BUSH'S NEW RHETORIC ON IRAQ

Can rhetoric change reality?

ND Batra
From The Statesman

At the time of mid-term congressional elections, President George W Bush has been trying to answer the question that most Americans have been asking: How are you going to get us out of the bloody mess in Iraq?
The deadly statistics are staggering but they don’t appeal to people’s imagination ~ unlike the daily images of Iraqis being blown up in the marketplace, mosques, roadsides and their neighbourhoods. In the pre-24/7 live newscast era, no one would have seen the horror on the faces of Iraqis.
Republicans have been saying during the election campaign that all politics is local and voters are likely to be more interested in property taxes, school problems, health issues and jobs rather than what is happening in Iraq. Democrats are trying to turn the daily carnage in Iraq as a referendum on Mr Bush and Republicans who control both the House and the Senate. But Democrats, too, don’t have any new ideas about what do in Iraq.
If staying the course in Iraq is meaningless, so is cut and loose ~ setting the date of withdrawal and getting out. There is a broad national consensus, however, that the USA cannot just pack and run away from Iraq.
Not only Iraq would continue to be a bloody hellhole for decades but also the USA would never recover from its humiliating shame and failure, if US troops were withdrawn hastily. That would be the end of the USA, as we know it: the sole global power that matters the most in the world. Americans are not ready for it. So for the time being, forget freedom and democracy.
Now the goal is to control Sunni-Shia sectarian killings and bring about a reasonable level of law and order and political stability so that President Bush could tell Americans that most of the objectives of invading Iraq have been achieved, which would justify gradual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
It is unimaginable that the USA would totally withdraw from West Asia and Central Asia. Strategically, there’s too much at stake in the region. During last week’s Press conference, after a subdued recounting of the achievements in Iraq, for example, capturing Saddam Hussein, free elections in which 12 million Iraqis participated and the death of terrorist Zarqawi, President Bush frankly acknowledged for the first time the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and loss of “some of America’s finest sons and daughters”.
As of today, 2,791 US troops have been killed, but the loss of Iraqi lives, 600,000 deaths since the invasion in March, 2003 through July, 2006 (and counting) according to a recent study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is shocking.
After the deaths of so many innocent people, Iraq is nowhere closer to freedom and democracy than it was during the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein; and now that he is gone, the country has descended into a most heinous sectarian barbarism in spite of US military presence, pouring of billions of dollars, and initial good intentions of transplanting freedom and democracy.
While Kurds in the north who have enjoyed autonomy since the first Gulf War due to the no-fly zone restrictions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime by the USA are not ready to give up their gains, including the region’s oil wealth, Sunnis aided by some neighbouring Arab countries and Shias with the full backing of Iran are locked in a deadly struggle for supremacy, not freedom and democracy.
Division of the country into three separate independent states would leave the oil wealth with Shias who dominate the south and with Kurd control the north, leaving Sunnis high and dry and full of bitterness and vengeance, which would not bring sectarian violence and terrorism to an end. The most important step in ending sectarian violence in Iraq must begin with Baghdad, which should be brought under some form of a draconian martial rule imposing day and night curfew, and shoot-at-sight orders.
Every neighbourhood in Baghdad should have a strong and palpable presence of American-Iraqi troops until the last goon is flushed out and killed.
Once Baghdad is brought under control, peace and order would emerge and faith and trust would spread in the al-Maliki’s government’s ability to do the job of providing security, disarming the militias and bringing about reconciliation.
Negotiations based on equitable distribution of oil resources and a federated political structure that keeps balance between the three regions, Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the West and Shia’s in the south as well as the central government should be the beginning of reconciliation for unity and national reconstruction.
Iraq’s neighbours, especially Turkey, Syria and Iran have their own national interests and since it may not be possible to have their active participation in the peace process, they must be neutralised. Iran with its nuclear ambitions and international sanctions hanging on its head would be the biggest spoiler.
It was so easy for the USA to topple Saddam Hussein but rebuilding of the peace in Iraq might need the commitment and sustained efforts of a new administration, may be a new generation of Americans. Fortunately, a regime change in the USA does not need an invasion by an outside power. In a democracy, regime change is periodic. That is the beauty of democracy and it must be spread everywhere.

Should Journalists Be Trusted?

If it bleeds, it leads

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/insidelocalnews/behind_leads.html

Journalism Ethics

http://nysoundposse.com/2006/10/event-ethics-and-journalism-should-we.html

Corporations seeking synergy

Growth through synergy

by ND Batra
From The Statesman

Recently when a friend in Mexico e-mailed to me: “I would Skype you at 10 a.m.,” I was not sure whether like “google” a new verb was quietly slipping into the American tongue, but I surely felt synergy rising due to the convergence of television, computer and telephone. Synergy characterises the ethos of the age of the Internet. It is also a most important buzzword today.

Corporations seek synergy and self-renewal through mergers, acquisitions and technological convergence, as the Tata Group is trying to do with the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker, Corus PLC. Synergy occurs when discrete businesses cooperate and combine creatively so that “the total effect,” according to Webster’s, “is greater than the sum of the effects taken independently.” Corporations would pay anything to have a business model for creating synergy, but business schools do not teach their students how to develop synergy. Necessity is the mother of synergy. Synergy is not limited to the business world. It is equally important in nature.

Ants, for example, build an unenviable synergetic environment for survival. They transcend their smallness through synergy. Can a small country like Bangladesh transcend its poverty by building synergetic environment with its neighbours? South Korea and Taiwan are examples of countries that have achieved prosperity through synergetic relationship with the USA and Japan. History of technology bears ample evidence that major leaps in technology occur only through synergy. Samuel Morse’s telegraph, for example, combined with Hertz’ electromagnetic spectrum theory to give birth to Marconi’s wireless telegraphy ~ radio; and subsequently to radio with pictures ~ television.

At every step of technological evolution, there was synergism created by combining two or more discrete concepts or technologies. Now you see the same thing happening to traditional television, as the TV set converges with computer. The remote obeys your commands, more like a magic wand, while you lounge on your sofa with a bottle of beer, munching peanuts, watching soccer on television or video clips on YouTube (recently acquired by Google for another upsurge of business synergy). A passive instrument of entertainment is suddenly turning into an interactive tool, making you put aside your beer so that you can seek and search whatever you want. Instead of a couch potato consumer, you become an active seeker. It is a market-driven synergy created by the coupling of computer technology with television.

The hype of webbed-television is that it allows you several features simultaneously, so you could watch television and surf the Web at the same time. Watch “ Jeopardy” and participate in the game show as well. Watch cricket, chat with a friend, send e-mail, and read the latest news about sports drug scandals on the same screen. Most of the newspapers in the USA, as it is happening in India too, seek synergy with competitive media. The BBC, for example, is a marvelous example of synergy being created when broadcasting weds the Internet. The BBC had no other choice for survival in the global market except through convergence with the Internet. The NBC and Microsoft combined to create MSNBC.Com, which created an information-rich multimedia environment. Every major television network anchorperson urges the viewers during the evening broadcasts to go to its website for in-depth reports and live chats with correspondents. So do The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which are being transformed into multimedia delivery systems. Content remains the king, but the king needs a multi-media kingdom.

Not long ago in the global race for synergy, Rupert Murdoch, whose satellite television reaches more than 100 million homes in 60 countries, realised that there’s no future without the Internet. He has been linking his satellite empire with the Internet to create an alternative delivery as well as a two-way interactive communication system. Acquisition of MySpace by Murdoch’s controlled News Corporation was a wise step in adding to its multimedia platform. It is important to understand that mere clubbing of businesses to create an overwhelming market power does not necessarily mean synergy, as the failure of America Online-Time Warner shows. Sometimes those who seek synergy need a vision. Sometimes synergy just happens. Synergy is not formulaic. It involves risk. What does this mean for a vast nation like India? Think of India as a nation of 200 million families, with an average family of five members.

As incomes rise, the first luxury item a family desires to buy is a high definition digital television set in order to enjoy their favourite pastime, sports and Bollywood. But as television households steadily increase in India, television would create the same problems as in the USA: commercial-driven programmes full of violence and sex, saturating the airwaves and cables, resulting in the coarsening of Indian culture. India could do better. If the national leadership decides that all television sets manufactured or imported must be Web-enabled, you have an Indian television household owning a computer as well, probably the only computer the family would have for sometime to come. If you add to the Web-TV Indians’ growing hunger for cell phones, you have the beginning of a great technological revolution in India.

The marketplace and the ingenuity of India’s world famous programmers have begun to create software in most Indian languages. This is the kind of information revolution the rural India has been waiting for, which can be further quickened if people become aware of the possibility of free telephone service provided by web-calling companies like Skype. Yes, you can Skype as long as you want and it is free, as my friend said.

