The New Nation - Internet Edition

Money continues to lose value

AS Bangladesh Bank data recently revealed, depositors are losing the value of their money as inflation widely overruns the real deposit rates offered by banks. The weighted average deposit rate at the end of March stood at 6.9 per cent, while the average inflation was 10 per cent, meaning that a depositor, who put Taka 100 in a bank account in June last year, would now get Tk 96.9 in real terms. The real deposit rate was negative 0.35 per cent at the end of fiscal year 2006-2007 and negative 0.48 per cent at the year-end. The banks, on the other hand, are helpless in protecting the depositors from losing real value of money as they walk a tightrope between raising deposit rates and making loans costlier for the private sector.

In such cases small savers would opt for withdrawing their deposits and exhaust those to meet the soaring cost of living, which would affect the national savings and further worsen the banks' liquidity problems. This is a rather 'difficult situation' for the banking sector and the economy as a whole. According to some experts, there is only one way left and the government has to take steps to raise people's real incomes and widen social safety-net coverage to help people cut on costs of food, education and healthcare.

Following continuous pressure from the government and the central bank, the commercial banks earlier agreed to lower their spread - gap between deposit and lending rates - to 5 per cent, keeping deposit rates unchanged. It is assumed that lower lending rates would stimulate investment and economic growth if other determinants including macroeconomic policies, socio-political regime and legal and institutional framework remain favourable as stated in a policy paper prepared by the country's central bank.

Monitoring the private universities

GOING through the pages of a newspaper these days, a reader is likely to frequently come across advertisements of a new university set up somewhere in Dhaka or in the other big cities. But higher education is not only about quantity. More important is its quality. And it is in respect of this quality factor that the privately-run centres of higher learning are found to be seriously deficient in a greater number of cases. What should be done in response is a question that is most frequently asked.

The major requirement seems to be the formation, as swiftly as possible, of an accreditation council for rating privately offered higher education. Such a step may help accomplish several things. First of all, the students and their guardians will know about the standard of the private universities as each of them is graded in order of performance. The ranking will help them to decide whether to take admissions in such universities or not. The rankings will be a guide to employers about the relative worth of the certificates of private universities.

More significantly, the establishment of the accreditation council and its move to rank the universities according to performance will put the pressure on their management to go all-out to improve standards to get a good ranking to be able to remain in business. Such a council should aim to identify the deficient universities and tell their management to meet standards within a specified time-frame or lose their licences to operate. Such a council should also examine whether so many private universities are necessary. If there has been an excess of such institutions, then it should recommend no further growth of them in the future and the recommendation will have to be accepted and enforced.

Factors inducing drug addiction

Md. Nurun Nabi

Drug abuse directly influences the economic and social aspects of a country. In Bangladesh it is a growing national concern. There are millions of drug-addicted people in Bangladesh and most of them are young, between the ages of 18 and 30. And they are from all strata of the society. In Bangladesh, sources of drug information quite limited and drug companies are the vital sources of information here. As with other countries in the world, Bangladesh is victimized for drug addiction in its young generation for mainly following reasons. Primary Causes of Drug abuse in Bangladesh: Primary

Cause Percentage

Delinquent

Peer 50%

Unconsciousness 5%

Curiosity 15%

Joy Felling 5%

Depression 20%

Others 5%

Total 100%

An overall cause includes psychological causes, economical causes, social causes, political causes, Biological causes and Familial causes Psychological causes:

Depression is a common cause of drug addiction. In daily life, people feel depression in many ways for many reasons. They try to remove depression and use drug as a tool for remove that depression. One day they became drug addict. Heart broken: When a man or woman refused by another man or woman in time of romance or marriage proposal, it is said that the heart of the refused person is broken. To reduce the mental shock, the refused person takes drug, and this taking is turned into addiction. This culture is mainly observed in the young generation.

One of the common causes of drug addiction is association with peer groups. When a normal person associates with an addicted person, he has a high probability to be a drug addicted. Curiosity is a normal tendency of human being. Especially the teenagers are more curious than others. At first they taste drug from their curiosity. Later, many of them turned into drug addicted.

Due to psychological disorder people become frustrated and thus they may be addicted to drug to forget their frustration or depression.. Unexpected event, sorrow, refusal from affairs makes a man psychologically ill and for this reason people may be addicted to drug.

