The RSS and Bajrang Dal have now attacked a medical doctor

In what is a spreading incidence of violence across the country, the RSS's hoodlums have now physically attacked Dr Raju, the Chief Surgeon of a Hospital in Kachhwa, Uttar Pradesh, Central India.

Up till now, as far as I know, the RSS confined its attacks to harmless preachers, nuns and other such people.

There is one case where a "real worker", a school principal, was beaten up in Madhya Pradesh.

Now, as far as I know, for the first time, a medical doctor has been beaten up (earlier today, according to a news flash).

Warmest congratulations to the RSS and the Bajrang Dal: perhaps they will now be encouraged to also start beating up normal farmers, shopkeepers, office workers, drivers, lab technicians, IT workers, heads of businesses, advertisers, ordinary housewives, and so on.

And, eventually, when it finally dawns on the exceedingly acute intelligence of the RSS and Bajrang Dal, that its terror tactics do not work on any and all of these, the RSS and Bajrang Dal will then no doubt rise to the ultimate masochistic height of beating each other too. Sphere: Related Content

Any Indian writings on technology? Or any writer on the history of technology in India?

I am working on collection of writings on technology and the good life.

However, I am finding it difficult to find any significant reflections by Indians on the origins, nature or effects of technology.

Equally difficult is finding anything significant on the history of technology in India.

Any suggestions? For those readers who know me personally, directly to me, please. Others can respond via my Blogsite of course. Sphere: Related Content

Baggage problems when flying?

Insurance claims for lost baggage almost doubled in the first half of this year, according to figures published today. The UK travel insurance company InsureandGo apparentlyreceived 2,094 claims between January and June, 85 per cent up on the number for the first six months of last year.

This is despite the number of passengers increasing only 1.4 per cent.

Well, that raises some questions, doesn't it. Why would a 1.4% rise in traffic trigger an 85% rise in the number of lost bags.

Could it have something to do with systematic underinvestment in baggage handling systems over several years? Sphere: Related Content

Facebook's technical problems

I see that Facebook, the social networking website, is scheduled to announce that it has broken into the UK’s top 20 most popular online destinations for the first time this week.

In the wake of its popularity, I have for some weeks now, been getting an invitation or two each day to accept them as my Contacts on Facebook.

Regretfully, due to a problem on the site that I reported some time ago, I can't actually accept any of these folk as Contacts, no matter how often I click the "Confirm" button.

So, till Facebook sorts out this problem, it will remain pretty unpopular with me! Sphere: Related Content

At the Wolfsberg Think Tank on "Leadership and Ethics" which I organised a few weeks ago, Dr Kim Tan, the Founder & Chairman of the British company, SpringHill Management Ltd., provided an inspiring presentation on the subject, "The Role of Ethical Business Leaders in Reducing Poverty".

What made the presentation inspiring was not all the theoretical points made, but rather the moving story of how he became involved in job creation combined with nature conservation on a mass scale (Addo Elephant National Park is the third largest national park in South Africa). The slides of his presentation are at:
http://www.wolfsberg.com/documents/Kim_Tan.pdf

Kuzuko Lodge is set to open soon. What a wonderful place to which to retreat for a luxury holiday - and in a malaria-free region!
http://www.legacyhotels.co.za/content.aspx?h=24 Sphere: Related Content

One of history's worst mass murderers is still the most honoured man in China

People become like their gods, goes an old Greek saying. We might modernise it as: "People become at least a little like their heroes".

So why is a man who was directly responsible for the deaths of some 70 million people, still the most honoured man in China?

I mean Mao, of course.

Probably the most exhaustive possible book on the man is titled Mao: the Unknown Story (just published by Vintage Books). Authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have, between them, produced nearly a thousand pages, based on ten years of research, including interviews with close associates of Mao as well as a massive number of other people who interacted at various levels and in various ways with him and his regime.

So we are not going to get a more authoritative look at the man in the near future anyway, and possibly not ever.

The book, like the man, is hard to engage with, and yet impossible to put down. You have unending documentation of his determination to grab and keep power, of the corruption that resulted, of Mao's unfeeling cruelties, and of his enormous ego. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that more than 70 million people were "eliminated" directly because of Mao's rule.

How could Indian Prime Minister Nehru and those around him have possibly got this man so totally wrong as to have considered him a "brother" of India? Days after being garlanded and feted in India, Mao ordered the attack on India which resulted in carnage of the Sino-Indian war (a huge amount of Indian territory is to this day held by China - and the current power-brokers in Inda are content to let all that slide in the interests of making money today). But those are sore matters. Let's not go there (as Americans say). Or not any further.

The point is that this power-crazed beast is, in spite of China's much-vaunted opening to the world, still the most honoured man in the country, with photographs everywhere and ritual homage still being done to his memory.

How can China ever expect to join the community of civilised nations as long as this man is not denounced by its elite? How can ordinary Chinese hope to have any chance of genuine freedom and dignity as long as this man is virtually deified in their country? Sphere: Related Content

The scandal of the commercial takeover of our intellectual life: the case of academic publishing

Is our intellectual life really being taken over slowly by commercial interests? I am met with incredulity when I make such a statement - at a party, for instance.

But consider the following incidents:

1. I am sitting at my computer looking for a particular quote to which I want to refer in an article that I am writing. On Googling it, I find it pretty quickly. However, I want to check the exact wording since it is some years since I read the particular piece, and my memory is not perfect :-)

So I attempt to access the piece via the hyperlink. It takes me to the site belonging to the publisher which demands a fee of $32.11 to give me access to it. That is quite a sum of money, for which I could easily buy a whole book, or even two. Exactly how many pages of material am I going to be able to buy for $32.11? In my case, ten pages - of which the particular piece in which I am interested runs for two pages (it happens to be a book review). In this case, I am not even given the option of being able to buy the two pages - I have to buy the whole book review section. As the material seems to be available from several sites, all of which lead to the publisher's page, I can only deduce that the publisher has deals with all these websites, so that the spoils are divided between the website that leads to the publisher's page and the actual publisher. Does the publisher really need to have such deals with these various websites? Is it not enough for the material to be listed on the publisher's website alone? Then, perhaps without the commission to the other websites, the material might be available to readers at a more reasonable price?

2. Here is a more egregious example. A friend who is an full professor at Oxford (let's call him Dr L) wrote an article a year or two ago and, perhaps because of the force of old established habit over the years, and certainly without any particular process of thought about it, signed away his copyright in the article to the journal publisher concerned - as one is increasingly required to do before articles and book reviews can be published. Another person (let's call him Dr S), a mutual friend, with whom I was breakfasting this morning, tells me that he wanted to translate Dr L's article into German so that it could be published in a collection of essays that he is editing for publication in Germany by a small academic publisher who will certainly not require the copyright but only the permission to publish a German translation of the original piece. Both Dr L and Dr S anticipated no problem from the Journal publisher, and permission was duly requested by Dr L in the usual formal way. But the permission has officially been denied by the publisher who (of course, now that it owns the copyright) does not need to give any grounds for denying permission.

Till a few years ago, it was customary for publishers to ask for only "first publication rights". Then this switched to the grant of copyright, though it was either written down or understood that this was merely a convenience for the publisher, and that no reasonable request for republication of the essay or article (for example in a book) would be withheld.

The whole situation has now changed, and publishers don't just want to make a reasonable profit on actually publishing articles, they want to extract the maximum profit from having acquired the intellectual property.

What rankles is that Dr L was not paid anything by the journal publisher for the original article and that the German translation and publication would be on a non-profit basis!

Conclusion: The sooner professors and others in academia stop collaborating with such commercial exploitation of their intellectual property the better.

How could they do so?

Simple.

Stop publishing in these print journals controlled by commercial interests, and set up peer-reviewed journals on the internet with full and free public acess. After all the salaries of our university academics are paid by citizens!

Alternatively, professors and other intellectuals should ask for royalties for the sale of their articles, in the same way as book publisher offer royalties on the sale of books.

After all, the intellectual property is created by the professor or intellectual. Those who risk their capital in publishing academic journals certainly deserve to make a reasonable profit. But why should the professor or intellectual get nothing if the ordinary member of the public has to pay to get hold of the intellectual property produced by the professor or intellectual? Sphere: Related Content

Mr Deichmann, the world shoe merchant

I had not heard of Deichmann when I started working in Switzerland, but soon there was no escaping his name. Specially as the Deichmann shoe empire grew and grew, and as his philanthropic activities grew in India, and then in Africa and Israel, and so on.

As a result, I came to admire the man greatly, even though I have never met him. Apparently, there was a biography of Deichmann published last year in German, but I was unaware of it, because I read German only when I have to, and certainly do not keep up with publishing in Germany.

The above is one set of facts which you need to know. Now put those aside, while we turn our attention to another set of facts which you need to know, before I bring everything together towards the end of this short posting.

Andreas Malessa is a radio and TV journalist and author. He came to our home to interview my twins, Suresh and Jyoti, about their novel Conspiracy of Calaspia, and their forthcoming new novel. Regretfully, I was not able to be there for the occasion. So Mr Malessa kindly left a "small present" for me. It turned out to be the English translation of Deichmann's biography, written by Hanna Schott and Andreas Malessa!

