Banner Advertiser

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Role of media in understanding and combating terrorism and extremism



Role of media in understanding and combating terrorism and extremism

The media is viewed as a source of power that influences, controls, and promotes new standards in the society and reinforces the existing ones. Media is thus one of the principal agents for societal development, democracy and good governance, and a crucial element in areas of conflict, terrorism and extremism, writes M Zahangir Kabir

JUST as corruption has a debilitating effect upon the economy so does the virus of terrorism—as Stern (2003) sees it—thrive upon hopelessness at the level of the individual and weak government at the level of the state. Stern feels that the virus spreads as a result of various risk factors. The precise identification of these factors is difficult but she considers them at different levels (Stern 2003:283-6) from the global to the individual.
   
'On a global level the communications revolution has greatly eased spreading the "viral" message, mobilising followers and creating worldwide networks. At the interstate level, bad neighbourhoods and failed states export crime, refugees and grievances. Festering interstate conflicts can breed terrorism not only in the immediate region, but also at far geographic remove. At the national level, a government's inability to provide basic needs and services [such as employment, basic education and health], protect human rights or to maintain a monopoly on violence damages the state's ability to fight extremist groups.'
   
Stern feels that poverty's role as a risk factor is controversial (cf. September 11 bombers were mostly drawn from Saudi Arabia's elite and two thirds of them had attended college) but there is still plenty of evidence that poverty and terrorism are correlated. Poverty may not be instrumental in driving terrorism—countless studies have debunked this notion (Bergen and Pandey, 2005)—but there are studies which have shown that 'when an economy sours, the poor are more likely to become involved in crime, riots and other disruptive activities, and that these activities increase.' For example, the Indonesian jihadi groups began to thrive only after the country's economic stagnation, when educated young men began to have trouble finding jobs in the 'civilian' sector.
   
Stern has demonstrated that 'extremist movements funnel young men from extremist seminaries, some of which function as orphanages for the poor, into various jihads—and into the clutches of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. … In poor countries like Pakistan, militants say that their salaries play a key role, not in persuading them to join jihadi groups, but in keeping them there. Jihadi groups' social welfare activities, especially the practice of compensating militants' families in Indonesia, Pakistan and Palestine, seem to play a role in making the groups more appealing to the poor.'
   
On the other hand, while madrassahs may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Qur'an in Arabic by rote, they do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. There is little or no evidence that madrassahs produce terrorists capable of attacking the West. Indeed, in an examination of the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists, Bergen and Pandey (2005) found that 53 per cent of them had either attended college or had received a college degree; only nine had attended madrassahs and all of these nine played a role in one attack—the Bali bombing in 2002. The idea that madrassahs are incubating the next generation of terrorists, Bergen and Pandey suggest, offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us [the West] rather than college graduates, as is often the case.
   
Stern suggests that 'humiliation—at the national or individual level—appears to be another important risk factor. …intellectual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and of al-Qaeda argue that violence is a way to cure Muslim youth of the pernicious effects of centuries of humiliation at the hands of the West. Globalisation—and the spread of Western power and values—is humiliating to Muslims, [Ayman] Zawahiri [of al-Qaeda] says. In his view, taking up the gun is a way to restore dignity to the Islamic world as well as to individual Muslims.' Stern continues, 'In addition to the spiritual intoxication that may come about from participating in attempts to purify society through violence, some terrorists experience a different kind of high: they like weapons and they like to kill, and they would do so for nearly any reason.'
   
In considering why the Islamic world is particularly vulnerable to the virus of terrorism, Stern (2003:287) not only cites corruption as a major factor but also the fragile nature of most Muslim-majority states and their unwillingness or inability to provide 'their populations with education, healthcare and other resources required to create robust economies and stable policies. … The more democratic regimes that exist in the Islamic world tend to be fragile and as plagued by cronyism and corruption as the autocratic governments. …In Pakistan, Islamist parties—some of which openly promote a 'Talibanisation' of Pakistan—did well in the 2002 parliamentary elections, in part because of the government's continuing failure to provide public services, but also because of anger about Islamabad's concessions to the United States in the war on terrorism.'
   
   Some perspectives on terrorism
   THE main factors driving terrorism are explained differently by different regimes. The United States identifies undemocratic and authoritarian regimes, poverty and fundamentalist Islam whilst, in addition, Europe and Asia consider the unresolved status of Palestine and the invasion and occupation of Iraq as very important. The Muslim perspective would also include the bias in the US's approaches to Iran's nuclear ambitions whilst keeping quiet on Israel's nuclear capacity building, the unhappy situation of post-war Afghanistan, the anti-Muslim rhetoric in the West, and the USA's unilateralism and its tendency to opt for military solutions (Hasan, 2004:57-64).
   
The 9/11 Commission in the USA identified the source of current international danger as Islamic terrorism, particularly the al-Qaeda network, its affiliates and its ideology. It argues that the leaders draw on a tradition of intolerance in a minority stream of Islam, which is fed by grievances widely felt in the Muslim world. It recommends two strategic goals:
   l the dismantling of the Al-Qaeda network; and
   l in the long term, to prevail over the ideology giving rise to Islamist terrorism.
   In order to meet these objectives, it is important, firstly, to understand the dynamics of extremism and, secondly, to devise a strategy to influence these dynamics in order to strengthen moderate and liberal conceptions of Islam.
   Thus, the US strategy is as follows:
   l to empower Muslim moderates and promote the creation of moderate Muslim networks (not being as well-resourced or motivated as radical groups, moderates have not established networks and may benefit from an external catalyst); and
   l encourage madrassah reform in order to counter the ideology of intolerance and Wahabi Islam that these madrassahs promote—US perception is that radical madrassahs provide personnel for radical movements and terrorist groups (Rabasa, 2004:66-67).
   
