How effective are international efforts to ease the problem of global hunger?

Effective

International efforts are effective when they are geared towards empowering food producers to build their long-term economic capacity. Cash vouchers and cash transfer programmes have proven better than food aid since these allow people to buy locally, thus injecting money into local economies and keeping local food producers in business.
WFP’s 2008 Purchase for Progress programmes that leverages on its ability to buy food commodities as a tool to both stimulate production and link small local farmers to regional agricultural markets.

 

International community has become more sophisticated in their approach to solve global hunger by incorporating high-end technology which proved to be effective in solving the problem of global hunger.
WFP has been turning to scientists to not just fortify the food products it distributes with micro-nutrients but to engineer specialized ready-to-use foods that can treat malnutrition as well. For instance, WFP developed a range of micro-nutrient powders that could be added to food directly. Evaluations showed that anaemia fell in Bangladesh, Kenya and Nepal after food powders were distributed to the communities.

 

International efforts have also become more effective with much stronger partnerships between private and public sector. (private sectors have greater expertise in solving hunger problem)
Since 2009, three UN agencies- the WFP,UNICEF,WHO- have been working together with global, regional and local business to combat hunger and malnutrition in a five-year, US$50 million initiative dubbed Project Laser Beam.

 

Not Effective

Governments cannot always successfully predict and therefore deal with the impact of geography and climate have on food production.
In Jan 2011, monsoon rains in Sri Lanka caused heavy flooding and severe damage to yet another staple- rice,causing shortage in food.

 

International efforts will be thwarted so long as the leadership of these affected countries remains ineffectual. Local government may be distracted by political infighting, may lack foresight and strategic planning.
In South Sudan, USAID agency has provided various form of aid such as construction of road and building of power plants. However, misplaced priority of South Sudanese government to spend US$10 billion to remake its capital cities into the shapes of objects found on its state flag will derail the international efforts.

 

Some international efforts focus too much on short-term aid which foster a culture of dependency, rendering them ineffective in solving the problem in a sustainable fashion.
After the success of Green Revolution was seen in 1970s, poor nations stopped investing in local agricultureal research since they can obtain food at a low price. This caused the rate of food production to fall in the 1990s, leaving the poor nations in a hungrier state that before.

 

 

Anders Breivik trial exemplified Norway’s strengths

The Independent

Friday 24 August 2012

If any good whatsoever has come out of the atrocities committed in Norway a year ago, it is to be found in the response of the country’s authorities and of the Norwegians themselves. That response reached its logical conclusion yesterday in the conviction of 33-year-old Anders Breivik for terrorism and premeditated murder and his 21-year prison sentence – the maximum available to a Norwegian court.

The scale of the Breivik’s crime defies comprehension. He set about killing as many people as he could, and he did so in a particularly calculating manner, collecting the weapons and ammunition over time, arranging elaborate decoys and methodically hunting his victims down. He claimed to be acting to save Norway from a supposed threat to its survival from immigration and Islam, and had read and written volumes trying to justify his case. He will spend at least 10 years in a special three-room cell, isolated for his own and other prisoners’ protection.

There will be those who regard the sentence as too lenient and the conditions of his detention as too comfortable. Such assessments might reflect some innate sense of fairness, or Breivik’s slight smile on hearing the verdict and his decision not to appeal. Any such view, however, has to be a comment less on the particular judgment than on Norwegian justice in general. This is the toughest punishment Norway can legally muster. It is to the credit of the country’s politicians that they did not try to legislate for new penalties retrospectively. Breivik was tried, convicted and sentenced according to the law of the land.

It is true that, after admitting the killings, Breivik had made no secret of his hope that he would be found sane and sent to prison, rather than being committed to a psychiatric institution as being of unsound mind. With the sort of perverted logic that characterised his crimes, he appeared to believe that being found sane would somehow validate his views. But again, Norwegian justice emerges well. Before the trial, experts had been divided about his state of mind. After hearing the evidence, the five-judge panel concluded unanimously that he had known what he was doing. This was the more courageous course, not only because that is what Breivik wanted, but because identifying dangerous views with madness is the escape route totalitarian regimes tend to favour. Norway has shown that it is prepared to take on the likes of Breivik and defeat them on their arguments.

To this can be added the humanity, dignity and lack of panic with which Norway’s leaders responded to the country’s most heinous act of terrorism; the efficiency with which Breivik was brought to trial; the openness of the harrowing and sometimes inflammatory court proceedings, and the national consensus against Breivik’s views which held firm throughout the year. And the question then has to be posed as to whether any other country would have handled a similar shock so well.

Even where Norway found its system wanting – an official investigation blamed the police for early failures that allowed Breivik to reach the Utoeya Island youth camp and prompted the police chief’s resignation – it was perhaps too hard on itself. In Breivik, the Oslo police were up against a lone and highly motivated individual – the most dangerous and unpredictable adversary any security service can have. Norway had experienced nothing of the kind before, and a relatively relaxed attitude to public security was, in its way, a positive reflection of the country’s abiding sense of safety.