VANDE MATRAM IS BEAUTIFUL

A Tale of Two Anthems

By RAJAT DAS GUPTA **
(rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in)


In early 2003 "Vande Matram" was declared as the second popular most national anthem, the topmost being the Irish one. The news was first broadcast by BBC- World Service Radio, which really bewildered those who are habituated to listening it in the morning. While "Vande Matram" slogan used to pass a shiver down the spine of the British in the Raj days, are they themselves broadcasting this news! Were they really tuned to BBC? Yes, they had to rub their ears to ensure that.
To look back, the song was composed around 1875 by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the pioneer of modern Bengali literature. It was later inserted in his novel ‘Anandamath’ in 1882 where it became a war cry for the crusading Vaishnavite monks in the famine afflicted land Bengal in the backdrop of the demising Nawab dynasty and the rising British power there in the 18th century. Later it became the war cry of the revolutionaries, both violent and non-violent, rising against the British Raj for independence of India. Thousands went to the gallows voicing this slogan/song which was a major motivating force at that time for the freedom struggle of India. It goes with the compliment – “The greatest and most enduring gift of the Swadeshi movement was Vande Matram, the uncrowned national anthem*.” (The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV P. 608 – courtesy, website TUHL Indian/Hinduism Home Page. *The status eventually given to it is ‘national song’ as has been elaborated below.). However, nothing can depict the spirit of ‘Vande Matram’ better than the following song of Tagore in as few words, which, in my inept translation also possibly does not lose all its inspiration:

1) “ Ek sutre bandhiachi sahasrati monEk karye sampiachchi sahasra jiban…..
Vande Matram…..”
In one string we stitchMany a thousand mind to pitch;In one mission we devoteOn the divine hymn to float -"Vande Matram"- (=Hail Mother/Motherland)Amidst disastrous storm, Facing many a hurdleOur daring heart will not fail;"Vande Matram" -Undaunted by fright's myriad formHurricane violent, sea in billowWill not put us low,Many a million waveWe'll brave;This life ephemeralWe'll not care to bail;Yet will remain unsnapped The solemnity that us trapped -"Vande Matram" To dispel our hibernation.***************************8 ‘Vande Matram’ drew attention of the Indian National Congress since the beginning. In its annual conference held in Calcutta in 1896, this song was sung and was tuned by Tagore and later on by several others. In its annual conference again in1905 it was accepted as our national anthem which was attended by Sister Nivedita, the Irish lady who had turned Vivekananda’s disciple about a decade back.
As it should be obvious from the reference in the song itself to a population of 7 Crore (as determined by the census of 1881 to be the strength of the Bengalis, including the Muslims, in the Eastern part of the country), ‘Vande Matram’ speaks more of ‘Mother Bengal’ rather than the whole of India. Yet, its appeal transcended this narrow geographical concept surfacing in its original wordings obviously because ‘Mother Bengal’ has been identified here with the Goddess Durga who is an inspiration to all Hindus where no regionalism stands. Besides, the 7 Crore was edited to 30 Crore around 1905 (the then Indian population) by those concerned with the song to extrapolate it in the new national scenario. Now, as the original 7 Crore included the Muslims (so does the 30 Crore) also in the then Bengal, the song itself may be absolved of the charge of communal bias, particularly when it peaked our nationalistic spirit sweeping away all our narrowness. It is a different matter that the song was voiced by the said crusading monks whose uprising happened to be against the misrule of the then Muslim Nawabs of Bengal. Eventually, they also had preferred British rule to the Nawabs’, not to swap Islam for Christianity, but to hail good governance to replace the dilapidated one. Again, the narrow geographical concept of Bengal, as found in Annandamath, should not disqualify the song as a national anthem of India. It may be appreciated, it would be ridiculous if this song sung by Bhabananda, the monk character in the novel during the Nawab dynasty, would have indulged in nationalistic megalomania, by inflating 7 Crore to 30 Crore or so. It appears, Bankim figured his song quite discreetly to fit it well in the plot of his novel. This aside, the fact is, India was never a ‘nation’ in the Western sense before the advent of the British rule which, along with its gradual expansion to the rest of India, starting from Bengal, with atrocity and Western enlightenment also as its integral part, solidified our nationalistic concept/sentiment. To criticize the original format of ‘Vande Matram’ for regionalism is to miss this historical relevance in which context, its said extrapolation to our modern national psyche has been only judicious, without diluting its original core inspiration in the enlarged horizon.
Nevertheless, religious fundamentalism raised its head instead, and some Muslim clerics and politicians (irrespective of religion) argued that this anthem indulges in deity worship against the spirit of Islam and was so unacceptable to its followers. A compromise was arrived at by accepting only the first two stanzas (vide website of TUHL Indian/Hinduism Home page) of the song as our national anthem editing therein the said 7 Crore to 30 Crore, as aforesaid, where Goddess Durga also does not occur. Notwithstanding this, the ghost of ‘deity worship’, if not regionalism also, ambushes even to-day to mar the true spirit of the song, to the extent it has been accepted as our anthem. While I fail to be overwhelmed by the wisdom of such zealots, I also fail to appreciate the highhandedness of the Govt. trying to impose this song in our various institutions in 2006, on the occasion of it being the centenary year for its acceptance as our national anthem. After all, a song is an aesthetic creation and should be left to one’s finer faculties.
Later, Tagore composed ‘Jana Gana Mano…’ sometime in 1911 which was officially accepted as the national anthem of independent India. Since then, in an attempt to distinguish it from ‘Vande Matram..’, the latter is often referred as ‘national song’ while the former as ‘national anthem’. However, this hardly affected the appeal and inspiration of any of these songs. It may be noted, in case of ‘Jana Gano Mano..’ also only the first two stanzas have been accepted as our national anthem (vide the said website), while it comprises three more.
Now, while ‘religion’ was the bone of contention in the anti-‘Vande Matram..’ tirade, the aim of invectives against ‘Jano Gano Mono…’ was Tagore’s assumed sycophancy for King George V who had visited India in 1911, which happens to be the year of composition of the song too that gave scope for such scandal. However, Tagore himself denied such allegation and I never could find any details as to who felicitated George V with this song, if at all he was, and who were the organizers and if at all Tagore himself was involved in it. Yet, it may be speculated if Tagore tried to entice the King to draw his support for some international accolade for him, say, the Nobel. There also, facts no way involve the King which were, Rothenstein, a British scholar, was a great admirer of Tagore’s nephew Abanindranath Tagore, a renowned artist and came to visit him at the ‘Thakurbari’, the ancestral house of the Thakur (Tagore) family. In the gathering Rabindranath was present whose beaming personality attracted Rothenstein who gathered from Abanindranath that Rabindranath was a poet. This was around 1911. However, Rothenstein was gradually attracted to Rabindranath and talked highly about him to other British poets/scholars of that time. Now, in Tagore’s own words, to quote from Maitrayee Devi’s ‘Mangpute Rabindranath’, (=‘Rabindranath at Mangpu’ -near Darjeeling- where Tagore had been intermittently Maitrayee Devi’s guest during the last 3 years of his life) the poet’s dialogue with her was as follows-
“When I first started translating them (poems of Gitanjali, on which basis he was awarded the Nobel) into English, I never thought they would be readable. Many have insinuated that Andrews was doing it for me. Poor Andrews felt sorry and ashamed. When Yeats arranged a meeting of distinguished people at Rothenstein’s house, I cannot tell you how embarrassed I felt. Yeats would not listen to me. He was undaunted. A galaxy of big people came. Gitanjali was read. They never said a word. They listened in silence and in silence they left – no criticism, no approbation, no favourable remark, no encouraging comment. Blushing in shame and disgrace, I wished the Earth would have opened and swallowed me. Why did I ever listen to Yeats? How could I write English, had I ever learnt it? I was filled with remorse, I could not raise my head. Next day letters started coming, they flooded in, overflowing with enthusiasm. Everyone wrote. Then I realized they were so moved that evening that they dared not talk. English people are reserved, it is their nature. It was not possible for them to express their feelings at once. What a surprise it was, unexpected and unimaginable. Friend Yeats was pleased.”
The event was in 1912 on 30 June or early July. It is this group of scholars/poets who had recommended Tagore’s name to the Nobel Committee in Sweden to culminate into the poet as a Nobel Laureate. However, I badly miss King George V in the entire episode!
Other relevant facts are, Tagore gave underhand support to the then ‘terrorists’ who had fought for India’s freedom and was a suspect of the British Govt. His novel ‘Char Adhaay’ (Four Chapters) on this theme of terrorism vouches this.
Secondly, Tagore’s dialogue with Maitrayee Devi may again be quoted in respect of his renouncing his Knighthood in protest against the Jalianwallabag (Punjab) carnage by the British police in 1919, as follows –
“They (British people) took it as a great insult. In England people are very loyal. So, this disavowal of the King did hurt them very much…”
Again, on partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905, Tagore himself led some of the processions on the Calcutta roads in protest against this partition voicing in chorus with thousands of his followers –

