South+and+Southeast+Asia

=South and Southeast Asia= The Mighty Motherland: Asia

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[|Brunei] [|Burma (Bhutan) (Myanmar)] [|Cambodia] [|Timor-Leste] [|Indonesia] [|Laos] [|Malaysia] [|Philippines]

[|Singapore] [|Thailand] [|Vietnam]

Migration and Colonization
Articles [|Beccaria NewsTrust]

Many of our nations with the exception of Thailand (currently in a positive economic state) have struggled and or are struggling with poverty issues, environmental woes, and other social dilemmas. Vietnam partook in many wars in the past, recently regained independence, and Vietnam's economic growth has been ridiculous in the past decade. Thailand has sustained successful living conditions for sometime now, has decent economic income rates, trade investment and tourism has assisted Thailand's prosperity.

Politics/International Law and Organizations
South and Southeast Asia varies from a strong democratic government to military dictatorship to monarchies to communist. India has the most stable government is the most modern region along with Singapore. Burma is controlled by a military government and is on the verge of falling in to civil war due to the government and militias made up of ethnic minorities vyng for power. Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy. Vietnam and Laos are one party communist states. The other countries fall under one of those categories.

Southeast Asian countries have joined the Association of South East Asian Countries (ASEAN). The goal of this organization is to help promote economic and social advancement. The organization also gives countries a medium to discusses conflicts to maintain peace.

globalization south and south east asia

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46334

this is an article based on the politics going down in Thailand. Its fairly new, arrived in 2009, more current than other available articles on the topic. Specifically it discusses events correlating to political peace, protests being conjured up in the streets of Bangkok. Smaller organizations were running certain parts of the nation, power was being divided. the "Red Shirts" was an organization in Thailand that thought they were up against another opposing group and the only way they could combat them was activating a democracy. Articles [|Strait Times] [|Nhân Dân]

Environment and Energy
SASUKE VINCE EVANS Energy and environment I research some environmental issues plaguing Bangladesh and found a reliable article to share with readers that gives an in depth description of the environmental dilemmas Bangladesh is currently facing.

http://www.discoverybangladesh.com/meetbangladesh/env_issue.html

In the beginning of the text it states that Bangladesh has not been doing well in the first place do to poverty, overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, and lack of awareness of the topic. Floods and cyclones have been tearing apart the land as well with the addition of deforestation, and destruction of wetlands resulting a broken estate. Health is in danger due to spread of diseases inhabitant in the water of the region. Cholera is a common issue. *Cholera- **Cholera**, sometimes known as **Asiatic** or **epidemic cholera**, is an infectious [|gastroenteritis] caused by [|enterotoxin] -producing strains of the [|bacterium] [|//Vibrio cholerae//] .[|[1]][|[2]] Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with //Vibrio cholerae// from other cholera patients. Brought to you by wiki

All the environmental contamination and impurities in the water have led citizens of Bangladesh to seek other alternative for safe drinking water. Over all, this nation is in a bad state of affairs dealing with their domain since they are faced with poverty, AND other issues which is not a good combination, since you need decent financing to solve the problems that obscure your path and all around well being.

Articles

Economy
Articles

India: Articles: This is about the large increase of retail sales in India. http://newstrust.net/stories/2086/toolbar?ref=mp.

Trade
Articles

Development
South and Southeast Asia is an area of heavy development. This week, in particular, is the 16th South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) Summit, held in Bhutan. Previously, Bhutan had declined the hosting opportunity, due to lack of infrastructure. Thus, there has been much development in the country, to bring Bhutan to a level at which it can host a major regional event. Bhutan has developed a plan, leading to Gross Domestic Happiness. Their state is highly focused on [|"cultural and ecological integrity."] As such, Bhutan has focused its development efforts on sustainability-- its natural environment leads to renewable resources industries, which [|employ 60% of the population]. Philippines: Started off as the republic of the Philippines, then as the country began to get more populated it's name was changed to an actual country. Originally there were many rules and regulations. Then they were granted the commonwealth status. People began to populate the Philippines. The country has been slow in gaining in technology, but when it comes to education they are growing slowly, they got up to there local universities, and most of their school students have an college acceptance rate of about 70%.