The young lives cut down by Anders Breivik cannot be brought back; the grief will endure, and Norway will be a warier, less innocent place for a long time. But confronted with an extreme atrocity, its social tolerance and respect for the law remained intact. Much went wrong on 22 July 2011, but it is worth recalling that, in the horrific aftermath, a great deal also went right.

A Different Justice: Why Anders Breivik Only Got 21 Years for Killing 77 People

Aug 24 2012, 12:48 PM

Norway’s gentler criminal system uses something called “restorative justice,” which appears to be potentially better at reducing crime than our own, but at a real cost.

As an American, or maybe just as a moral human being, it’s hard not to feel appalled, even outraged, that Norwegian far-right monster Anders Breivik only received 21 years in prison for his attacks last year, including a bombing in Oslo and a cold-blooded shooting spree, which claimed 77 lives. That’s just under 100 days per murder. The decision, reached by the court’s five-member panel, was unanimous. He will serve out his years (which can be extended) in a three-room cell with a TV, exercise room, and “Ikea-style furniture.” The New York Times quoted a handful of survivors and victims’ relatives expressing relief and satisfaction at the verdict. It’s not a scientific survey, but it’s still jarring to see Norwegians welcoming this light sentence.

Norway’s criminal justice system is, obviously, quite distinct from that of, say, the U.S.; 21 years is the maximum sentence for anything less severe than war crimes or genocide. Still, it’s more than that: the entire philosophy underpinning their system is radically different. I don’t have an answer for which is better. I doubt anyone does. But Americans’ shocked response to the Breivik sentence hints at not just how different the two systems are, but how deeply we may have come to internalize our understanding of justice, which, whatever its merits, doesn’t seem to be as universally applied as we might think.

The American justice system, like most of those in at least the Western world, is built on an idea called retributive justice. In very simplified terms (sorry, I’m not a legal scholar), it defines justice as appropriately punishing someone for an act that’s harmful to society. Our system does include other ideas: incapacitating a criminal from committing other crimes, rehabilitating criminals to rejoin society, and deterring other potential criminals. At its foundation, though, retributive justice is about enforcing both rule of law and more abstract ideas of fairness and morality. Crimes are measured by their damage to society, and it’s society that, working through the court system, metes out in-turn punishment. Justice is treated as valuable and important in itself, not just for its deterrence or incapacitative effects. In a retributive system, the punishment fits the crime, and 21 years in a three-room cell doesn’t come close to fitting Breivik’s 77 premeditated murders.

Norway doesn’t work that way. Although Breivik will likely be in prison permanently — his sentence can be extended — 21 years really is the norm even for very violent crimes. The much-studied Norwegian system is built on something called restorative justice. Proponents of this system might argue that it emphasizes healing: for the victims, for the society, and, yes, for the criminal him or herself. Sounds straightforward enough, but you might notice that there’s nothing in there about necessarily punishing the criminal, and in fact even takes his or her needs into account.

“Restorative justice thus begins with a concern for victims and how to meet their needs, for repairing the harm as much as possible, both concretely and symbolically,” explains a 1997 academic article, by a scholar of restorative justice named Howard Zehr, extolling the systems’ virtues. In the Breivik trial, this meant giving every victim (survivors as well as the families of those killed) a direct voice. Victims were individually represented by 174 court-appointed lawyers. The court heard 77 autopsy reports, 77 descriptions of how Breivik had killed them, and 77 minute-long biographies “voicing his or her unfulfilled ambitions and dreams.” In an American-style retributive system, the trial is primarily about hearing and evaluating the case against the criminal. Norway does this too, but it also includes this restorative tool of giving space to victims, not as evidence, but to make the trial a forum for those victims to heal and to confront the man who’d harmed them. The trial itself is about more than just proving or disproving guilt, but about exorcising the victims’ suffering.

What about the criminal? Of course, Norway is locking Breivik away in part to keep him safely cordoned off from society. Beyond that, the restorative “model encourages offenders to understand the consequences of their actions or to empathize with victims,” Zehr explains. That begins with the trial, where he or she is encouraged to grapple with the wrongness of their actions; Breivik gave no sign of doing this, a remorseless, fist-pumping neo-Nazi to the very end. The process continues during the incarceration, which is treated less as a form of punishment than as a sort of state-imposed rehabilitation. It’s not a categorial difference from the American model, which includes a number of rehab and therapeutic offerings, but, with Breivik about to enjoy some not insignificant creature comforts in his three-room cell, the emphasis is clearly distinct.

The pleasant-sounding experience of being in Norwegian prison isn’t some sign of Scandinavian weakness or naïveté; it’s precisely the point. A comfortable cell, clean and relaxing environment, and nice daily activities such as cooking classes are all meant to prepare the criminal for potentially difficult or painful internal reformation. Incarceration, in this thinking, is the treatment for whatever social or psychological disease led them to transgress. The criminals are not primarily wrongdoers to be punished, but broken people to be fixed.