“Amar Sonar Bangla, Ami Tomay Bhalobasi
Chirokal Tomar Akash, Tomar Batash Amar Prane Bajay Bansi”

(Oh my golden Bengal, I love Thee
Thy azure, Thy breeze play flute forever in me…”

The song he had composed on this occasion became a national anthem of Bengal at least. Eventually, the British Govt. was forced to redress the partition on that occasion.
Now, how are these compatible with the story of Tagore’s sycophancy of George V as had been spun?
However, all these razzmatazz had indulgence due to our fiddling with the truncated first two stanzas of the song adopted as our national anthem, as aforesaid, overlooking the rest of it as if that did not matter in determining the real intent of the poet latent in the song. But, some people are not cursory like learned Mr. B. Bhattacharya, who highlighted the penultimate stanza of the song in his letter to the Editor (The Statesman) published on 15 September 2006 which may be quoted as follows-

“Dushapane atanke raksha korile anke snehamoyee tumi Mata….”
which, according to the faithful translation of the correspondent, comes to–
“O affectionate Mother! You have protected me so long in your lap from all nightmarish terror”.
Now, the correspondent leaves the question to us if George V would like to be addressed as an “affectionate Mother”! My conviction is, such effeminacy would be a contempt of the top royal personality (a male at that time!) and Tagore would instantly find himself behind the bar for this offence, which he never did! Hopefully, this hits the last nail in the coffin of the ‘sycophancy thesis’. However, it may be wiser not to escalate this point further as nothing stops one to argue that the ‘Mata’ in this song smacks of ‘deity worship’ for which its forerunner ‘Vande Matram..’ was put on the dock.
Yet, some highly relevant points need stress. Even a dunce with a bit of sincere probing of the song cannot miss that the “Eternal Charioteer” in the 3rd stanza of the song leading “the travellers through ages along the ups and downs of the rugged path resonant with His chariot wheels” could not be a flesh and blood entity, but a spiritual one illuminating India’s people over millenniums aiming proliferation of peace, benignity, welfare and harmony among humanity at large, across the world not fragmented by ‘parochial walls’. This internationalism from humanist angle that Tagore displayed since late 19th Century, as opposed to the politico-commercial noises we hear now-a-days in the name of ‘globalization’, manifests again in the second stanza of the song – “East and West come / By the side of Thy throne..”. Of course, “throne” smacks of a ‘King’ and the sleuths in their relentless effort to detect George V here may jump up to ‘Eureka!’. We should be content only with our envy for them for the extra grey matter they are endowed with. Now, leaving the sleuths aside, we may further observe that no other national anthem thus looks beyond its concerned national boundary and ego, not even our ‘Vande Matram’ and ‘Sare jahanse Acchha’ (by Iqbal), all of which are myopic in their eulogy for a certain population within a geographical confinement. Such international overtone flashes in a large number of poems/songs of Tagore, including patriotic ones, a widely quoted one being- “Where mind is without fear…..”.
All these by no means acquit ‘Jana Gana Mano…’. In early 21st century a legal petition was moved to drop the word ‘Sindhu’ from the text of the song as Sind is no more a part of India after its partition. At length, Mr. Ram Jethmalani fought the issue successfully in the Supreme Court which gave its verdict against the petition for deletion of ‘Sind’.
These two anthems, much pilloried for decades, however eruditely, have still retained their dignity due to their great intrinsic values. All invectives against these have undergone thorough scrutiny of highly eminent and knowledgeable persons many times and nullified also, after which these should have morphed to non-issues long before.
One may ponder, quite distressingly, why they have not! We have observed above that it is the British who had forged ‘nationalism’ in India, not as unmixed blessing though, but it heightened our best human qualities like patriotism, courage, determination, self-sacrifice, foresight etc., whereas, after Independence, with the earlier trials and tribulations gone, our worst qualities are surfacing with the wane of the said best ones. Our long persisting tangle on this non-issue is only a symptom of the forces fast disintegrating our nation, if not pushing us to the pre-British days. In fact, history never records an anthem which had united as well as divided a nation at different points of time more than this duo.

***********************************

** The author, professionally a Chartered Accountant, also authored a few books including ‘The Eclipsed Sun’, a translation of Tagore’s poems & songs. He lives in Calcutta.

Toward a New Bangladesh

A gentler kinder face of Islam

News from Bangladesh

ND Batra

Given a chance everyone could get out of poverty. Human beings are essentially entrepreneurial in spirit. Entrepreneurship, which means innovating and building new tools for opening new frontiers—not merely a struggle for survival—has been the ultimate fount of human evolution and growth. Charity is the antithesis of entrepreneurship, though it makes the charitable feel good. Charity does have a place in society, as Islam rightfully insists, and as all great religions of the world have been preaching for millennia. But Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate of Bangladesh who trained as an economist at Vanderbilt University, says that it is “not an answer to poverty. It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away individual’s initiative to break through the wall of poverty.” Social tyranny whether of petty money lenders, religious fanatics, or a well-organized poltical party such as the communist party perpetuates poverty. In 1983 with only a few hundred takas ($27) in hand, as the legend says, Dr. Yunsus told a handful of rapacious moneylenders, one might say in the spirit of Moses, “Let my people go.” Chains of slavery were broken but freedom comes from ability to work. Work means dignity. Nothing comes closer to the American yes-I-can-do spirit than Dr. Yunus’ secular faith that “Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty.” Fighting poverty should be the primary fucntion of the government. When the government gets out of the way of the people, as it has been happening in China and India, entrepreneurs rise and create wealth. It is that simple. Awarding the Peace Prize to someone from a country that most regard not only as an international basket case but also a breeding ground for Islamic jihadism, the Nobel Committee rightfully admonished that "lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty… Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.” The most unique aspect of micro-credit financing in Bangladesh is that it has been empowering women. A liberated woman can be a powerful regenerative force in a society, especially an overwhelmingly Muslim society mined with petrodollar financed madrassas. Whether Muslim clerics would accept liberated and empowered women is another momentous challenge. In a manner of speaking, the secular liberation theology—liberating the bottom people from poverty— Dr. Yunus may be the answer to Al Qaeda and religious extremism. But micro-credit cannot lift all boats. Bangladesh needs to think big in order to compete internationally in trade and commerce and for which it needs some friendly help from countries like the United States whose markets, homes and hearths, have become a captive of China. Wal-Mart, JC Penny, Target and other global buyers should be encouraged to play the role of corporate diplomats and be urged to import on a priority basis from countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the quality of whose garments is as good as that from China. That is my personal experience when I shop around for my personal clothing needs.Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, said about Bangladesh in his book, The End of Poverty: "Not only is the garment sector fueling Bangladesh economic growth of more than 5 percent per year in recent years, but it is also raising consciousness and power of women in a society that was long brazenly biased against women's chances of life." The international consequences of a dollar flowing to Bangladesh are far more important in terms of fighting poverty and terrorism, human rights and democracy, than willy-nilly letting China add to its trillion-dollar reserve. Dr. Sachs wrote, "The job for women in the cities and rural off-farm microenterprises; a new spirit of women's rights and independence and empowerment; dramatically reduced rates of child mortality; rising literacy of girls and young women; and, crucially, the availability of family planning and contraception have made all the difference for these women." If there is hope for womankind, you see its bright face emerging in Bangladesh—a crucible for struggle between the old and the new face of Islam. Bangladesh is an open society and a democracy, however, imperfect and fragile, and given a chance it could lift itself out of poverty and become an exemplar for other countries especially in Africa. As Dr. Yunus told a newspaper that some day our grandchildren might to go to a museum and wonder what it was like to be poor, for which of course rural micro-credit schemes would not be enough.Bangladesh must get out of its small-minded siege mentality and irrational fear of its neighbors, emulate countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, think and plan big, and compete internationally in trade and commerce for which it needs an expanding base of information technology, manufacturing and services, and massive investment to build infrastructure. Its youth is hungry for challenges, for constructive work, or else… Bangladesh must re-imagine itself. One Dr. Yunus is not enough for Bangladesh. ****************************************************************************************(ND Batra, Professor of Communications and Diplomacy at Norwich University, Vermont, USA, has completed a new book, “Digital Civilization: How Much Freedom Does a Man Need?” due for publication in 2007. *****************************************************************************************

Give Bangladesh a Chance

Muhammad Yunus of Bangaldesh
A gentler and kinder face of Islam

“Grameen believes that charity is not an answer to poverty.It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away individual’s initiative to break through the wall of poverty. Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty…. One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.”

