A New Start

Keroppi, Kyorosuke

Kyorosuke Kyorosuke is wildly curious, and loves all sorts of new things. Blessed with superior eyesight--he can see things over half a mile away--Kyorosuke is often the first to pick up new information. Underwater swimming is his specialty. He enjoys surprising people by suddenly leaping out of the water--Keroppe has been known to pass out in such instances... Kyorosuke makes up one-third of the mischievous Ganta-Kyorosuke-Keroppi trio Birthday:  April 22

http://www.sanrio.co.jp/english/characters/keroppi/kr02.html

kway guan huat

特写 - popiah skin
"business is established, moral to give back to society"

kueh pie tee skin

===

from

http://victorkoo.blogspot.com/2006/03/joo-chiat-past-and-present-1.html

==

This popiah skin manufacturer has been around since 1938 although I cannot confirm whether it has always been in Joo Chiat since I was not even born yet at that time. So this shop has survived World War II. Whilst other local popiah skin manufacturers like well-known第一家(Tee Yih Jia) have fully automated their operations and even gone global, this one in Joo Chiat has chosen to stand still in time but yet has stood the test of time. 'Tee Yih Jia' literally means 'the first (company making popiah skins)' but since the company was established in 1969, it is definitely not the first homegrown company making popiah skins - Kway Guan Huat (郭源发) was established more than 3 decades earlier.

At Kway Guan Huat, the popiah skins are still made the traditional way. Each piece is made by hand, hence no two pieces are exactly alike. A worker holds a lump of very soft and pliable dough high and swings it skillfully with his hand. He then very deftly touches a large flat heated pan (the kind used for cooking roti pratas) with the dough. The worker must do this with just the right touch, literally. If done correctly, a round thin piece of dough is left stuck on the pan to cook. After about 10 seconds, the cooked dough is then scraped up from the pan and stacked with earlier cooked ones. The whole process may seem very easy to an onlooker but I am sure that in reality it is not.

In the olden days, there used to be a row of about half a dozen workers all doing the same routine as described above but on different pans, of course. It was quite fun to watch so many of them doing the same action simultaneously. It was like they were doing a military drill. But last Friday when I visited the shop, there was only one worker doing his thing. I suspected that perhaps business had not been as good as before.

There was another reason why I had the impression that their popiah business might not be doing very well. One of the shopkeepers peeked out and saw my car parked by the roadside. She then promptly handed me a pamphlet that extols the virtue of a $460 air cleaner for my car. But at that price, I really felt that it would clean out my wallet more effectively than the air in my car. That sum of money could buy a popiah feast for about 100 people! So I replied politely that I would read up the pamphlet first and then revert if I was interested. Why the need to diversify to a totally unrelated product if the popiah business was thriving right?

Below are other details of Kway Guan Huat:

Prices:

1 kg of plain popiah skins – S$16 (pro-rated charge for weights less than 1 kg)
1 kg of egg popiah skins (available on Sat, Sun and PH only) – S$18
Vegetarian popiah ingredients (toppings not included, enough for about 10 rolls) – S$22
Crab meat popiah ingredients (toppings not included, enough for about 10 rolls) – S$20

So how do you get there? Most conveniently by car or taxi, of course.

Photo 1 - The shop is at 95 Joo Chiat Road. If you are coming from Geylang Serai, the shop is on the left-hand side of the road, just after the junction with Joo Chiat Terrace.

Photo 2 – The shop front

Photo 3 – The 'Popiah Dance'

Photo 4 – Stacking up the finished product

A few days later, the president of the bank, Hursel Disney, phoned to ask my father why he would write a check for $1,000 when he only had $3 in his account.

"The realtor told me he wouldn't cash it," my father explained.

"Yeah, that's what he tells everyone," Hursel said.

"Tell you what, the cheque just fell off my desk and landed in the back of the trash can. I probably won't find it until next month." (That's the way the presidents of small-town banks did things back in those days.)

And that's how we came to live in a house with a porch.

Porch talk is one of the customs we've let slide out of our lives, not realising how desperately it is needed. This is the irony. We have more talk than ever before but too little communication; so many words but so little meaning. I miss those days of lag time. The magic of our porch talks, I now recall, was not only their depth but their breadth. My grandmother supplied the depth and I provided the scattering of topics. We discussed Lawrence Welk, the Virgin Mary, Richard Nixon, the gold standard and the merits of homemade ice-cream versus store-bought. I especially remember a fascinating talk about my family's history with moonshine.

I do not wish to romanticise the porch. Not all of its talk reached the level of Plato or Jefferson but there was a lustre to those talks, a certain glow and depth lacking in these days of e-mail and instant messaging. Perhaps it was the parenthesis of silence, the bracketing of conversation with reflection.

When my wife and I bought our home, we gave careful consideration to the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Little did we realise the most valuable real estate would be the 200 sq ft of our porch. On it, we have solved all of the world's problems, evening after pleasant evening, arcing back and forth in our wicker swing, the twilight breeze bearing all our cares away.

==

FT REPORT - HOUSE & HOME: The threshold of greatness

By Phillip Gulley, Financial Times
Published: Oct 27, 2007

Several years back, I was visiting an elderly woman reminiscing about her childhood. When I asked her what she missed the most, she closed her eyes and said: "Porch talk. I miss the porch talk."