In an ideal restorative trial, the criminal will not just be passively punished for his or her crime, but actively take “responsibility for making things right with victims and the community as far as possible,” as Zehr puts it. This “restitution” can include “money and services, to victims and the community.” But that’s just an ideal, and Zehr acknowledges that “society rarely achieves justice that is fully restorative.” It’s hard to imagine Breivik ever getting to this point (experts expect his sentence to be extended indefinitely), though others do, and he will be joining a prison system designed for those to-be-reformed.

Here’s the tough thing about restorative justice: it works, as long as you don’t consider retribution to be its own inherent good. Despite the lighter sentences, restorative justice systems seem to reduce crime, reduce the cost of imprisoning criminals, and reduce recidivism. There’s no comparative data on which system better satisfies victims, but survivors and family members at the Breivik trial, at least, spent days of court time listening to, crying over, and applauding one another’s stories. And this approach isn’t just for well-off Scandinavian societies; Saudi Arabia has claimed considerable success applying the restorative models to terrorists and violent extremists.

But, even if we accept all of the data suggesting that society as a whole is better off under a Norwegian-style restorative model, those numbers don’t account for the more abstract, difficult-to-define sense of justice as its own inherent good. Whatever you feel when you read about a criminal going free, see a wrongdoer get away with it, or hear that a mass murderer got sentenced to only 21 years, those emotions might be rooted in a basic human need for justice and fairness. A 2003 Princeton psychological study, for example, isolated a feeling of “moral outrage felt by those who witness transgressions.” A German study from last year found that people who believe they’ve witnessed injustice become less happy, as if living in a just society were an intrinsic emotional need.

Norwegian-style restorative justice subverts those human desires for justice and fairness, which does seem to have found success in reducing crime’s cost to society. Proponents, such as University of Oslo professor Thomas Mathiesen, say it’s better for society overall because it isn’t about “revenge, but sober, dignified treatment.” But is the retributive-style need for justice and fairness really only about “revenge,” or is it something more important than that? The retributive approach absolutely has its pitfalls — the American system’s heavy emphasis on punishment has a history of leading it to horrific excess and abuse — but at least it’s meant to be just. I don’t know how you balance that against the overall social good, which Norway’s gentler system seems to have found success in promoting, but the vastly different philosophies undergirding the two systems are a reminder that, even if right and wrong are universal, how society treats them is not.

How America’s Losing The War On Poverty

August 4, 2012

While President Obama and Gov. Romney battle for the hearts and minds of the middle class this election season, there’s a huge swath of Americans that are largely ignored. It’s the poor, and their ranks are growing.

According to a recent survey by The Associated Press, the number of Americans living at or below the poverty line will reach its highest point since President Johnson made his famous declaration of war on poverty in 1964.

Close to 16 percent of Americans now live at or below the poverty line. For a family of four, that’s $23,000 a year. On top of that, 100 million of us — 1 out of 3 Americans — manage to survive on a household income barely twice that amount. How is this poverty crisis happening?

‘I’ve Never Seen Anything As Bad As Now’

Across the nation, food banks are reporting giant spikes in demand. The food pantry in Webster Springs, W.Va., used to serve 30 families a month just three years ago. Today, 150 families in that county — of just 9,000 people — depend on the food pantry run by Catholic Charities.

Webster Springs is a hard-hit area. Two coal mines have closed down there in the past year. The median income is around $20,000. Yet the crisis is also taking place right in our nation’s capital.

At the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., forklifts move huge pallets of food around this giant warehouse. This year, they expect to give out 33 million pounds of food — a record. Close to 700,000 people in the region are now at risk of going hungry.

“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen anything as bad as now,” says Lynn Brantley, who runs the facility. She’s been working with food pantries for four decades and describes what’s happening today as a hunger crisis. “It’s growing into the middle class.”

Who Is Poor?

There is increasing overlap between those who used to be firmly in the middle class and those who are poor. Most Americans who are poor are still white, but that’s also changing, says Angela Blackwell, who runs PolicyLink, a research and advocacy organization that focuses on poverty.

“The face of poverty for the nation has changed from being white to being black and Latino,” she tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “That’s made a difference, too, because when people thought of poverty as being white and elderly there was more general sympathy in the country and more commitment to do something about it.”

It’s estimated that the percentage of Americans living in poverty will increase to 15.7 percent this year, the highest in 50 years. “That shocking statistic really only represents the people who live below the official poverty level,” Blackwell says. “But you have twice that number [of] people who are living near poverty.”

Low-Wage Jobs Keep Incomes Low

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan delivered a State of the Union address in which he declared that the war on poverty had failed. Now, with the poverty rate in America expected to reach its highest rate since 1965, it looks like Reagan may have been right.

Not so, says Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert on poverty, but, he tells Raz, there is a lot to worry about.

“One reason is we’re still in a recession,” Edelman says. “We’ve had a change in our economy over the last 40 years that has produced a flood of low-wage jobs.”

One half of all jobs in the U.S. today now pay less than $35,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that’s one of the lowest rates for American workers in five decades.

