The New Nation - Internet Edition

The New Nation at 31

IF a newspaper is called a conscience-keeper of the society, then this paper has-during 30 years of its publication-tried to prove true to that. When it was launched as a daily in 1981 after three years of operation as a weekly, The New Nation was the only independent English daily in Dhaka city. This independent stance had made this paper useful in airing people's views and grievances.

At that time two other English daily newspapers were run by the government under the then Newspaper Management Board, a remnant of the short-lived one-party rule of the mid-seventies. The New Nation enlisted the services of some legendary figures in Bangladesh journalism-the late Hasan Sayeed, Mahbubul Alam, Amanullah, Alamgir Mohiuddin, ABM Musa, Enamul Huq, Fazle Rasheed, Amanullah Kabir, Moazzem Hossain, to name a few-plus a number of then bright professionals who now shine in their own right The late Atiquzzaman Khan had offered useful suggestions. As a champion of democracy, human rights and private entrepreneurship, this paper succeeded to atract the atention of a cross-section of people within a very short span of time.

During the 30 years the profession of journalism itself went through different upheavals marked by change from strict control of newspaper registration since the seventies to virtual free breeding of papers in the early nineties, politicisation of newspapers and journalist unions after the restoration of democracy and the negative influences that are associated with such changes. Some successful new experiments have also been made in the newspaper industry during the period.

We in the New Nation do not claim to have been producing the best newspaper in Bangladesh, but our commitment to democracy, constitutionalism, human rights, people's welfare, good governance, journalistic objectivity remains as firm as before. May we assure our readers of our resolve to uphold this glorious tradition of our paper.

Continue the vigil

THE latest arrest of armed militants from different parts of the country proves correct apprehensions regarding disruptive activities during the present election. Police recently recovered live bombs and grenades from Jessore, Meherpur, Gaibandha and Comilla districts. At least seven suspected militants of Jama'tul Majahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were arrested. The law-enforcing agencies suspected that the terrorists were plotting to disrupt the election.

The government has taken different security steps including deployment of about fifty thousand army personnel throughout the country to assist law enforcing agencies in maintaining law and order and ensuring successful holding of the election. Five-tier security arrangement have been made in the city. These steps have started bearing fruit like arrests of militants and recovery of weapons. Some groups in the south-western districts are reportedly inactive at present. The measures taken so far are essential for the holding of the election.

In recent years some evil forces proved to be too tenacious to be uprooted. Following several terrorist bomb blasts that killed many people in the past, some militant groups were banned and their kingpins arrested. Some of them have been executed. These steps have drastically weakened these militant groups. But the recent arrests and recovery of weapons prove they have not disappeared totally. Although the recent activities of the militants are not much alarming but they pose a potential threat to the restoration of peace. These forces should be kept under constant watch.

Bottom-up stimulus

Yossef Ben-Meir

What development projects deliver short-term relief to people and long-term economic structural change for sustained growth should therefore be part of the upcoming economic stimulus package? The answer: projects determined and managed by the local communities they are intended to benefit.

Depending on life conditions and challenges rural and urban communities face and the ideas they have for local development, projects communities typically prioritize to implement include roads, schools, clinics, community centers, daycare, and cooperatives. They are in private sector development, pubic health, green initiatives, training, and empowering people. They are in agriculture, manufacturing, and human services and development.

Community-level projects directly and more quickly impact local populations because of their proximity. Projects are located in local communities where they stimulate jobs and purchases of materials and equipment. As projects are designed, implemented, and functioning (more immediately because of community control and local reliance) stimulus takes effect. There is not a lag in waiting for a trickle-down of benefits.

Bottom-up stimulus would have groups of tens, hundreds, and thousands of local citizens gather together and assess their challenges and opportunities in the process of creating an action plan for development. "Participatory" planning activities help guide community members through dialogue and information gathering in order to develop solutions to their pressing needs.

Their community projects funded by government will create multi-tiered, private-public partnerships, and advance both federalism and national unity.