Poverty is the main cause of drug. Who cannot lead a happiness life he must feel inferior and want to drive his problem? In a research finds that most of the people become addicted to the drug for poverty and lack of property or full of property. Drug helps him to ignore his sorrows or emotion. But in case of property he willingly wants to abuse money and the drug testing is the main cause of it.

Different society has different cultural and religious tradition. In different cultural festival a common tradition is taking alcohol, cannabis, and other drug.

There are some religious festivals where drug is common. In the festivals of different tribal society, people use drug as a part of their festival. Social status: Sometimes people take drugs due to their social status. Higher-class young people take alcohol and other drugs to maintain their status in the friend circle. They believe that taking drug is a fashion for higher-class people. Day by day they become more addicted and cannot leave it.

One of the important causes of drug addiction is the availability of drug. Drug trafficking is one of the reason for availability of drugs. The law enforcement agencies are not well equipped and effective to stop the drug dealing and trafficking. As a result the drug dealers distribute drugs among the people and the people become drug addicted by taking this drug.

The unemployed young peoples are always in depression for their unemployment. To remove their depression they use drug. Sometime, unemployed people associate with criminal act and drug addicted gang and start taking drugs with them. Unconscious about drug: Many people become drug addicted beyond their consciousness. People use different medicine for different disease. Longtime use of those medicines make them dependant on those medicines. Later, they don't continue their normal life without those medicines.

Day by day, human being losing their social and religious norms, values.

Almost all the religion prohibit drug. Most of the society prohibits taking of drug. But people lost the norms, values and taking drug. Political cause: motivated by the political party: Sometimes young peoples are motivated by the political person to take drug. Many political leaders are related with drug trafficking. They distribute this drug through criminal gang to young people.

Access affection of parents: Sometimes young people don't care anything under access affection of their parents. They act as they like. Onetime they join in the delinquent gang and start taking drug. Less family interaction: Less family interaction reduces the parental control over the child and lost the sympathy for their parents. As a result the son/daughter has the chance to associate with peers and learn how to take drugs.

Quarrel between father, mother and other family members' leads a child to delinquency. A delinquent child associate with other delinquent peers and one day they will join in delinquent gang where drug is available for the gang members.

Long term disease needs long term use of medicine. Day by day the patient became dependant on the medicine and got addiction with that medicine.

In the later period, he cannot continue his normal life without that medicine. 2: Pain or lengthy sleeplessness.3: Insomnia for protection of dieses, 4: Genetically effects from the ancestor: Sometimes there are genetically causes for drug addiction. It is said that, the son of a drug addicted father will be drug addicted.

Hubris and humility in our politicians

Tom Plate

THE practice of sincere humility, especially by the high-flying, is not particularly in fashion these days. But it is precisely during economic and political tension that more frequent and fervent expressions of it might serve to smooth over some tough spots.

After all, being truly humble can serve to downsize egos that otherwise would upsize minor molehills into major mountain ranges; egomania may be the cause of as much crisis escalation as the root cause itself. "Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues; hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance."

That insight came from St. Augustine more than 1,500 years ago, but the thought applies with a vice-like grip today to men and women who act as if they are inherently more important than the rest of us earthlings - or who feel entitled to living their life out as royalty when so many people all over the world are fortunate to have even a simple un-leaky roof over their serf-like heads. Prime example number one: I give you Pervez Musharraf.

As an announced Muslim, Pakistan's president isn't about to sink his teeth very deeply into his St. Augustine. But he can look to the Quran for guidance on humility. And I quote one thought from Holy Quran: (25:64): "The true servants of the Gracious God are those who walk on the earth humbly and when the ignorant address them, they avoid them gracefully by saying, 'Peace'!"

But this career military man seized the presidency in 1999 and doesn't want to give it back, no matter what anyone says, including the Pakistani people. Two main reasons lie behind this arrogance. One is that Musharraf believes his wisdom as president is essential to Pakistan's future stability. The second reason is that US President George W. Bush believes that Musharraf is essential in terms of American interests.

This latter assessment ought to be enough to shake everyone's belief, even Musharraf's! In fact, fewer and fewer Pakistanis agree with Bush; they want their president to go. This puts them greatly at odds with the US, which once again publicly prefers a strong-man in a foreign country to what the people there prefer. But Washington always knows what's best for others, right?