Social scientists and preachers offer a number of reasons for the decline of civil society in the US: broken homes, poverty, disease, television and increasing secularism, to name a few. But I believe all that is wrong with our world can be attributed to the shortage of front porches and the talks we used to have on them. Somewhere around 1950, builders left off the front porch to save money and we've had nothing but problems ever since.

The first years of my life, I lived in a house without a porch, in the first subdivision in our small town. When I turned nine, a grand old house with a porch came on the market. My parents would drive by it, slowing as they passed. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to live there?" they would say to one another.

Then one Saturday morning, while Dad was walking on the town square, the owner of the jewellery store, who was also the town's real estate agent, stopped him.

"I have just the house for you," he told my father. "The Hollowell place. They're asking $30,000."

"Can't afford it," my father said.

"I can get you in that house for a $1,000 down-payment," the jeweller-real-estate-agent said.

"I don't have $1,000," my father said.

"Write me a cheque and I won't cash it until you have the money," the agent promised.

So my father did, then and there, without telling my mother.

A few days later, the president of the bank, Hursel Disney, phoned to ask my father why he would write a check for $1,000 when he only had $3 in his account.

"The realtor told me he wouldn't cash it," my father explained.

"Yeah, that's what he tells everyone," Hursel said.

"Tell you what, the cheque just fell off my desk and landed in the back of the trash can. I probably won't find it until next month." (That's the way the presidents of small-town banks did things back in those days.)

And that's how we came to live in a house with a porch.

My memory is this: each April, on the first warm Saturday, we would remove the storm windows, haul them up to the attic, carry down the screens and fit them in the windows. The windows and screens, being old and handmade, lacked the exactness of factory windows. Someone had written on each screen, in shaky, old-man handwriting, which window it fit: dining room, south; north-west bedroom, window over register. The screens never did fit precisely. My father would rub a bar of soap along the frames and finesse the screens into place.

With the screens installed, we would carry the stepladder around to the front porch, lower the porch swing to its correct height, to the link in the chain with the dab of red paint, then carry the rocker up from the basement. Thus, porch season commenced.

There was an etiquette to porch sitting. People would approach our porch and stop at the foot of the steps, awaiting an invitation to join us. If one wasn't forthcoming, they knew delicate matters were being discussed and would excuse themselves after a brief exchange of pleasantries. This rule was never discussed or written down but was generally known and obeyed by all, except by children and dull-witted adults.

Porch sitting was an evening pursuit, after the supper dishes were washed and the kitchen cleaned. We children would run underneath the streetlight, shrieking, our hands covering our hair to keep the bats out. Bats, tradition had it, made nests in your hair and drove you mad. My mother and father would watch from the porch, unconcerned, as the bats swooped past, plucking at our heads.

After a while, my mother would call us into the yard, then a while later on to the porch. Coming in for the night was always a progression: street, yard, porch. By the time we reached the porch, we were fading and would arrange ourselves on the railing, our backs to the columns, while the adults visited. If we sat quietly and listened closely, we could hear them discuss matters we weren't ordinarily privy to, stories of certain people in our town who'd moved away without telling anyone.

Some evenings, if my father was feeling expansive. he would share stories of his childhood, about growing up in what he called the "hard times". In later conversations with my Aunt Doris, I learned that many of my father's stories were embellished, which in no way lessened their appeal.

On nights the Cincinnati Reds played, my father would set the kitchen radio on the parlour table, open the window on to the porch and listen to Marty Brennaman announce the game. Lee Comer would wander over from next door to provide local commentary. Lee was exempt from the rules of porch etiquette. He and any member of his family could ascend the steps without asking, and still can, since Lee's son, Ben, now owns the house.

Porch talk is one of the customs we've let slide out of our lives, not realising how desperately it is needed. This is the irony. We have more talk than ever before but too little communication; so many words but so little meaning. I miss those days of lag time. The magic of our porch talks, I now recall, was not only their depth but their breadth. My grandmother supplied the depth and I provided the scattering of topics. We discussed Lawrence Welk, the Virgin Mary, Richard Nixon, the gold standard and the merits of homemade ice-cream versus store-bought. I especially remember a fascinating talk about my family's history with moonshine.

I do not wish to romanticise the porch. Not all of its talk reached the level of Plato or Jefferson but there was a lustre to those talks, a certain glow and depth lacking in these days of e-mail and instant messaging. Perhaps it was the parenthesis of silence, the bracketing of conversation with reflection.

When my wife and I bought our home, we gave careful consideration to the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Little did we realise the most valuable real estate would be the 200 sq ft of our porch. On it, we have solved all of the world's problems, evening after pleasant evening, arcing back and forth in our wicker swing, the twilight breeze bearing all our cares away.

Extracted from 'Porch Talk' (HarperOne, $15.95)

FT: Anarchy in North Korea? Hardly

Anarchy in North Korea? Hardly

By Peter Tasker

Published: October 27 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2007 03:00

The white guy in the Pyongyang karaoke bar clutched the microphone in his meaty paw. "I am an Antichrist," he roared, shaking his shoulder-length locks. "I am an anarchist."

Our North Korean minders' bemusement turned to consternation as the Sex Pistols' lyrics scrolled across the TV screen.

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"I wanna be an anarchist. Get pissed. Destroy".