This is the American Report

A sex scandal dogs

From The Statesman
By ND Batra

A Congressman’s sex scandal is dogging the November mid-term elections in the USA. The smooth talking and affable Mark Foley (Republican from Florida) resigned from his House seat after being confronted by ABC News and his admission that he had been sending lusty messages to teenage congressional pageboys. Here’s an instant messenger (IM) exchange with a minor:

MaF54: What are ya wearing?
Teen: T-shirt and shorts
MaF54: Love to slip them off ya.

Congressional pages and interns run errands for lawmakers and get exposure to the political processes and sometime become victims of their venality (Remember Monica Lewinsky, the gal who sizzled a President, made him cry in anguish, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and almost got him impeached?).

After he was unmasked, Mr Foley readily outed himself and admitted that he is gay and accepted full responsibility for his sexually explicit Internet behaviour, though his attorney tried to put a spin and said that the ex-Congressman was an alcoholic and was sexually molested as a child by a clergyman.

There is a psychological folklore in the USA that those who have been sexually abused as children might themselves grow up as child abusers and molesters; therefore, they need understanding and sympathy and treatment rather than jail time.

If Mr Foley were sexually molested as a child, why did he not come forward and name names as hundreds of others have done, causing the Catholic Church shame, embarrassment and millions of dollars in settlements? Mr Foley had a flourishing political career and had become a darling of the media as well as Hollywood. Before the public exposure, there was a discreet scent of the exotic about him that added to his irresistible charm as a Congressman.

What is the best time to disclose childhood abuse? David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, was quoted in The New York Times, saying, “Most survivors disclose it after their eighth drunk driving arrest or their wife saying she wants a divorce, or their fifth bar fight.”

When someone is put under a gun and there seems to be no exit, the person might say anything to escape for life.

“Childhood trauma doesn’t excuse criminal behaviour. I hope he will find the strength to do what thousands of other victims have done, which is publicly expose the predator ~ whether he’s alive or dead,” Mr Clohessy admonished. Had Mr Foley’s predilection for teenage boys been not publicly exposed, he would have continued his extraordinarily charming life as a supporter of gay rights and protector of children’s rights.

Simulation and dissimulation come naturally to politicians.

As the House’s co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, Mr Foley had sponsored legislation in July to protect children from cyber-exploitation by adults. As a loyal Republican Congressman, Mr Foley’s private life could not have been totally unknown to the party bosses, including the House Speaker, Mr Dennis Hastert (Republican from Illinois), who acknowledged his responsibility for failing to keep a watch in the matter but refused to accept any accountability. He wouldn’t resign.

Not only is Speaker Hastert’s reputation at stake but also the future of the Republicans in the November elections.The Republican Party has always touted itself as a party of American family values, but kept quiet when it knew that one of its own was IM-ing sexual fantasies with schoolboy pagers as young as 16, who were on a learning curve at the Capitol Hill.

As revelations keep unfolding daily as to who knew what and when, it is becoming clear that at least since 2004, several powerful people in the Beltway political hierarchy were aware of Mr Foley’s “inappropriate behaviour,” about which some congressional pages had lodged formal complaints. Speaker Hastert has been asserting that he did not know about Mr Foley’s e-mail sexual shenanigans with teenage pages, but whether such an appalling pretence of ignorance would be enough to let him maintain his credibility as the House leader beyond the November elections, if at all the party maintains its majority, is doubtful.

The question is about the Speaker’s competence and moral courage to confront one of his colleagues whose conduct he should have known. Ignorance in politics is no excuse. President George W Bush dutifully supported the beleaguered Speaker: “I know Denny Hastert... He is a father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country. I know that he wants all the facts to come out.”

But the Iraq war and the latest revelations by a journalistic gadfly Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in his book The State of Denial that President Bush has not been telling the truth to the American people about what is actually going on in Iraq, has not added to the President’s declining political capital.Republicans seeking to keep their seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections, a few weeks away, would rather not be seen with the President.

Mr Bush’s endorsement of the Speaker has little meaning at this crucial political juncture. The bi-partisan House ethics committee has enthusiastically swung into action and issued dozens of subpoenas to investigate the matter as to whether there was a cover-up, though it is doubtful whether any clear-cut, finger-pointing findings would emerge.After the elections, Mr Foley’s follies would be forgotten. The American people would keep wondering what to do about Iraq, which is worming deeply into the nation’s psyche.

(Dr Batra has completed a new book, Digital Civilization: How Much Freedom Does a Man Need? He teaches communications and corporate diplomacy at Norwich University, Vermont, USA)

This is the American Report

Honest brands create good fortune

CYBER AGE by ND Batra
From The Statesman

Last month, the world’s biggest retailer Wal-Mart sent a wave of joy by announcing that it would sell about 300 generic prescription drugs ranging from allergy medication to antibiotics at $4 for a month’s supply.
Not to fall behind its rival, another major retailer, Target, announced that it, too, would match Wal-Mart’s prices.
In a culture of open marketplace capitalism, a company has to come up with innovative solutions to stay competitive. A company is nothing but its reputation and maintaining it is a big challenge.
Coca Cola and Pepsi have not come up with a creative solution to stay alive in India. Desperate calls from Washington to New Delhi won’t help the cola companies. Nor would the court battles. Reputation is the foundation of trust and loyalty, which gives stakeholders confidence in dealing with the company.
A company’s identity and image (along with its philanthropy) are the building blocks of its reputation. Wal-Mart like Bangalore has a distinct identity, a character. Identity is a company’s assertion of its individuality and embodies the company’s vision, its reason for being there. It sums up its business case.
The image of a company is the distinct memorable impression in the minds of the people as they interact with the company.Together, identity and image raise the profile of a company, its reputation, its significance beyond commercialism and profit making. Americans know what Bangalore is, but not Kolkata, not as yet.
“A company’s identity”, says Paul Argenti of Dartmouth’s Tuck School in one of his books, “is the visual manifestation of the company’s reality as conveyed through the organization’s name, logo, motto, products, services, buildings, stationery, uniform, and all other tangible pieces of evidence created by the organization and communicated to a variety of constituencies”.
A company’s name, symbols, products, services, employees, buildings, its tangibles and intangibles, are not a cluster of facts but a dynamic system that creates specific value and meaning for the stakeholders.
Stakeholders’ perception of the company, however, emerges from the totality of the impression. While a company might do its utmost to build and control its identity, it cannot totally control the image, the impression, the perception, the public has about it. A company’s identity and the image are never the same, but the closer they are, the better is the reality, which is the basis of the company’s reputation. While it is desirable to achieve consistency in identity, McDonald’s golden arches, for example, the perception of the company should no be expected to be the same in every country.
McDonald’s is one of the fast food chains in the USA but in China it has the image of a desirable American food, desired by the young and the old, in spite of the fact that the identity of the company, its sounds and images, are globally quite consistent.
In France, the company has a low public image, in spite of the fact that one of its popular products is called French Fries. Of course, there’s nothing French about them. A corporate identity must embody the company’s core values, the sum and substance of what is called its business case.
Identity is the visualisation of its mission, and answers the unasked question: Who are we? What are we doing here? These are the questions Coke and Pepsi should be asking in India.
Last week, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Infosys Technologies’ visionary corporate statesman NR Narayana Murthy said, “Clear conscience ~ clear profit…. When in doubt, disclose.” Coke and Pepsi should listen to him.
While a consistent and well-defined identity a company projects before the public helps it to build a perception of the company about what it stands for, the reputation is built over time and depends upon how the company conducts itself.
A strong reputation matters because it enhances a company’s attractiveness, softens criticism, and creates public support for a company’s activities. Customers don’t mind paying a little extra for a product when it comes from a company with a strong reputation for quality and fairness. A company with a strong reputation attracts talented employees, who like to stay with the company for personal and professional growth.
The likeability of the company by the employees and their day-to-day interaction with the various stakeholders adds to the reputation of the company.Employees become the corporeal identity of the company embodying its values and mission. But when a CEO is found with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar, as it has happened with the global accounting firm Arthur Andersen, for example, the reputation comes crashing down.
No amount of identity metamorphosis could bring the reputation back. Arthur Anderson self-destructed, as did Enron, the infamous energy giant.
Apart from the integrity of corporate leadership that inspires respect and loyalty from employees and the general public, companies like Microsoft have enhanced their reputation by carrying out global philanthropic activities.Corporate philanthropic giving at local, national and global levels should become part of a company’s business case.
Philanthropic activities of a company must be thoughtfully and tastefully publicised through corporate advertising to project the humane side of the company as Microsoft is doing through its global foundation to fight AIDS and tuberculosis. Some companies make use of institutional advertising to let the public know how involved they are in adding to the public good, just as Beyond Petroleum (BP), formerly British Petroleum, has been doing with its corporate ads, informing the public about its commitment to the development of alternative sources of energy.BP looked green until its recent pipeline troubles in Alaska.
No company can ever rest in peace, thinking that its reputation is secure. Reputation is not a constant but a corporate variable.
(Dr Batra teaches communications and corporate diplomacy at Norwich University, Vermont, USA)

It is verbal Jihad now

Devil taken control of logos

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on CBS “60 Minutes” news magazine that a US diplomat had threatened to turn “the Land of the Pure” into the “stone age” if his government did not fully and unconditionally cooperate with the USA in hunting down the Taliban and Al-Qaida after the September 11 attacks.