This was the first time that I became aware even of the German book, let alone the English one.

So now we come to synthesis of the two sets of facts above: I have finished reading the book very quickly. It is (somewhat unattractively for the English reader) titled Why are you rich, Mr Deichmann? and published by R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal, Germany.

The translation is perfectly comprehensible, but there are what may be called various "Germanisms" in the text, which give it a curious flavour. The book(all too briefly) covers the family's antecedents, Heinz-Horst Deichmann's experiences during the Second World War, how a medical doctor came to be one of the world's top shoe businessman, and his philanthropic and business activities. There is a brief section on the children, now that Heinz-Horst Deichmann's son Heinrich Deichmann has taken over the running of the business. And finally there is tribute by the old family friend Johannes Rau, then President of Germany, to Mr Heinz-Horst Deichmann.

The story is told very simply, almost sparsely. A few sentences cover the millions invested in philanthropy and, equally important, the months of time every year. The acquisition of imporant companies is covered in a sentence, sometimes less. So this is a rather understated story, whose full magnitude hits you only on reflection. A powerful story of an extremely rich man who enjoys life but lives modestly so that he can help humanity. Sphere: Related Content

The "N" Factor

The "N" stands for "networking" which of course existed long before the word came into existence - as is always the case. Even in the world of ideas and concepts, the idea or concept always pre-exists the creation of the word to describe it (at least in the world of ideas and concepts).

Well, there are probably thousands of books on networking, but I must confess that I have never read any of them, thinking them a waste of time, as I grew up in India where the art of networking has been taken, if not to its highest level, then to something pretty close to it.

However, since a couple of my friends, Adrie Reinders and Marion Freijsen, have not only written a book but even presented it to me, I had little option but to at least browse through it.

I must say that, as soon as one seeks to do so, this little book draws you into it. Not only is it "unputdownable", it is full of practical tips that any novice will do well to have in her/ his bag.

The best thing about the book is that it distinguishes between genuine networking, which consists of establishing a relationship, and what might be called merely increasing the number of visiting cards in your Rolodex or the number of addresses in your Excel.

However, even relationships (or networks) need to be managed! Reinders and Freijsen have created very helpful charts and tables. A systematic approach to networking is different from a merely intuitive approach to it - not that intuition is at all bad guide to relationships and to networking, but intuittion does need to be supplemented with systems.

They look at the role of events in enhancing networks, at sports and other interests. They examine the question of whether networks are transferrable (or can be passed on from one to another). They present various considerations in relation to charities, to e-networking tools, social networking tools, collaboration tools, networking in politics, the impact of culture on networking, et. al..

Higly recommended.

Adrie Reinders and Marion Freijsen, The N Factor, WBusinessBooks, California, USA, hardback, pp 148, $19.95

(see http://www.wbusinessbooks.com/) Sphere: Related Content

A minor debate on family origins

On my website, under Family History, I assert that the family: "used to reside at 30 Beharipur, Bareilly. From that, we guess that the family originally comes from Bihar, which was once much richer than what became known as the Upper Provinces under British rule (or Uttar Pradesh now)".

One of my relatives, visiting me recently, questions this. So, before anything else, I should amend the entry to read NOT "we guess" BUT "I guess".

Now the grounds for his questioning turns out to be "Beharipur" COULD also mean that the area of the town is dedicated to one of our gods.

My feeling is that there is some contemporary prejudice against Bihar on the part of my relative, as this is now one of the poorest and most lawless parts of the country!

However, to the grounds of his question: IF the area really was dedicated to this god, then there should certainly be a pretty old and massive temple in the middle of the area. As far as I know, though there is of course the usual plethora of temples in "our" area, there is NO "Behari Mandir" or equivalent.

I regard that as a pretty conclusive riposte - though, as always, I am open to fresh light on the subject. Sphere: Related Content

Bruce Katlin running a marathon to raise funds for Satya Niketan School in India

In one of my postings yesterday, I mentioned Bruce Katlin & his wife Terry Graziano, who are training to run a marathon to raise funds for Satya Niketan School.

Well, I have just received an email from him saying that it is the Portland Marathon that they will run on October 7. Here is the bulk of his message:

"My friends Rebecca and Chandra Kant Shourie have dedicated their lives, (their lives have been threatened just for teaching English to these children!) to providing the only English education at the school that they started, The Satya Niketan School (Home of Truth) to the poorest children who are considered the "lower caste". Some of these children can not afford the $4.95 monthly fee to attend classes.

"The conditions in the Nagod region are difficult and we are asking for your contributions so that the school can purchase a much needed generator to power the school's lights and sole computer. We need to raise $3000 by October 7th. Please contribute whatever you can afford via ITAG:
http://www.itagonline.org/index.php?id=2

To learn more about the Shouries, the school and what Terry and I are doing to raise money through our marathon, please visit our website at:
http://web.mac.com/brucekatlin/

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best Regards,
Bruce

Bruce Katlin
President
Katlin Consulting
+ 1 646 265 5009
http://www.blogger.com/www.katlinconsulting.com
bruce@katlinconsulting.com Sphere: Related Content

So the mini-subs are real

Readers with long memories may recollect stories of Russian mini-subs being sighted in the Norwegian fjords, and even tearing through fishermen's nets when (accidentally) snagged in them.

Ever since the 90s, I have asked various people whatever happened to the mini-subs since they have stayed out the news. But no one seemed to know.

Now, however, we do know. The mini-subs are not the figment of the Norwegian imagination. Nor are the mini-subs merely rusting somewhere. See the story "Russian subs dive to the Arctic Ocean Floor" (they mean mini-subs): http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,497774,00.html Sphere: Related Content

Indian resources on philanthropy

I am trying to put together a collection of readings from Indian traditions or sources on the subject of philanthropy.

Any suggestions are welcome - whether from ancient books and writers, or from more modern secular, Muslim, Indian Christian, Sikh, Jain, Indian Buddhist and other sources, agnostic, humanist, and so on.

You can send suggestions either to my e-mail directly (if you have it) or simply respond to this Blog in the usual way.

Many thanks! Sphere: Related Content

Education in India and the work of Chandra Kant and Rebecca Shourie

Readers who know me personally will be aware of my admiration for the work of Chandra Kant Shourie and his wife Rebecca, who founded Satya Niketan School in Nagod, Madhya Pradesh, Central India over 20 years ago).

Bruce Katlin, of Katlin Consulting in New York, is training to run a marathon to raise money for the school, and it will be wonderful if readers feel able to support his effort. As he points out, the school needs the equivalent of $3000 in order to buy a new electricity generator as their rather aged one is fading, and they need electricity in this extreme hot weather. The school started in the living room of the Shouries and has now expanded to 400 children. You can support a child's education there for about $5 a month!

Here is a brief and understated history of the school and of what it has achieved:


History of Satya Niketan
(Satya Niketan means the Home of Truth)

The year 2006 was the 21st year of Satya Niketan High School. What began as a small kinder garden class of 20 children, sitting on the floor on mats, and around an old dining table, in the our living room, (Rebecca and Chandra Kant Shourie) with both of us joyfully pouring out our love upon the children; has today grown to a full fledged High School, with 400 students. It is the only high school in the area providing quality education to the children of the Nagod District. The education is in English Medium so that the children get a chance to go forward in the world, equipped to address the challenges of higher education in the different fields which are opening up in our developing country.

Some of the satisfying fruits of our labours have been working with children from very poor homes, for whom it would never have been possible. Satya Niketan has graduated students who are working as Engineers, IT professionals, doctors and in many other fields, earning enough to lift their families out of the vicious cycle of poverty! Equally important, Satya Niketan has become an interface, a point of dialogue with the established society, in terms of challenging long held superstitions and beliefs which have been detrimental to the development of our society and nation. A point of challenge and change, as any educational institution, by its very definition ought to be.

To understand and appreciate the journey of Satya Niketan, it would be helpful and beneficial to understand the reasons and motivations that brought a couple like us to a backward and remote place like Nagod, and be motivated enough to give the best 25 years of our lives to the building of this school. Rebecca Shourie holds a MA (Hons) in English Literature, Delhi University, and BSc Nursing, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing, Delhi, and Chandra Kant Shourie – holds a BE (Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science.

A deep spiritual experience led us to commit our lives to serving our country. We are highly qualified and have had a number of top order career options lined up before us but instead of pursuing personal careers, we have opted to dedicate our lives to serve others. We feel strongly that the doctor is needed where there are sick people. So, we embarked upon a path which led us to the poorest and undeveloped parts of our country. As we cast ourselves upon this path, a series of events led us to the place called Nagod in the District of Satna, in the northern part of Madhya Pradesh, India.

Nagod, is a small town, with a population of about 25,000 to 30,000 and serves as the centre – (administrative, market, social and political) for about 600 villages which surround it, each with an average population of about 1,500 to 2,000 people. Nagod has an old fort, which is still inhabited by the royalty of Nagod State (a small kingdom established in the thirteenth century, by Parihar Rajputs ), with the royalty of Nagod still enjoying power in free India. The oldest living Prince of Nagod is currently the Home Minister of State in the present Bharatiya Janata Party Government of Madhya Pradesh.