Anarchy in North Korea? Hardly. The restaurant we had been taken to on our bizarre tour of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was a restricted "foreigners only" establishment on the outskirts of the North Korean capital. The vast selection of songs on the karaoke system was as far from the lives of ordinary citizens as the plates of meat and vegetables on our table.

Not to be outdone, one of the minders countered with a stirring rendition of "The Song of Kim Il-sung", backed by a video montage of missiles and tanks, marching soldiers - and, of course, images of the "Great Leader" himself. Judging by the wild applause of the waitresses, he nailed it.

We were a seven-person group of hacks, sensation-seekers and Asia hands on a five-day visit to North Korea organised by L&J Development. Getting in was no easy matter. Our Russian travel agent kept changing the schedule. Mysterious "political factors" caused the whole thing to be cancelled twice, then just as suddenly uncancelled. All the time we were under the watchful gaze of two "guides", highly-trained minders whom we nicknamed Good Cop and Bad Cop to mark their contrasting personal styles.

The pretext for the trip earlier this year was the Arirang "mass games," an event to mark the 95th birthday of Kim Il-sung CKFTstyle, the "Great Leader" and founder of the nation. Despite being dead since 1994, Kim Il-sung continues to occupy the post of president, thus taking his country one step beyond gerontocracy to necrocracy. His son, Kim Jong-il, has to content himself with being general secretary of the Korean Worker's Party and "Leader."

The games were an ideological son et lumière performance, featuring mass gymnastics, dancing and tae kwon do workouts held in a stadium. The backdrop was created by a bank of 20,000 children holding up coloured boards. The images on this giant video screen changed every few seconds. Kim Il-sung routing the evil Japanese colonialists. Kim Il-sung routing the evil American imperialists. Kim Il-sung leading battalions of happy workers to a shining new dawn.

The clockwork precision of the ever-smiling performers was even more impressive since they were stuck out in the pouring rain for the entire two-hour show. Leni Riefenstahl would have loved it, as would fans of Busby Berkeley musicals.

The minders kept us on a tight leash. Our hotel was on an island in the River Taedong, so unsupervised evening strolls were out of the question. Not that there was much likelihood of interacting with ordinary citizens. On a visit to the subway - decorated, naturally, with giant friezes of the "Great Leader" - silent, shadowy passengers shied away from us like frightened deer. Generally people looked terrible - listless, hollow-cheeked, significantly shorter than their cousins to the south. Wizened women sat down on the escalators apparently glad of a few minutes' rest.

What we didn't see was often more striking than what we did. The bustling street life that marks any Asian city worth its salt was nowhere in evidence. No food-stands, no carts selling T-shirts, no throngs of chattering girls - no bright lights anywhere except for the eerie glow that illuminates the ubiquitous statues and portraits of the "Eternal Leader."

One evening our coach rumbled past a hundred-strong crowd milling around in the darkness. Was this, perhaps, a private market and thus evidence of the fabled liberalisation that travellers to North Korea have been reporting for at least 20 years now?

We demanded an explanation from Good Cop. He continued his soliloquy on Korean reunification and the American plot to obstruct it. We repeated the question, louder. He increased his own volume to match. Soon we had left the crowd far behind. As to what they were doing - we remained as much in the dark as the streets of Pyongyang.

Later on, Bad Cop reminded us that private markets did not exist in North Korea. Nor for that matter did crime, homosexuality, or any desire to wear brightly coloured clothes.

The "Eternal Leader" was everywhere: urging his people onwards from enormous stone plinths, smiling encouragement from the lapel badges worn by every North Korean citizen. Our opportunity to meet him face-to-face came on a visit to the International Friendship Exhibition, two hours north of Pyongyang.

The exhibition hall is a vast concrete edifice holding all the gifts the "Great Leader" has received over the years. These ranged from the potentially useful, such as a bullet-proof limo from Stalin, to the unconsciously ironic, such as the snarling head of a black bear shot by Nicolae Ceausescu.

We had been asked to wear ties as a mark of respect and photos were strictly forbidden. The minders' voices trembled with reverence as they ushered us into the presence of the "Great Leader" himself - or rather, a creepily realistic waxwork, greeting us with outstretched arm and the smarmy grin of a door-to-door salesman. Classical music plinked away in the background. A group of women in traditional costume followed us in. At the sight of the waxwork they dissolved into sobs.

We stifled our laughter like naughty children in Sunday school. Which is in a sense where we were; North Korea has left Marxism far behind and moved into the territory of religion. The symbolic borrowings are clear. A new star is said to have emerged in the sky when Kim Jong-il was born. Anecdotes that sound bizarre to outsiders - such as the Kim Jong-il's hole-in-one on his first ever round of golf - are reminiscent of miracles in the lives of the saints.

Abraham Lincoln reckoned you can't fool all the people all the time. L Ron Hubbard and the Reverend Moon might disagree. Religious cults gather millions of believers, not because their doctrines make sense, but because they feed off deep-seated human weaknesses.

"We like you so much we want to keep you," said Good Cop on the way to the airport. Recalling the missing Japanese citizens snatched by North Korean agents, I found it hard to return his smile.

Instead another Sex Pistols line came to mind. "No future" - that is, for the 23m inhabitants of this benighted country.

Peter Tasker is a Tokyo-based investor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT: Kings of the Hollywood jungle

excerpt:

On their way to the Rome Film Festival, where the movie received its world premiere on Tuesday, before its showing the following day at the London Film Festival, Redford and his co-stars Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep stopped in New York to promote a film they all feel strongly about...