Example number two: I give you Lee Myung-bak. As a Presbyterian, the new president of South Korea can dip into the New Testament for all anyone could want on the humility issue. He urgently needs to review such teachings: Before taking office earlier this year, he was known in the private sector as "the bulldozer" for his 'my-way-or-highway' style. Those who worked with him report that this tractor-moniker accurately captures Lee's bull-headed traits. But what works in the industrialised private sector - especially in the rough-and-tumble environment of a gigantic Korean chaebol - doesn't always fly in the public arena. Just months after his landslide victory, Mr. Bulldozer has hit the brick wall of negative public opinion. South Koreans want policies explained, not rammed; their beef is that they want a humbler leader, not the second coming of an old-style dictator common to Korea prior to 1987. Mr. President, read your Christian Bible - and study your Korean history.

Now here's prime example number three: Americans who are foreclosing on multi-million-dollar homes because they can't meet the mortgage payments anymore. This is even happening to a famous former late-night American TV talk show host, who has been in the news with much moaning and groaning about his fate.

He's not the only American who looks to be in over his head and is about to lose his home, of course. The root of all evil, as they say, is money, and now some Americans who once appeared to have plenty of it before seem to have not enough of it. § But the culprit here is not so much a low economy as a lack of humility. Many Americans forgot all about humility for years as they enjoyed a life of leveraged luxury. Now those Americans are finding themselves in trouble.

Like a Musharraf who equates himself with Pakistan itself, or a Lee who thinks he can push Korean voters around like intimidated corporate underlings, the American consumer has been committing the sin of happy hubris that now looks to be turning, for many of them at least, into unhappy humiliation. The antidote to humiliation is this: self-imposed humility. And it is a life-long virtue that can work for all of us, not just for heads of state.

(Prof. Tom Plate is a veteran American journalist and founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network)

The fittest survive in Lebanon

Ceem Haidar

MY FELLOW Lebanese, come pick up your Medals of Immunity since nothing seems to shake you anymore. There was a bomb, you say? We still don't have a president? Another leader just got assassinated? There are clashes in parts of Beirut? Gunshots were heard? So then, what's the safest route to go to the bar tonight?

Considering the turmoil we have seen and the conflicts we have endured, I'm surprised we are still standing - and even able to smile about it all.

Perhaps the Darwinian notion of "survival of the fittest" was conceptualised particularly for Lebanon and its inhabitants. If someone is wondering why, my response would be to look at the past four years of events in the country.

Our problem-solving skills, though requiring major retouching, are among the most advanced in the world. We have a new crisis to attend to almost every week. And look - there go the politicians yet again trying to resolve a new issue at hand. Yet here we are, a few months of peace have been secured, it seems. However, our leaders cannot be entirely credited for the adept problem-solving skills of the Lebanese people. Their expeditious methods of restoring peace on the streets are not entirely effective. In fact, although we may have the most reputable risk management skills in our leaders, they are always seated around their table battling away crisis after crisis, so their timing is unfortunately way off. We Lebanese youth find ourselves unable to plan ahead. From education to work, our lives are repeatedly put on hold, and we silently pray for a brighter future. Lebanon in general is not the best of places to establish oneself career-wise, as the opportunities here are limited. Since enrolling in my university, I have spent more time at home due to the crises than I have in the classroom, and the same applies to those who work. I speak for all our youth when I say that in order to fully apply ourselves and give back to our country, we need to experience what it's like to be free from strife.

However, after this most recent conflict that resulted in the Doha Accords, all Lebanese are asking: "Did the politicians really have to put us through all this just to reach an inevitable compromise?"

So why don't we call on the leaders and tell them to leave their bickering to themselves, to not burden us with their political differences, and to simply allow us to go through at least one day without having to hear them squabbling over power instead of dealing with more normal political issues. In the end, after all, it all comes down to the race for power. But then again, Darwin kicks in and the fittest seem to survive.

Our will to live is stronger than ever. We have endured events far beyond our limits, yet have overcome them. The ability to adapt graciously to situations seems to be innate, whether becoming accustomed to times of war, turmoil, or even familiarising ourselves with peace. We find ourselves yearning for what Westerners talk about, namely safety, security and stability.

So what can we, as the youth of Lebanon, do about all of this? Our options may be limited, but we want to voice our concerns - whether in editorials or by staging protests. After all, this is our homeland, and it is based on democratic principles - and no longer should our voices go unnoticed. Our sheer determination will keep driving us until we are heard, though.

There is not one event that we have not been witness to, not one dilemma at hand that we have not scratched our brains to try and find a solution to. The Lebanese are, each in their own way, self-trained political analysts. No one else in the world can give you the history of their country, updates of the current state of emergency, and what the leaders are trying to do to help, in less than five minutes, under machine gun fire and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) blasts.