There’s a common perception that somebody who’s poor or living below the poverty level is lazy or simply living off government handouts. Edelman says the actual average poor person is working.

“And working as hard as she or he possibly can,” he says. “And particularly in the recession, not able to get work or steady work. There are certainly people who make bad choices, but the fundamental question in our economy is the number of people who are doing absolutely everything they can to support their families — and they just can’t make it.”

Some Battles Won, But Threats Loom

Back when LBJ declared his war on poverty, being poor looked very different than it does today. Traveling in Mississippi with Robert Kennedy in 1967, Edelman saw children with bloated bellies and sores that wouldn’t heal. There was real hunger and real malnutrition.

“The food stamp program is a tremendous success,” he says. “But since that time, it turns out that children are the poorest age group in our country because their families — typically single moms trying to make it — can’t do so because of this flood of low-wage work that we have.”

Many economists say that when the economy does recover, a lot of the jobs that were lost won’t be coming back. That suggests the possibility of significantly high unemployment for a long time — maybe even a permanently large class of Americans who live in poverty. Blackwell says we can act to prevent that future. “And it’s not rocket science.”

“We know now that by 2018, 45 percent of all jobs in this nation will require at least an associate’s degree,” she says. “We could invest in the system of training — particularly focusing on community colleges and preparing people to go to four-year institutions and improving our high school education.”

“We actually have extraordinary infrastructure in this country, from the manufacturing base we once had,” she continues. “We need to retool it, we need to refit it, we need to make sure that it’s ready for the kind of advanced manufacturing that we’re seeing develop in other countries.”

Armed, but Not So Safe

By MICHAEL A. BLACK

Published: July 25, 2012

Chicago

AS the families of James E. Holmes’s victims continue to deal with this senseless tragedy, anti- and pro-gun groups are exchanging their standard barbs on gun control in America. Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, recently suggested that if this incident had occurred in his state, where many citizens carry concealed weapons, the crazed shooter could have been quickly terminated. I wonder if the congressman considered the confusion and terror that occurs in a real-life firefight?

I spent over 30 years as a police officer in the Chicago area, and I was required to carry a weapon both on and off duty. A few years after 9/11, laws were extended to allow officers to carry their weapons across state lines and retired officers to continue to be armed, the logic being that those men and women had been screened and trained and knew when and how to use their weapons in emergencies. Excluding our brave military personnel, police officers are probably the only individuals who rush toward the sound of gunfire.

I’ve faced people with guns many times and arrested violent, armed offenders for such crimes as robbery and homicide. Although my gun often left its holster on those occasions, I am grateful that I never had to shoot anyone. I never lost sight of the responsibility of carrying a weapon. Despite what many people think, it’s not something to be taken lightly.

Illinois is the only state that does not allow ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms. A few years back, I was visiting my father at the laundromat where he worked, when one of the regulars, who knew I was a cop, asked if I was “strapped.” When I said yes, he complained that he should have the right to carry a gun, too, since he was “a law-abiding citizen.” I’d heard this knucklehead spout off about minorities on numerous occasions and didn’t think he was a good candidate to be packing a weapon in public, though in many states, he could have been. The Trayvon Martin case shows the consequences of an untrained person with a gun. Police officers must go through psychological screening and a lot of training before they’re allowed to carry a weapon, and even then problems sometimes arise.

I once told a rookie that you never forget the first gun you take off the street. Mine was taken from a guy named Homer in 1978. It was close to midnight, and we got a call reporting two men trying to break into an apartment building. I pulled up and caught the guys — Homer and a friend — at the doors. It turned out that the caller was an ex-girlfriend of Homer’s who lived in the building and had made it clear that he was not welcome. Homer had a record — and a .22-caliber handgun in his pocket.

A month later, he saw me outside the courtroom and cordially waved. “It ain’t nothing but a misdemeanor,” he said, which at that time was true. “I’m just gonna plead it out and get rid of it.” And that’s what he did.

The last shooting incident I was involved in happened at 3 in the morning on Dec. 26, 2010, my last Christmas before I retired. We responded to a report of two men arguing, one threatening to shoot the other. My radio blared, “Shots fired! Man with a gun.” When I reached one man, running in the darkness between two houses, he had already been shot by another officer. When the officer had ordered the man to stop and identify himself, the man had pointed a pistol at him. The officer ducked behind his car door and fired half the bullets in his Glock 21 before finally hitting the offender once in the left buttock. We eventually found the shooter’s silver semiautomatic deep in a snowdrift.

The suddenness and confusion of that moment points out the folly of the politician’s belief that an armed civilian could have easily taken out James Holmes. Imagine the scene: speakers blasting, larger-than-life heroes and villains on the screen, and suddenly real gunshots, a man in a gas mask firing one of three weapons — a shotgun, handgun and rifle, with extended magazines for extra ammo capacity — into the panicking crowd. Even a highly trained, armed police officer would have been caught off guard. Try adding a bunch of untrained, armed civilians into the mix — this type of intervention could have made things much worse.