Denoeux (2002: 72-74) examines the position of radicals and moderates on democracy. 'Radicals reject democracy. They do not believe in sovereignty of the people, but in the sovereignty of God (hakimiyya), and cannot accept that the latter would take a back seat to the former. In their view, the sharia – which they see as God's will regarding how human society ought to be organised and how it should manage its affairs – must take precedence over the will of the majority.
   
It also should determine what the 'rightful' place of women and minorities is in an Islamic society (which, to democrats, means legitimation of state-sanctioned discrimination against minorities and women). By contrast, moderates are said to believe in the compatibility of Islam and democracy. They often claim to find precedents for democratic principles in such Islamic concepts as shura (consultation) and ijma (consensus). Most important, they assert (with varying degrees of emphasis and credibility) that if they were to come to power they would respect democratic rules, abide by the will of the majority as reflected in elections, and protect human rights and civil liberties as well as the pluralistic nature of society.'
   
On the other hand, there is a related argument that the gradual Islamisation of public discourse and society produced by the moderates, or by the courting of 'Islamist moderates' by the authorities, may over time create an environment in which extremism can flourish.
   
   Provide education and reduce poverty
   AS NOTED at the beginning of this article, the situation of madrassahs and their possible links with militant, even terrorist, activities need to be examined within the wider context of both the educational and the socio-economic environments in which they operate. It is clear that the extent of poverty in Bangladesh and Pakistan is high and that a large majority of the poor live in rural areas. The likelihood of either country achieving the MDG of halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day is low; the prospect of halving the proportion of the population living on less than $2 a day is even less certain. But the focus must remain on poverty reduction for the next decade and more, and an expanding rural economy, particularly growth in agriculture, is important for the reduction of poverty in Bangladesh and Pakistan, as elsewhere in South Asia.
   
In the past there has been a lack of public investment in rural infrastructure (irrigation, roads, electrification and communications), social infrastructure (basic education and health care) and agricultural research and extension services. 'These under-investments have been reinforced by a policy and institutional environment that has inhibited the development of the non-farm economy in rural areas. The combined effect has been that unfavourable initial conditions—such as an unequal distribution of land, limited irrigation facilities and low stocks of human capital—remain prevalent (Hasan et al. 2004:37).'
   
In the future, therefore, the key area for both government investment and donor support should be rural infrastructure and social infrastructure in rural areas. Agricultural growth, along with appropriate pricing policies and institutional arrangements for marketing and distribution of production inputs and outputs, can lead to improved rural incomes which in turn can lead to parents sending their children to a regular school—provided, of course, that such a school is readily available.
   
A good education in the long run leads people out of poverty, but not in the short term. Pakistan and Bangladesh have signed up to the agreements reached in the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000 and to achieving the MDGs. Therefore, both the government and the donor community need to address the issues of poverty reduction beyond the education sector in the immediate future and the issues of improved access to a higher quality education in the long term which prepares children and youth for a productive life within their own and the world community.
   
   Media as crucial element in areas of conflict, terrorism and extremism
   THE South Asian nations like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh have more or less been gripped with conflict, violence, terrorism and extremism from the years of recent past. As a result the development initiatives of these countries have been thwarted on and often.
   Free and critical media plays a central role in democracies and development by constituting the main source of information, which provides the society with knowledge and a variety of experiences. It also serves as a forum for public debate, conception and development of opinions. The media is viewed as a source of power that influences, controls, and promotes new standards in the society and reinforces the existing ones. Media is thus one of the principal agents for societal development, democracy and good governance, and a crucial element in areas of conflict, terrorism and extremism.
  
 It can be suggested that media is both a friend and a foe to a peace process. Media can foster human security, and there is evidence that media can reinforce motives for fuelling wars. It can be an instrument for peace and conflict management, which promotes messages and strategies that can lead to peaceful agreements and tolerant behaviour in a given society. Media can also be a weapon of violence that propagates biased information and manipulates societies or groups in conflict with divisive ideologies and harmful actions. Thus, the media have become pervasive and extremely influential in attitudes towards conflict.
   
The role of media in conflict resolution or in combating terrorism and extremism has increased its place in public attention. Policy makers, journalists, and social scientists all point to the central role of the press in events such as socio - political conflict, sectarian conflict, ethnic violence, cross – border conflict etc.
   Wolfsfeld, one of the leading peace media scholars, states that it is more complex to cover peace news than war. The drama and emotions of violent news are more profitable than peace reporting, since they attract more public attention. Still, studies and research on the role of the media in conflict resolution and combating terrorism and extremism are very limited compared to other conflict-related issues. An even more neglected area in this field is peace media.
   
The Media's role in combating conflicts, terrorism, extremism, and violence essentially include:
   l Review the conventional news coverage of conflicts, terrorism, extremism, and violence;
   l Map the role of press in past and contemporary conflicts, terrorism, extremism, and violence;
   l Delineate the emergence of concept of 'peace journalism' as an alternative to conventional news coverage of conflicts, terrorism, extremism and violence;
   l Mobilise newspapers, radio, television and other media in the quest for peace.

   Dr M Zahangir Kabir is an associate professor (Foreign Faculty), Department of Media Studies, Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. drzahangir@gmail.com
 



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Tony Judt - Must read



 "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."  Upton Sinclair

 

Tony Judt died over the weekend. the first article is written by him and the second is an obituary published in the Guardian.