During the rule of the Parihars, the society was organized according to the Feudal lines - Landlords being given a number of villages as their fiefdoms, in return for their loyalty and allegiance to the king. Independence here has not made much of a difference in the daily routine of life – the difference it has made has been that now these Kings and Landlords have to fight elections (or rather put up credible facades of elections ) in order to maintain their fiefdoms and their influence over their constituencies instead of being born into privilege. This feudal system which is present in a unique form is in the northern part of India, and it is incorporated into the all pervasive caste system, which is still maintained in all its former glory and rigidity in these parts.

Our advent into this land exposed us to this society in a very dramatic way. Among other things, one of the things that we felt very deeply about was the lack of education in this area. There was hardly any education worth its name. In the early 1980’s if you happened to take a walk around the town, or around the villages, you would come across groups of young children between the ages of 8 to 15 sitting around, playing cards and gambling. Often these sessions would erupt into violence. We personally witnessed many such incidents.

We also found that the whole education scene was negatively commercialized leading to a complete breakdown of the system in this land. There are centres of examination where for a certain amount of money mass copying is organized. In the government schools, (which make up the majority of the schools) there is no teaching and during the exams, children are allowed to copy. This continues up-to the college level. As a result you have students with a first class Masters degree in English Literature and they cannot write a single sentence in proper English!

Along with these factors and the need expressed by some of the prominent people in the locality made us seriously think of using our education to promote a higher level of quality education amongst the children of this area. So, in 1985 we got a small group of children between the ages of 3 and 6 – around 20 of them, and started a small class in our living room. We had no money, no resources, we started with just - (can you believe it?) just 10 paise and a torn Rs.2 note in our pocket!

We had very good response from our first batch of students. Unfortunately this caused resentments in another quarter. The only other educational institution of some repute, which was being run in this town was Saraswati Shishu Mandir – an RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) a fundamentalist Hindu organization. They began to feel threatened and launched a defamatory campaign against us seeking to undermine the confidence of the people in our efforts. The two prominent accusations they used against us were one; that these people have no roots here, they can go away anytime, and then what will your children do? The other of course, was the communal card: that these people are Christians and they will make your children into Christians and spoil your religion.

This propaganda continued unabated for 10 – 12 years! The result was that in the higher classes we had very few students. However, we had made a commitment to the students who had come and their parents had put their trust in us. And, we made a commitment that even if we had only one student in our class we would still keep our part of the commitment. And we were put to the test. One year there was only one student in our tenth class!

Another cause of major opposition came from the high Caste people, especially the Brahmins (the priests) and the Ruling class and the Merchants. Their major problem was that we did not distinguish between the students on the basis of their castes. In fact, we encouraged the children from the poorer sections of society (in 95% of the cases poor meant lower Castes or untouchables), to get the benefit of education. We felt that was one thing which would enable them to break through the vicious cycle of poverty and its effects. This became a major factor with some of the high Caste people strenuously objecting to the fact their children were being forced to associate with people of low birth and that was having a detrimental effect on the upbringing of the child. Some of them went to the extent of taking their children away from our school for this very reason.

Finances have been and continue to be a very big challenge. The area here is very poor and the people do not have high paying capabilities – especially the people who really need the benefit of education. So we have had to keep our fees very low, so that it is affordable. Today we are charging a fee of Rs. 200 per month, (approximately, $4.94) and for a large number of people they are unable able to pay. Today, 25% of the students are either studying on a concession or we are giving them free education. The weather here can also be a challenge. During the rainy season we have many floods and we lose power and that is why we need a new generator to power the school.

Apart from the above problems, the other major challenge was to get qualified teachers. This proved to be the biggest problem. However, in miraculous ways during our worst times, help came from unexpected quarters – at different times we had volunteers from New Zealand, Australia, England, Holland and the United States, who came and stayed with us for periods ranging from 3 weeks to 2 years, and helped teaching in the school. Over the years the only sustainable solution that we managed to develop was to train some local people and teach them to teach. This was the only solution which would work long term. So, now we have a staff of about 20 people including the teachers, office staff and the staff running the vehicles.

Struggling with all these handicaps, 10 students from our first batch of students who started with us in 1985, appeared for their High School examination in the year 1905-06! That was a milestone. This year, our 12th batch of High School students will appear for their examination. It has been very encouraging that the students who have passed on from our school have done very well in their careers. Some have become engineers, some IT professionals, and some are working to become doctors! And a few have volunteered to come back and help us in the school for some time. That is very encouraging indeed.

So, over the years, as we have persevered. Today we today have the strength of 400 children studying from Kindergarten to class 10 - what we call High School. We still have shortage of space and staff, so the school runs in two shifts: morning shift for the Juniors and the afternoon shift for the Seniors.

We believe that we have made a significant impact in the local surrounding through the running of Satya Niketan High School and interacting with the children and their parents in this area. Over the past three years we have seen the school grow in terms of the number of children and the confidence, which the local people are now having in the school.

The two major arguments of the people committed to opposing us and wanting us to close down are: that we will leave and their children will be left in the lurch, and that we will convert their children to Christianity. Over the past 21 years both these accusations have fallen to the ground. We have not left in spite of great adversity and we have only tried to make the children better human beings.

We hope that we will be able to continue to serve the children of this land and the work that we have built up will be carried forward by the children who have caught the vision with which this work was begun.

Rebecca and Chandra Kant Shourie Sphere: Related Content

How much do people need to be paid to leave the Hindu fold?

According to Hinutva argument, I regret to say, they do not need to be paid very much at all.

As Mr. Vidya Bhushan Rawat put it in his article, " Equity of Faith in Secular India ?":
"For Hindutva, everybody who is dissatisfied with their faith has been paid a handsome amount of money to convert. Unfortunately, that is where the problem lies, as most of the converts are still much below the poverty line. If conversion had fetched good money and good life in monetary terms, I am sure the Brahmins, Banias and other upper caste Hindus would have been the first to grab the opportunity".

In fact, people who turn away from Hindu oppression are "rewarded" with social ostracism, discriminated against for employment, and are even beaten, raped or murdered. And yet people continue to leave the Hindu/ Brahminist fold in their thousands!

Many millions more would do so if only they dared. But, as Hindutva raises the stakes and makes it clear to what lengths it is prepared to go to preserve brahmindom, the people are becoming more and more willing to face the goons of the RSS and its allies.

So Hindutva needs to face the fact that its time in history is past. India has become irrevocably a secular state. The majority of Indians (composed, whether one likes it or not, of Dalits and OBCs) are much more likely to remain Hindus if they see a sensible Hindu community rather than the sort of power-crazed, proto-Nazi Hindutva groups that have been on view for the last few years.

The greatest enemy of the Hindus today are the Hindutva groups, just as the greatest enemies of Islam are the fundamentilist Al Qaeda and their ilk. Sphere: Related Content

Announcing an International Essay Competition (Fantasy Literature)

Do indulge a parent:

Sought After Media LLC (USA) has announced, in co-operation with Starbloom Ltd. (Ireland) and Nivedit Good Books Ltd (India), an international essay competition, based on the internationally acclaimed novel, Conspiracy of Calaspia, by my teenaged twins.

Entrants must have been born on or after January 1, 1982.

There are no other qualifications.

Essays can be up to 1,000 words.

Creativity and originality are the criteria on the basis of which an international panel of eminent judges will adjudge the top ten entries - totally independent of the writers, the publisher, the organisers and their families or employees. The panel of International Judges will be announced soon.

The ten winning essayists will be taken from their respective international airport for a 10-day literary tour of the UK, with the opportunity to have a partial-scholarship for the triennial Summer Institute of the C. S. Lewis Foundation from July 27-August 9, (a week each in Oxford and Cambridge).

There are one hundred runner-up prizes.

Recognising that the prize will tend to favour youngsters from privileged homes, the organisers have arranged for specific prizes for young people from Dalit ("outcaste"), inner-city, and other such backgrounds.

Information on the twins, the novel, the critical and popular acclaim are at: http://www.twins.guptara.net/

Information on the novel itself is at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy of Calaspia

Full details of the competition are at: http://www.calaspia-competition.com/


For your general information: the Italian-language translation of Conspiracy of Calaspia is on contract to be published next Spring from the largest Italian-language publisher, Mondadori, and the German-language and translation is due to be published by one of the oldest German-language publishers, Rowohlt, also next Spring Rowohlt has also selected Conspiracy of Calaspia as its lead novel for young adults for their 100th anniversary next year.

In fact, Mondadori and Rowohlt have signed up for the first THREE novels from the twins (I am not sure that I would have enough confidence in ANY 18-year olds to pay them solid money in anticipation of their producing work good enough to publish!). The twins are due to deliver the 2nd novel to them by the end of September this year and July 2008 respectively.

Conspiracy of Calaspia rose to number 2 on the overall Indian best-seller list (behind Kiran Desai's Booker Prize Winning novel!), and was therefore THE India best-seller for the fantasy section... Sphere: Related Content

When and where has the public trusted governments

Journalist Li Daton's article "Beijing baozi and public trust" in the latest issue of Open Democracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/beijing_baozi#100) provides plenty of material for thought.