... the story takes place on three tense emotional fronts. Presidential hopeful Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise) is about to give a sensational story about a new war strategy to a probing TV journalist (Streep) as the two carry on a fierce cat-and-mouse game of wit and evasion. At a West Coast University, a once idealistic professor, Dr Malley (Redford), confronts a privileged but blasé student (Andrew Garfield). Meanwhile, in the heat of battle in Afghanistan, two of Malley's former students, Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Peña) lay bare the arguments of mentors and politicians...

....The screenwriter set out to explore the ways in which different people face demanding times. The movie features two soldiers who have risen out of poverty to serve their country; an ambitious politician pursuing his beliefs with secret military missions; an influential reporter unsure of her role in a world where journalists themselves have become part of political agendas; a wearied professor whose last great hope is to make an impact on his students; and a cocky college kid who has never taken a real stand...

...It's a film about personal responsibility, about people accepting their role in shaping the future, about how we each deal with our choices in life to try to make this a better world."

Streep was impressed by the subject's urgency. "It's a story about making the right choices, but it's also about how easy it is not to make a choice at all," she says. "The film says that it doesn't matter what you think or feel if you don't do something about it, if you don't stand up and jeopardise everything."

==

Kings of the Hollywood jungle

By Emanuel Levy

Published: October 27 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2007 03:00

What attracted me to Lions for Lambs ," says the film's star and director Robert Redford, "was the way the story uses the war as a catalyst for major issues, such as the role of the media, of education, of politics and youth in America. It's a provocative film that addresses big questions head-on, while compelling the audience into thinking about where we are right now, and how we got here."

On their way to the Rome Film Festival, where the movie received its world premiere on Tuesday, before its showing the following day at the London Film Festival, Redford and his co-stars Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep stopped in New York to promote a film they all feel strongly about.

Covering the events of a single day, the story takes place on three tense emotional fronts. Presidential hopeful Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise) is about to give a sensational story about a new war strategy to a probing TV journalist (Streep) as the two carry on a fierce cat-and-mouse game of wit and evasion. At a West Coast University, a once idealistic professor, Dr Malley (Redford), confronts a privileged but blasé student (Andrew Garfield). Meanwhile, in the heat of battle in Afghanistan, two of Malley's former students, Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Peña) lay bare the arguments of mentors and politicians.

One of Hollywood's most articulate thinkers, Redford emphasises that, while Lions focuses on current events, its themes dig much deeper and the film is not a war drama. Rather, he sees it as "a human drama that dares to ask the viewers to question".

"In the end," says Redford, "the questions raised by the film go to the audience: 'What would you do? How do you feel about this?' "

Redford has always been drawn to stories about the fabric of American institutions. This interest, which has marked his diverse career as a movie star, producer, director and guru of the independent movement, drew him to this script by the relatively unknown Matthew Michael Carnahan.

The screenwriter set out to explore the ways in which different people face demanding times. The movie features two soldiers who have risen out of poverty to serve their country; an ambitious politician pursuing his beliefs with secret military missions; an influential reporter unsure of her role in a world where journalists themselves have become part of political agendas; a wearied professor whose last great hope is to make an impact on his students; and a cocky college kid who has never taken a real stand.

When Carnahan, who also wrote the current action thriller The Kingdom , set in Saudi Arabia, finished his screenplay, he joked to producer Tracy Falco that perhaps he should send it to Redford. He couldn't believe it when the joke became a reality. "I talked to Bob for the first time last September and a few months later we were in production. It's amazing how much energy and enthusiasm he brought to this project."

Although Redford hadn't directed a film for seven years, the script struck a nerve. "It came out of the blue," Redford recalls, "I was surprised by it because it was political. There's so much commercial insecurity about political films these days that only the safe ones get made. Those that are risky, that force you to think, are harder to come by."

As a director, Redford has explored the turmoil within American families in the 1980 Oscar-winning Ordinary People , the temptations of TV culture in the 1994 Quiz Show , the vital connections between landscape, nature and the American soul in The Milagro Beanfiled War and The Horse Whisperer . He has also influenced American filmmaking by founding the Sundance Institute, Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Channel, which have nurtured a young generation of directors making bold and original stories, those largely untold by mainstream Hollywood.

But Lions for Lambs was not just about taking chances. Redford says he was drawn to the idea of sparking real debate and invigorating young audiences not used to seeing such big issues tackled by movies. "I hoped this film would provoke audiences to contemplate where we are in this country," says Redford. "To me, it's a story about much more than the current issues now. It's about the deeper factors that lie behind the issues and how they are experienced on a personal level by real people. It's a film about personal responsibility, about people accepting their role in shaping the future, about how we each deal with our choices in life to try to make this a better world."

Redford was further compelled by the taut storytelling and artistic challenges. "I'm not interested in political films for history's sake. There had to be a character-driven story," as there was in the 1976 All The President's Men about the Watergate scandal, which Redford produced and starred in with Dustin Hoffman. Redford's films as producer and actor have centred on populist American themes, as evident in The Candidate , a critical look at the political process. But Redford adds: "I would never want to do something that was abject propaganda. Lions shows different points of view and we have to respect all of them. I want the audience to have an open reaction to each story."