Illinois is routinely called the “most repressive state” by gun rights groups. It requires everyone to obtain a firearm owner’s identification card before purchasing firearms and ammunition. This gives the police another tool to work with if an armed crook is caught without a card. It also creates a paper trail for repeated, in-state purchases. Perhaps if some kind of effective tracking  safeguard had existed in Colorado, James Holmes’s purchases — all of which were legal — might have been flagged.

The pro- and anti-gun groups need to sit down and let common sense rule. We register automobiles and require proof of driving proficiency before granting driving licenses. Is it so unreasonable to consider a national or state-by-state registry for firearms? While I’m not totally opposed to concealed carry laws, why not require comprehensive background checks, psychological screening and training? And while it might be considered un-American to prevent an ordinary citizen from owning an assault rifle, would it be too much to ask why he needs to have a specially modified 100-round magazine?

As a former policeman, I know that such measures would help law enforcement do its job. As an American, I hope that they could help us head off the next tragedy of this type.

Michael A. Black, a retired police officer, is the author of “I Am Not a Cop,” with Richard Belzer, and the forthcoming book “Sacrificial Offerings.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 26, 2012, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: I Carried a Gun, and It Was Heavy.

The NY Times

So I guess the punchline is this: as long as the human security and human life are concerned, the weapons are neutral. It is their usage and implacations of this usage that will have a huge impact on the society and the world.

Posted by Tra 🙂

Higgs Boson: ‘God Particle’ Discovery Ignites Debate Over Science And Religion

(RNS) The Higgs boson is perhaps better known by its sexier nickname: the “God particle.”

But in fact, many scientists, including the physicist for whom it is named, dislike the term.

In 1993 when American physicist Leon Lederman was writing a book on the Higgs boson, he dubbed it “the goddamn particle.” An editor suggested “the God particle” instead.

One thing is clear: The July 4 discovery that marked a new chapter in scientific knowledge also reignited debate over the universe’s origins — and the validity of religious faith as scientific knowledge expands.

The Higgs boson explains why particles have mass — and in turn why we exist. Without the boson, the universe would have no physical matter, only energy.

The cosmological implications are hotly debated. Can God fit in a scientific story of creation?

The answer is “no” for Lawrence M. Krauss, an Arizona State University theoretical physicist. He argued in Newsweek that the Higgs boson discovery “posits a new story of our creation” independent of religious belief.

“Humans, with their remarkable tools and their remarkable brains, may have just taken a giant step toward replacing metaphysical speculation with empirically verifiable knowledge,” he wrote.

With enough data, physics would make God obsolete, he said. “If we can describe the laws of nature back to the beginning of time without any supernatural shenanigans, it becomes clear that you don’t need God.”

Religious believers see things differently.

Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno argued in a Washington Post column that scientifically deduced universal laws expose “the personality” of God. “The mysteries revealed by modern science are a constant reminder that reality is bigger than our day-to-day lives,” he wrote.

Alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra said in a YouTube video that the boson hints at a divine interconnectedness of all things.

“It only strengthens the notion that the universe comes out of a nothingness which is everything,” he said.

This much is true: Higgs bosons — which permeate the universe — help us understand how something comes from nothing.

The awe we feel with this heady topic causes even nonreligious people to use religious language, said Philip Clayton, dean of Claremont School of Theology and a researcher of science and religion.

“Humans are really fascinated with what we know scientifically and what lies right at the boundaries of what we can know,” he said.

Albert Einstein’s quip that God “doesn’t play dice with the world” is a metaphor to help explain our quest for order in a world that seems chaotic, Clayton said.

Such metaphorical language helps to explain the world at the particle level where physical laws such as gravity break down, and physicists rely on abstractions to describe how particles interact.

Clayton said discussing whether the discovery “disproves religion or supports creation” misses the point. “The fans and the foes of religion … are overreaching on both sides. The quest for the Higgs boson, and its ultimate discovery, neither proves nor disproves God,” he wrote in a Huffington Post column.

But Krauss says science isn’t trying to disprove God. Rather, data only have to offer an explanation for the universe that would make a divine creator redundant. When English physicist Peter Higgs proposed the Higgs boson in 1964, it helped codify an incomplete model of the universe. This model was shown accurate through experimentation culminating in July 4’s discovery.

Krauss said further experimentation will lead toward a “unified theory” of the universe that accounts for everything from quarks to galaxies.

“That’s the difference between science and religion,” he said. “We don’t require the universe to be what we want — we force our beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality.”

The Decline of the Media Industry

http://inthecapital.com/2012/03/06/why-your-grandkids-wont-know-what-dvds-or-newspapers-are-infographic/

Why Your Grandkids Won’t Know What DVDs or Newspapers Are [INFOGRAPHIC]

Digital media has experienced some intense positive trends over the past six or seven years while the more traditional media industry has been hit by some major drops in what used to be million dollar markets, such as video rental stores and traditional book stores. The websiteTotalbankrupcy was kind enough to encapsulate the staggering figures and numbers behind the decline of the media industry into a beautiful infograph, so I give you the decline of the media industry.