Cambodia: Cambodia has had a rough time in the past concerning their government, with the change in power to Khmer Rouge and the genocide. Since the genocide ended in 1979 the country was still in a bad place, and the country had massive evacuations of the citizens to prevent more issue within the groups still alive. While the Khmer Rouge was in control the schools started to have limited teachings making it so that the new generations would be easier to control. Since then the country had to start from the beginning development has taken a while to get back to the way it should be.

Vietnam: There are a few things that are going on in Vietnam at this point in time dealing with development. The one thing is that disabled people are getting jobs and being able to work. For disabled and orphaned vietnamise people they are going to be able to work and do different things.

Security and Terrorism
Articles:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-pressed-Pak-on-terror-at-Indias-insistence/articleshow/5788448.cms Obama this week has focussed on terrorist groups and the likelihood that they could possibly acquire nuclear weapons. He has called out India stating " "Unfortunately, I do not see this concern either in Pakistan or India about nuclear terrorism," he said. "Both countries do not see the seriousness of this situation."

South and Southeast Asia's stability regarding their countries seems to not be at the greatest spot currently. Thailand, East Timor, and Myanmar are three prime examples of countries in South and Southeast Asia that have a somewhat unstable form of government, which would cause for a low level in security and possible high level in terrorism.

In Medan, Indonesia, 6 suspected terrorists were arrested by indonesia police recently. It was said that one of the 6 was an important militant strategist that had a role in a bombing of the australian embassy back in 2004. They found the suspicious characters parked outside a city landmark while one policemen noticed the gunshot wound on one of the man's hand. The 6 men were all individually on the government's militant watchlist. 4 of which were wanted for being part of a failed attempt to sassassinate the Indonesian president. (posted by Lauf., for Mercado)

Education
NEPAL In Nepal, roughly half of the population is literate. However, the figure is skewed: twice as many males as females are literate (CIA Factbook). Recently, the government [|allotted a large sum of money] towards building and rebuilding schools. Since there are schools that have been damaged by natural disaster, those will be fixed. Also, in many schools, there are too many children in one classroom, or there is simply no classroom at all, more will be constructed. Overall, the government projects that 8,000 classrooms will be built. The history of education in Nepal demonstrates the great challenge that exists. For many years, education was discouraged, due to the political figures of the times. However, after the 1950s, there has been a surge in Nepali education. While this is a start, continuing problems include caste discrimination. Different castes have vastly different attendance rates school: This may be due to geography and class: members of higher castes are richer; richer people live in cities; educational facilities are in cities (mainly). This chart shows attendance rates in primary school, broken down by gender, geography, and wealth: The numbers get even more stark when secondary school is considered. The figures for attendance at secondary school are demonstrated in the chart below. Attendance drops dramatically in between primary and secondary school. One explanation is that there simply are not many secondary schools in the country, and especially not in rural areas. (Friedrich Huebler is awesome.) media type="youtube" key="TPO1kYDi9w8" height="340" width="560" This video describes the efforts of community schools, and how they have improved Nepalese education over the past few decades. It focuses specifically on Dalit (low caste) education.

Philippines: Filipinos are very well educated, and they begin to learn at an early age. How ever, their country is not very up to date on technology. They stick to the original methods of text book, and they choose not to introduce children to technology until they are almost in high school. How ever many students have it at home.The colleges are trying to add more technology into their course to help better prepare students for the real world. There education is based solely around facts. Colleges are recently using computers for journalism, they feel as though an education should not be based off of the internet and other sources except for hard-copy print. Below you can see a middle school. SWEET!, DUDE! ( In my best crush voice from finding nemo)

[[image:Classroom_in_India.jpg width="610" height="404"]]
India is revolutionizing It's educational system where every single child weather privileged or poor will have access to free public education. If you look at the picture above, you will have a visual sense of what a typical classroom size looks like in some of the lower scale regions of India.

This graph above displays the literacy rate by gender in the different states in India. Indian males tend to have higher literacy rate then Indian females because male's literacy ranges from the sixties percentile through nineties percentile while on the other hand, Indian females literacy rate ranges form twenties percentile through eighties percentile. Which is not bad because in other regions of the world female literacy rate is not that high. One of the possible reason why males have a higher literacy rate then females depend on many other factors like male Indians have more rights then the females. It is very common in Indian culture for families to pick a wife for the son or vice visa. However, despite the culture differences, India is considered to be one of the most educated regions in the world.