 

 

Wealth, wellbeing and change

Tony Judt,

9 August 2010

OPEN DEMOCRACY

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/tony-judt/wealth-wellbeing-and-change-we-must-recast-public-conversation?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=On-Demand_2010-08-09%2013%3a24

 

About the author

Tony Judt, historian, social thinker and essayist, was Director of the Remarkue Professor of European Studies at New York University.

 

Tony Judt has died. In his important last book, Ill Fares The Land, dictated under the impact of his fatal motor-neurone illness, he reflects on why social democracy has failed to offer effective resistance to the onslaught of late 20th century capitalism, let alone organise an alternative to it. In a striking section he argues that in the late 18th century the revolution had already been won as enlightenment arguments changed the language and terms of debate in which society was conceived.

 

Here in Britain we face a double-crisis. Our partly pre-enlightenment constitution (becoming ever more pre-enlightenment, indeed) is heading towards complete system failure, while the Labour Party suffers from acute exhaustion after the rhetorical inflation of the Blair-Brown years. This has led us in Our Kingdom to plan a relaunch that connects with the need to renew democracy across Britain in ways that go much further than what is currently on offer and includes engagement with issues of nation, culture and language as well as the economy, the media and our worm-riddled institutions.

 

Reading Ill Fares The Land I was struck by one short section (pp 167-73) that spoke directly to what we are trying to do and I asked Tony Judt if he would give us permission to reprint it as part of our relaunch, which we are now planning for September. He kindly and generously sent his agreement and best wishes. We publish it immediately to salute him and his exceptional achievement.  AB

 

Most critics of our present condition start with institutions. They look at parliaments, senates, presidents, elections and lobbies and point to the ways in which these have degraded or abused the trust and authority placed in them. Any reform, they conclude, must begin here. We need new laws, different electoral regimes, restrictions on lobbying and political funding; we need to give more (or less) authority to the executive branch and we need to find ways to make elected and unelected officials responsive and answerable to their constituencies and paymasters: us.

 

All true. But such changes have been in the air for decades. It should by now be clear that the reason they have not happened, or do not work, is because they are imagined, designed and implemented by the very people responsible for the dilemma. There is little point in asking the US Senate to reform its lobbying arrangements: as Upton Sinclair famously observed a century ago, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." For much the same reasons, the parliaments of most European countries—now regarded with sentiments ranging from boredom to contempt—are ill-placed to find within themselves the means to become relevant once again.

 

We need to start somewhere else. Why, for the past three decades, has it been so easy for those in power to convince their constituents of the wisdom—and, in any case, the necessity—of the policies they want to pursue? Because there has been no coherent alternative on offer. Even when there are significant policy differences among major political parties, these are presented as versions of a single objective. It has become common- place to assert that we all want the same thing, we just have slightly different ways of going about it.

 

But this is simply false. The rich do not want the same thing as the poor. Those who depend on their job for their livelihood do not want the same thing as those who live off investments and dividends. Those who do not need public services—because they can purchase private transport, education and protection—do not seek the same thing as those who depend exclusively on the public sector. Those who benefit from war—either as defense contractors or on ideological grounds—have different objectives than those who are against war.

 

Societies are complex and contain conflicting interests. To assert otherwise—to deny distinctions of class or wealth or influence—is just a way to promote one set of interests above another. This proposition used to be self-evident; today we are encouraged to dismiss it as an incendiary encouragement to class hatred. In a similar vein, we are encouraged to pursue economic self-interest to the exclusion of all else: and indeed, there are many who stand to gain thereby.

 

However, markets have a natural disposition to favor needs and wants that can be reduced to commercial criteria or economic measurement. If you can sell it or buy it, then it is quantifiable and we can assess its contribution to (quantitative) measures of collective well-being. But what of those goods which humans have always valued but which do not lend them-selves to quantification?

 

What of well-being? What of fairness or equity (in its original sense)? What of exclusion, opportunity—or its absence—or lost hope? Such considerations mean much more to most people than aggregate or even individual profit or growth. Take humiliation: what if we treated it as an economic cost, a charge to society? What if we decided to 'quantify' the harm done when people are shamed by their fellow citizens as a condition of receiving the mere necessities of life?

 

In other words, what if we factored into our estimates of productivity, efficiency, or well-being the difference between a humiliating handout and a benefit as of right? We might conclude that the provision of universal social services, public health insurance, or subsidized public transportation was actually a cost-effective way to achieve our common objectives. I readily concede that such an exercise is inherently contentious: how do we quantify 'humiliation'? What is the measurable cost of depriving isolated citizens of access to metropolitan resources? How much are we willing to pay for a good society?

 

Even 'wealth' itself cries out for redefinition. It is widely asserted that steeply progressive rates of taxation or economic redistribution destroy wealth. Such policies undoubtedly constrict the resources of some to the benefit of others—though the way we cut the cake has little bearing on its size. If redistributing material wealth has the long-term effect of improving the health of a country, diminishing social tensions born of envy or increasing and equalizing everyone's access to services hitherto preserved for the few, is not that country better off?

 

As the reader may observe, I am using words like 'wealth' or 'better off' in ways that take them well beyond their current, strictly material application. To do this on a broader scale—to recast our public conversation—seems to me the only realistic way to begin to bring about change. If we do not talk differently, we shall not think differently.

 

There are precedents for this way of conceiving political change. In late 18th century France, as the old regime tottered, the most significant developments on the political scene came not in the movements of protest or the institutions of state which sought to head them off. They came, rather, in the very language itself. Journalists and pamphleteers, together with the occasional dissenting administrator or priest, were forging out of an older language of justice and popular rights a new rhetoric of public action.