He writes:
"... in matters of public safety, public confidence in the government has been seriously eroded. People would rather believe rumours spread by their family and friends than announcements by the government. They have good reason. During the Sars epidemic, the government denied there was a problem; when the Songhua river disaster led to water supplies being cut off in the city of Harbin, the government claimed it was "fixing water pipes". Indeed, even officials from the state council information office admitted on 13 July 2007 that local governments "cover up 90% of negative news stories" and leave uncovered "less than 10%". In such a climate, it is hard for the public to entrust the government with its safety. This real and widespread public feeling is becoming a source of opposition to the government. But if the sentiment continues to build, it is not just the government that will be damaged: public safety too will be threatened - for safety cannot be built on rumours. It is self-evident that the key to solving the problem is political reform. A government that is not accountable to the public, not controlled by its vote, not forced by a free press to tell the truth, will inevitably find itself in a crisis of governance. In the end, both those in power and the public pay a heavy price."

Well, all I can say is that I hope political reform will come to Communist China but that is up to the elites in China.

The question that Li Daton's comments raises for me is: have governments always or never had public trust? Clearly neither. 100% is a difficult if not impossible to achieve in either direction, but 80% should be possible, or at least 60%. And yet as one surveys history and geography, it is astonishing how rarely people have trusted their government. There is a direct relationship between the behaviour of the rulers/elits and the degree to which the people trust them. Though there were individual kings or specific elites who acted on widely-agreed public service ideals, such individuals/ groups were few and far between.

The first systematic attempts to create systems and structures for clean and trustworthy government were attempted by the Hebrew people under the inspiration of their prophets - in other words, as far as I can discover, the Hebrews were the first people to go beyond general exhortation (such as is found in Buddhist, Hindu and other teaching around the world) and actually put into practice structural means of limiting the power of the king or elites and of holding them accountable.

However, that progress in human history went on the back burner, so to speak, as the Hebrew kingdoms disappeared after David and Solomon.

It was not till the 12th century rediscovery of the Hebrew principles in Europe, which led eventually to the Magisterial Reformations of Calvin and Cromwell, Zwingli and Hus and Luther and the rest, that these principles were put into effect again. Then of course, under the influence of the Radical Reformation, these Hebrew principles were put even more systematically into effect in the states that united to form the USA.

It was specifically due to the implementation of these Hebrew ideas that Europe and the USA arose from being some of the poorest areas of the world, to becoming some of the richest parts of the world.

Today, it is these Hebrew principles that are being universalised as globalisation marches on, leading to a conflict between the traditional exploitative ways of kings and elites in most of the world through history, and the new Hebrew-style expectations around the world. That is why traditional societies have to choose between their traditional ways of doing things and "modern" (i.e. ancient Hebrew) principles of governance and transparency and confession and reparation and repentance and so on.

It is not only China that has to choose but most of the rest of the world as well. That is one of the unseen and unrecognised drivers of world conflict today. Sphere: Related Content

Gideon's Tongue

The story of Gideon, found in the Biblical book of Judges chapter 7 is quite extraordinary. I don't mean the bit about his 300 men beating an army many times their size, "no more to be counted than the sand on the seashore".

Rather I mean the bit about the selection procedure for Gideon's band of 300. You know the story, Gideon marches 10,000 men to a spring and orders them to drink the water. Some of them kneel down to drink, while 300 "lap with their hands to their mouths...like a dog". These are the ones who are chosen.

Now I don't know when was the last time you had to drink from a spring. Kneeling down and putting your mouth directly to the water (which is what the majority of Gideon's lot apparently did) is not my idea of fun. In other words, I too would have bunched my fingers and my palm and scooped the water up to my mouth. But then I would have half-sucked and half-poured the water into my mouth.

In fact, I have tried to lap like a dog to check out the Gideon story, and I can tell you that you can't get much water into your system by that method.

So I can only surmise that the construction of the tongues of the humans of that time must have been rather like a dog's - and therefore rather different from mine (I can't speak for the rest of humanity on this point, as I am not a regular examiner of tongues and of their "lapping capability").

In any case, I regret that I would not have been of much use to Gideon. Sphere: Related Content

Dumbing down: the FT?

I am not sure how current the phrase "dumbing down" is outside the UK. But this British expression refers to the lowering of standards, specifically intellectual and linguistic ones.

Dumbing down is no doubt sometimes deliberate, but is usually the accidental by-product of structural changes, ownership, incentive systems, and so on.

This phenomenon started with British TV, which used to tower head and shoulders above TV in the rest of the world. BBC TV resisted valiantly for some years. Then standards at BBC Radio started crumbling and finally even atthe BBC World Service (Radio) - even though the latter channel continues to be the best in the world, its standards have certainly fallen from its heyday in the Sixties. Commercial interests continue to hammer and chip at this at the whole of the BBC.

In a sort of parallel movement, standards started falling at British newspapers. The great newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian (whatever one might have thought of their politics) slowly succumbed. The Independent has provided some challenge to that trend. However, I don't keep up with any of them, now that I have lived outside the UK for some 12 years.

But I do keep up with the FT, whose standards also started declining some years ago. I recollect writing to the Editor of the FT when I first noticed this trend, asking what the colour of someone's clothes had to do with the content of the particular front-page story, and whether such frivolity could be expected to continue.

No answer of course.

Now things have come to such a sorry pass that we find the following headline in today's edition (on the Net): "Pessimism manifests itself very effectively to produce the status of monetary liquidity, the driving force for a return to growth". This is not English. Rather, it is some kind of gibberish.

BTW, FT.com has also gone increasingly for advertisements on its site, presumably in order to make money. In principle, I have no objection to advertisements. They can be informative. They can even be entertaining. However, in their search for returns, the chiefs at FT.com have now started letting in advertising with kinetic content. This slows the site so much that reading FT.com is becoming a substantial waste of time. Sphere: Related Content

Should governments fund religious institutions?

I see that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded an end to the Indian government's funding of madarsas (institutions where Muslim children are taught their religious basics - but institutions where religious extremism, it is alleged, is also sometimes inculcated).

The Indian government has become gradually less non-transparent over the years, but there is still a lot of non-transparency left.

It will certainly be very helpful to Indian voters to see the extent to which the Indian government subsidises not only Muslim religious institutions (which are the 2nd most numerous in the country) but also Hindu religious institutions (which are the most numerous). Also of course, the smaller or "minority" religious institutions run, in order of size, by Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and others (as applicable).

Indian voters can then decide whether to continue, or to discontinue, subsidies to religious institutions.

Naturally, such a question applies not only to India. Similar questions can be asked in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other Muslim countries, or Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries, and so on.

In the United States, a helpful distinction is drawn between (a) religious institutions themselves (such as churches) which are primarily for worship and religious instruction, and (b) the services provided by religious groups to society as a whole regardless of religious commitment or orientation - such as schools, universities, soup kitchens and so on which serve everyone.

The government does not fund the former, but is happy to support financially the latter in certain specified ways.

Naturally, there are vigorous debates and even court cases about where exactly to draw the line between (a) and (b), but the distinction is a good one to draw in principle.

Even more naturally, in a democratic country with a dominant religion (e.g. the USA with Christianity), there is no reason why the citizens of that country should not decide to fund the religious institutions (i.e. category (a)). But it is a mark of the political maturity of the USA that its citizens do not do so and choose only to fund categry (b).

Other countries, such as India, would do well to follow that distinction - even though I predict that it will be harder to maintain the distinction between (a) and (b) in countries such as India where corruption is widespread, and specifically where religious corruption is endemic. Sphere: Related Content

My response to Ross Mahoney's post on Professorships of War

Ross Mahoney wrote: "You can not make such a comparison between war and Hitler. That is to misunderstand the whole purpose of these Profersorship. We have for too long ignored the subject of war in academia. It has been vilified as the realm of the military and in doing this academic history has ignored the most important aspect of human history, war. To understand this is to try and grasp human nature itself. Is this not a cause worth understanding then I am not sure there is much else to bother with. War encompases all aspects of human history, therefore, it is right that these chairs are established to further our understanding. "

My response is:

1. Clearly all comparisons are by their very nature improper. That is, all comparisons are made for particular purposes. My purpose was to illustrate that focusing on a particular subject, by the very act of so focusing, enhances the status of that subject. I do not see that Mr Mahoney disagrees with me on this point.

2. However, Mr Mahoney asserts that the PURPOSE of having "professorships of war" is to "try and grasp human nature". This is a most interesting point, and were this to be so, I would expect the Professorship concerned to be titled something like "Professorship of Human Nature" with some suitable sub-title indicating that how this Professorship of Human Nature differed from (for example) psychological and sociological Professorships was that this one focused on examining war for this purpose.

3. In what I have read of the work of such Professors, I have not found a particular emphasis on understanding human nature. In all likelihood, this is simply my lack of suitable guides in the field, and I will be grateful to Mr Mahoney for drawing my attention to suitable works that do focus on this area.