In bottom-up stimulus, decision-making of local participants and partner groups is improved through information sharing and collaboration. Risk is shared in these community investments; local people and organizations also contribute in-kind, sometimes in the form of labor and partial financing. Bottom-up stimulus diversifies the economy and makes it more resilient in times of fluctuation. The question now becomes: what programs can deliver bottom-up stimulus and should be earmarked in the economic package? Here are five recommendations that taken together can catalyze tens of thousands of viable community projects.

1. Double the size of AmeriCorps (to 150,000 volunteers) and thirteen-fold increase the Peace Corps (to President John Kennedy's goal of 100,000).

To expand and reform, the agencies should recruit volunteers with generalist backgrounds and emphasize in their training and service the organizing of community meetings and partnership-building, a role their volunteers are positioned to perform. Investing in volunteerism (and the community projects volunteers catalyze) will reduce unemployment and unleash in the near future a powerful wave of social entrepreneurs.

2. In public universities and colleges, support programs and new centers for community mediation, training, and development that enable students, faculty, and others to engage local communities and assist them in development planning and implementation. University-community partnership for development and "action-research" will bring win-win transformative benefits. State funded universities and colleges are being hit hard by the economic downturn and this is an important way they can contribute to and benefit from the stimulus.

3. At least double the funding for the soon-to-be called Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, in addition to President-elect Obama's proposed reforms of the Council, including nondiscrimination in hiring, training to access funding, and serving 1 million students in summer and after school programs. I also suggest requiring religious institutions to have a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for the community-service related projects they administer to help avoid potential impropriety with public funds. The Council should encourage interfaith partnerships to increase project sustainability.

4. Establish a new fund that injects bottom-up stimulus in local areas suffering socio-economically and environmentally through no fault of their own; for example, because of natural and human-made disasters, and social dislocation caused by free trade.

These communities of people are in serious need and stand to benefit the most from the process of establishing community-owned and managed projects.

5. Increase funding and training for community extension agents from government departments (e.g., Interior, Energy, Housing, Health and Human Services, and Commerce) and agencies (e.g., Small Business Administration and Environmental Protection Agency). Those in federal, state, and local government who interface with community groups can be ideally situated to bring people together to plan and implement development initiatives.

Robert Rubin, the self-described consigliere of Citigroup and former Treasury secretary, described as a "perfect storm" the events that led to the global financial collapse.

The perfect storm then assisted the rise of Barack Obama, a leader quite familiar with the mechanics of community organizing and bottom-up social change and movements. The perfect storm - and the immediate and long-term economic results the country needs to navigate out of it - could now indirectly deliver its antidote: bottom-up stimulus.

Obama team can not do it alone

Paul Kennedy

It has become abundantly clear, at least to this observer, that the Obama team, however smart and experienced and wonderful it may be, cannot possibly fulfill all of the hopes that are being wished upon it by joyous but anxious Americans and by the equally anxious but hopeful multitudes abroad.

This next president, at once bold and uplifting in his speeches, then cautious, reflective and warning in his afterthoughts, has the mettle to be a great leader. At the same time, however, he faces an extraordinary list of problems and challenges as America and the world move into 2009. Barack Obama must also know that he has to prioritise: He cannot be all things to all men, he cannot satisfy all hopes, he cannot deal with all the Earth's ailments. If he does not focus, he is lost.

Two areas call for immediate and sustained attention by the Obama administration. It has to devote a large share of its energies to the rescue and recovery of the US economy as well as its interconnected global financial and trading networks; without such a recovery, we are all in deep trouble. Yet Washington cannot concentrate upon economic matters alone, because it also must pay great attention to global politics, that is, to relationships with a touchy and rising China, to a touchy and increasingly enfeebled Russia (believe it or not), to the South Asian powder keg, to awful Arabian minefields. Our new president has to walk into the future with Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes in one hand, and Carl von Clausewitz and Sir Halford Mackinder in the other.