 

Unable to confront the monarchy head-on, they set about depriving it of legitimacy by imagining and expressing objections to the way things were and positing alternative sources of authority in whom 'the people' could believe. In effect, they invented modern politics: and in so doing quite literally discredited everything that had gone before. By the time the Revolution itself broke out, this new language of politics was thoroughly in place: indeed, had it not been, the revolutionaries themselves would have had no way to describe what they were doing. In the beginning was the word.

 

Today, we are encouraged to believe in the idea that politics reflects our opinions and helps us shape a shared public space.

 

Politicians talk and we respond—with our votes. But the truth is quite other. Most people don't feel as though they are part of any conversation of significance. They are told what to think and how to think it. They are made to feel inadequate as soon as issues of detail are engaged; and as for general objectives, they are encouraged to believe that these have long since been determined.

 

The perverse effects of this suppression of genuine debate are all around us. In the US today, town hall meetings and 'tea parties' parody and mimic the 18th century originals. Far from opening debate, they close it down. Demagogues tell the crowd what to think; when their phrases are echoed back to them, they boldly announce that they are merely relaying popular sentiment. In the UK, television has been put to strikingly effective use as a safety valve for populist discontent: professional politicians now claim to listen to vox populi in the form of instant phone-in votes and popularity polls on everything from immigration policy to pedophilia. Twittering back to their audience its own fears and prejudices, they are relieved of the burden of leadership or initiative.

 

Meanwhile, across the Channel in republican France or tolerant Holland, ersatz debates on national identity and criteria for citizenship substitute for the political courage required to confront popular prejudice and the challenges of integration. Here too, a 'conversation' appears to be taking place. But its terms of reference have been carefully pre-determined; its purpose is not to encourage the expression of dissenting views but to suppress them. Rather than facilitate public participation and diminish civic alienation, these 'conversations' simply add to the widespread distaste for politicians and politics. In a modern democracy it is possible to fool most of the people most of the time: but at a price.

 

We need to re-open a different sort of conversation. We need to become confident once again in our own instincts: if a policy or an action or a decision seems somehow wrong, we must find the words to say so. According to opinion polls, most people in England are apprehensive about the helter-skelter privatization of familiar public goods: utilities, the London Underground, their local bus service and the regional hospital, not to mention retirement homes, nursing services and the like. But, when they are told that the purpose of such privatizations has been to save public money and improve efficiency, they are silent: who could dissent?

 

Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt was published by Allen Lane (Penguin) in March 2010. Thanks go to the Wylie

 

Tony Judt

Obituary

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/08/tony-judt-obituary

 

Outstanding historian of the modern world with a trenchantly clear-sighted take on international politics

 

In the 1960s, Cambridge produced a remarkable generation of historians – David Cannadine, Linda Colley and Simon Schama among others – but one name acquired a particular resonance. Well before his death at 62 from motor neurone disorder, Tony Judt flowered not only as a great historian of modern Europe, expanding from his original specialism of French 19th-century socialism to encompass the whole continent, but as a brilliant political commentator.

 

In his guise as a political and historical essayist, he was a fearless critic of narrow orthodoxies and bullying cliques, from communist apologists to the Israel lobby, from "liberal hawks" to progressive educationists. And his political writings have proved not only perceptive but often prophetic.

 

He was born in the Jewish East End of London. Judt's grandparents had all been Yiddish speakers from eastern Europe; his father had reached Britain by way of Belgium, and worked as a hairdresser among other occupations. Young Tony went to Hebrew school, learned some Yiddish, and was conscious of English "anti-semitism at a low, polite cultural level". For all that he would one day be denounced as an enemy of Israel, he retained a deep absorption with his heritage. "You don't have to be Jewish to understand the history of Europe in the 20th century," Judt wrote, "but it helps." It helped him.

 

After the family had moved west across London to settle in Putney, Judt was educated at Emanuel school, an old-established independent school in Battersea. He disliked his schooldays, although he was a useful rugby player and remembered with deep gratitude "Joe" Craddock, a master who proved kindly under his gruff exterior, and who chivvied the boys in his German class to such effect that Judt still commanded the language more than 40 years on. This was one reason why he was later disdainful of educational fads, and of "Britain's egregiously underperforming comprehensive schools".

 

Escape came through King's College, Cambridge, which offered him a place before he had taken A-levels. But he had already formed one commitment which made his 1960s "a little different" from the decade as his radical contemporaries knew it. His parents were not especially devout, and their political connection was with the residue of the anti-Stalinist, Jewish socialist Bund party. But they were worried that their son, whose sister was eight years younger, was too solitary and withdrawn.

 

They therefore encouraged Tony to join the small socialist-Zionist youth group Dror. This became the "all-embracing engagement" of his teenage years, making his later change of course all the more striking. An ardent activist and organiser, he spent summers working on kibbutzim, alongside comrades who rebuked him for singing Beatles songs, and he flew to Israel on the last flight as the 1967 war began.

 

After hostilities had ended, Judt acted as an interpreter for volunteers on the Golan Heights, though he began to lose his faith. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country," he later said, but he gradually saw that leftwing Zionists, at least as much as the right, were "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country" and who had since suffered "to make this fantasy possible". His experience of Labour Zionism had a further effect of imbuing a lifelong suspicion of all forms of ideology and identity politics. He despised political expediency, but abhorred misplaced idealism and zealotry.

 

Although he missed the expected first in history in 1969, he was encouraged to continue in academic life, and eventually returned to King's, where he gained his PhD in 1972. Before that he had studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and then embarked on archival research in southern France. Mixing with the elite at the École Normale began another process of disenchantment, when he observed at firsthand that "cardinal axiom of French intellectual life", as he drily called it, "a radical disjunction between the uninteresting evidence of your own eyes and ears and the incontrovertible conclusions to be derived from first principles".

