India’s Parliament Agrees to Anna Demands

By JIM YARDLEY || Published: August 27, 2011 (New York Times)

NEW DELHI — India’s Parliament capitulated on Saturday to the anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare and the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to support his cause in a standoff that lasted nearly two weeks.

Anna Hazare, center, in New Delhi on Saturday. He sought the
 creation of an antigraft agency, and went on a hunger strike.

After a day of wrangling and speechifying, Parliament adopted a resolution endorsing Mr. Hazare’s central demands for shaping legislation to create an independent anticorruption agency empowered to scrutinize public officials and bureaucrats in India.

Mr. Hazare, 74, has been waging a hunger strike for 12 days, refusing to call it off unless Parliament adopted his proposed legislation to fight graft rather than a bill put forward by the government. Huge crowds of supporters have participated in peaceful protests and rallies across India in what became an outpouring of public disgust over corruption.

Mr. Hazare’s aides told the Indian news media that he would now probably end his fast on Sunday morning at Ramlila Maidan, the public grounds in New Delhi where thousands of supporters had already started rejoicing on Saturday night, even as lawmakers were finishing their speeches in Parliament.

“There is a need of a change in the system,” said Pranab Mukherjee, the powerful minister who introduced the resolution into the Lok Sabha, the lower house. “And we are doing so.”

Parliament must still take several steps before final passage of a law to create the anticorruption agency, known as the Lokpal, before the end of the session. Saturday’s resolution also was marked by a touch of legislative sleight-of-hand. Mr. Hazare’s team had wanted a public vote in order to identify lawmakers who opposed the measure. Instead, the measure was read aloud in both houses and given approval without a vote.

“It was unanimous,” said R. P. N. Singh, a lawmaker and government minister, when asked on NDTV, a news channel, about the lack of a vote. “Both the houses have stepped up their resolve to fight corruption.”

Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike dominated public life in India and exposed a visceral public revulsion at the depth of corruption here, large and small. Hundreds of thousands of people had poured into the streets across the country to support his campaign for a tough anticorruption agency. Movie stars, gurus, politicians, singers and others flocked to his side at Ramlila Maidan, which served as his fasting site. Crowds filled the grounds despite heat and rain.

In recent days, the impasse has been centered on three demands by Mr. Hazare: that Parliament pass a Lokpal law during its current session; that similar agencies to fight corruption be established at the state level; and that a transparent process be established for public grievances. Those demands were endorsed in Saturday’s resolution, though the final details will be codified when the legislation moves to a special parliamentary committee.

“Parliament has spoken,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the Indian news media on Saturday. “The will of Parliament is the will of the people.”

If anything, though, the Hazare movement exposed the depth of disillusionment with India’s politics. Mr. Hazare’s hunger strike became a platform to articulate broader public frustrations.

He has lost more than 15 pounds, and refused medical advice to take glucose.

“You have done wonders,” Mr. Hazare told the crowd at Ramlila Maidan on Saturday morning, before Parliament approved the resolution. “Today the Parliament is discussing the issues you have raised. It is the people’s parliament that is supreme.”

P. J. Anthony and Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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TI-India condemns Anna arrest

Transparency International India condemns the arrest of Anna Hazare
Delhi, 16 August 2011

Anti Corruption watchdog, Transparency International India (TII) , has condemned the arrest of Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and other members of India Against Corruption, this morning.

Terming the arrest, unconstitutional and violation of civil liberties of ordinary citizen of this country, TII Executive Director, Anupama Jha said, “Government has not been able to check rising corruption in the country and is trying to muzzle the voice of those who raise their voice against corruption. This is undemocratic and injustice to the people of this nation”, she said.

Chair of TII, P. S. Bawa said, “Government should not ignore the criticisms being levelled against them with regard to the Lokpal Bill. Rather they should consider some valid points being raised by the Anna team.” Mr Bawa pointed out that certain clauses including action against the Ministers and MPs and procedure with regard to enquiry and investigation in the Government Lokpal Bill was too vague.

“We very strongly feel that the Government should attempt a reconciliatory talks with the civil society leaders , instead of stifling the voice of the people who are in no mood to tolerate corruption any more. We also feel that since the monsoon session of the Parliament is going on, the Government should reconsider its draft bill and include the points raised by the civil society leaders”, spokesperson from TII said.

Media contact(s):
Transparency International India

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A friend writes to Dr Manmohan Singh

E.A.S.Sarma
14-40-4/1 Gokhale Road
Maharanipeta
Visakhapatnam 530002
Tel. Nos. 0891-6619858/ 9866021646

To


Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister


Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

From what I have gathered from the news reports and TV broadcasts during the last couple of days, you issued a “terse” reply to a letter addressed to you by Shri Anna Hazare to intervene in the ongoing face-off between him and the government. You have evidently adopted a righteous approach by advising Anna Hazare to approach the police.