The final, irresistible pull for Redford was the fact that Cruise had already expressed interest, not only as an actor playing the slick yet impassioned senator, but also as executive, making the film with his long-time partner Paula Wagner as their first project in the new United Artists. "I don't think the film would have been made without Tom," says Redford. "The idea of Tom playing a senator was different and intriguing. Then I called Meryl Streep and said, 'I'm interested in this, how about you?' and she said, 'If you do it, I'll do it.' That's how it came together so quickly, and for a relatively modest budget."

Streep was impressed by the subject's urgency. "It's a story about making the right choices, but it's also about how easy it is not to make a choice at all," she says. "The film says that it doesn't matter what you think or feel if you don't do something about it, if you don't stand up and jeopardise everything."

For Cruise, the movie represents the kind of bold, unexpected story he and Wagner hope will form the foundation of the reinvented United Artists, the company that originally began in 1919 to give Hollywood artists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, creative control over their work.

Cruise says: "It's a very powerful script, and it's a great film to kick off the new UA, especially with Bob Redford, a true maverick who has defined so much of modern cinema with his championing of independent cinema.

"I never thought of this as a war film but as one that will promote dialogue and challenge the audience's ideas - no matter what their point of view."

www.romacinemafest.org

'Lions for Lambs' goes on general release in the UK on November 9

[trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPCbOqiVKfo]

calvin and hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

                                          

FT: No more hypocrisy

No more hypocrisy

Published: October 27 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2007 03:00

From Mr Jerry Harris.

Sir, Why all the fuss over the lack of democracy in Russia and China? Gideon Rachman (October 23) was the latest to decry this supposed "challenge to the west". Common thinking asserts that capitalism will give rise to middle-class democracy. Yet the fascist regimes of Europe were capitalist. And the US supported dozens of authoritarian capitalist governments among developing nations. So let us deal with the world as it is and drop the hypocritical surprise.

Jerry Harris,

Secretary, Global Studies Association,

Chicago, IL 60622, US

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

FT, AFP: Burma

The junta's exports lose their sparkle

By Amy Kazmin

Published: October 27 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2007 03:00

For centuries, Burma's gem mines have suppliedsome of the world's best rubies, jade and other gemstones coveted by couture jewellers and their wealthy customers. In recent years, these stones have also been a key source of foreign exchange for a cash-starved junta, which last year earned about $300m (€209m, £146m) from state gem auctions.

But after watching television images of Burmese soldiers attacking civilians and monks, executives at Cartier, the French luxury brand, decided it was time to take a stand. Within days, they were telling their cut-stone suppliers that they would not buy any more gems mined in Burma and would conduct random checks to ensure that the stones they did buy were not coming from there.

"While it was clear before that Burma was not a democratic regime, what we were witnessing was organised state violence. This was, in a way, an emotional response for us," says Pamela Caillens, Cartier's corporate responsibility director.

Cartier's move reflects the strong response by big western jewellers to last month's crackdown in Burma after many of them had long overlooked human-rights concerns.

Burmese rubies, prized for their rich red, are said to comprise 90 per cent of the world's supply. Burma also provides up to 98 per cent of the world's jade, giving the country what one jeweller calls a "stranglehold" on these gem sectors.

Bulgari, the Italian jeweller, has said it, too, will boycott Burmese gems. Jewelers of America, which represents large US retail chains such as Kay Jewelers, has called on Congress to close a loophole in a US ban on Burmese imports that has allowed Burmese gemstones to enter the market through third countries, where they are normally cut and polished. Tiffanyhas observed a ban on buying Burmese gems since 2002.

"We want to give our voices to those who say, 'something must change'," says Peggy Jo Donahue of Jewelers of America. "We don't want to buy products that might support a regime that hasn't yet engaged in democratic reforms."

Burma's biggest western investors, Chevron and Total , have so far rejected calls to divest their stakes in the Yadana gas field and associated pipeline, saying a sellout would only transfer their assets to other, less-scrupulous investors - and could give the regime a windfall in capital gains tax revenues.

However, other western businesses are re-evaluating their Burma links, prompted by concerns about the risk to their reputations of being seen to be aiding the military regime. In addition, the EU and the US are both considering fresh sanctions that could force many companies to cut their ties.

In the wake of the bloody crackdown on protesters, Rolls-Royce decided to stop servicing aircraft engines for the state carrier Myanmar Airways and leasing aircraft for another Burmese airline.

Rolls-Royce said it would have "no further involvement" in Burma. Myanmar Airways suspended some of its flights as a result, citing loss of insurance coverage.

Even before the recent crackdown, many image-sensitive UK clothing companies had stopped buying apparel from Burma after being targeted by consumer boycotts. In 2002, Triumph International, the lingerie business, closed a Burmese bra factory after a high-profile poster campaign called on the company to "support breasts, not dictators".

Besides gemstones and despite pressure from environmentalists, Burma has also remained an important source of teak, a hardwood valued by yacht and furniture makers.

Timbmet, the UK's largest importer and distributor of hardwoods, says it decided to wind down its sourcing from Burma several years ago after "we judged that trading with Burma was not responsible", says Mike Packer, the corporate responsibility director.

The company, which imported £3m ($6.2m, €4.3m) of Burmese teak last year, says it always tried to acquire legally logged wood, but ultimately concluded it could not verify environmental or labour conditions to its satisfaction.