4. It is a moot point whether "war encompasses all aspects of human history" or vice versa.

5. I have some experience of academia, in various capacities, since 1965. I am unaware of any ignoring or vilification of the subject of war or the military in academia. Again, this probably reveals the extent of my ignorance or unawareness, and I will be glad to have my attention drawn to any evidence of this. Studies of war have had a place in academia at least as long as acedemics has existed.

The list of writing on the subject is historically and geographically extensive, and would not have survived without at least minimal patronage from the elite (including the academic elite) - The Jewish Bible, the Koran, Kautilya, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Frontinus, Gaius Julius Caesar, Renatus, and even Machiavelli (not The Prince but The Seven Books on the Art of War), de Saxe, Frederick the Great, Bonaparte, von Clausewitz, Jomini, Mahan, von Moltke, and so on, down to Mao, Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Schwarzkofp, Weinberger, Powell and so on, down to the present. Sphere: Related Content

_ivan's response to my post "Training, Coaching, Mentoring":

Ivan's comment was as follows:

"You base your final distinction partly on your definition of the word "coach". But this definition is largely an ethymological one. Ergo, you hinder the development of the language on historical grounds.I would do the same, but I find people countering me saying that the language has evolved, and that "coaching" and "mentoring" mean the same now. Are there any official guidelines that specify whether the meaning of words are that of their origines or that of the majority?"

As someone who accepts neither Darwin's theory of evolution at the macro level (I do accept it on the micro level), nor the idea that all "progress" is good, I naturally resist attempts to foist new words and new meanings simply because they are new. Old words and meanings are sometimes more accurate and therefore more serviceable than new ones.

The whole point of my piece was to argue that there is a sensible distinction to be made between the content suggested by the word "coach" and the content suggested by the word "mentor", and that it is therefore right for us to make that distinction.

However, to answer your specific question: No, there are no "official guidelines" - because there is no official body concerned.

Moreover, in these matters, where official bodies exist (e.g. the Academy in France), they have seemed to fight a losing battle - linguistic ignorance and misuse swell like the sea, without regard for linguists and Academies.

Nevertheless, at least some of us should be thinking about these things and encouraging the right use of words. Without linguistic and grammatical discipline in general (or at least agreement between two parties in dialogue), communication becomes impossible. Sphere: Related Content

Pierre Schlomo Presley's comment on my post "On Corporate Sustainabilty Reports and the Guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative":

Pierre Schlomo Presley wrote:

"I imagine the simple answer has to be that it doesn't affect their short-term stock price. Economics has failed us in the sense that we rely heavily on a system of attributing value that seems unable to, in a nod to Rumsfeld, price "known unknowns", much less "unknown unknowns" into the costs of doing business. Will it take a tragedy on the scale of the Stein report to give us some "knowns" that will incite us to focus on the long-term?" Sphere: Related Content

Response by Anh Khoi Do, to my post "Iran Nuclear Intentions Revealed":

Apologies to Mr Anh Khoi Do!

I had somehow overlooked his response to my above-named post. Here is his comment:

"The West might also fear Iran, because it has reached the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Even though the Iranian president affirms that this program is solely meant for pacific purposes, let it be said that Iran doesn't recognize Israel as a country. Furthermore, by being able to produce nuclear weapons, Iran, one of the countries that sponsor the Hezbollah, might also provide the Hezbollah with this kind of weapons. " Sphere: Related Content

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel

Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,496003,00.html

I was kicked out of India during the days of the Emergency for, among other reasons, publishing (in the University newsmagazine I was resonsible for at the time) Solzhenitsyns' Nobel Prize Winning Speech, "One Word of Freedom".

So I have always had a sort of highly personal interest in Solzhenitsyn's work.

This interview with him is the most recent that is available, and reveals his latest thinking.

Though I think he is fundamentally (but understandably) mistaken about the concept of Russia about the Orthodox Church, about Putin, and many other topics, there is no doubt of his honesty, his commitment to truth, his moral courage, and his literary achievement (which is also an achievement in terms of historical and political discourse). Sphere: Related Content

Professors of the History of War, Of Nazism, of Hitler...

There has been an ancient interest in War Studies (under one rubric or another).

However, I find that at least THREE universities now have a "Professor of the History of War" (Boston University in the USA, Oxford University in the UK, and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands).

I have mixed feelings about this development.

On the one hand, in theory, it should be possible to study all kinds of subjects, even the worst kinds of evil.

On the other hand, the very act of studying anything enhances its status.

Especially if a Professorship is involved at an eminent university.

To illustrate: if we had a Professorship of Hitler Studies, would that not rather inflate the eminence of Hitler?

I know that such a Professorship exists in a certain novel, not sure if one or more of these exists in fact.

I do know that there are Professors of Nazi Studies (and cognate matters), and I am extremely uneasy about those too.

Professors of German Studies (or some such) are fine, even if they focus on Nazi Germany or on Hitler, because that puts the evil in a historical and geographical context, without raising the evil to eminence on its own.

Similarly, while we need to study War, I should have thought it better always to put war in the context of politics and international relations and so on, rather than focusing on war on its own and thus giving it needless and inapporpriate importance .

Conclusion: abolish Professorships relating to War and rename the relevant Professorships. Sphere: Related Content

Priestly sex abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church

So the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has paid for $660 million to some 500 people who claimed to have been sexually abused.

Regretfully, this is often the way with big corporations, and with states however big or small (and, the Roman Church, which claims to be divine, is an interesting mixture of corporation and bureaucracy).

Organisations will usually do anything and everything to find scapegoats while hindering public scrutiny of the organisation.

What of secular virtues such as transparency? Accountability?

What of "religious" virtues such as confession and repentance?

What of organisational common sense - analysis of what is wrong with the organisation that it has produced such massive allegation of wrong-doing in so many countries, so that what is systemically wrong can be remedied?

Don't ask.

Because if you did, you might have to examine some curious pagan ideas (celibacy, an elite priesthood, an infallible CEO) which have been ensconced in this Church for centuries. Sphere: Related Content

Executions in China

A couple of days ago the Wall Street Journal reported that, following the execution of Zheng Xiaoyu the former head of China's food and drug safety agency, there has been a lot of discussion about the number of executions in China.

Even though "execution numbers are murky", it says that apparently China carries out more executions than the rest of the world combined.

However, in a gnomic final aside, it says that "there is evidence that China's rate of executions, which is high, is dropping". It would be interesting to know what the evidence is and, if the overall picture is "murky", how anyone can conclude anything at all from whatever evidence exists.

But there is something in the human mind that yearns to make sense of everything around us, because of which we tend to believe whatever we hope or fear might be the case.

It would be much better to call on the Chinese government to make all the facts available - then we would have at least something like a proper factual basis for coming to some unarguable conclusions. Sphere: Related Content

4.4 billion people moved by airports in 2006

That's the news from the Geneva-based Airports Council International (ACI), which has 1,640 airports operated by its members from 178 countries. Presumably at least a few airports are not members, so the number must be larger in fact....

But even if we take the figure provided by the ACI, it means that, on average last year, something like one out of every two people in the world took a flight somewhere.

I don't know if you have noticed, but the era of cheap air travel seems to be coming to an end. The airlines are trying their hardest to keep it cheap, but they do have to make money. And even when they offer a particular flight for nearly zero cost to the customer, fuel surcharges alone are higher now than the complete flight used to be not long ago.

My guess is that most people are still flying (1) because they feel they have to - e.g. on business;(2) because they have relatives that they feel they *must* visit - e.g. at a wedding or the birth of a child or a funeral; and (3) because they are not yet used to the idea of flying being too expensive - e.g. for holidays.

As the price of flights, but even more important now the *inconvenience* of flying because of flight delays and security measures, comes to rest in people's consciousness, more and more people are expressing a distaste with the idea of flying - though that does not seem to have dented the willingness of these folk to travel (I think that applies to me too, except in the case of holidays, when I have started to avoid travelling if at all possible).

Might we expect that, sooner rather than later, the love of flying (and the love of motor cars, which is associated) will drop dramatically?

Logically, one should think so. Yet there is a prophecy in the Bible that as the world speeds towards its end, travel will only increase and increase. Is it the case that people will refuse to adapt? Or that newer forms of travel will become possible technologically, due to which travel will become even cheaper, more hassle free and (extremely important) environmentally friendly?

I don't know. But I wouldn't bet against any prophecy in the Bible. It seems to have been proved too right over too many hundreds of years to tangle with it.

So I wait to see how this conundrum is resolved, between on the one hand the Biblical prediction that world travel will increase and increase, and on the other hand the reality of flights becoming more and more expensive, frustrating and (at least in the awareness of an increasing number of people) environmentally unacceptable. Sphere: Related Content

The Case of Shambo, the Temple Bull in Wales

The facts of this case are sufficiently in the public realm for me to not have to retail them in this Blog.

But I thought I ought to make public the fact that I have today written to the relevant Minister in the Welsh Government as follows:

"Dear Minister

I understand that your Government has decided to appeal against the judgment provided by His Honour Judge Hickinbottom on 16 July 2007.

His Honour's judement notes that Swami Suryananda's interpretation of Hindu beliefs maintains that "there is a spark of divinity in all animals". However, it seems to have failed his notice that "all animals", in the Indian tradition, includes not only include cows and bullocks, dogs and cats, and so on, but also bacteria and bacillii.