Here are some of the crazier statistics that stood out to me:

• Newspaper Advertising Revenues Dropped by 44.24% in just 4 years – Unbelievable. Considering this is one of the biggest sources of revenue for most newspaper companies, this statistic reveals how print media has been ravaged by digital media. That’s rough.
• Between 2007 and 2010, 13,500 newspaper journalists lost their jobs – Thank god I write for IntheCapital, a prime example of digital media at it’s best.
• Citizen journalism, locals reporting on their own news, is on the rise – Again, thank god I write for IntheCapital!
• Amazon now sells more e-books than printbooks, the ratio being 115 e-books for every 100 print books – Considering how popular kindles and e-readers are now a days, it makes sense that e-books will continue to trend upward and print books slowly become a thing of the past.
• Netflix predicts DVD’s will be obsolete by 2030 – I think back at how long it took to amass my current DVD collection, and I feel myself welling up with spite and anger at the thought that it was all for nothing.

Sport heroes you MUST know!!!!!!!

“Sport provides the true heroes of our age.’ Do you agree

Sources : http://bleacherreport.com/articles/515589-10-sports-heroes-that-are-actually-heroes, Wikipedia

 

1) Terry Fox:

Fox was a distance runner and basketball player who had his right leg amputated in 1977 after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a cancerous condition.

In 1980, on an artificial leg, Fox began the “Marathon of Hope,” a cross-country run across Canada intended to raise money for cancer research. He had raised $1.7 million by the time he was forced to stop the Marathon of Hope.

2)Roberto Clemente:

The link between professional athletes and charity is pretty much assumed at this point. But Roberto Clemente did it before it was a trendy professional obligation, and it ended up costing him his life. Clemente used to spend his offseasons doing charity work for his native Puerto Rico

3) Billie Jean King:

Professional tennis player who was a key figure in the fight for women’s equality during the 1970s, the time in which her famous victory over Bobby Riggs.

4)Arthur Ashe:

It would have been enough if Ashe was remember solely for being the first great African American tennis player. But he used his celebrity to further civil rights causes, most notably the movement against Apartheid.

5)Jackie Robinson :

an American baseball player who became the first black Major League Baseball (MLB) player of the modern era. The example of his character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.

6) Jessie Owens:

Jesse Owens was the star of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which was supposed to be a showcase for the so-called “master race.” Owens won four gold medals, and his success made Hitler choose to skip all medal presentations after the first day.

7) Muhammad Ali:

Muhammad Ali  is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist. Considered a cultural icon, Ali was both idolized and vilified. Ali stated, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” – one of the more telling remarks of the era.  Widespread protests against the Vietnam War had not yet begun, but with that one phrase, Ali articulated the reason to oppose the war for a generation of young Americans, and his words served as a touchstone for the racial and antiwar upheavals that would rock the 1960s.

 

Traditional media still the best platform for national debate

By Leslie Fong

AMID all the hype about the rise of social media, it might be pertinent to ask why some government ministers have chosen of late to make policy announcements on their Facebook pages or in their blogs instead of traditional mass media.

Doubtless they must have done so not just to show that they are keeping up with the changing times, but also because they believe that what they have to say can reach more people, and more effectively, via social media rather than newspapers, radio and television.

But is that really the case?

On the face of it, the reach of some social media may appear formidable. Facebook, the most popular, has more than 2.5 million active users in Singapore. The reach of popular bloggers can be mind-boggling – Malaysian actress Lisa Hurihani, to name just one, has seven million followers who read her blog or Twitter postings regularly!

In comparison, The Straits Times, Singapore’s best-selling newspaper, reaches 1.35 million daily; Lianhe Zaobao, the national Chinese-language daily, a shade over 500,000; and Berita Harian, the Malay-language daily, 230,000. Channel 5, the free-to-air English-language television channel, is watched by 998,000 daily while Channel 8, which is in Mandarin, reaches 1.9 million viewers each day. The combined reach of all the radio stations in Singapore is an estimated 2.4 million.

It would be tempting to add up all these numbers and say traditional mass media have a reach of more than 7.378 million, or about three times that of Facebook in Singapore. But that would be wrong because there is over-lapping to account for. For example, according to available statistics, at least 130,000 read both The Straits Times and Zaobao each day. Trying to estimate how many of these also watch Channel 5 or 8, or both, as well as listen to more than one radio station is a Herculean task.

However, it would not be wrong to argue that the combined reach of traditional mass media in conveying a ministerial announcement will exceed that of his Facebook posting – because not all 2.5 million users would make it a point to check out his blog daily. Indeed, in all probability, few would. Of course this sort of argument can be mounted against, say, newspapers carrying the same announcement. But a news story about the announcement will likely catch the eye of a Straits Times reader flipping through its pages.

If a ministerial posting on, say, Facebook does not reach that many Facebook users, it is not unreasonable to ask whether the minority of Facebook users who happen to check in on a minister’s posting should be the first to hear about a policy announcement before the majority of Singaporeans who turn to traditional mass media every day.