These reports also indicate that some of your responsible Cabinet colleagues and equally responsible UPA colleagues have cast serious aspersions on Anna Hazare’s personal integrity.

If these reports are accurate, I think it marks a very sad day for India’s democracy.

In today’s scam ridden environment, Anna Hazare has emerged as the civil society’s undeclared leader to symbolize the public anger and anguish against corruption. The people of this country have helplessly watched in dismay and disgust one scandal after another unfolding ad nauseam, not because that the executive that you head is over anxious to unravel it but more as a result of the fearless investigations carried out by the media, the objective analyses conducted by C&AG and the timely interventions made by the judiciary. At every stage, you and your esteemed colleagues, frowned upon the actions of each of theseinstitutions.

The people at large have read about these scams in the vernacular news papers, heard about them on the radio and viewed them on the TV channels. These scams stand out clearly because they are ugly, exploitative and are in the nature of plundering the country’s resources. Their dimensions are truly mind boggling. To think that the people of this country are not moved by what Anna Hazare has done during the last few months is like the proverbial ostrich hiding its head, unwilling to face the harsh reality!

Let us see why this diminutive man, leading a simple life, incurred the Prime Minister's displeasure.

Has he asked you for thousands of hectares of land as some industrialists nurtured by post-1991 reform have done? Has he approached you to give him a mining franchise in violation of the law of the land, as the mining lobby that permeates the political system today has often done? He has not asked for captive mineral blocks as Poscoe has done. Has he requested you to allot 2-G spectrum against all cannons of ethics as some of your own former Cabinet colleagues had allowed the influential industrial houses to do? Has he arm-twisted you for a remunerative berth in your Cabinet, as some of your coalition partners have done? Nor has he ever tried to stay in a 5-Star hotel as some of your Cabinet colleagues did!

You are an extraordinarily courteous person, as I have known you. I am sure you have not been terse to any of these influential persons anytime. I am therefore particularly surprised and distressed at the “terseness” that you have reportedly displayed to a physically fragile but morally strong person like Anna Hazare!

On behalf of the civil society, may I appeal to you, Mr. Prime Minister, to treat Anna Hazare with the respect that is due to him as an important member of the civil society and as a highly liked person among the youth of this country? You should remember that Shri Hazare has single-handedly woken up the nation to rise as one entity against the scourge of corruption. While I appreciate that the Constitution has bequeathed us an elaborate legislative machinery in the name of democracy, you should realize that the people of this country who are sovereign in their own right have no patience to wait for the machinery to go through the procedure of processing a draft law that ab initio falls short of their basic expectations. This is particularly true in the present context in which the UPA government is getting surrounded by scams and scandals galore, as never before.

On behalf of the civil society, I appeal to you to treat Shri Hazare as our representative and invite him for an interaction as such an interaction is what the public wants. I would welcome the government inviting for a similar interaction, the rights activists working in different parts of the country, the various NGOs known for their work, eminent concerned citizens and so on. In a democracy like ours, consultation is the essence and despotic methods of law making, the anathema. I hope good sense will prevail on the government and the ongoing face-off is resolved at the earliest without leaving a sense of bitterness among the people.

I write this letter on the eve of the 64th Independence Day. Sixty four years have gone by but the freedom we gained in 1947 at the national level is yet to percolate down fully to the disadvantaged sections of the people. To them, governance has become synonymous with corruption and harassment. I hope there is all round realization of this bitter truth.

Regards,




Yours sincerely




E.A.S.Sarma
Former Secretary to GOI
Visakhapatnam

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These kids think stealing is OK.

No wonder these kids think stealing trainers is OK. Everyone makes excuses for them – Telegraph Blogs

Katharine Birbalsingh

Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.

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The reason your house is not regularly robbed is not because you lock your doors. It is because most people don’t steal. Sure, locking is a deterrent used to deter those on the fringes of society, but the main reason you are not attacked on the street, shops are not constantly looted and burnt down, and we all don’t take things that don’t belong to us is because someone, when we were little, taught us the difference between right and wrong.

Put a child in front of an insect and he will take great delight in making it suffer until his mother or father tells him that causing pain is wrong. Children need to be brought up properly with parents who care enough about them to say no, with a school system that cares enough to admit when behaviour is out of control, with a community that recognises that we are ALL responsible for our children.

Many of these mindless thugs involved in the riots don’t think more than 10 minutes into the future. They think that stealing trainers is ‘fun’, not even considering that it might be wrong. Many of them are, quite literally, unable to read and write: 17 percent of 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate. If you de-educate an entire generation, if you constantly make excuses for their behaviour, if you never teach them the difference between right and wrong, then chaos is what you reap. These young people are just implementing what they’ve learnt at school!