Mr Packer says they had no illusions that the pullout would have any impact on the regime, though the EU's planned import ban on Burmese wood might have. "There are a lot of other companies that have picked up and are benefiting from our withdrawal," he said.

While western jewellers say they felt compelled to support the Burmese people's struggle for change, they hope their boycott will be only temporary. "It is not for ever," says Ms Caillens of Cartier. "If we change our decision, we have witnessed a difference - a change for the better. We definitely hope that something will occur, and that the jewellery industry will have played a bit of a part in it."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Burma regime’s cronies feel sanctions

By Amy Kazmin

Published: October 26 2007 19:05 | Last updated: October 26 2007 19:05

In early September, Tay Za, a charismatic Burmese businessman accused of having close links to the military junta, was in Singapore to launch a daily service between the city state and Rangoon for his airline, Air Bagan. The three-year-old carrier, which does most of its business within Burma, had launched daily Bangkok flights and hoped to make an ambitious regional expansion.

The right to operate an airline was just the latest in a series of lucrative concessions secured by Burma’s most powerful businessman, whose extensive interests range from hotels to logging and mobile phones.

But Air Bagan on Thursday announced it had been forced to suspend its Singapore flights starting on November 4, a move that came after Tay Za, his wife, his son, and his companies were blacklisted by the US as key supporters of the military regime.

The move was evidence that the international response to the military’s violent crackdown on peaceful protesters last month is beginning to pinch the Burmese businessmen who until now have profited from their association with the generals who control the economy.

“They must be starting to feel a little bit encircled,” said Sean Turnell, an Australian economist who edits the journal Burma Economic Watch. “These things hurt them because they want to be seen as legitimate.”

Also named by the US have been Htay Myint, chairman of the Yuzana Company, which runs supermarkets, hotels, property-related enterprises and agribusinesses, and Khin Shwe, chairman of the Kay Gabar Group. Identified as key regime cronies, all face the prospect of their assets in US banks, or their overseas subsidiaries, being seized.

The same entrepreneurs – along with another 27 Burmese businessmen and relatives deemed to be beneficiaries of the regime’s economic policies – have also been hit by Australian financial sanctions.

Analysts say the sanctions may not have much of an obvious direct impact, as the businessmen are not thought to keep their assets in US banks or subsidiaries of US banks and no one knows how much Burmese money may be parked in Australia.

Yet Mr Turnell said that blacklisting businessmen as key cronies of a pariah regime “could be more effective than they appear to be on paper” as it was likely to make other non-financial companies wary of the risks of dealing with them.

Air Bagan officials in Singapore said they did not know why the Singapore-Rangoon route had been suspended, and calls to the head office in Rangoon went unanswered. But The Irrawaddy, a Thai-based news organisation dedicated to Burma, reported the company was facing difficulties with its Singapore-based bank.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Tourists on a boat take photographs of the Singapore waterfront skyline

Several firms on US Myanmar blacklist linked to Singapore

6 days ago

SINGAPORE (AFP) — Three companies with strong links to Singapore are among seven firms blacklisted by the United States under fresh sanctions against Myanmar after its deadly suppression of pro-democracy protests.

According to President George W. Bush's order the companies which are either based in or linked to Singapore are: Pavo Trading Pte Ltd, Air Bagan Holdings Pte Ltd and Htoo Wood Products Pte Ltd, which is also listed as being from Myanmar's main city, Yangon.

The sanctions were announced Friday and are designed to target organisations with ties to Myanmar's ruling junta in the hope it will pile more pressure on the regime.

"It's about time the US did something like this," said Dave Mathieson, a consultant on Myanmar to Human Rights Watch in Bangkok.

He said the sanctions "actually go after the money" of the junta, adding they also served as a "wake-up call" for Singapore.

Also named is Air Bagan Ltd of Myanmar, which last month made Singapore its second international destination. The airline's chairman, Tay Za, arrived on the first flight.

Tay Za has "very, very strong links to the junta," said Sean Turnell, an economics professor who specialises in Myanmar at Australia's Macquarie University.

Tay Za is not among 11 individuals named by Bush as senior regime officials in Myanmar who are also subject to the fresh sanctions.

The directory at a building in Singapore's central business district lists Air Bagan Holdings and the two other blacklisted Singapore-linked firms as operating from a suite on the 24th floor.

But the suite carries no sign and workers in neighbouring offices said they knew nothing about what type of company operates from there, although they have seen people coming and going on weekdays.

An opaque blue sticker covered the door and obscured the interior. Phone and email messages to Pavo Trading were not immediately returned.

"We can't really comment right now," said Zaw Nay Oo, Air Bagan's corporate affairs manager, who works from the airline's sales office in a city shopping plaza.

Government spokespersons in Singapore also could not be immediately reached for comment.

The website for Pavo Trading says it is a sister company of Htoo Group of Companies and was established in 1999.

"The company's main interest lies in export of timber and timber products from Myanmar," says the website.

It says the group's flagship company, Htoo Trading Co Ltd, is a logging firm established 17 years ago.

"Htoo Trading is run by Tay Za," said Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, a human rights group.

Bush's executive order cuts off the designated officials and organisations -- and those acting on their behalf -- from the US financial system, the US Treasury Department said.

It means that "any assets these individuals and entities may have that are within US jurisdiction must be frozen, and US persons are prohibited from transacting or doing business with them," the department said.