But if a national socioeconomic recovery plan, plus global economics and global Great-Power geopolitics, are at the centre of Obama's first-term policies, what issues might have to be relegated to the second tier, and pushed to the periphery? What matters can a well-meaning, hugely optimistic and highly popular new American administration not commit much attention or resources to, even while offering lip service to their importance?

The list is long, and the space short, so let us limit ourselves to the following four areas of policy that, however significant to their protagonists, are not likely to rise to the top of an Obama administration's agenda. All of them, I feel personally, are important, but I doubt if any will gain significant attention. How nice it would be if I'm wrong!

First, Latin America. I have always been amazed at how little attention the United States pays to the rest of the Western hemisphere, particularly to our southern neighbour, Mexico, but also to critically important nations such as Brazil and Argentina.

My visits to all three countries in recent years suggest that there is a widespread yearning across the subcontinent for a respectful, balanced relationship with their Yankee cousin. But will Washington pay much attention, apart from a symbolic presidential visit or two? I doubt it. We take Latin America for granted, and it will be remarkable if Obama can break out of that mold of thinking.

Second, Africa. This sounds ridiculous, I know. All the rhetoric of the new president's campaign suggests that the fate of the continent from which he takes his family roots is close to his heart and mind. That may well be so. But what exactly and systematically the new administration can do to assist Africa is much more of a puzzle. The best and most immediate help would be to contrive a sharp rise in the world's commodity prices - coffee, groundnuts, rubber, oil, hardwood, phosphate - that would reverse their tumbling exports, provide hard currency and save jobs. But the current world depression makes that unlikely - and, besides, the United States prefers low global commodity prices, because it imports so many of those goods.

It would also be wonderful if the Obama administration could miraculously bring peace and security to war-torn regions that, in sheer extent, are probably twice as large as Europe. No other external Power could do it. A 10-year commitment of 250,000 U.S. troops, with all logistical back-up, would do it. How likely is that? Pigs might fly. In two or three years' time, how far down the new administration's totem pole will Central Africa really be? I am not being cynical here, merely realistic. If there is a future major crisis concerning Ukraine or Taiwan, when will the under-secretary of state for Africa next get to talk with the president, if he/she ever does?

Third, reform of the United Nations and Bretton Woods systems. Well, good luck. Everyone can see that the 1944 and 1945 international economic, financial and political-security structures are out of date in this new century; in fact, they were probably out of date around 1980. A global security system in which only five out of 192 nations have special veto and permanent-membership privileges (i.e. on the UN Security Council), and three of those five are in long-term relative secular decline - Britain, France and, let's face it, Putin's Potemkin-village Russia - is a current absurdity.

Since the Permanent Five (P5) will not relinquish their powers, the least they can do is allow India and Brazil to join their high table. But that can't be prominent on the list of the "To Do" items of the new Washington crowd. Nor can any significant shift in the power balances on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, niftily located on 14th Street NW in their own downtown; the US likes the current Bretton Woods status quo. To be sure, Obama will encourage the World Bank to assist the poorest 60 nations of the globe, and push the IMF to be gentle toward Iceland. But this is not a big-ticket item. As for other UN reforms - better peacekeeping cooperation, improved development techniques, yes, fine, but no need to bother us.

Fourth, Europe, the EU, transatlantic relations in general.

This conclusion may excite reactions in Berlin, Rome, London and Paris (what doesn't excite reactions in Paris?), but I suspect that the pan-European swooning for Obama - remember the 200,000 enthusiasts at the Brandenburger Tor? - will not lead to a reciprocal identification of Europe as being the lodestar of future American foreign policy and strategy. Europe is sort of fine, as is. It is not a problem, like China, Russia, the Middle East, Iran.

It is of increasingly little help in the military and strategic fields. It definitely is important in terms of economic coordination, but that is better done out of New York rather than out of the District of Columbia. Simply put, Europe's extraordinarily high estimation of Obama is unlikely to be matched by his own estimation of Europe, although we shall hear many a pretty speech about the enduring and solid relationship in the years to come.

