Blog 3 - Article reflection

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080905/tts-png-australia-us-japan-wwii-airman-972e412.html

CANBERRA (AFP) - - The suspected remains of a World War II-era airman found dangling in trees in the jungle of Papua New Guinea have turned out to be just a moss-covered branch, the Australian military revealed Friday.

Hikers on the famed Kokoda Trail, site of a brutal 1942 battle between Japanese and Australian troops, reported they had discovered what appeared to be the suspended skeleton of a flyer tangled in parachute cords two weeks ago.

But the Australian Defence Force (ADF) said it had sent staff from Canberra's embassy in Port Moresby to inspect the remote site, only to discover that the suspected human skeleton was simply a tree limb tangled in vines.

"No remains were located," the ADF said in a statement received here Friday.

"While the location, near Kagi, is below a flight path that was commonly used by Allied aircraft during WWII sorties, the find has been confirmed by ADF staff as a moss-covered branch.

"It appears the branch has broken off the main tree and fallen across some vines, which from the ground, could have been confused with the body of an airman," the statement said.

News that the remains of a flyer had been discovered more than 65 years after his death in the heat of the World War II battle for the Pacific had caused a sensation.

"I couldn't make it out at first. It wasn't until the wind blew that you could really see it is in a harness," guide David Collins, who was leading the group of Australian hikers who spotted the tree-bound mass, said last week.

"There are goggles and it appears to be caught up in cables, so presumably it is an airman," he said.

The ADF immediately dispatched a team to check whether the find was actually a body and, if so, to determine the airman's nationality as Australian, US and Japanese planes overflew the area during the war.

The jungle in the area is extremely dense and hikers are warned not to stray off the Kokoda Trail as unexploded ordnance remains strewn in the area more than half a century after fighting ceased.

Some 600 Australian soldiers died in battle near the extremely rugged Kokoda Trail, which was seen by the Allies as a crucial point at which to halt the Japanese military's southern advance through the Pacific towards Australia.


The news article, about the supposed WW2 pilot found dangling in the trees above the remote , 96-kilometer Kokoda Track, has caused quite a sensation among people across the world, including me. I closely followed the news story (it didn’t help too that Yahoo News only made a short post about it) through various news channels such as ABC and BBC. Nothing much was said too in these news, so I was consigned to a long wait, occasionally typing “WW2 Flyer Found at Kokoda Track” into search engines on days where I was less busy. No news came by for a while, until finally the conclusion arrived to the mystery shrouding the Kokoda Track Flyer. Well, it turns out that it was just a moss-covered branch that looked uncannily like a human from far.

What a letdown, eh? During my occasional search for more information on this case, I encountered many comments from users who too have either chanced upon this story or follow it intently. I recall one comment saying something along the lines of “So why do we care about some dead guy that’s hanging from a tree anyway? We should just bring him down and bury him somewhere to put his soul to rest”

This set me thinking. WHY did I care so much about a pilot from a war that was over before I was born? He was not from my country, and neither have I been to Australia, United States, or Japan so I don’t have an attachment to any of these countries. In our society, we hear about deaths every day. Millions died in WW2, yet somehow the a single mysterious corpse raises my interest and thoughts more so than the mass memorials and graves dug in the honour of the many who died in the war.

I guess, it’s the single poignant story behind alleged pilot that drives my interest, and the life stories of millions is lost in the nameless blend of a mass memorial and grave. Who was the pilot? What army did he serve? How did he die? Who were his family?

I stopped to think that this was someone’s child. He could have had a brother, or a lover. If time permitted, he could even have had children and grandchildren. What we have here is not a single death, it is a web of pain stretching out through the ages, getting thinner but never quite disappearing. This person died for his country, and he believed in what he was fighting for. I hoped that with further investigation, the families of the deceased would be able to get closure at long last; an old man and his children could finally see what happened to his father who went missing over the skies of Papua New Guinea.

But then the results came out and it turns out that it was nothing more than a moss-covered tree branch after all. In fact the tree where it was found on only started growing after WW2 ended!

So well, after all there is a lesson to be learnt from this media sensation that so gripped my interest. Sometimes, the media speculation is not correct, and one can tend to jump to conclusions without any definite proof.

Democracy Essay -Teoh Ye Oon

“Democracy creates stability in a society.”