Singapore is chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and has led regional criticism of the junta's crackdown last month, which killed at least 13 people. More than 3,000 were detained.

Observers say Singapore's tough words against the junta must be matched by economic action given the city-state's extensive links with the regime.

Human rights activists and other experts allege -- without providing direct evidence -- that junta funds have flowed into, or at least through Singapore, a regional financial centre.

Singapore strongly denies allegations that it allows banks based here to keep illicit funds on behalf of Myanmar's secretive generals.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told CNN television recently that the country does not take "dirty money" and does not condone money laundering.

The city-state was among the regional countries Bush praised Friday for their response to Myanmar's upheaval.

FT: Book review: Michelin's very own guide

"Mr Lottman's account of the company's behaviour during the second world war is appropriately judicious; occupation provided no easy options. The company decided to keep its factories open; the alternative might well have been forced labour for its employees. The Michelin factories did enough for the German war effort to warrant a Royal Air Force bombing raid. Against that, several Michelins had distinguished resistance records."

==

Book review: Michelin's very own guide

By Michael Skapinker, FT.com site
Published: Mar 03, 2004

THE MICHELIN MEN
Driving an empire      
By Herbert Lottman            
IB Tauris, $27.95, £19.95

 

In 1985, Financial Times journalists went to Clermont-Ferrand in central France to interview François Michelin, head of the eponymous tyre manufacturer.

 

It was the first interview Mr Michelin had given to any newspaper in six years. There was no question of the journalists entering the factories. The interview took place in a hotel - after the next-door room had been checked for eavesdroppers.

 

When the FT returned last year to talk to the new boss, Edouard Michelin, François's son, the interview was at Michelin's headquarters. These days, the company even allows journalists to peek into the factories.

 

There is a limit, however, to Michelin's new openness. When Herbert Lottman, author of The Michelin Men, asked when Edouard was born, the company declined to say. An "always helpful outside source" provided the answer (August 13 1963), along with the intelligence that Mr Michelin's family called him Dou-Dou.

 

So this is not an authorised history. Michelin refused to help in any way, which has not made the book any less readable.

 

Marcel Dassault, the French aerospace pioneer, called Michelin's tyre business "a provincial speciality". A book about tyre-making would be a provincial speciality too, except that Mr Lottman, a New Yorker who has been a journalist in France for 30 years, has a wide sweep, and there is more to Michelin than tyres: there are its famous guides, its celebrated restaurant ratings, and Bibendum, the Michelin Man, one of the world's best-known corporate mascots.

 

And because Michelin has been there throughout the automobile's history, its story is the 20th century's too.

 

Michelin traces its roots to 1830 and a company that manufactured rubber balls. It was renamed Michelin in 1889, when André and Edouard Michelin (the current chief executive's great-grandfather) were invited to run it after their father married into the founding family.

 

Edouard took care of the manufacturing in Clermont-Ferrand. André, living in Paris, became the company's hugely skilled publicist. By now, Michelin's business was tyres: bicycle tyres and horse-drawn vehicle tyres. André Michelin said in 1895 that he did not see much of a future for automobile tyres.

 

He was wrong, but the company caught up, surpassing Britain's Dunlop and Germany's Continental to become Europe's greatest tyre manufacturer. From the start of the automobile age, Michelin campaigned for more and better motoring. The guides, started in 1900 and, initially free, were part of that. If people were going to travel by car, they needed to know what was worth looking at and where to eat: two stars meant "worth a detour", three stars "worth a journey".

 

Michelin was a paternalistic employer, providing staff with housing, schools and medical care. Its leaders were eager followers of the newest management trends, meeting Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of "scientific management". The company had an employee suggestion scheme as long ago as the 1920s.

 

Against this, Michelin was fiercely anti-union and took a harsh line against anyone who tried to organise one. Leaving Michelin, or being fired, had serious consequences. Departing employees, even those who were dismissed, had to agree not to work for any company in the same field, whether in France or abroad.

 

The Michelins had an early understanding of the importance of air power in war. During the first world war, their factories produced crude bombers. Mr Lottman's account of the company's behaviour during the second world war is appropriately judicious; occupation provided no easy options. The company decided to keep its factories open; the alternative might well have been forced labour for its employees. The Michelin factories did enough for the German war effort to warrant a Royal Air Force bombing raid. Against that, several Michelins had distinguished resistance records.

 

The company's postwar success was based on its pioneering of the radial tyre. Its continued name recognition owes much to its restaurant stars. Mr Lottman knows a lot about Michelin's stars and he treats us to the full five courses.

 

There is a long section on the positive effects on restaurant standards as well as on the negative consequences: high prices, uniformity of culinary style and often intolerable pressure on restaurateurs who covet three stars or, having won them, are desperate to keep them.

 

There is less on how much the restaurant ratings and the guides contribute to Michelin's central business of selling tyres. However energetic Mr Lottman was in tracking down people who would talk, some of Michelin remains hidden.

 

Readers of this newspaper might have liked more on the company's ownership structure, which gives the family and their intimates extensive control but unlimited liability too. There is also little in the way of final summing up or discussion of the future and the publishers have provided a deplorably inadequate index.

 

Enough carping. This is an absorbing, novelistic read: a story not only of a French company but also of French pride, the country's often mysterious industrial success and, finally, of France itself. Well worth a detour.