But we can. It's in our nature. It's how we survive.

(Ceem Haidar majored in journalism at Lebanese American University and is a graduate of the class of 2008. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service)

Will peace take flight?

Jonathan Rosen

LATE last month, Israel announced that it had named the hoopoe as its national bird. The long-billed hoopoe, which has a punky orange crest tipped black, is barely mentioned in the Bible (as an unclean animal that may not be eaten) but it plays a role in rabbinic literature and in Islamic lore as well.

It is celebrated, among other things, as the messenger that shuttles between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It is in other words well suited to the symbolic burden the country has placed on it.

The idea that birds can be emissaries to a battered world - like the dove and raven sent out by Noah - motivated Israel's decision to adopt a national bird as part of its commemoration of 60 years of statehood. In Hebrew the name of the bird is duchifat. In Arabic it is hud hud. And in English hoopoe is a word that sounds, as Emily Dickinson noted about all feathered creatures, strangely like hope.

The news was announced at the official residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who in the late 1940s changed his name from Persky to Peres because he saw a giant lammergeier, or bearded vulture (in Hebrew, a "peres"), circling overhead. Legend has it that the lammergeier, which no longer breeds in Israel, killed the Greek tragedian Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on his head. Birds can be dangerous, which is precisely why the United States chose the bald eagle, though Benjamin Franklin complained, in a letter to his daughter, that the eagle was a cowardly bully while the turkey was nobler and feistier and therefore a more apt symbol for America.

In Franklin's time, a young democracy wanted a warrior bird; in the 21st century other considerations carry the day. The cross-section of Israelis who did the voting to choose a national bird - including schoolchildren, soldiers, academics and Knesset members - rejected the possibility of a raptor (specifically, the much-loved, and endangered, griffon vulture) as sending the wrong signal for the country. They also rejected the night owl, which Arabs believe to be an evil omen.

I first saw a hoopoe in 2000, the year the Oslo Accords officially fell apart. I had known about the bird since childhood, when I learned that King Solomon - who, with his storied ability to understand the speech of animals is the Dr. Doolittle of Judaism - had sought out the hoopoe in order to build the Temple. It had not occurred to me, until I began bird-watching, that the bird was real.

But there I was, in a small bird observatory in Jerusalem, with a soldier whose job it was to net migrating birds, weigh them and then toss them back into the air. "Filthy birds," he said, pointing out one that was heading for a hole in a wall and then adding that they reeked of excrement. So much for the bird who helped the king build a house for God. It was, however, a lesson worthy of Solomon, seeing this lofty bird that smells of mortality. It is the nature of birds to embody multiple elements, shuttling as they do between earth and sky, between ancient and modern, between wild and tame. They are emblems of our heavenly aspirations and yet they are the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs.

The search for a national bird was organised by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and led by an Israeli ornithologist, Yossi Leshem. Leshem has created the International Center for Bird Migration in Latrun, the site of some very bloody battles in Israel's War of Independence and home to a vast war memorial. The centre's hopeful slogan, printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English, is "Migrating birds know no boundaries," in contrast to the people on the ground, for whom boundaries are everything. This gives bird life an added poignancy in Israel.

Israel is a surprisingly good place for bird-watching (half a billion birds fly through the country during migration, converging from Africa, Asia and Europe). Jeremiah noted that "the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times" and she still does - every year, 85 per cent of the world's white stork population migrates over Israel, despite the general upheaval of the world below.

A hoopoe is the hero of the Persian poet Farid Al Din Attar's "Conference of the Birds," a medieval allegory in which a group of birds sets out to find the king of the birds. The hoopoe is their leader, artfully persuading all the reluctant birds to come on the quest. In the end, they manage to find the king of the birds, who turns out to be God. The birds that have made it into the bird king's presence are filled with radiant insight but they are consumed - they discover they are part of God and they are obliterated in the divine effulgence.

This is a happy ending if you are a mystic but it is chilling if you are not.

Attar, a Sufi, believed that all religions are a path to God. It is part of the endless irony of history that the place where Attar once lived (and that in fact expelled him for heresy) today threatens with obliteration those nations, most especially the Jewish state, that it deems an abomination. Whether even the wisdom of King Solomon, and his magical avian emissary, can devise an answer to this threat is one of the great challenges of the coming days.