Yet the new president has more important fish to fry.

So the pundits are right: Rescuing the US economy and preserving the geopolitical order have to be the twin priorities of the new Obama administration. The rest, even such important domains as Africa, Latin America, Europe and the UN, come a little behind. Those wonderful, cynical French diplomats of an earlier age would have recognised this. What, after all, was their phrase?: Gouverner, c'est choisir. "To govern is to choose." It was always so.

Outsourcing it right away

Phillip Knightley

Three major developments in the history of British journalism have taken place almost unremarked.

The first involves the way British newspapers and television covered the attacks in Mumbai; the second concerns the reporting of the financial crisis and the third, although it happened in the United States, shows the way the future of English-language journalism is developing.

The Mumbai attacks were fast-moving stories so there is some excuse for the confused reporting. But there is no excuse for the way the British press put a symbolic Union Jack on all its stories. All the British victims were automatically heroes, but there is a limit to the mileage to be had from heroes alone.

So the attackers were also British, according to the tabloid press. The Mirror reported that two of the attackers were from Leeds, two from Bradford and one from Hartlepool. "Butchers of Mumbai are Brits", announced the Express. But they weren't. Within hours, news bulletins announced there was no British connection. OK. But the Mail on Sunday said that UK cash funded the operation. No confirmation of this either.

Desperate for some link to Britain, the Telegraph said that the attackers "knew what they were doing". They were not attacking India, or Hinduism, or ostentatious wealth, or western values. "They were striking at a place that symbolises former British power."

Strangely, the one link with Britain that did exist was quickly denied by the Foreign Office. It was reported that the attackers in the Taj Hotel had asked guests at gunpoint, not if they were Hindu or Muslim, but if they were British or American, a significant fact because it demonstrated the anti-Western nature of the attacks. Not so, said the Foreign Office.

But I personally saw a guest from the Taj, an Italian, interviewed on TV and he said the attackers had specifically asked him this question. When he replied that he was Italian, he was told, "OK, then you can go." The British reporting of the financial crisis has shown a failure to keep the public informed. Headlines have been alarmist, to say the least. "Terror Stalks the Stock Markets", "Collapse Costs London Councils £200m" and "Billions Lost in Crash" can, according to media commentator Peter Wilby, risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.

But Wilby would rather risk this than for the press to behave as it did when there was a financial crisis thirty years ago. The "The British banking system was close to systemic failure. Then, as now, NatWest was in dire straits. Then, as now, the Bank of England poured in public money.

But the drama was almost entirely behind closed doors. NatWest simply denied it was in trouble, and it was believed. To this day no one knows for sure how much the crisis cost the taxpayer."

In other words, in those days, Northern Rock would have been sorted out before the public - and particularly the depositors - knew a thing about it.

My third example of what is happening to English-language journalism is from the United States. Pasadena Now, a website in Pasadena, California, sacked five staff journalists and outsourced their jobs to six people in India. The US journalists were earning £400 a week. The Indian journalists doing the Americans' jobs will be paid £5 per thousand words.

The publisher and editor of the website, James MacPherson, said the American staff had sat at their desks typing on a keyboard made in China and looking at a monitor made in Malaysia and still didn't understand outsourcing journalism. The Indian journalists write features and news from information they are sent, or get off the web. They even report Pasadena Council meetings via video stream but this has had its drawbacks - the Indian reporters missed two council members walking out in a protest; the video camera did not face that way.

MacPherson added, "Journalists seem to believe that their job is alchemy, that it has some mystical element to it. The truth is that it is a process, that can be broken down and re-engineered."

Dean Singleton, the head of Media New Group, which owns 54 daily newspapers across America, said his company was considering outsourcing everything, including one Indian news desk for all its papers. He said most pre-production work was already carried out in India, which had cut costs by 65 per cent. Is this the future?