Teachers can only keep the peace in the classroom because they have established authority. Where there is order in classrooms, children show respect because they have been taught to respect teachers. ONE teacher can therefore command the respect of hundreds of children. It is the same with the police and order in society. The police cannot hope to outnumber the rioters. As a civilised society, we rely on a sense of morality in our people to keep the order. How did the Japanese survive their recent nuclear disaster? They queued quietly for food and help, and waited. They didn’t say ‘ME ME ME’! Do young people wear hoodies in Japan? Do Japanese children question their teacher’s authority? Do Japanese adults defend the appalling behaviour of their youth? NO.

We are an international disgrace. What would happen if the teacher left her classroom and said that she was ‘keeping a close eye on things from her holiday home’? Theresa May, Home Secretary, was the only one of our leaders, whether Conservative or Labour, who returned from holiday immediately when Tottenham exploded. Where were all of our leaders? If even our politicians refuse to take responsibility for their ‘classrooms’, then how can we expect the children to remain in their chairs?

Ken Livingstone blames everything from Thatcher to the Conservatives to lack of youth clubs. Darcus Howe is comparing our riots to Syria’s! I look on in horror at our BBC reporters, as well as ordinary people being interviewed on TV, as they all chant the usual mantra without even thinking: cuts, cuts, cuts. A man whose shop had been looted met Nick Clegg on the street, clearly distressed, and rather than blame the looters, he attacked the Deputy Prime Minister over the cuts. What is wrong with everyone? Have we been brainwashed by aliens?

Even the sensible people (and there have been a few) refuse to denounce ALL of the violence. Brixton, Croydon, Birmingham are bad, but Tottenham somehow was ‘understandable’. Come again? You mean sometimes looting and violence are acceptable? Apparently, the Tottenham riots are understandable because the police shot Mark Duggan (father of four, according to the Guardian). Do we really think that the police went out and killed a random innocent man? Or rather, as the local residents say, was he not a ‘major player’ in the Tottenham criminal underworld? They say he ‘lived by the gun’, and caused ‘grief’ to local people. Some say he was a crack cocaine dealer. His fiancée says he was determined not to go back to jail (so he has been in jail) and he has a child with her and another woman. She also has another 2 children from another man. Yet what do Mark Duggan’s parents say? That he was a good father and a respected member of the local community. How can someone with that reputation be considered a respected member of the local community?

Was Mark Duggan a good father? Who knows! Certainly, Jens Breivik, father of the Norway bomber, was absent during his son’s childhood. He refused to see his 16-year-old son because he ‘wasn’t ready’ (whatever that means). Jens Breivik, rather than feeling remorse for having failed as a father, was only interested in his own reputation when the appalling Norway killings took place. But when I criticised him, I was shot down by ordinary readers of this blog. How dare I criticise parents when I am not a parent myself! White readers say that they are unable to speak about black absent fathers because they’re white. Fine. But is Jens Breivik black? Yet no one was willing to be critical of his questionable parenting. Parents teach their children the difference between right and wrong. If they are absent, then the child grows up without a moral compass.

These criminals are responsible for their behaviour but so are their parents who sit at home, knowing their children are out there, looking forward to the goodies their children will bring home. I am so angry, so ashamed, so utterly dismayed. The vast majority of these criminals are black. No one will say it. I hang my head in shame, both as a black person and as a teacher. I naively thought if I could tell people what was happening in our schools that we would change things. I wrote a book, thinking that this would stop the liberals from the excuse-making. But instead, I was told I had made it all up. Our great capital city is on fire and even this isn’t enough to convince people that the excuse-making must stop!

What does the Socialist Workers Party say? “These riots are a bitter reaction to racist policing and a Tory Government destroying people’s lives.” It beggars belief. Our reaction to these riots is the greatest worry. What will defeat us is not the rioters. Scary as they are, they are a minority of yobs. What will defeat us is the power of bad ideas. Given our refusal to change, the worst is yet to come.

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World's Tallest Building

World's Tallest Building

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has just announced plans to build the Kingdom Tower, a more than 3,280-foot structure that will eclipse Dubai’s Burj Khalifa as the world’s tallest building.

With an investment of 1.23 billion dollars and stretching two-thirds of a mile high, the skyscraper will serve as the flagship of a $20 billion development project known as Kingdom City. By the time it’s completed in 2013, the tower will feature a Four Seasons hotel, apartments, Class A office space, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observatory. The designers, Chicago-based architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, says development is already underway at a site just outside Jeddah, a city located near the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.

For the sake of comparison, Burj Khalifa, the current record-holder, is shorter by nearly 600 feet. And it’s already more than twice the height of America’s tallest structure, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago, which stands at 1,451 feet.