In a joint Press conference recently with President George W Bush on the lawns of the White House when reporters asked the Pakistani strongman to elaborate on his brazen remark, General Musharraf tried to wriggle out of public embarrassment by saying that he was under contract with his publisher to keep his mouth shut until the book was released. While reporters guffawed at Gen Musharraf’s crude attempt at self-promotion of his book, Mr Bush could not control himself and retorted derisively that what the Pakistani is saying is, “buy the book”.

Normally, politicians indulge in the luxury of ghost-written kiss-and-tell books for money ~ and revenge against their detractors ~ after they retire or are kicked out of office. Gen Musharraf, as they say, wants to make hay while the sun shines. But Gen Musharraf was not the only one who put Mr Bush in a spot with his tongue wagging out of control. Mr Bush’s worst nemesis has been Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who took the podium at the UN General Assembly and let it out, “Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world.“Truly. As the owner of the world…... As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Like Iran, Venezuela sits on a huge oil reservoir and wants to use his country’s natural resources in forging a global alliance against the USA. Oil hungry-China is willing to oblige and help Venezuela in diverting its oil resources across the Pacific, as are some other countries hunting desperately for natural resources.

Iran’s media savvy President, Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined a select group of people in this world who have been denying that the Holocaust ever occurred.Last December, Mr Ahmadinejad said that the West “has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets.” Whenever reporters try to pin him down about his views on the historical reality of the genocide, he ducks the question and changes the topic. His constant refrain, which probably embodies the Arab-Muslim attitude toward Israel, has been: “If you have burned the Jews, why don’t you give a piece of Europe, the USA, Canada or Alaska to Israel… .Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?” He forgets that Israel like ancient Persia is where it should be. Islam and Christianity rose out of Judaism.

When the head of a nation such as Iran with nuclear ambitions, and a supporter of extra-territorial militant groups such as Hezbollah, says that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, the global community cannot ignore the statement as a loony tune.

Abusive and self-righteous rhetoric has been ravaging global diplomacy for quite sometime. Addressing the University of Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany, as a “call for a dialogue of the Christian faith with the modern world, and for a dialogue between all cultures and religions”, Pope Benedict XVI uttered some inflammatory words quoting “Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in exchange with a Persian scholar,” which the Pontiff has been desperately trying to unsay since then: “Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The Vatican could not have failed to imagine the reaction such an insulting statement coming from the Pope would have caused.

The pope tried to apologise, “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”Papal spin masters and apologists on both sides of the Atlantic have not succeeded in assuaging outraged Muslims who have burned and pillaged churches to prove once again that extremists have taken full control over Muslim sensibilities.But what was the Pope thinking when he chose a text that did not represent the Catholic Church's present thinking?

When on 19 April, 2005 Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger assumed the papal throne, he ceased to be an individual. He became the singular voice of the Catholic Church. He could not have been unaware of what he was saying. I believe that the Pope was trying to admonish the global Catholic community about the gulf that divides it from Islam, which has continued to be from medieval Persia to modern Iran “evil and inhuman”. In the Internet age, his words could not have been limited to the faithful only.

One might speculate as to what prompted Pope Benedict to dig out an obscure statement of a medieval ruler but his views are not very far from those of President Bush, who said before the National Endowment for Democracy last year, “Islamic terrorist attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.”

The West does not look at Islam as a gentler and kinder religion. Nor does it know how to deal with it.

Bush keeps going, going

Checks and balances for Bush

From The Statesman
ND Batra

In spite of the fact that now a majority of Americans believe that the Iraqi invasion was a mistake, George W Bush continues to believe that toppling Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do to prevent Iraq from becoming a hub for terrorists. It’s a struggle for civilisation, Mr Bush said, not a war between civilisations.

Foreign policy, of course, cannot be run on public opinion polls, which go up and down so often that it would be politically crazy to be solely guided by them. National leaders sometimes take measures that are unpopular but necessary according to their perception of the problem the country faces and their political vision. What hurts their cause, however, is the language in which they frame their thoughts, as Pope Benedict’s recent remark equating Islam with violence and evil have shown. That the result of Iraqi invasion turned out to be much different, much bloodier than expected has not lessened the Bush administration’s resolve to bring about changes in West Asia.

Gone is the tongue-lashing optimism of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld who said after the Iraq elections: “Just having elections in Iraq is an enormous success and a victory. Following the elections in Afghanistan and the election recently in the Palestinian Authority, the Iraqi vote will mark still another success for democracy and a defeat for pro-dictatorship and extremist elements in the region.” The future did not happen they wanted it to happen. Spreading democracy still remains the policy, but only if US forces could move beyond fighting terrorism. Mr Bush now admits that his ill-famed utterances like “Bring em on,” challenging insurgents to attack US forces in Iraq was a mistake, though he still does not realise how much damage the expression “Axis of Evil” has done to US diplomacy.Evil is, of course, everywhere and the world has become a dangerous place.

No nation is safe from evil-doers, jihadis and non-jihadis, but by characterising that evil is limited to a small axis of three countries, Mr Bush absolved others by default. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis said some time ago, “The terrorists of September 11 exposed vulnerabilities in the defences of all states,” which compelled Mr Bush to preside over “the most sweeping redesign of US grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt. The basis for Mr Bush’s grand strategy, like Roosevelt’s, comes from the shock of surprise attack and will not change. None of FDR’s successors, Democrat or Republican, could escape the lesson he drew from the events of December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor): that distance alone no longer protected Americans from assaults at the hands of hostile states.

Neither Mr Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can ignore what the events of September 11, 2001, made clear: the deterrence against states affords insufficient protection from attacks by gangs, which can now inflict the kind of damage only states fighting wars used to be able to achieve.” The USA was not the first country to bear the brunt of terrorists. Countries like India have long been suffering terrorists’ attacks sponsored by their neighbours. But earlier the USA looked at the situation differently. Now it sees terrorism as a global threat to civilisation and it must be eliminated.

The horrific events of September 11, 2001 led to the establishment of US presence in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and destroy Al- Qaida terrorists.But US presence has been having some unintended consequence in the region, in the sense that India and Pakistan have been opening up to each other at several levels and the ceasefire is holding up on the Line of Actual Control.The settlement of disputes, including Kashmir, and long-term peace is still a possibility in spite of recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Terrorism breeds in failing states. The Bush administration needs to reframe and rephrase its policy of pre-emption in terms of international cooperation to eliminate terrorism.

Pakistani military rulers know that breeding and financing terrorists can bite back. England and other European countries too have begun to realise that Islamic terrorism is growing in their midst and must be purged whatever the cost. Prof Gaddis said: “It is a failure of both language and vision that the United States has yet to make its case for pre-emption” in terms of the self-interest and survival of each nation; and a collective security system, which could best be under the US leadership.The US leadership must have a strong moral foundation to persuade others to join in its efforts to eliminate the global scourge of jihadist terrorism.Many senior political leaders both Democrats and Republicans believe that moral leadership begins with how the USA treats the captured terrorists.

The Abu Ghraib prison abuse has been a shameful embarrassment at home and abroad. The US Supreme Court recently ruled that the President must not ignore the Common Article 3 of Geneva Conventions which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity” or “humiliating and degrading treatment”of terrorists, who must have their day in the court with all the rights of fair trial under the criminal justice system of a civilised society.President Bush said the war against terrorism is a struggle for civilisation. True; but in the process the USA should not lose its own soul and descend into the heart of darkness.

Born to multitasking

How much information can you stand?

ND Batra

From The Statesman

Ceaseless information pollutes our minds. There was a time when production, distribution and processing of information, news and movies existed in a state of balance. We consumed and assimilated what was produced. And then there was time for silence, for conversation, and for playfulness.

But that was before computers, microwave and satellite transmission created a deluge that seems to sweep away everything else from our lives. Some of us, especially of the older generation, raised on the logic of linear thinking and writing, can’t handle what we see as an information tsunami. Others, especially of the digital generation, growing up on computer games, cell phones, instant messaging, kids born to multitasking, revel on this new culture of incessant messaging. The digital generation has not been complaining that there is too much information swirling around, albeit most of it is useless.

David Schenk called it “data smog.” Due to a ceaseless development of computer technology, information and data production has become so abundant that it clutters our minds as “a pollutant.” We produce too much information for our own good, and so fast that we our minds can’t assimilate it, he said. Of course what is a pollutant could become raw material for something new in the future, only if know what to do with it. In other words we don’t have the requisite software to turn pollutants into useful products.