Democracy comes in many forms, and like all other political systems, varies in definition from person to person. However, a general agreement about the definition of democracy is that it involves the public voting and deciding on the way the country is run. For this essay, we shall only focus on the concept of the citizens being able to vote for what they want, instead of branching into different types of democracy such as representative or direct.

Stability is largely tied to the satisfaction of the citizens, either politically, socially, or economically. Fulfillment of this three would create a stable society.

Firstly, politically speaking, a democratic government is a double-edged sword, with potential benefits or disadvantages. For the disadvantages, due to the voting system, we face a few problems. Firstly, as the citizen’s choices may vary over time, they may vote for laws that do not benefit the country in the long run. That will result in political stability as leaders are deemed “useless” and replaced constantly. Each leader’s differing views will result in an unstable political climate.

However, this same policy can be a benefit. Leaders in representative democracy who produce consistent results will stay in the leadership position for a longer time and thus have a politically stable society. If the public is well-educated and pragmatic, they too will vote for policies that improve the country in the long run, leading to satisfaction throughout all three fronts.

Secondly, socially speaking, there are potential advantages/disadvantages. The main problem with relying on a majority vote is that the minority’s views are not taken into account. For example in the Sri Lanka conflict, the Tamils were outnumbered and thus if a democratic political system was used they would probably be oppressed by the Sinhalese This results in violence and bad social stability.

However, once again the majority vote can be a benefit instead. This would ensure that a large amount of people are happy- you can’t please everyone anyway. Rather than other political systems (such as dictatorship, where one person imposes his views on the rest), democracy ensures that the maximum number of people are satisfied. This leads to minimum social unrest.
Another advantage is that democracy promotes individual rights and a certain degree of freedom. This generally pleases the public, and thus with greater freedom to do what they want (without invading the rights of others) they would be more satisfied, leading to greater stability.

A few economic benefits do come about from being democratic. Firstly, there are better relationships with the UN, with mature, well-off, democratic economies.. This leads to better trade opportunities with them and better economic prospects. Secondly, investors tend to favor countries with better social stability, so in this sense economy is related to social stability.

In conclusion, I feel that democracy does lead to stability in a society. The disadvantages mentioned earlier are often caused by a less-educated public, and since democracy is a system generally practiced by countries with well-educated citizens these problems would not surface.

http://internetsafetyadvisor.info/journal/2008/2/22/another-myspace-cyberbullying-hoax.html
Title of article: Another MySpace cyber-bullying "Hoax"
Author: Internet Safety Advisor.
Date written: Friday, February 22, 2008 at 06:01AM


Recently, I stumbled upon this article, entitled "Another MySpace cyber-bullying "Hoax". It talked about how yet another teenager fell for a hoax where another person set up a false identity on social networking websites to lure people into their bullying.

In the article, an 18-year old teenage boy Jordan was lured by an online persona called "Cassie", who claimed to be the sister of his locker partner, Lisa. Lisa acted as a go-between between him and "Cassie", passing him messages and gifts from her.

For months, "Cassie" repeatedly set up visits or meetings, only to cancel them at the last minute. Jordan thus became more and more depressed.

Well, as it turned out, "Cassie" didn't even exist! It was just an elaborate ploy by Lisa, targeted at Jordan with no obvious intent. However, this reminded me of another case, where a girl was befriended by a "cute boy", also on MySpace, only to have the boy turn on her one day, calling her cruel to her classmate. The girl was so depressed that she commited sucide, and the "boy" turned out to be her classmate's mother, trying to monitor what the girl was saying to her child.

It's quite sad really, how we humans abuse our own inventions to cause harm to others. This seems to happen more with teens or children, where they are not yet mature enough to behave responsibly online, and also have feelings of insecurities that they vent by picking on others online.

This problem is becoming more and more prevalent in our society, where children are often given more material conforts (such as computers and games) to replace how both parents now work compared with the traditional single-income household. With no one to provide care and guidance to the children, they may turn to other means to vent their fustration, including cyber-bullying.

Of course, I'm not implying that the parents are completely at fault. Who can blame them for working to provide for their child? However, parents must realise that children do not have just material needs to take care of, they also have mental and psychological needs. A simple thing like sitting down and talking to the child could help to both de-stress and assess the child's situation.