FT: The brave new world of state capitalism

The brave new world of state capitalism

By Martin Wolf

Published: October 16 2007 19:55 | Last updated: October 16 2007 19:55

Globalisation was supposed to mean the worldwide triumph of the market economy. Yet some of the most influential players are turning out to be states, not private actors. States play a dominant role in ownership and production of raw materials, notably oil and gas. Now states are also emerging as owners of wealth. This is creating widespread concern. Does that narrow focus make sense? The broad answer is No.

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Fevered attention is currently focused on so-called “sovereign wealth funds”. As Standard Chartered shows in an intriguing analysis, carried out with input from Oxford Analytica*, these are not a new phenomenon: the oldest dates back to 1953. But today there are more funds, with far more money at their disposal than before. In all, they control some $2,200bn, with $2,100bn in the top 20 funds. The seven biggest belong (in order of estimated size) to Abu Dhabi ($625bn), Norway ($322bn), Singapore – GIC ($215bn), Kuwait ($213bn), China ($200bn), Russia ($128bn) and Singapore – Temasek ($108bn).

By definition, these funds exist because a country has a surplus of savings over investment that ends up in the hands of the government. In practice, this has happened for two reasons: ownership of commodity wealth (particularly oil and natural gas), and what amounts to forced savings from an export-oriented manufacturing economy, as in the cases of China and Singapore.

Where a country’s natural resource wealth is large relative to the size of its population, the fund should be seen as a different way to hold that wealth, for the long term. In the case of Russia, however, the aim is stabilisation, which implies a shorter-term horizon. China’s fund is a consequence of its massive reserve accumulations, which exceed the sums it can conceivably need for insurance. This has allowed the transfer of $200bn (maybe much more in future) to a new fund – the China Investment Corporation – with the goal of achieving a higher return than the miserably low one on the country’s official reserves.

How large are these funds? They account for approximately 1.3 per cent of the world’s stock of financial assets (stocks, bonds and bank deposits). But the total of $2,200bn is, notes the Standard Chartered report, bigger than the sums invested in hedge funds (at $1,000bn-$1,500bn) and private equity funds (at $700bn-$1,100bn). Nevertheless, it is dwarfed by the $53,000bn controlled by mature institutional investors (see chart).

The sovereign funds remain far smaller than official foreign currency reserves (approximately $5,600bn). But the expectation is that these funds will grow rapidly, possibly to exceed official currency reserves in a number of years. If recent growth were to continue, the total value would reach $13,000bn over the next decade. This might then be 5 per cent of total global financial wealth.

How is the money used? Here the report distinguishes funds by their transparency and by the active, or strategic, nature of their approach to investment (see chart). Norway’s fund is conventionally invested (with widely distributed ownership) and transparent. Singapore’s funds are defined as transparent, but look for large ownership positions. Qatar’s fund is defined as non-transparent and strategic, as is China’s. But Lou Jiwei, chairman of the China Investment Corporation, insists that the new fund will operate on commercial lines.

Is there any reason, then, to be concerned about the emergence and likely growth of such funds? As a general proposition, the answer is No. If a government operates a fund transparently and on normal commercial lines, with a wide range of investments and no dominant positions, as does Norway, one can only welcome its emergence as an investor. Questions should be raised only if a fund sought a controlling interest in a strategic company. Then two issues would arise, neither of them specific to sovereign funds: the first is whether the fund is a “fit and proper person” to control a company; the second is whether ownership might threaten a public interest.

Many sovereign wealth funds should raise no concerns whatsoever. The worrying ones are only those that do seek dominant positions or outright ownership of strategically important businesses. If the fund belonged to a government deemed potentially hostile, the concern must be bigger. It would be reasonable to keep control of companies operating in defence or high technology out of the ownership of funds belonging to any foreign government, let alone a potentially hostile one. But interesting questions arise elsewhere: what would people feel about Chinese government ownership of a big media operator?

In other respects, however, the concern with sovereign funds is too narrow. The big truth is that contemporary globalisation has brought players into the game that operate by different rules from those espoused by today’s high-income countries: vast state-owned companies, such as Gazprom; billionaires who have gained fortunes by a mixture of force and fraud; and funds owned by governments. Of these, the last may well turn out to pose the smallest problems.

My broad recommendation, then, is to consider the emergence of these funds as part of the integration of countries that accept a bigger role of the state in markets than western countries do today. So be it. It is better for such countries to prosper inside the market system than glower outside it. It is absurd to take a country’s exports of oil and refuse to allow it to buy assets, in return.

Yet not everything should be for sale. It is possible – indeed, necessary – to define a negative list of companies that are “off limits”. It is also reasonable to monitor the suitability of owners of large public companies. It would be wrong to exclude state-owned companies from bidding for such public companies. But it is quite reasonable to investigate how these have operated elsewhere. It is not unreasonable, after all, to believe that a state-owned company might not work on normal commercial lines. But it may do so, in which case no problem need arise.

Meanwhile, the owners of the sovereign wealth funds need to understand their own best interests. They should manage their money professionally and transparently. This is also the way to minimise friction with host countries. If they refuse to abide by these principles, they must expect trouble. Yet trouble should not go out of its way to look for them: far, far worse things can happen than for China to come to the west bearing the chequebook it has earned by its people’s remarkable efforts.

*State Capitalism: The Rise of Sovereign Wealth Funds, October 15 2007

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007