Leaving aside the numbers game, I would argue that the issue is not just reach but, more importantly, the implications of that minister’s decision to bypass traditional mass media for social media. Chief among these is the implicit relegation of traditional mass media to lesser importance. Before I go any further, let me declare my interest – I have worked in media for more than 42 years, the first 35 in newspapers, the rest in both traditional and new media.

With bias for or against neither, I say that ministers choosing to go to social media first, instead of making their announcements in an open press conference, are, unwittingly, undermining traditional mass media. And that, I submit, is not in Singapore’s best interest. Here I should stress that I am not angling for protection for traditional mass media. I just think it is wrong to leave them out when important announcements that affect the entire nation have to be made.

As it is, traditional mass media, all owned and operated by Singaporean companies, face blistering competition for attention, or eyeballs, as well as revenue from numerous digital challengers, not a few of which are global players with no particular allegiance to Singapore. There is nothing xenophobic about this. It is an open question whether, when push comes to shove, foreign-owned and operated media will show the same sense of responsibility and restraint so necessary for keeping Singapore’s multiracial society in good stead.

Seen from this perspective, a ministerial decision to go to social media first is, in effect, a risky invitation to eyeballs to move there, away from traditional mass media. Once this migration, already under way among the younger generations, gathers even greater momentum, traditional mass media are in clear danger of becoming irrelevant.

When that happens, Singapore will lose the valuable platform through which it can, as a nation, talk with itself. Despite the brickbats thrown at mass media from every direction, they still play the valuable role of ensuring that the bulk of Singapore society are focused on the same issues, be these about the widening income gap or the perplexing failures of the Mass Rapid Transit system. People may hold different views about how the income disparity can be narrowed but they are not talking at cross-purposes.

In that regard, new, digital media, whether social by design or not, are no substitute. By their very nature, new/social media are narrow, fragmented and unregulated. Technology has enabled Singaporeans to go online, or mobile, and seek out like-minded individuals with common interests, and so forge a tight little community of their own. They can share photographs, swop gossip, tell the world where they are having coffee, and open up on one thousand and one facets of their private lives which a dinosaur like me would never countenance doing. Such groups can be happily esconced in their own little world within cyberspace, with nary a bother about what their fellow Singaporeans think, say or do.

In short, social media are a useful tool for one-to-one or small closed group engagement but not, I submit, the platform through which to keep the entire nation informed and educated, much less actively involved through rational discussion.

Should Singapore lapse into the state when eyeballs are dispersed over as wide a spectrum as the mind can imagine, it would become well nigh impossible for Government to ensure that enough of society are on the same page, to begin with, never mind forging a national consensus. And without that consensus, effective governance becomes an uphill task.

Can we then claim, hand on heart, that we will still remain one people, one Singapore?

The writer, former editor of The Straits Times, is the senior executive vice-president for marketing, Singapore Press Holdings.

streview@sph.com.sg

Singapore is not good model for developing country

June 4, 2012 – 4:03 PM | Permalink| Print |

When Myanmar’s reforming President Thein Sein visited Singapore in January, officials there offered lessons on how to modernize and attract foreign investment. Singapore’s eagerness to court Myanmar’s ruling generals has been a diplomatic feature of the international community’s two decades of trying to crack open the reclusive country.

Now that Asia’s “next economic frontier” has started to open up, Singapore – where Myanmar’s senior generals bank and seek.
hospital treatment – is keen to offer itself as a dazzling example of how to become a first-world economy within a couple of generations.

It’s a siren call that should be resisted, said Rodney King, the Australian author of the controversial book Singapore: Myth and Reality.

“Singapore is not a good development model and not one a developing country should follow. Singapore has basically conned the world about its nation-building achievement,” said King. “It is frightening that they should regard Singapore as a good model to follow.”

Years of robust growth in Singapore were driven initially by waves of foreign capital into the city-state and more recently by the import of foreign workers, who now make up one-third of the population. The government’s jealous husbanding of much of the economy, meanwhile, has rendered impotent much of the nation’s faculty for creative business.

“Its entrepreneurial, innovative capacity is quite small. It’s got a very small local private sector, unlike say South Korea and Taiwan, where there are vigorous entrepreneurial cultures. In Singapore, they don’t really have that,” said King, who spent many years working in the island-state.

It is unlikely that Singapore says this in its diplomatic and commercial outreach to Myanmar. Ashfaqur Rahman, chairman of the Center for Foreign Affairs Studies in Bangladesh, had no doubt what Singapore hopes for when he noted how it shunned the previous Western policy of making a pariah of the ruling junta.

“The basis of this strategy was to gain from a relationship which was essentially economic. Singapore invested heavily in Myanmar and traded with her. It even pushed other [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] members to allow Myanmar to join the regional organization.”

Myanmar citizens, who for decades have been mired in corrupt economic lethargy, are no doubt dazzled by Singapore’s success in turning a former modest British trading hub into a confident modern nation with a per capita income among the highest in the world.