 

By the time the fruits of his stay in the south were published in 1979 as Socialism in Provence 1871-1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modern French Left, Judt had left King's for the University of California at Berkeley. But he did not relish his first taste of American academic life, and soon returned, to spend 1980-87 as a fellow, and politics tutor for the philosophy, politics and economics course, at St Anne's College, Oxford.

 

Nor was he enraptured by "the small change of Oxford evenings", and he was startled by the erratic inebriety of such celebrated Oxonians as Richard Cobb, although he shared Cobb's disdain for the uncritical Francophilia of so many of their colleagues. Even so, Judt preferred what he called the more mondain tone of Oxford to Cambridge "cleverness", and said later that he had been tempted to return to Oxford, but never to his own alma mater.

 

Then, in 1988, he was appointed to a professorship at New York University, which was his home for the rest of his life. Judt often missed Europe, which was after all his subject, but he flourished mightily in America. In 1995 he added another string to his bow when he became the director of the new Remarque Institute for the study of Europe at NYU, founded with a bequest from the widow of Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet On the Western Front.

 

These were very fertile years for Judt. In 1990 he published Marxism and the French Left: Studies On Labour and Politics in France 1830-1982, a collection of scholarly essays. Two years later his scintillating and excoriating Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 dissected that "self-imposed moral amnesia" of a generation that had been infatuated with communism and had worshipped Stalin to a degree which now seems not only repellent but incomprehensible.

 

Not all clever Frenchmen and women had bowed down before that "pyramid-builder" in the Kremlin. The phrase was Raymond Aron's, the political writer who was one of a trinity of French heroes to whom Judt devoted the lectures which became his 1999 book The Burden of Responsibility, along with Léon Blum and Albert Camus. By his later years, Judt's adherence to scholarly standards, along with his contempt for charlatans such as Louis Althusser and for academic fashion, made him seem a conservative figure to more modish colleagues. But far from making the notorious journey to the right, he was preaching social democracy to the end of his life. He was a reactionary only in reacting against intellectual dishonesty and imposture.

 

By now Judt was writing widely for newspapers and journals. In particular he had been encouraged by Robert Silvers at the New York Review of Books, where many of his best essays appeared, although he also wrote for the New Republic until excommunicated for his criticisms of Israel. He went with a bang not a whimper: two of his last contributions to the New Republic were a trenchant critique of the history of the six-day war by Michael Oren, now Israeli ambassador to Washington, and an evisceration of Koba the Dread, Martin Amis's purported book on Stalin.

 

In 1995 Judt lectured at the Johns Hopkins Centre in Bologna under the auspices of the New York Review. His lectures were published as a short book, A Grand Illusion? An Essay On Europe. He was a sceptic in the proper sense of the word, before it was appropriated by xenophobes: sceptical about the lack of democracy that was so evident in the project of European integration. Eurocrats with their centralising obsession reminded Judt of George Santayana's definition of fanaticism: redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

 

In a brilliant passage he compared the Brussels Eurocracy with the "enlightened despotisms" of the 18th century under Frederick II of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria, with their "ideal of efficient, universal administration, shorn of particularisms and driven by rational calculation and the rule of law". It was this characteristic of "the European idea" that has made it so appealing to "a dominant professional intelligentsia".

 

That sparkling essay was by way of being a trailer for the history of Europe that was to be Judt's magnum opus. As soon as Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 was published in 2005, it was recognised as a masterpiece, acclaimed by scholars and a bestseller in several languages. It described how Europe had remade itself after the horrors of war, totalitarianism and mass murder, helped by some degree of wilful amnesia, although towards the end of the century many repressed memories were at last being recovered.

 

On the one hand Judt had an eye for telling detail, whether it was the fact that in 1951 only one French household in 12 possessed a motorcar, or that in 1982 the state corporation IRI controlled a quarter of Italian ice-cream production. On the other, his judgments could be pointed: the 1970s was intellectually the bleakest decade of the century: structuralism and deconstructionism came to the fore because their "inherently difficult vocabulary had achieved a level of expressive opacity that proved irresistibly appealing to a new generation of students and their teachers".

 

But the larger theme of this great book is "the withering away of the 'master narratives' of European history", from the narrative of Christendom to the narrative of national greatness to the narrative of dialectical materialism. Two hundred years after the French Revolution, the "cycle of ideological politics in Europe was drawing to a close".

 

Before that, in 2003, and wearing his polemicist's hat, Judt had published in the New York Review the single most controversial of all his essays, Israel: The Alternative. Its opening words, "The Middle East peace process is finished," set the unsparing tone, before Judt went on to say that the very idea of an ethnic Jewish state had become an anachronism, and should be succeeded by a binational state. Writing a few years later, he hoped to see in time "a natural distinction between people who happen to be Jews but are citizens of other countries; and people who are Israeli citizens and happen to be Jews".

 

He was contemptuous of the way a powerful lobby had manipulated Jewish American opinion, although this compared with the way "the Greek, Armenian, Ukrainian and Irish diasporas have all played an unhealthy role in perpetuating ethnic exclusivism and nationalist prejudice in the countries of their forebears". This essay set off a storm of abuse: lectures by Judt were cancelled under pressure and he was dropped by magazines he had written for.

 

But the essay now seems prophetic as well as brave, as did another he wrote in 2006. The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up dealt in passing with the accusation that criticism of Israel was antisemitic, and warned that "genuine antisemitism may also in time cease to be taken seriously, thanks to the Israel lobby's abuse of the term". And with what already looks like acute prescience, Judt said that the calamitous war in Iraq "will in retrospect be seen, I believe, to have precipitated the onset of America's alienation from its Israeli ally".