According to Schenk, the phenomenon of accelerated production of data collection and information production is of recent origin, only a half century. “For nearly 100,000 years leading up to this century, information technology has been an unambiguous virtue as a means of sustaining and developing culture…Then, around the time of the first atom bomb, something strange happened. We began to produce information much faster than we could process it.” There’s no denying the fact that dropping of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki created information explosion that could not have been handled by traditional means of information processing especially in a manner that would have created knowledge and understanding of what man could do to his fellow beings.

There were technology nay-sayers, Luddites, of the 19th century, who out of fear of loss of jobs and their traditional life styles, destroyed machinery rather than adopting and accepting it. Schenk is no Luddite but he laments, “We have quite suddenly mutated into a radical different culture, a civilization that trades in and survives on stylized communication…. The blank spaces and silent moments in life are fast disappearing. Mostly because we have asked for it, media are everywhere. Television, telephones, radios, message beepers, and an assortment of other modern communication and navigational aids are now as ubiquitous as roads and tennis shoes—anywhere humans can go, all forms of media now follow: onto trains, planes, automobiles, into hotel bathrooms, along jogging paths and mountain trails, on bikes and boats...”

The ecology of information has become overwhelming. A few seasons ago, the television sitcom “Hope and Faith” introduced a two-part episode about wife exchange, which in spite of its suggestive open marriage immorality wasn’t as naughty as it sounds. In fact “Wife Swap” is a popular reality show, where two housewives in culturally different states exchange households with children but without swapping beds, just to see how the other half of womankind lives. In a parody of the reality show, in the “Hope and Faith” episode of wife exchange, Hope left her home in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to live with a family in Manhattan, where she found that the high-tech New York family members had all the digital gadgets but they seldom talked with each other as a family.

The culprit was the work-alcoholic father, Aaron, who in a delightful mockery of “always on, always available,” was always talking to someone on his hand-free cell phone. When he looked at his Hope, his wife in exchange, at the dining table, she thought he was talking with her, but of course, no, he was talking past her, with someone else on the other side, a customer. The Manhattan man symbolised the multitasking New Yorker, always in communication, always networking, always connected, except when it came to touching someone emotionally and keeping relations on a steady keel.

The Manhattan wife-swapping cell-addicted man episode ended with Aaron deciding to give up his always-on wireless communication gear, sell his multimillion-dollar apartment and return to his family’s bosom and turn to simpler things. Ah! But that could only happen in television. Nevertheless, we have to consider the possibility that confronted with an ever rising tide of information, the human mind might evolve and adapt and learn to improve the signal-to-noise ratio; that’s, new technology might help us to see patterns in what is called noise and clutter.

History of human evolution has been a struggle to transform nothingness to zero to information, from empty cave walls to primitive carvings and murals, from rags and papyrus to manuscript writing, from zero-and-one sheep counting to decimal system to bits and bytes. I am optimistic that tools that enable us to create information would also help us to find patterns and meanings in that information, whether it is about terrorism or about the global marketplace.

Bush not giving up 'til the cows come home

Challenging times for the Unite States

ND Batra

The cowboy president is seldom caught in a reflective mood in the public, but when Kelly O’Donnell of NBC asked him in a recent meeting with reporters whether he felt frustrated, President George Bush replied with his usual equipoise that sometimes he did feel frustrated though “rarely surprised.” Rarely has an American president carried such a crushing burden on his shoulders as this man. And he is not going to give up ‘til the cows come home.
Not only has the war in Iraq mutated from the supposedly glorious war of liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein to an unending Shia-Sunni sectarian violence bordering on civil war, the rise of Iran-Hezballa-Syria crescent has been a no less shocking development. Add to it the defiance of Iran on the nuclear issue and you get a glimpse of a new Middle East rising, a region that instead of fueling global economy with its vast oil reserves might instead fuel further non-state and state-sponsored global terrorism.
Iran might have been overjoyed to see how thousands of its rockets that it clandestinely supplied to Hezballa were hitting Israel, but it could not have imagined nor did it seem to care the death and destruction the proxy war had brought to the innocent people of Lebanon. Nor did Israel and its supporter the United States. Lebanon has become a bloody chessboard of power play.
“But war is not a time of joy,” said Bush. True, though I believe that war does create hope and excitement in the theater of imagination of strategists who sit around the table and calculate advances and retreats and collateral damages and international repercussions. Unfortunately, modern wars are not winnable. The victors, if any, cannot walk away from the destruction of war as you can see in Lebanon. Iran, Hezbollah, the United States are now funneling resources to rebuild the devastated Lebanon in order to win over the minds and hearts that they destroyed to achieve their strategic goals in the region— a perverted example of creative destruction. The dead would be buried and eventually forgotten but the maimed and mangled and the living dead would be always there, in our living rooms, recycled in the global 24/7 of Al Jazeera and the CNN.
Bush nonetheless did not issue a call for giving up the struggle against terrorism, which would outlast the remainder of his days in the White House, but he acknowledged the obvious that these “are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country.”
Next week the United States would be observing the fifth anniversary of the horrific attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon. Although the war in Afghanistan and Iraq might have to some extent drained the psychic energy of the American people, and most of them now believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake, it is rather surprising that the wars have not slowed the US economic growth. In fact the US American economy since 9/11 terrorist attacks has been steadily growing. Jack Welch, the ex-chairman of GE, who along with his wife Susie Welch writes a weekly column for BusinessWeek, stated a month ago, “Since mid-2003 the American economy has grown about 20 %. That’s more than $2.2 trillion—equal to the size of the total economy of China. Seven million jobs have been added.” The Welches were trying to ward off criticism against outsourcing; but that is equally true in the case of jihadi terrorism. New York is once again a shining city on a hill. The towers would rise again. The trains (in Mumbai) are running again, aren’t they?
Nonetheless, there is increasing pessimism in the United States whether Iraq would ever settle down as a peaceful nation. The United States cannot cut loose and run and let the devil take the hindmost. That would turn Middle East into a Shia-Sunni bloodbath, which some see as already in the making especially with the reckless ascendancy of an almost-nuclear Iran as an aggressive Middle East power. Not only has Israel reason to fear Iran whose president, Mahmoud Ahamedinejad, has publicly declared that the Jewish state should be wiped out; but Arab countries also have absolutely no reason to be celebrating the rise of a nuclear Iran establishing its hegemony in the Middle East. Nor would it be in the interest of the Indian subcontinent to see any nation controlling the energy resources of the region.
But giving up is not the character of the Bush presidency. Bush sees the war against terrorism as struggle against the ultimate evil, which must be defeated, because otherwise, as he told the American Legion convention last week, terrorists would be free “to turn back the advance of freedom, and impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world.” If the United States does not fight terrorists in the streets of Baghdad, Bush said at the convention, “we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities.” In order to win “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” the United States must utilize “every element of national power.”
While Bush vows to keep fighting global jihadist terrorism, he is also fighting at home to keep Congress under the Republican control as the American people go to polls in November. Democrats are in disarray. They don’t know what to do about Iraq. Nor does anyone else.

