Skip to main content

Passage 1

In the following  paragraphs, identify the topic and the main idea.

Even by the standards of ASEAN, it was a dismal performance. The leaders of the other nine members of the Association of south-east Asian Nations used their summit in Bali this week to ladle praise on Myanmar for its "positive" and "pragmatic" recent policies. These, it appeared, meant the transfer of Myanmar's most famous citizens, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, from prison to house arrest, and the publication of a "road map" for democracy. Since a return to democracy  has been promised by Myanmar's current junta ever since it took power in 1998, and since Miss Suu Kyi won an election in 1990 that has never been recognised, the Myanmar map looks as forlorn as the Middle Eastern one.

The disgraceful treatment meted out to Miss Suu Kyi is only the most obvious outrage committed by South-East Asia's most repressive and incompetent government. The generals do not just imprisons thousands of political prisoners: they have turned their country into a place where life expectancy has collapsed to around 55, and growth has vanished. The World Health Organisation ranks the efficacy of Myanmar's health system at 190 out of 191 nations.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Make a Stan for Timeless Art

 One museum's fossil can be an art collector's installation  In December 2019, a real banana duct-taped to a wall, billed as a work called comedian, by the Italian satirical artist Maurizio Cattelan fetched $120,000 at a prestigious art show in Miami. Not long after, another identical work by the same artist was also sold for the same amount.Both buyers were French and they were connoisseurs, not consumers, presumably. Not only did the perishable nature of the art not affect its saleability— a 'performance artist' peeled the banana off the wall and ate it — the work was declared the 'unicorn of the art world'. If that banana symbolised the evenescence of an artistic idea, its timelessness will surely be underlined by the sale of a67 million-year-old composition of bones that is the highlight of Christie's Evening sale of 20the century Art in October in New York.  The 'work' has been named Tyrannosaurus Rex(by paleontologists) and Stan (by its finders...
Post a Comment
Read more

Europe's plague Joke Renaissance

 Laughing at the face of coronavirus is getting contagious in that continent With much of Europe abd Britain getting back under lockdown covers with Covid relurking,  the cradle of dodgy pandemic jokes is having a renaissance. The chaps who brought the world the Teutonic Bubonic Plague Jokebook— the Black Death supposedly the prime reason for Germans losing their sense of humour — are already guffawing with fear. The strategy this time seems to be any dearth of mirth will be the birth of death. So, as cracks like the corona virus also keeping their versions of pub and restaurant timings —it's rule-abiding Europe for the critters too, you see— go viral, who knows, one may even have a new healthy obsession with Eros and Thanatos, rather than a prolonged taste for organic food and EU Rules of Origin Laws.  Remember, this is the continent of the original Coveni, Covidi, Covici( I came down with Covid , I saw Covid, I conqured Covid), not to mention the very name ' Coronavirus...
Post a Comment
Read more

Work on Grining from Year to Year

 That work life is no laughing matter appears to be corroborated by a recent study done by two Standford University academics, who found that cachinnations start becoming less frequent from a median age of 23, or about the time when people get jobs. Whether or not the researchers' prime conclusion– that laughter is " under-leveraged" in offices and can be a gamechanger, professionally , if properly utilized — is solid enough to take Humour Seriously (also the little of their book), it is true that laughter is not exactly a common workplace sound. It is heartening at their survey of the daily laughing habits of 1.4 million people from 166 countries showed that four -year-olds did so up to 300 times a day. But their additional finding that 40 years olds clocked up that same number over 10 weeks is a sobering statistic. Of course, if that cohort also laughed as frequently as four year olds, it would be quite alarming, not to mention distracting, in workplaces.  That laughter...
Post a Comment
Read more