 

In Bush's Useful Idiots he took apart the soi-disant liberals who had supported Bush's catastrophic foreign policy. He derided those members of the liberal intelligentsia who had supported the Iraq war but changed their minds after incompetent execution led to disaster. "Like Stalin's western admirers who, in the wake of Khrushchev's revelations, resented the Soviet dictator not so much for his crimes as for discrediting their Marxism," the liberal hawks were now "irritated with Bush for giving 'preventive war' a bad name".

 

His last book was written in extraordinary circumstances. In the late summer of 2008, Judt was diagnosed with the variant of motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – or in America as Lou Gehrig's disease, after a famous prewar baseball player – a wasting malady that gradually, and sometimes rapidly, destroys the use of all muscles; in Judt's own phrase, it was like being imprisoned in a cell that shrank by six inches every day.

 

In the spring of 2009 he won a special Orwell prize for his lifetime's body of work, and in the autumn of 2009, he gave a lecture in New York on "what is living and what is dead in social democracy". On that unforgettable occasion he appeared in a wheelchair, explaining that, since he was paralysed from the waist down, what the audience had was literally a talking head, and adding that he had been asked to say something uplifting about his condition and treatment, "But I'm English. We don't do uplifting." The lecture was expanded into Ill Fares the Land, published in spring this year to much acclaim, and an altogether more effective defence of collective welfare based on the values of community than anything heard from Labour politicians in recent years.

 

Rather then resign himself to slow extinction in that prison cell, Judt began, as a mental exercise, to recall all his life, from childhood onwards, and turned this into a series of beautiful short "windows of memory" which were published in the New York Review. Some of them dealt with Cambridge, Paris and Switzerland, while those on his upbringing were not only delightful but almost intolerably poignant to anyone of his generation: rationing, London fogs, trolleybuses, the local Sainsbury's which still had sawdust on its floor and "assistants in starched blue-and-white aprons", not to mention the way that "girls in those days came buttressed in an impenetrable Maginot Line of hooks, belts, girdles, nylons, roll-ons, suspenders, slips and petticoats".

 

Judt was twice married and divorced, and had several other women friends, before he met Jennifer Homans, the American dancer turned ballet writer, whom he married in 1993, with whom he found domestic tranquillity, and to whom he dedicated Postwar.

 

She sustained him during his final ordeal, and survives him with their two sons, Daniel and Nicholas, the dedicatees of Ill Fares the Land.

 

In two books, Judd used lines from Camus as epigraphs: "If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it," and "Every wrong idea ends in bloodshed, but it's always the blood of others." They could stand as the mottoes of his own sadly abbreviated but splendid life's work.

 

Peter Kellner writes: To those who did not know him well, Tony Judt was a bundle of contradictions: an idealist who could be scathingly critical of those who shared his ideals; a Jew, immensely proud of his heritage, who came to be hated by many Zionists; a very European social democrat who preferred to live in America.

 

To his friends, the contradictions disappeared. As with so many 20th-century Diaspora Jews, education provided the key to Tony's character: in his case, not education to serve the interests of any tribe or ideology, but education to understand and improve the world about him. His driving passions were evidence, rigour and truth. If his pursuit of those passions led him to reject earlier views, or to offend erstwhile allies, so be it.

 

Hence his disillusion with kibbutz life and, later, the moral basis of the state of Israel. Hence his frustrations with the centre-left in Europe and his despair with so many facets of the country that he loved and where he chose to settle.

 

His spell in Israel, immediately after the six-day war and between his first and second years at Cambridge, shaped him in many ways: not just his views of Zionism but his attitude to politics. He was always progressive, but never willing to surrender his judgment to groupthink. He loved few things more than to test arguments – leftwing, rightwing or non-political – with his King's College friends in his room late into the night.

 

His love affair with America started when he was a lecturer at Berkeley, California, in the 1970s. But his admiration of its open, can-do mentality was always tinged with scepticism: "I have seen the future and it does NOT work," he wrote to me. Even as he embraced the opportunities available to an American academic, he deplored the country's reluctance to imagine, let alone implement, the basic tenets of social democracy.

 

This approach led him to be wary of the enthusiasms that blinded others. He was as ardent as any Democrat to see the back of George Bush, but was never swept up in Obamania. At the time of the new president's inauguration, Tony told me he was no more than "cautiously optimistic", and fearful that he would compromise too far on issues as diverse as the Middle East and healthcare.

 

Tony's emotional home remained Europe. When I first visited his flat in New York, I was startled to see a poster showing the apartment block where my own father had grown up: the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna. Tony explained that this fine example of 1920s architecture reminded him of one of the two great 20th-century advertisements for social democracy: "Red Vienna" after the Great War. His other example was Britain's post-1945 welfare state, of which he and I were grateful beneficiaries.

 

Tony's greatest work, Postwar, is a monument to his knowledge and understanding of the continent in which he grew up. He returned to Cambridge for a year to work on the book and spoke of his disillusion with his alma mater. "They spend the whole time grumbling about the lack of government money," he said. For him, as the director of the Remarque Institute, it was part of the job to raise money. Why could not Cambridge academics do the same – and see the advantages of independence that this gave?

 

To some, that would be another contradiction: a lifelong social democrat who believed that universities should not be wholly reliant on state funding. But it was no contradiction to a man who believed always that a healthy society required both public purpose and private initiative.

 

• Tony Robert Judt, historian, born 2 January 1948; died 6 August 2010

 



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] HEARTFELT GRATITUDES TO INDIA !!!!!!