Given the grounds on which the judgment is provided (the protection of the rights of these sorts Hindus in Britain), it would be improper to destroy not only bulls and cows who might be suffering from dangerous diseases, but also bacteria and bacillii themselves, whether of tuberclosis or of any other variety.

In other words, it becomes entirely impossible to fight infectious diseases.

This idiotic interpretation of Hindu belief is rejected by most thinking Hindus today, whether in Britain, in India, or in other countries.

I therefore wish to express my support to your Government for appealing against this Judgment. " Sphere: Related Content

Christian gullibility?

Most christians are probably as gullible as the rest of the population.

From yesterday, some well-meaning friends started drawing my attention to various posts to the effect that "A report in Sunday Express magazine quotes a British Secret Service,MI6, report that some 200 million Christians in 60 countries aroundthe world are at risk of suffering persecution."

However, I cannot find the original report anywhere! So is this a hoax?

I started searching for the original report because:
- "MI6" is journalistic misnomer for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, the correct abbreviation for which is "SIS"
- the role of SIS is to provide the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom. What is happening to Christians around the world is no concern to the government of the UK (except incidentally), and is therefore no concern of the SIS. The SIS operates world-wide to collect secret foreign intelligence in support of the British Government's policies and objectives, which do *not* include the promotion or protection of christianity - Britain is in fact a secular state with atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims in top positions in government, industry and society.. As far as I know, the sorts of subjects on which the SIS focuses are: regional instability, terrorism, weapons proliferation and illegal narcotics.

However, there is no particular reason to doubt the scale of the problem. The figure of "200 million Christians in 60 countries around the world at risk of suffering persecution" may well be accurate.

The curious thing is that people are always at risk of being legally or illegally persecuted or suffering ostracism or calumny or mockery for becoming christians. Yet they continue to become christians in such large numbers. Shoorely shomething rong hir?

As a follower of Jesus I regret the continuing massive confusion caused by the propoganda machines of the various christian churches between becoming christians on the one hand (an external and ritual-oriented matter) and the internal matter of following Jesus the Lord with the consequences that has in one's life and relationships. Sphere: Related Content

The terrible things that British missionaries did in India during the days of the Raj

A friend draws my attention to the following site, which consists of (very) short stories taken from the published memoirs of a man who used to be a missionary in India.

One's worst suspicions are confirmed by the on-line book, QUITTING INDIA Short Stories from the British Raj: http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/QuittingIndia/QuittingIntro.htm Sphere: Related Content

China's military spending touches new record

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates, in its latest yearbook, that military spending in China climbed to an estimated $49.5 billion last year from $44.3 billion in 2005. For the first time in living memory, China's military expenditure surpassed that of Japan, "making China the biggest military spender in Asia and the fourth biggest in the world".

As far as is known, no one is planning to attack China. So is China is planning to attack? What? And when? Sphere: Related Content

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE? by Lee Iacocca

I have just read this slight and over-assertive book (with one word IN CAPITALS in more or less every alternative sentence, at least in certain parts of the book).

Regretfully, the book is addressed primarily to an American audience.

What a pity that Iacocca who made so much of his money from companies playing on the global stage, should confine this otherwise thoughtful book only to American interests. Sphere: Related Content

"Rising government violence in Sri Lanka"

A friend in Colombo, who is NOT Tamil, tells me the following, and I quote more or less verbatim:

"Recent weeks have brought about noticeable changes in atmosphere in Colombo; there is a heaviness in the air. The spiraling conflict is finally having an effect on Colombo, which has otherwise remained removed from the horrors of war in other parts of the country. There are no signs that there will be any improvement in the near future as the government is bent on a military solution. They are borrowing monies to fight a war that they cannot win, leaving the future generation to pay. In the meantime the president's family is putting handsome sums into foreign accounts through arms-deals. In the end it is the poor who suffer in this conflict. They are the ones whose sons are sent to be killed. They are the ones who can't afford to leave the country to flee the shelling. They are the ones struggling as taxes are raised, government charges increase, unemployment rates soar…

"We are continually amazed to hear of the different schemes the Government thinks up in order to make money, the most recent being a tax they are now imposing on all NGO income from 2005.

"On a more positive note people are starting to challenge the government's course of action. Only last week hundreds of Tamils "without legitimate reason to be in Colombo" were taken away in the middle of the night by buses, in what could be described as ethnic cleansing. However, a public outcry has forced the government to issue apologies, with the Tamils allowed to return. There seems to be a new determination amongst the church leaders of Sri Lanka not to remain silent in the face of the injustices committed on both sides of the conflict. Please pray for the protection of those church leaders who are courageously taking public stands. "

That's what he says. Sphere: Related Content

Does the world need a new financial order, as Putin claims?

The Russian leader has, I read, called for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions. Apparently, he said that the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace the existing model that has become “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy”.

I am not sure what Putin means by "democratic" and "undemocratic", but I am pretty sure that what he means by those words is not what most people around the world mean by them.

However, the institutions are indeed "archaic", "unwieldy" and in need of reform. The world does need a new financial order - one that is genuinely oriented to creating global justice, fair play, transparency, accountaibility, stability and environmental responsibility rather than the chimera of "growth".

If Putin's remarks encourage the reformation of the global financial institutions in a way that leads to their becoming at least efficient and effective, that would be wonderful.

However, his remarks were confined to the need for these institutions to "reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia", as FT put it today, quoting Putin as saying that these institutions "are a far cry from recognising the existing balance of power.”

That is more like sobbing at being not allowed into a club. Sphere: Related Content

British business leaders are now as spineless as American ones

In this morning's edition of Financial Times, I see that Prime Minister Blair is being criticised by British business leaders for voicing his fears over the direction that Russia is taking: Putin is consolidating his control over not only over politics (which is, if one is generous, a mixed blessing) but also over business (which will be an unmitigated disaster for business - and not only in Russia).

"There were few dissenting voices from the denizens of global business attending the forum over the weekend that included the heads of Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and BP," claimed FT, naming specifically the Hans Jörg Rudloff, the chairman of Barclays Capital, and Peter Hambro, executive chairman of Peter Hambro Mining, as those who are publicly critical of their Prime Minister's comments.

The FT is now one of the few newspapers around the world that has so far maintained its neutrality and objectivity, so one can reasonably assume that the report is accurate. If that is so, then I cry, on Britain's business leaders, "Shame!".

They are imitating the example of some spineless American business leaders who would rather collaborate with the dictatorship in China than encourage and cajole them to aspire to the global standards now expected in politics as well as in business.

Businesses have a moral responsibility to use the power of their investments not only to make money but also to improve matters globally. That is the whole point of their signing up to statements and organisations such as the UN's Global Compact or participating in exalted events such as the World Economic Forum.

If businessmen and businesswomen don't want to entirely discredit such organisations and institutions, the least they can do is to keep quiet rather than openly show that they are prepared to sacrifice liberty, law and principle for the sake of profit.

And if such organisations wish to have any chance of keeping their integrity and reputation, they must denounce such behaviour on the part of the leaders of their member organisations.

So-called leaders who support unfair and unjust regimes or actions will, sooner rather than later in today's world, be found out and fall from their eminent and lucrative positions. Not only that, the businesses they lead will themselves collapse suddenly. Sphere: Related Content

Professor Marglin on "Institutionalised Greed"

On last Friday, 8 June, I posted an entry titled, "sustainability versus institutionalised greed around the world".

Harvard Professor Stephen Marglin, responds as follows:

"I want to reinforce your excellent statement about the meaning of institutionalized greed, especially the paragraph:
Most important: the entire culture, worldwide, is now oriented to making a quick buck – that is why we have so few bright youngsters who think as their first priority of joining the government or multilateral agencies – everyone wants to go into consultancy or investment banking or the financial industry (and only those who "fail" at this go into other areas) – well, that is too broad a generalisation – but I think you see what I am aiming at
"Everyman for himself and devil take the hindmost" is inscribed on the doorposts of the church of economics, and economics is the dominant religion of our times. Attached is an anecdote from my forthcoming book (The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community) which makes your point."

The excerpt, that Professor Marglin attached from his forthcoming book, reads: "That the foundational assumptions of economics are cultural myths rather than universal truths was brought home to me forcefully some years ago in Moscow. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, a Finnish colleague and I had gone there to recruit Russians for a collaborative intellectual enterprise on the scope and limits of economics in addressing ecological problems. One afternoon we had a particularly lively discussion, and there was a general interest in continuing into the evening. The Russians proposed supper at the apartment of Sergei and Lena. Sergei was associated with the School of Cultural Politics where the afternoon meeting had taken place, but in fact we knew Lena much better since she had been our interpreter since our arrival. Lena had already given us a warm welcome and excellent dinner the evening before, so it took considerable reassurance from her to convince us that six or eight people descending upon her would not be a major inconvenience. Her only concession was to allow us to purchase some food and drink for the occasion. We went to a gastronom, a delicatessen/grocery store, which despite being a state enterprise was reasonably well stocked. Both because of the long lines and the clumsy system (you got a ticket specifying your purchase, went to a cashier to pay, and then back to the sales person for the goods) the process took a while, but for me the chance to see what more or less ordinary Muscovites could purchase in early 1993 outweighed any inconvenience. At last we were done: a lot of smoked fish, some wine and vodka, and enough other things to make a reasonable supper.