Digitally Seductive

What digital paradise makes of us

From The Statesman
ND Batra

The Internet has created a new media environment that not only enables people to communicate, discuss and exchange information, give and receive feedback, but also provides an interactive, collaborative environment in which words can become deeds and speech can become action.
Networked computers, the building blocks of the Internet, are much more than mere productivity tools and informatics systems. Unlike the traditional media, they are capable of creating a cyber-environment that can be designed to be persuasive, that can motivate people to act and change their social behaviours.
Stanford University researchers call this rhetorical concept Captology, which according to BJ Fogg: “Focuses on the planned persuasive effects of computer technologies.” It may be the next challenge for software programmers to design virtual environments to motivate people, for example, not to drink and drive, to have healthy sexual behaviour, to avoid pregnancy, to become entrepreneur.
Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School has argued the view that computer codes can be a great source of power in society for the simple reason that most of our activities are taking place in cyberspace nowadays. But the rhetoric of software design, the persuasive code that entices, builds relationships, arouses and fulfils desires and makes the users come back has not been explored in areas other than cybersex and virtual reality Internet games.
There may be a fortune in developing codes that persuade the user to change his attitude, behaviour and actions. The strength of the Internet is its interactivity, its ability to respond and give instant feedback. Feedback not only regulates the flow of communication but also gives some of the control back to the receiver of the message.
Two persons in conversation establish a dynamic relationship to create shared meanings. Human communication is essentially a transaction that takes place effectively if people have or can create a common field of experience. Islamic jehadists, for example, share one another’s mental model of the Islamic paradise, and for them suicide becomes a door to that mental image of everlasting beauty.
Persuasion works through sharing of mental models. The Internet makes it easy to share mental models whether they are of instant entrance to paradise through suicide bombing, buying and selling on a virtual platform such as e-Bay, or sharing intimacies as companies such as MySpace allow members to do.
Internet communication can transcend face-to-face communication, can be persuasive, and in certain circumstances is even more desirable. The absence of face-to-face cues such as how a person looks and sounds vocal inflections, which might arouse scepticism, are absent in Internet communication, especially in e-mail or question-answer Websites.
Selective self-presentation makes it possible for people to open themselves up to others, which they would hesitate to do in face-to-face conversation for fear of contradiction and lack of control.
Even in chatrooms and instant messaging, communication can become as what one researcher, JB Walther, called “hyperpersonal”, that is, socially more desirable than we are likely to experience face-to-face. It allows the play of fantasy partly to compensate for the absence of aural and visual information that gestures and voice create in interpersonal encounters. Fantasy lowers our guards and makes cyberspace seductively persuasive and dangerous.
So many teenagers go astray in chatrooms because cyberspace lets them assume fake identities and gives them freedom to pretend what they fancy themselves to be. Some of them become victims of conmen and predators, who too assume identities desirable for their teenage victims. The playfulness of virtual environment, an environment of “Be what you want to be”, creates a pleasurable experience, a sensuous flow, in which we feel as if we are in control of our environment, something that real life might deny us.
As the legend goes, on the Internet nobody knows whether a person is a dirty old man trying to seduce teenagers; a gender-swapping woman playing with big boys in a virtual game room; or a teenager posing as an expert. As a New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner quipped: “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.”
At least for some time, that’s what a California teenager Marcus Arnold had tried to do a few years ago. Probably using his knowledge gained from television programmes such “Judge Judy”, and taking advantage of the pseudonymous freedom that a newly started knowledge sharing company had provided, Marcus turned himself into a legal expert and began to dole out free legal advice. His simple, direct, non-legalese approach to puzzling legal questions had a great appeal. Soon people began to call him at home, seeking his legal advice. But the burden of fakery became too heavy for the 15-year-old boy and one day, he said: “I am not what I have been telling you.” Real lawyers poured scorn but the public rallied around him and he continued to give his non-expert, common sense expertise on legal matters for sometime. Although the free Website (AskMe) closed a few years ago, at its height about 10 million registered visitors posted questions and answers on everything from Armageddon to Zen.
There is so much appetite for knowledge. The seductive power of the Web (and the codes that make it possible) presents one of the greatest challenges to knowledge-creating companies and venture capitalists.

A low-intensity surveillance society

Surveillance: Getting used to it?
ND Batra

From The Statesman

Search companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and others collect and archive huge amounts of personal data from which can be profiled the behaviour of the user.

A few weeks ago, America On Line, an Internet search company inadvertently released from its archives millions of search queries done by more than 600,000 users during a three-month period. Thought their names were not released but it would not have been difficult to put together the profile of searcher 167845, for example, and what was obsessing him or her.

The questions you ask and the searches you make online or in real life reveal your mind. The American people are quietly submitting to whatever brings them a feeling of assuredness. Protests against intrusiveness by the government and businesses into our personal lives have become muted. We are slipping into a low-intensity surveillance society.

Every time there is a terrorist attack, we feel that the government might be right. Online surveillance devices are being increasingly used by businesses to track users when they surf their websites. Tracking is done unobtrusively and the user can never suspect that he is being watched; nonetheless, the practice is questionable, especially when the Website does not declare in its privacy policy.

Most of us are familiar with cookies, small software programmes the advertisers put on our hard drives to track where we surf so that they can customise the most appropriate advertising message for us to achieve target marketing, reaching the right person with the right message. But a web bug can be programmed to collect whatever data is required without the knowledge of the user. When you look at your online mutual fund statement, or a pornographic site, the web bug too could be monitoring it. Some companies do inform their visitors about the tracking devices they use and for what purposes. Yahoo!, for example, uses web beacon, a single-pixel picture, to count and identify users. A web beacon can track whether a particular message, including junk mail, has been opened and acted upon or not.

Any electronic image that is part of a web page, including a banner ad, can be programmed to act as a beacon and spy on the user. Yahoo! claims that the information enables the company to personalise the surfing experience when a frequent user visits their portal. The company uses beacons to do demographic research on behalf of their clients, but asserts that no personally identifiable information gathered from the beacon research is shared with the clients. Users can opt-out, but most of them don’t know whether the option is available, nor do many of them pay attention to the privacy statement.

Surveillance technologies are not limited to the Net. Several companies are using biometrics, face recognition, radio frequency and global positioning system (GPS) technologies, to keep a watch on their properties and track suspects. Many car rental companies in the USA use GPS to keep track of their rental cars. If a car is stolen or involved in an accident, the company would know the exact location of the car. GPS also enables them to check the speed of a rental car. About five years ago, Acme Rent-a-Car of New Haven, Connecticut charged one of its renters $400 for exceeding the speed limit, which it tracked with GPS; but the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection sided with the renter and did not allow Acme to collect the fine. It also raised an intriguing legal question whether a private company can act as a traffic policeman and penalise the offender.

Many airports have started using digital fingerprint identification technology to conduct background checks without any protest from employees. Face recognition technology is being extensively used not only in airports but also in ballparks, banks and other business establishments. If a suspect turns up, his face is digitally matched in seconds with the image database. It is not a foolproof system; for example, a man with sunglasses could not be identified with face recognition technology. So far no terrorist has been apprehended by face recognition technology, but the security business is booming in the USA.

The US Customs and some airports are using low-dose x-ray machines, such as Body Search, to electronically scan a person for drugs, bombs and contraband. Body Search electronically strips a person naked and projects the image on the screen for scrutiny without the person being asked to take her clothes off – all in the name of security. Hundreds of air travellers, including women, are randomly subjected to electronic Body Search.

An interesting security tracking technology is the radio-frequency identification tag (RFID), which is attached to a suspect’s baggage as he checks in. The tagged baggage is automatically routed to a security area where it is screened with special cameras and sensors for explosives and other hazardous materials. Along with our baggage, we too might have to wear radio-frequency ID tags so that we can be monitored as we move from one airport to another, from country to country via GPS.

Only if we could put an RFID tag on every terrorist!

The most ironic part of being under surveillance is that it has not diminished American innovativeness, creativity and productivity.

India Celebrates Freedom and Democracy

Freedom under the shadow of hope and terror

ND Batra
From The Statesman

On the occasion of India’s Independence Day observed yesterday, while the world has plunged into gloom because of the pre-emptive discovery of the terrorist plot to blow up ten transatlantic airlines ~ only a month after the horrific train attacks in Mumbai ~ I still believe the good will ultimately prevail.

The bonds between the United States and India are very strong. Terrorism will be finally beaten, if the free world continues cooperating. There is so much common between India and the United States that I can’t love one without the other. Freedom deeply rooted in secularism makes every one a productive citizen in the United States, for the simple reason that when an individual cannot assert his superiority or make a special claim on the basis of his race or religion, he has no choice but to show his natural born abilities and talents to succeed, which has turned the United States into a merit-based a society, more or less.

The idea that success, in whatever terms it is defined, is possible for any one with talent, from Wall Street to sports arena, Silicon Valley to Holly-wood, is essentially everyone’s ambition. It is a secular version of the Biblical oration: “If you knock, it shall open until unto you.” The price of not knocking at the door is that you are left in the cold. There’s no choice but to try and try again, which has made the US a highly competitive society.

Secular freedom has proved productive not only in economic terms, but in every field of human endeavor. It breeds in you a sense of equality, dignity and self-worth, and your heart cries out, Go and take the risk. Every field of activity in the United States teems with talented people drawn from various nationalities, cultures, races, and colors. Americans are so unafraid of the otherness of “others,” though it has not always been so if you recall the burning of witches to Japanese-Americans’ incarceration during WWII and the McCarthy era terrorism.

The foundation of secular freedom was laid in the United States with the Declaration of Independence, as it was done in India when Nehru evoked India’s “Tryst with Destiny” at the mid-night hour on the 15th of August 1947. It has been a long struggle to keep up with the demands of secularism, freedom and equality in the United States as it has been in India. The struggle isn’t over. It will never be over. It has been a long struggle when you consider how much it has taken for African-Americans to reach their present status. A generation ago it would have been impossible to think of an African-American woman occupying one of the most powerful diplomatic and political positions in the United States.

The rise of Condoleezza Rice as US Secretary of State demonstrates the truth that talent matters and freedom has many possibilities. So does the rise of a Muslim scientist to become the President of India; a Sikh to become the Prime Minster of India; an Italian-born Christian woman to become the leader of a major political party. The richest man in India is a Muslim. Some of the most successful and glamorous Bollywood personalities are Muslims. Christians in India run some of the best schools, colleges and hospitals. That’s what India should be celebrating. But the elevation of a few in the United States from the dungeon of invisible oppression might also give a misleading impression that all American Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans are upwardly mobile. Far from it.