Dear All,

 

We are blessed to have a

FRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR like

INDIA , who helped us to

liberate our country from

Pakistani occupation. India

is the only country in the HISTORY who voluntarily

withdrew its forces from

Bangladesh!! Look at other

countries like German,Korea

Japan, Kuwait,Iraq, etc. where

US base is still there!! If India

had bad intention to occupy 

and control Bangladesh, then

their forces whould have been

still in Bangladesh!!! So, lets

cheers for INDIA !!!!

 

Regards,

DR. MANIK

 

 

 





________________________________
From: Faruque Alamgir <faruquealamgir@gmail.com>
To: notun_bangladesh@yahoogroups.com; wideminds <WideMinds@yahoogroups.com>;
alochona <alochona@yahoogroups.com>; Sonar Bangladesh
<sonarbangladesh@yahoogroups.com>; dahuk <dahuk@yahoogroups.com>; Bangla
Zindabad <Bangladesh-Zindabad@yahoogroups.com>; Amra Bangladesi
<amra-bangladesi@yahoogroups.com>; history_islam@yahoogroups.com;
mohiuddin@netzero.com; Musfique Prodhan <chena_kew@hotmail.com>; Ayubi
<s_ayubi786@yahoo.com>; Anis Ahmed <anis.ahmed@netzero.net>; Md. Aminul Islam
<aminul_islam_raj@yahoo.com>
Cc: akhtergolam@gmail.com; anis.khan@netzero.net; news@khabor.com;
bangla_ict@yahoogroups.com; banglarnari@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 3:58:01 AM
Subject: [Bangladesh-Zindabad] Re: [notun_bangladesh] Cartoon of the day

 


To add to the list the slogans are appropriate as we are watching the
subservient attitude of the Sarkar who claims to be only and the only sole agent
of Chetona( what chetona N for whose cause; a million Dollar  ????????????
?????) :


" TIPAI MUKH IS BLESSING FOR US AS   FARAKKA WAS"(SOURCES STATEMENTS GIVEN THRU
NEWS MEDIA)
 
" R GRATEFUL FOR URACCEPTING "BERU BARI" PLS DON'T LISTEN TO DETRACTORS ABOUT
"TIN BIGHA / TAL PATTY "
 
" WE DON'T MIND GIVING U TRANSIT FROM ANY POINT THE ETERNAL FREINDS WISHES"

Faruque Alamgir



On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Mohiuddin Anwar <mohiuddin@netzero. com> wrote:

 
>............ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
>......... ......... ........
>
>------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
>---------
>
>
>____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ ___
>Professional Logo Designs
>Your business needs a logo! Order today, delivery in 5 days or less.
>logomojo.com

[ALOCHONA] India Prepares for a Two-Front War



India Prepares for a Two-Front War
 
This isn't just a change in military doctrine—it's a reflection of America's declining power in Asia
 
By DAN BLUMENTHAL
 
There is one country responding to China's military build-up and aggressiveness with some muscle of its own. No, it is not the United States, the superpower ostensibly responsible for maintaining peace and security in Asia. Rather, it is India, whose military is currently refining a "two-front war" doctrine to fend off Pakistan and China simultaneously.
 
Defending against Pakistan isn't anything new, and Delhi has long viewed China with suspicion. But in recent years India has been forced to think more seriously about an actual armed conflict with its northern neighbor. Last year Beijing started a rhetorical clash over the Dalai Lama's and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visits to Arunachal Pradesh state, which China claims as its own. In the two years before that, Chinese border incursions into India almost doubled. Not to mention China's massive military buildup and concerted push for a blue-water navy.
 
In response, the Indian military is rewriting its so-called "Cold Start" doctrine. Cold Start's initial intent was to provide the armed forces with more rapid and flexible response options to Pakistani aggression. The Indian military believed that its ground forces' slow and lumbering mobilization after the 2001 terrorist attacks on its parliament played to Pakistan's advantage: International opinion turned against decisive Indian military action. Delhi also worried that its plan to send in heavy forces to weaken Pakistan was unrealistic and might well trigger a nuclear response.
 
So Indian strategists searched for military solutions that would avoid a nuclear response but still provide a rapid retaliatory punch into Pakistan. The resulting doctrine was built around eight division-sized "integrated battle groups"—a combination of mobile ground forces backed by air power and tied together through an advanced system of sensors and reconnaissance capabilities. The Indian Army would advance into Pakistan and hold territory to use as leverage to end terrorist attacks launched from Pakistani soil.
 
But as China has grown more aggressive, Delhi has begun planning to fight a "two-front war" in case China and Pakistan ally against India. Army Chief of Staff General Deepak Kapoor recently outlined the strategy: Both "fronts"—the northeastern one with China and northwestern one with Pakistan—would receive equal attention. If attacked by Pakistan and China, India will use its new integrated battle groups to deal quick decisive blows against both simultaneously.
 
The two-front strategy's ambitions go even further: In the long term China is the real focus for Indian strategists. According to local newspapers, Gen. Kapoor told a defense seminar late last year that India's forces will "have to substantially enhance their strategic reach and out-of-area capabilities to protect India's geopolitical interests stretching from the [Persian] Gulf to Malacca Strait" and "to protect our island territories" and assist "the littoral states in the Indian Ocean Region."
 
Of course the existence of a new doctrine does not make it an operational reality. But a cursory glance at India's acquisition patterns and strategic moves gives every indication that India is well on its way to implementation. Delhi is buying and deploying sophisticated command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance networks; supersonic cruise missiles; lightweight towed artillery pieces; and new fighter aircraft with supporting electronic warfare and refueling platforms. India has already bought C-130J aircraft from the U.S. for rapid force deployment. The navy is planning to expand its submarine fleet, to acquire three aircraft carriers, and to deploy them with modernized carrier-based fighter aircraft. In addition India plans to deploy fighters and unmanned aerial vehicles at upgraded bases on the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the eastern Indian Ocean.
 