As we emerged from the gastronom, Lena, quite out of the blue, said: "Terrible, terrible.” Earlier remarks had prepared me for some cryptic if not apocalyptic comment, but nothing seemed particularly terrible to my untrained eye. "What's terrible?" I asked.

"Milk."

"Milk?"

"Yes, milk. It's terrible. Here they sell milk for 54 rubles per liter (approximately $0.09 at the then current rate of exchange) and at the kiosk in front of our apartment house it costs 92 rubles."

Jokingly, I responded: "That's not terrible; it's a great opportunity."

Now it was Lena's turn to be surprised: "Great opportunity? What do you mean?"

"Simple. You buy milk here for 54 rubles and sell it in front of your house for, say, 75. You make a lot of money and the folks in your apartment get their milk cheaper.” Once an economist, always an economist.

Lena thought about this for a moment, and then said "It won't work. You can't get the milk there. You can't buy gas.”

"Listen," I said. "If you can make money from buying milk cheap, you can find gas."

Lena was silent for another moment, and then shook her head, her exasperation with this uncomprehending foreigner showing through: "No, it still won't work. Even if you could find gas, there is no transport."

Now I began to feel a challenge. Here was first-year economics. Here was freedom for Lena's apartment house from the bondage of 92-ruble milk and a tidy profit in the bargain. "Look, if there is enough money in it, all these obstacles can be overcome.”

After some more back and forth, a light bulb went on just above my head: all this talk about "is" was really a cover for Lena's misgivings about "ought.” The difficulties were not logistical but moral. As a matter of right, milk ought to sell for the same price in front of her apartment house as at the central gastronom. And it was immoral to bring this about through the mechanism of the market and the incentive of profit.

I realized that what was second nature to me was totally alien to Lena. Doubtless the quickness and sureness of my responses owed something to my professional training, but my profession was only frosting on the cake of market culture. Most people reared in a market culture, economists or not, would have no trouble understanding rudimentary arbitrage, even if they could not define this term.

I realized two other things. First, while it was certain that 70+ years of communism were part of this story of cultural difference, Lena's resistance to the logic of the market ran much deeper, the product more likely of centuries of wariness than of decades of communist propaganda.
Second, however ingrained market logic might be for the present generation of Germans, Frenchmen, and Americans, hardly a century ago Lena's suspicions could have been found all over Western Europe and the United States. It oversimplifies to identify the populism that swept the American prairies in the 1890s with wholesale condemnation of the logic of the market, but I do believe that many populists would have taken Lena's side of our exchange rather than mine.

But we don't have to go to Russia or back to 19th century Kansas to see resistance and acclimatization to the logic of economics. Every year thousands of undergraduates all over the United States take courses in the principles of economics, partly, perhaps, because they are persuaded it is useful preparation for business or law school, but partly, I am sure, for enlightenment. Many ask (with Adam Smith) how morally to justify a world based on self-interest. Parents may have urged the importance of looking out for number one, but Smith’s idea of an invisible hand propelling self-interest to serve the general interest sounds too much like other forms of adult hypocrisy of which they become, as they grow up, increasingly aware. Imagine the relief, not to say exhilaration, to learn sophisticated arguments why looking out for number one is a social virtue. And if there remain any doubts, students can always draw sustenance from the source of the wisdom of Economics 101: the arguments come from professors of economic science—objective, unbiased professors who have no other ax to grind than that of Universal Truth itself. (There remains an unconvinced minority. No matter how hard they try, they just don't get it. Needless to say, these students tend to limit their further exposure to economics. Given this selection bias, it is no wonder that economics is not a hotbed of introspection about its premises.)".

That is pretty startling writing coming from a mainstream economist, but it shows that things may be beginning to change.

For those readers who are interested in getting hold of Professor Marglin's book, here are the details of the book: THE DISMAL SCIENCE: HOW THINKING LIKE AN ECONOMIST UNDERMINES COMMUNITY (to be published soon by Harvard University Press, USA).

The official description of the book reads: "Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

"Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world
in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as
people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last
four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the
world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the
imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered."

The Harvard edition in hardcover is due to be published in January 2008, ISBN 0-674-02654-3 $35.00 £22.95 E32.30

The other HUP book by Stephen A. Marglin is: GROWTH, DISTRIBUTION AND PRICES

Stephen A. Marglin is Walter Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Sphere: Related Content

A quick recollection of the history of privatisation

In relation to a recent post, a friend asks if I'd include the privatization of basic public services (water, energy, public transport etc), in fact the privatization of the public realm in the Habermasian sense, into "the institutionalization of greed"?
She adds: "If I'm correct, the mainstreaming of this privatization started with Maggie Thatcher and the liberalization of money markets".

My response:

The fashion for privatisation started with a New Zealand Prime Minister in the 1970s (sorry, I can't recollect his name at present).

The "success" of that measure inspired Reagan's Proposition 13 in California (if I recollect the name aright) which was the precursor to privatisation taking hold as a philosophy in the USA

Mrs Thatcher overlapped/ followed Reagan - and the dovetailing of their policies was not limited to privatisation, which is why there were cartoons in which the famous Gone With The Wind film poster had Reagan carrying Thatcher, in a romantic pose similar to that of Clark Gable and Betty Davis, but with a mushroom cloud in the background...

Anyway, the impact of these 3 privatisation sweeps in the Western world was "only" the reduction of the middle class by some of them elevating themselves into the ranks of the rich (good for them, say I) and the decline of others to the lower classes

However, this set in train the fashion for privatisation around the world, in which publicly-owned assets were sold for a song to members of the dictatorial elite in countries such as Russia and China, so that the dictatorial elite became even richer at the expense of the public, to whom the elite threw the sop of surviving a bit better than they had done earlier if they were ready to join the new working class - though a few among the masses who were more intelligent, better organised and more agile, were able to benefit from the relatively free market economy and so could become, compared to the new working class, relatively rich.

Even a cursory analysis of purchases of real estate in the West by the Chinese and Russians between say 1990 and 2000 (or later) will indicate clearly that the primary beneficiaries of privatisation was the dictatorial elite which was in existence in such countries immediately prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall

This should not be a surprise. Elites always look after themselves. What is a surprise is the ease with which they were able to dupe their masses (and the West) into believing that their version of the market economy was introduced for the sake of the masses and was good for the masses. When and if we understand this, we understand also the continuing appeal of Communist (or "nearly-Communist") parties in all the ex-communist parts of the world where the masses are permitted to have political preferences

In brief, my answer to your question is: Yes.
And the practical consequences of privatisation will be enormous but will be seen clearly, I suspect, only in about 10 years

Prabhu



-----Original Message-----From: kaarin [mailto:kaarin@kaarintaipale.net] Sent: Montag, 11. Juni 2007 10:19To: Marie-Claire Cordonier SeggerCc: 'Stephen Marglin'; Guptara, Prabhu; dan@worldfuturecouncil.org; councillors@worldfuturecouncil.orgSubject: Re: request for feedback/input


Dear Councillors,

thank you Marie-Claire for reminding us of the cornerstone of unilateralism:
"The American Way of Life is not up for negotiation..." - it would be
interesting to learn, by the way, what is the correct definition for "the
American way of life" - how many cars, or how much of what?

My main reason for wanting to join the discussion was to ask you economists, Sphere: Related Content

"Give me money or give me death"

In the bad old days, before the wonders of modern technology and politicised morality, old-fashioned people followed the immature philosophy "give me liberty or give me death".

In our enlightened, modern, scientific and progressive times, we know that slogan should mature into: "Give me money, good health and happiness, or give me death".

Standards rise, we have greater expectations, so life should get better amd better - right?

Well, unfortunmately, life is not like fiction.

Human beings remain human beings, relationships (for all their frustrations) are still the only basis for happiness, and - yes - all human hearts still yearn for as much freedom as they can glimpse, even in their imaginations. Sphere: Related Content

Why the Middle East does not matter

I am just catching up with some of my reading from last month, so I have only just read Edward Luttwak's highly interesting article, "Why the Middle East does not matter" in the British monthly, Prospect.

He says, among other things, that "Western analysts are forever bleating about the strategic importance of the Middle East. But despite its oil, this backward region is less relevant than ever, and it would be better for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it....the dead from Jewish-Palestinian fighting amount to fewer than 100,000 - about as many as are killed in (a single season during the ongoing genocidal massacres in Darfur). Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war...the relationship between turmoil in the middle east and oil prices is far from straightforward....And global dependence on middle eastern oil is declining: today the region produces under 30 per cent of the world's crude oil, compared to almost 40 per cent in 1974-75....Yes, it would be nice if Israelis and Palestinians could settle their differences, but it would do little or nothing to calm the other conflicts in the middle east from Algeria to Iraq...or to stop Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shias, nor would it assuage the perfectly understandble hostility of convinced Islamists towards the transgressive west that relentlessly invades their minds and sometimes their countries".