Beyond the tower’s impressive size is a design that features a host of smart technological advancements. For instance, the building’s tapered wings allow for an aerodynamic shape that reduce structural loading due to wind vortex shedding. And a high-performance exterior wall system minimizes energy consumption by reducing thermal loads.

Here are a few other notable innovations:

• A three-petal footprint that is ideal for residential units.

• Each of Kingdom Tower’s three sides features a series of notches that create pockets of shade to shield areas of the building from the sun while providing outdoor terraces with stunning views of Jeddah and the Red Sea.

• A sleek, streamlined design that was inspired by the “folded fronds of young desert plant growth

• 59 elevators, 12 escalators and a 98-foot sky terrace at level 157 that’s available for penthouse occupants

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The Fragile Human Memory

Four things most people get wrong about memory.

By Katherine Harmon | August 4, 2011  |

Human memory has been shown again and again to be far from perfect. We overlook big things, forget details, conflate events. One famous experiment even demonstrated that many people asked to watch a video of people playing basketball failed to notice a person wearing a gorilla suit walk right through the middle of the scene.

So why does eyewitness testimony continue to hold water in courtrooms? A new nationwide survey of 1,500 U.S. adults shows that many people continue to have the wrong idea about how we remember—and what we forget.

Here are four common incorrect assumptions about memory, held by some of the survey subjects, that experts say should be forgotten:

1. Memory works like a video camera, recording the world around us onto a mental tape that we can later replay.

Nearly two thirds (63 percent) of those in the random telephone survey said that they agreed with this model of a passively recorded memory. This notion runs counter to research that has shown events to be recalled based on "goals and expectations," the researchers behind the survey wrote in a new paper, published online August 3 in PLoS ONE. It also "contradicts the well-established idea that memory retrieval is a constructive process," too, which can be shaped by assumptions and beliefs, noted Daniel Simons, of University of Illinois, and his co-author, Christopher Chabris, of Union College, both of whom are psychology professors.

2. An unexpected occurrence is likely to be noticed—even when people’s attention is elsewhere.

More than three quarters (77.5 percent) of people thought that this would be the case. Clearly, they are unfamiliar with the gorilla suit study. That work and other research have shown that unexpected—and even preposterous—details frequently go unnoticed, and thus do not make it into memory. Aside from a false certainty that one would notice more people wearing oversized primate costumes, this presumption could have some serious implications for the legal system and eyewitness testimony. "If juries and lawyers believe that a suspect ‘should have’ noticed some event, they will tend to see claims of ignorance as deliberate attempts to deceive," Simons and Chabris wrote.

3. Hypnosis can improve memory—especially when assisting a witness in recalling details associated with a crime.

Most memory experts disagree with this statement, but more than half (55.4 percent) of the surveyed public thought that it was accurate. Courts have already steered away from accepting testimony that was gathered through hypnosis. And many studies have demonstrated that people under hypnosis—and even those who are not—can often be led by questioners to "recall" things that never occurred.

4. Amnesia sufferers usually cannot remember their identity or name.

Although soap operas might lead you to conclude otherwise, most common forms of amnesia interfere with the formation of new long-term memories—usually as a result of a major brain injury. The researchers cite the movie Memento as a reasonably accurate portrayal of the condition, but most popular portraits "depict amnesia as something more like a much rarer fugue state in which someone cannot remember who they are and suddenly take leave of their home and work," they noted. Perhaps because of the prevalence of this blank-stare amnesia in television and movies, a whopping 82.7 percent of those surveyed shared this (incorrect) view of the condition.

The survey also found that nearly half (47.6 percent) of respondents said that once a memory is formed, it is set in stone. This is also not true, say the researchers: "Our memories can change even if we don’t realize they have changed," Simons said.

Along these lines, more than a third (37.1 percent) of people thought that "confident" testimony from a witness should be adequate for a criminal conviction. However, many defendants who were later shown to be innocent via DNA testing had originally been convicted based on a faulty ID by an eyewitness. And as the researchers pointed out in their paper, being confident about your memory of an event is a good predictor of its actual accuracy, but "the link between confidence and accuracy across individuals is more tenuous, in part because people differ in their baseline levels of expressed confidence."

A lesson to be gleaned from all of this might exonerate a group that might need all of the credibility it can get these days: politicians. "The extent of these misbeliefs helps explain why so many people assume that politicians who may simply be remembering things wrong must be deliberately lying," Chabris said. But imperfect memories alone, of course, do not guarantee anyone is always striving to be deception-free.

But if there’s one thing to remember about the findings, it’s that "people tend to place greater faith in the accuracy, completeness and vividness of their memories than they probably should," Simons said.

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