India is not looking for a fight with China: It simply understands it is prudent to develop a military that can deter Beijing. President Obama's accommodating stance toward China and his apparent lack of interest in cementing partnership with Delhi have focused Indian minds, as have his failure to invest in resources his Pacific commanders need.
 
While America has a strong interest in sharing the burdens of checking China's expansionism, it should be concerned when its friends react in part to a perception of American weakness and Chinese strength. Ultimately, the U.S. is the only country with the power and resources to reassure its allies they need not engage in costly arms races with China. But first the U.S. must identify Chinese military power for what Asian allies know it to be: a threat to peace in Asia.
 
Mr. Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington
 


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Mustain Zahir on Pronab's visit



Mustain Zahir on Pronab's visit
 
 


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] One billion dollar Indian Loan to Bangladesh

One billion dollar loan from India has impeccably divided the nation. In one side clearly the so called pro-liberation, Shadhinotar pokhyer, alias Awami League, Jatiyo Party and another 12 parties and on the other side the so called anti liberation, jamaat and two other parties. One side is saying their prayer raising their joint palms touching forehead praising their secular god and His blessing through India – the friend, savior and rescuer to offer the biggest financial package ever given to take the Bangladesh into prosperity.
Other side is simply riling on the whole package of incentive that only invest, employ and facilitate the lenders fundamental interests go beyond the economic and financial means.
Who is right?
Turkey signed an MOU during Abdallah Gul's recent visit to Bangladesh, a One billion dollar offer, most of the AL doctrine media refuses to spread the news. We know the multilateral or bilateral donors committed pipe line package stacked with billion of dollars remains unutilized for need of earnestness from the part of the government or good governance. That could have built our Railway, road or transport net works, port and more interestingly the crippled power sectors. There is no dearth of money. But then why with such a fun fare and extra enthusiasm drumming up of this deal signing in lightning speed!
Infrastructure development that sets the centre stage of the whole package is to be mainly intended for lenders own interests in their own country, the troubled and difficult –eastern part. To facilitate their own cargo, one should not loose sight of barrier created for our own indigenous(not quite in their definition of quality and origin except environmentally hazards produce like 'brick') product to their land, cement, rod, glass, garment, cosmetics, toiletries already faced with no entry.
It would have been better to meet the Indian demands in economic terms by upgrading our own infrastructure in our own terms, from variety of cheaper sources, that too to cater not only India but whole region in competitive economic terms and perspective. Our investment would have been more productive and facilities more beneficials.
Another aspect of this deal is, nothing from, what AL, with all their cultural, political, economic and personal submission to their long proven mentor's utter discomfort, yet expected under the popular demand a little gesture as reciprocate to their total submission and services one after another. Not even a single one, expect the same promise of – 'looking', 'considering', 'in the next meeting'.
These hollow promises make great value to our so called pro liberation forces because they think because of India we have our liberation today. Even our Sector Commanders, Muktijodhya Shanksod and the whole bunch of cultural workers, who always keep them ready to offer yet more, in their quest for happiness and gratefulness!
It reminds me of today's British politics and its total submission to USA. – submitting to US pressure has become so ingrained in British politicians that they have lost all capacity to think for themselves. What ever enthusiasm is created by the new coalition government of David Cameron he proved to be even no worse then Tony Blair – re-writing British history in America's favor as he recalled how Britain had been 'very much the junior partner' in 1940 when Britain and the US became united in the war against Nazi Germany. In fact, the United States had not even entered World War II at that stage!
If this is the case for a nation like Britain, what on earth we should think of autonomous policies of our own for which millions of our people gave lives.


------------------------------------

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.comYahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
alochona-digest@yahoogroups.com
alochona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
alochona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ALOCHONA] 40 Bizarre Statistics That Reveal The Horrifying Truth About The Collapse Of The U.S. Economy



40 Bizarre Statistics That Reveal The Horrifying Truth About The Collapse Of The U.S. Economy
 
 Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon.  Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth.  What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system.  The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.  At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure.  We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop.  As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable. 

Already, things are really, really, really bad out there.  Unemployment is at shockingly high levels.  Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records.  Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed.

There is no use sugar-coating it.

The U.S. economy is collapsing.

The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy....

1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.

3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.

4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier.

7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck.  That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.

10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.

11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.

12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.

13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.

14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.

16 - Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.  Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

17 - According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

18 - 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.

19 - According to one survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

20 - According to one recent survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

21 - The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined sharply to 52.9 in June.  Most economists had expected that the figure for June would be somewhere around 62.

22 - Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.

23 - Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.

24 - Consumer credit in the United States has contracted during 15 of the past 16 months.

25 - During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.

26 - Things are now so bad in California that in the region around the state capital, Sacramento, there is now one closed business for every six that are still open.

27 - The state of Illinois now ranks eighth in the world in possible bond-holder default.  The state of California is ninth.

28 - More than 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means that they are a very bad credit risk.

29 - On Friday, U.S. regulators closed down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to be shut down so far in 2010.

30 - The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.

31 - The U.S. federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.

32 - According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

33 - The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.

34 - According to a new poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.

35 - One study found that as of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

36 - The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation's wealth.

37 - The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.

38 - According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

39 - For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

40 - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/40-bizarre-statistics-that-reveal-the-horrifying-truth-about-the-collapse-of-the-u-s-economy



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___