Remarkably an island state with just 1% of Southeast Asia’s population still attracts nearly half of its foreign direct investment. Yet this success has come “at considerable costs in terms of independent development, human rights, freedom, and workers rights”, according to an academic paper published last year.

That part of the economy not in foreign hands is dominated by government-controlled institutions run by the local nomenklatura. Keeping an every present watch is the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has run virtually a one-party state since independence.

“One of the key features of the Singapore model is that the commanding heights of the economy are controlled by the state – directly or indirectly. Burma [Myanmar] had all its state enterprises taken over in 1962 by [the late general] Ne Win, which has just dragged the economy into the ground,” said King.

“If they were going to follow the Singapore model they would be just repeating the mistakes that they have already made. Singapore crushes individual enterprise but [Myanmar] is going to need all the enterprise it can possibly muster to get over 50 years of chronic warfare and political repression.”

King’s criticism might have less sting given Singapore’s wealth were it not also echoed by an increasing number of complaints rising from within the city-state. Indeed, many now question whether the “Singapore model” is still valid. In last year’s general election the ruling party won its lowest share of the vote since independence.

Productivity gains have been notoriously weak for decades, hardly what the casual observer might imagine from a country regularly ranked as one of the most competitive.

The American economist Paul Krugman infuriated Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew 20 years ago by claiming Singapore’s growth could be explained by more of everything – capital and labor – except efficiency.

Ever since the launch of the “Teamy the Productivity Bee” campaign three decades ago, the government mantra has been to focus on generating greater added value. Despite myriad training initiatives, worker productivity has barely grown by 1% a year in the new millennium.

Growth has been sustained by an inflow of foreigners that has doubled the island’s population since 1980, with foreigners and non-Singapore born citizens now representing three-fifths of the population. “We’ve grown in the last five years by just importing labor,” said Lee Kuan Yew himself in 2010.

The country arguably hasn’t maximized that influx. “They imported all these scientists and technicians from all over the world but the outcome has been fairly modest. These people have found working in a bureaucratic structure quite stifling,” said King. The authorities “spend tons of money on resources but the ambience isn’t there really. They seem to be able to attract talent, but when they get them they can’t operate the way that they want.”

Equality gap
Singapore shone in the headlines again recently when one of Facebook’s founders, Eduardo Saverin, was revealed to have given up his United States passport in favor of residency in Singapore to “invest like crazy.”

Saverin joins an elite of super-rich floating on top of an ordinary public, many of whom struggle to make ends meet in an increasingly expensive city. The bottom half of the population experienced either falling real income, or no gain in income, over most of the last decade.

High inequality levels have combined with falling social mobility, reinforcing the grip of the privileged upper class to the point where even the government recognizes this threatens the social compact.

One of the city-state’s most respected economists, Professor Lim Chong Yah, said in April that the city’s Gini coefficient (a measure of equality) of 0.47 was approaching the “danger level” of 0.5 when typically income inequality starts to tear at a country’s social fabric. He has advocated a “shock” therapy of pay rises for workers and tax penalties for the rich.

King estimates one-fifth of the population lives in poverty as measured by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development standards. “They have been able to attracts lots of foreign direct investment … at the cost of Singaporean living standards.”

Singapore may now have passed some sort of inflexion point. The first two generations of PAP leaders have faded from the scene – aside of course from the Senior Lee himself – and the younger leaders do not seem to hold the power to cow the population as in the past.

“This has been a country of frightened, intimidated people. In the 1950s and ’60s, Singaporeans were feisty, gung-ho people but Lee and co killed their spirit,” said King.

This past timidity in the face of authority permitted a series of policy mistakes followed by awkward U-turns. One notable quirk came in 1970 when Lee discouraged big families after deciding the population was too high, only years later changing his mind to beg (rather comically) Singaporeans to breed more freely.

Over the years, careful observers have pointed out that Singapore’s “success” owed much to being a small, compact island that made political and social control relatively easy, so enabling it to experiment with robust but effective national development strategies.

By contrast, Myanmar is an infinitely more complicated jigsaw of ethnic, geographic, economic and historic problems in a space that is one-thousand times bigger. “Vast, sprawling countries like Indonesia, (Myanmar) and Thailand … would find such strategies a great deal harder to implement,” said King.

To be sure, Singapore’s founding myth as a mosquito-infested swamp of palm plantations and kampong dwellers in 1965 is a compelling one for underdeveloped countries like Myanmar eager to learn the secrets of rapid enrichment.

Nothing could be further from the truth, however. In 1965, Singapore was one of the most developed cities in Asia in terms of industrial development, living standards and literacy of the population, argues King.

“Singapore’s nation-building success, such as it is, was based on a set of highly favorable circumstances that are unlikely to be found elsewhere,” he said.

Singapore surely must be praised for many things, not least its relatively clean dealings in a region benighted by corruption. But, if King’s assessment is correct, then Myanmar might be wise to examine carefully the advice from an authoritarian state of growing inequality struggling with low productivity and rising social unhappiness.

Source: http://www.inewstoday.net/2012/singapore-is-not-good-model-for-developing-country/