I should check his statistics when I have a moment: I suspect that the decline of the middle east's share of global oil production from 40% to 30% has been primarily because of the situation in Iraq.....

However, in other ways, the article is thought-provoking. Sphere: Related Content

sustainability versus institutionalised greed around the world

I am part of several efforts to introduce or enhance sustainability-related thinking and actions in the global economy.

In one such effort, I introduced the expression "institutionalised greed" into the discussion, and this has raised some puzzlement. I have been asked what I mean by that particular expression.

As this might be of wider interest, I excerpt my response:

"What I meant by 'institutionalised greed' is, for example, that the world's largest collections of money (pension funds) are, in theory, interested in stable long-term earnings, because their commitments are to fund pensions for their "members" for the rest of their lives – and there are statistical models that predict fairly accurately what those commitments will mean over the decades ahead (barring major disasters, in which case on average their commitments REDUCE)

In theory, therefore, all pension funds should be invested long term. In fact, however, most pension funds have a horizon of three years in their investment strategy.....

Or take the stock exchange system – as we have it at present, this enables "day traders" to buy/sell from moment to moment simply on the basis of whether they can make any money from the buy/ sell RIGHT NOW and without regard to fundamentals – nothing immoral about this in itself, only it nurtures a "short term greed" mentality – and the simple way to counter that would be to have two classes of shares for all companies – "short-term shares" and "long-term shares" – the proportion of these to be varied from time to time depending on whether we wanted to slow down or speed up the rate of economic activity. For example, a government could introduce 50% of each for all public companies, and reduce the proportion of short-term shares steadily over time, or increase them steadily over time. Of course, companies themselves could introduce such shares without waiting for government action. Worldwide we have a system of 100% long-term shares (in, e.g., family-owned companies) and 100% short-term shares (in all public companies). I am simply arguing for a better balance in the publicly-traded companies which actually drive the national and global economies, so that we have less short-termism in the global economy.

Another example of institutionalised greed: most companies that I know put the hourly movements (or less) of their share price on the computer screens of all workers, as if the workers should be focused not on their jobs but on pushing up the share price! In fact, NO worker (not even the CEO) can do very much to influence share price movements since those are mostly determined by flows of international capital to different regions and industries depending on their relative attractiveness at any moment. What any CEO does is to influence (to a certain extent) the price of her/his company relative to others within the "same industry" – but this is a very slight influence compared to the influence of the massive flows of capital across regions/ industries...However, the CEO's incentives are tied not to increases in profits on a long-term and sustainable basis but to increases in share price....

Workers too are monetarily incentivised to focus on their narrow jobs rather than to think of the long-term good of their company as a whole or of society...

Most important: the entire culture, worldwide, is now oriented to making a quick buck – that is why we have so few bright youngsters who think as their first priority of joining the government or multilateral agencies – everyone wants to go into consultancy or investment banking or the financial industry (and only those who "fail" at this go into other areas) – well, that is too broad a generalisation – but I think you see what I am aiming at

Even medicine and law (which were originally "public service" professions where one earned a reasonable amount but the main "payment" was public recognition and respect) are increasingly seen only as means of earning lots of money....

So we have an institutionalisation of greed worldwide (actually, primiarly since the end of the Second World War and the rise of Darwinistic thinking) – and, if we do not focus on understanding, analysing and countering this worldwide culture of institutionalised greed, we have no chance of winning the struggle for a sustainable future. Sphere: Related Content

National People's Tribunal holds Indian national and state governments guilty of gross neglect of duty

All branches of the Indian government have studiously avoided the Hearings of the National People's Tribunal set up to investigate the recent incidents at Nandigram.

While the final report of the Tribunal is not yet ready, the following preliminary findings have been released:
- There is no doubt at all that grave violations of human rights have been committed against the villagers of Nandigram;
- There seems to be a disturbingly large number of reports of sexual violence against women;
- There is an urgent need for a thorough, independent investigation of the events of 14 March 2007, especially with a view to ensuring justice for all those whose rights have been violated;
- There are still a significant number of people in the area who need immediate medical attention for various problems related to the violence;
- From all accounts no steps have been taken by the state machinery to provide compensation for the dead and injured so far;
- The education and normal activities of school going children in both Nandigram and adjoining areas such as Khejuri have been seriously affected due to both past and ongoing disturbances.

For the actual Preliminary Report of the Nandigram National People's Tribunal hearings, please go to: http://groups.google.com/group/JohnDayal/browse_thread/thread/bbdfbf68d1ab7a44 Sphere: Related Content

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

These two people do a wonderful job of keeping the corporate world on its toes. They have published for many years (somewhat over-rhetorical) accounts of corporate frauds, sicknesses and systematic failures.

The individuals are now going their separate ways to set up their own vehicles, focusing on slightly different things: Russell Mokhiberto continue editing "Corporate Crime Reporter" (www.corporatecrimereporter.com) and Robert Weissman to re-start his column titled "Focus on the Corporation" (www.multinationalmonitor.org).

In the recent swan-song of the joint-effort they have undertaken up to now, they say "Digitalization, corporate consolidation...and the expanding demans of the national security state are combining to enable the creation of a Big Brother corporate-state nexus".

There is a germ of truth in this. For something like a historical account of why we are going in this direction, however, one needs to read Jeff Faux's THE GLOBAL CLASS WAR (which I have reviewed elsewhere).

But all such authors (Faux, Mokhiber, Weissman and others) seem to be unaware that, historically, there has always developed, in every part of the world a "corporate-state nexus" or its equivalent. So, possibly after an initial period of tension, kings always became involved in an alliance with trade, and traders always ended up allying with the political elite.

The only exceptions were post-Reformation Europe - and the USA, which inherited the fruits of the Reformation. These parts of the wrold strove to separate, and to a large extent succeeded in separating, trade from rule - and in exporting this "best practice" (in however diluted a form) to other countries.

One could argue that liberating people to be themselves, rather than mere pawns in the game, consists in getting the political elite to set the right rules (which they can never do as long as they are in the pockets of commercial interests - or are themselves commercial interests with another face) and then in setting up systems by which the rules are applied equally to everyone regardless of their position, wealth, influence and so on.

One could argue that this is essential of the "rule of law" - there is no point in the law "ruling" if (a) the law is itself unfair, and (b) if the rich, powerful or influential can systematically and usually escape its requirements.

Most modern critics of the state-commerce nexus appear to be unaware that their own sense of what is right comes, originally, *exclusively* from the Bible - no other philosophy or ideology has any basis for indignation at a corporate-state nexus. And, equally important, that other than the times and parts of the world influenced by the Bible, the "state-commerce nexus" has in fact been the universal norm.

In order to recover the cultural strength for reversing the renewal of this old nexus, it is necessary to not merely rail against it, but to rediscover the "self-interest sacrificing" spirituality of the Biblical tradition which cleaned up (substantially) Europe and the USA - though that "clean up" is now losing strength due to the waning of Biblical influence in Europe and the USA.

Meanwhile, do keep up with Mokhiber and Weissman. They may not understand the roots of their own indignation, but they are doing good work - and, even when they get it slightly wrong, that is not out of malice or self-interest. Anyone can get it wrong sometimes.

They very often get it right. More power to them. And every success with their now-separate ventures. Sphere: Related Content

Two years ago, at about this time, I was in London briefly to see my daughter and went with her to a play that she wanted to see. It turned out to be a stunning piece of theatre: brilliantly constructed and tackling some of the key questions of our time: fundamentalism, ambition, materialism, cross-cultural life, inter-racial attitudes - all within the context of a British-Muslim family (the author is a Muslim woman).

The play focuses on Mr Rizvi's ambitions to be elected to a local council (that's the equivalent of a municipality), which unravel as family secrets are revealed at the same time as political developments in the wider world turn sour. The play has its bitter-sweet moments of humour but focuses on questions of understanding and misunderstanding, and the clash of values within a family.

CHAOS is the first play by Azma Dar and I am happy to see that her script has been published by the London publisher, Oberon. Sphere: Related Content

Is the Chinese government playing fast and loose with its own rules?

The FT this morning reports that the Shanghai government agency responsible for clearing drains and repairing lifts in apartment buildings has emerged as a leading shareholder in at least three listed companies, in spite of being barred from such investments. The Shanghai Municipal Housing Maintenance Fund Management – appears on lists of the top 10 shareholders of companies in the aerospace, electronics and energy sectors traded on the Shenzhen stock exchange. The three holdings are together worth about Rmb788m ($100m).

The revelation, says the FT, will add to concerns that different parts of the government have invested heavily in shares – often illegally – during the recent boom in the mainland market and could be exposed to losses if there were a crash.

Well, that's fine as a concern for those watching the markets with a nervous eye to a possible crash.

Most observers will be concerned about something rather different: how are these illegal investments by Communist Party-controlled entities rigging the rules to make Communist Party members even richer than they would otherwise be? Is it the case that the drive against corruption only applies to those who fall out with the Communist Party?

Most dictatorships eventually come unstuck because of this kind of practice of creating a set of rules or laws but then allowing the high and mighty to benefit from breaking exactly those rules. Sphere: Related Content