The painful truth is that racial profiling is a common occurrence in the United States, which prompts the police sometime to shoot first then ask question, if the non-White person, especially if he is Black, Hispanic, or Middle-East/South Asian-looking, is not properly responsive. In India the equivalent of racial profiling is caste-and-religious profiling. A Muslim might be under suspicion for no reason except that terrorism has become associated with Islamic extremism with its hub in Pakistan. Like the United States, India has a long way to go to eliminate blind and irrational prejudice, though the most heartening aspect of it is that no one is giving up the fight. Acceptance of diversity has become a necessary condition for political survival both in India and the United States, which is another fascinating parallel between two great democracies founded on multiculturalism and secularism and now both fighting Islamic terrorism.

For me freedom has no meaning unless it breeds equality in the sense of equal opportunities for everyone, a level playing field where a person can prove his best and give his best and be rewarded for it. That’s more than a personal sentiment if you consider it from India’s national interest. You cannot have a strong market economy in upwardly perpetual motion unless the best and the brightest are allowed to come forward and compete for and expand economic opportunities.

The marketplace, howsoever Darwinian it might be at times—rather than one’s caste, gender, or religion—should determine the competition and reward the best. The government’s obligation is to build the infrastructure, maintain law and order and take care of the poor because the marketplace cannot solve these problems.

It is only through the power of the open marketplace that minorities and other left-behind-people could be integrated into the fabric of India. Hope is the best front against despair and terrorism.

On this Independence Day let’s keep our hearts and minds open, as Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru would have wanted us to do.

TV and Attention Disorder

Make TV children-friendly

From The Statesman
By ND Batra

What happens in the cradle is much more important than what is happening in the killing fields of Iraq and Lebanon.

Children’s brain undergoes rapid development in the early years and exposure to violent and sexually explicit television might interfere in the neural wiring of the brain. Research shows that apart from triggering violent behaviour in children, television may be responsible for obesity in children, because instead of playing outside and doing physical activities children become couch potatoes.

A study published in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics showed that early exposure to television by children increases the risk of attention disorder. The research done at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center at the University of Washington, Seattle, led by Dr Dimitri Christakis concluded that for every hour of television viewing by children in the one to three age group, the risk of attention disorder increased by nine per cent.

The study did not mention what kind of content caused attention disorder. Would slow repetitive programmes such as Sesame Street, Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, for example, have the same effect as fast moving programmes such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bugs Bunny? It is important to keep in mind that a child having attention disorder does not necessarily suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD children (and adults) suffer from some chemical imbalance in the brain. They can’t stay still, chatter incessantly, get bored easily, forget things and can’t finish the work they are doing.

To some extent all children show such tendencies, therefore, parents should not jump to hasty conclusions. Attention disorder is a matter of degree. At some point it becomes a serious illness. The question is whether rapid-fire television programmes cause or aggravate the condition.

Or could some programme reverse attention disorder?
While the University of Washington study concluded that an early exposure to bad television programmes might skew brain development, another study showed the tremendous learning potential of television for toddlers. The researchers found that toddlers as young as 10 months have the potential to learn when they watch television. The right kind of television programmes promote intellectual development and could help children to learn language skills, such as matching names to the objects they represent, and do things by watching them being done on television. For example, a toddler could take apart a toy and also put it together after seeing it being done on television, researchers had found. Psychologist Dr Mabel Rice of the University of Kansas concluded from her research on language acquisition that children at a very early age have the potential to learn from television if the programmes were specially made for them, such as Sesame Street.

Infants’ television programmes that create sharp focus on an attractive object, and a friendly person who repeatedly talks about the object stimulates infants’ brain to learn. Music plays a big role in learning. To be sure, fast-paced, slam-dunk children’s cartoon programmes, which are nothing but infomercials for action toys and sugared cereals, are not going to help children anyway except to turn them into passive-aggressive consumers of the multibillion-dollar toy marketplace. What goes into the programme content is important.

Television is not the enemy of children.
Children’s programme makers driven by commercial lust are children’s enemies.

A few years ago, The American Psychological Association suggested four steps that could be taken “to mitigate, moderate and minimise” the toxic impact of violence on children: (1) Watch at least one episode of a programme the child watches to know how violent it is. (2) When viewing together, discuss the violence with the child; why the violence happened and how painful it is. Ask the child how the conflict could have been solved without violence. (3) Explain to the child how violence in entertainment is “faked” and not real. (4) Encourage children to watch programmes with characters that cooperate, help, and care for each other. APA said these programmes have been shown to influence children in a positive way and suggested making “TV violence part of the public health agenda (as with smoking and drunk driving) publicising ~ through a vigorous public information campaign in all information media ~ its perils and effects.”

Television violence in children’s programming has not gone down for the simple reason that Hollywood has passed on the responsibility to parents, expecting them to use the V (violence)-chip to block out objectionable programming. Since each television programme in the USA is rated for violence and sex and all sets have programme or channel-blocking mechanisms, it is left to the parents to protect children from bad television. But the survey shows that parents are not pro-active, partly because of the pressures of daily life. Besides, there is little choice on television.

The First Amendment freedoms have been cornered by Hollywood greed, which has left little incentive for creativity. In this war-torn world, children have become a forgotten constituency. On the minds of most American parents, there are weightier issues: job security, retirement, healthcare, and the seemingly endless Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon.

A Step For India-US Friednship

Nuclear deal takes an initial step
But ND Batra says Indian diplomats still have their work cut out for them

By ND BatraAsiaMedia Contributing Writer

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Those of us who watched last week's debate in the U.S. House of Representative over the United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006 had very tense moments at the closing.
Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, introduced a motion to recommit the Bill to the House International Relation committee to include a provision that India must make a full commitment to U.S. efforts to isolate Iran in its nuclear ambitions. It was a daring political subterfuge that would have killed the deal.
The intensity of debate over the Markey-Upton motion, and the thin margin (235-192) by which the motion was defeated, showed not only how strongly U.S. lawmakers feel about Iran's development of nuclear weapons, but also that India has significant hurdles to face in making the nuclear deal.
The impression given by the final count, 359 votes to 68, that the House gave overwhelming support to the India-US nuclear deal is misleading. There is a strong substratum of opposition, which cuts across party lines as well as scholarly and journalistic communities, to let India bypass the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and indirectly become a member of the nuclear club.
In the coming months, Indian diplomats have their work cut out for them because some Americans have yet to be fully persuaded that an India-U.S. civil nuclear deal is good for the United States.
Of course, the nuclear deal is good for India.
By offering India "full civilian nuclear energy cooperation," President Bush made a bold act of statesmanship to establish long-term strategic and economic relations with a country that many Europeans and Americans are beginning to perceive as a reliable global partner. The pragmatic partnership to let India grow and play its rightful constructive role in global affairs is not about containing any other rising power. It is rather a partnership to let India develop as an alternative model of economic growth without compromising fundamental freedoms.
The rapid economic growth of Indian economy, which some estimate will increase 8 to 9 percent a year for the next few decades primarily through the efforts of its rising entrepreneurial class, would lift millions of Indians out of poverty. An economically dynamic India would make the military containment of any rising Asian power unnecessary. The more equal players there are on the Asian stage, the less chance there is for a single hegemonic power to rise.
The deal would remove hurdles in India's search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy. In a joint statement with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Bush administration has accepted India as a "responsible state with advanced nuclear technology," recognizing it as an exception to the rule, a country that should "acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states."
After the Senate vote in September, when Congress finally approves the deal, India will be able to buy nuclear fuel for its existing nuclear power plants and shop to build new ones. In the course of time, as trust increases and diplomatic relations further improve, a whole new world of sophisticated American technology would be open to India, enabling it to leapfrog past decades sluggish economic growth. In return India has agreed to do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty -- to open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection and to continue the moratorium on nuclear testing. Its nuclear military arsenal would remain off limits.
Critics in India, particularly the Left parties, who fear that the deal would create co-dependency relations with the United States need to consider how China has benefited from its strong economic partnership without compromising its sovereignty. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and penetrate deeply into corporate America.
An Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline -- if not a pipedream -- is only a very remote possibility; but even if it materializes, it may not be enough to meet India's gargantuan need for energy. Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are practical alternatives to which the United States has opened its doors.
Prime Minster Manmohan Singh was right when he told a joint U.S. Congress session last year, "There are partnerships based on principle, and partnership based on pragmatism. I believe we are at a juncture where we can embark on partnership that we can draw both on principle as well as pragmatism."
For the next decade, India's diplomacy should have a single-minded focus on one primary goal: speedy economic growth, which a partnership with the United States would hasten. Ironically, the opponents of the deal in the United States are banking on the Indian Left to scuttle the deal in the Indian Parliament.
The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.
Date Posted: 8/1/2006