The schools in Vietnam are very different then the schools in the United States. Children in Vietnam go to school six days a week, Monday through Saturday for four hours a day. The school year goes from September through May. Every child learns how to read and write. They study most of the same things that we do, math, science and geography. One thing that is different is that they are taught traditional manners and customs like social skills and to respect their elders. Almost every school day starts with a test. On Saturday's they have tests and tell the teacher what they learned that week. Instead of grades they are ranked in the class. In an [|article] I read this week, they talked about how there are to many fights happening in the schools. There are too many children in the schools and there are lots of fights between the younger children. The school board wants there to be more teachers and helpers there to make sure that there are no fights.
 * Vietnam**



Society and Culture
BHUTAN Bhutan's a pretty weird little place. It is the Kingdom of Bhutan, and until a few years back, was still ruled by the King. Theirs is a culture focused on people, demonstrated by the government measuring Gross National Happiness as opposed to Product. The following video-documentary details many aspects of Bhutanese culture, including their love of the King and their obsession with archery. It also focuses on the new steps in Bhutan to begin to end isolation in the Himalayan mountains. media type="custom" key="6016935" [|There are 25 languages spoken in Bhutan]. Of these [|Nepali] is the most common, with roughly 265,000 speakers in Bhutan, followed by [|Dzongkha], the national language of Bhutan with 160,000 speakers, and then [|Tshangla], a trade language, spoken by 157,000. Bhutan has a total population of a little over half a million people, and the wide prevalence of the Nepali language demonstrates a similarity in culture with Nepal.

Human Rights
Naima: I had [|article 17] which talks about having the right to own your own property, and that no one should be deprived of having their own property. In Indonesia only Indonesian nationals are allowed to own their own property or land and it is called "Hak Milik" Foreingers are now being allowed to own their own property in Indonesia just so that they can contribute to the national economy.

When comparing Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Cambodian International Amnesty report I found that in Cambodia there is a lot of unfair acts that go unpunished. A lot of journalist in the area are afraid to speak their minds on things that are going on around Cambodia because they will be unlawfully killed. SInce 1994 nine journalist have been killed.

The issues of Human Rights in this region is very interesting. According to [] Burma (Myanmar) is one who has been having some issues. Article 10 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states that Everyone is entitled to a fair trial. In Burma, this is not the case. Many people have been trailed and given sentences that are not fair.

Gender
Naima: I read this article about what things women have to get over, or the struggles they have from being women and living in India and this quote from the [|article] really stood out to me:

"The biggest challenge we are facing today (not only in India, globally) is the lack of equal number of women in higher/ professional/ specialised education. In India, it’s a bigger problem with the girl child not treated at par with her brothers! If I visit someone and they make their daughter get water, make tea, help in the kitchen while the son gets to sit around playing computer games; I never like to revisit them" This quote was really interesting to me because it really does sum up the problem with gender and equality in India today. It's sad that the women are expected to do everything while the men (or boys) can just sit around and not really be expected to do anything. I think that this is good journalism because the author takes her real life experiences and makes them interesting enough to actually want to be read.

Gender is an interesting topic in South and Southeast Asia. Throughout time different countries have come to terms with who holds power and who does not. It is interesting to see how many have become acceptable. There are other countries that are still in need of help with understanding gender topics. In Burma (Myanmar), there organizations that were created to help women in need. One of these is the Burmese Women's Union (BWU). This was created because of the many issues that are going on in Burma, especially in gender.


 * CULTURE AND SOCIETY**

South Asia, which is compromised of the sub-continent India, and South east Asia, which is compromised of several countries including Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, to name a few, has seen influence from Northern countries such as China and even India itself for south east Asian countries. Several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are found spread throughout each country. Not only are different religions found to be scattered throughout the area, but languages, dining manners, agriculture, and the arts have seen changes due to China, India, and western countries. Culture in South Asia varies depending on what part you go to. In Thailand women wear rings on their necks to show a simple of beauty, and also they buy makeup to make their skin appear lighter because the lighter your skin, the more beautiful, and richer you are considered. In the Philippines it is considered a right of passage for a female to start dating, and in the strict religions of all the countries, traditions carry through the whole nation.