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JULY 2003 |
IN THIS ISSUE
MAIN FEATURE Broadbandits! : The $750 Billion Telecom Heist By Deepak Goyal OPINION Different Land, Déjà Vu : From Brezhnev to Bush By Ashok Deo Bardhan HONOR Being the Change : Overachiever with Heart By Ankur Luthra Publisher’s Note • Infotech India • Ethnic Language Rights Finance: Protection from Disability Auto Review: 2003 Toyota Celica GT-S Bollywood Watch, Hindi Film Review: Bhoot • Tamil Cinema Recipe: Pineapple Mango Melba Ice Cream • Horoscope |
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Publisher's Note
The Enron scandal made a horrified public realize just how far corporate greed can go. However, telecommunications is a somewhat esoteric field that does not lend itself easily to sexy news stories. Nor are the main players particularly well known. Om Malik, a writer for Business 2.0, has been a close observer of the industry for many years. With his expertise in both the technology and financial markets, he is well placed to piece together the story of how the huge $750 billion telecommunications scam happened. It’s a rollicking tale of corporate crooks, greedy financiers, millions of unsuspecting investors, clueless venture capitalists, crooked forecasters, self-proclaimed pundits and hapless entrepreneurs. He has written about it in a new book, “Broadbandits! Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist.” We made it our cover story for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a cautionary tale about the perils of unbridled capitalism. The telecom debacle proves that the market is to economics what fire has been to the rise of civilization: a vital tool, perhaps, but a terrible master without effective checks and balances. The second, somewhat parochial reason for our choice is this: It’s nice to see a South Asian writer venture into investigative business reporting. Ashok Deo Bardhan’s wry commentary on the U.S. media’s role during the Iraq war should draw more than the occasional sardonic smile; it’s a sobering reflection on how the powers that be continue to manipulate opinion, and how conscious vigilance is the real antidote. In this issue we also carry an essay by Berkeley computer science graduate Ankur Luthra: It is his broad, humanist vision which impressed us as much as his formidable academic performance. |TOP| Main Feature  Broadbandits!: The $750 Billion Telecom Heist - By Deepak Goyal Business and technology writer Om Malik has pieced together the sordid saga of how telecom mavericks made millions, greedy financiers fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture capitalists, crooked forecasters, self-proclaimed pundits and hapless entrepreneurs, writes Deepak Goyal.  Business writer Om Malik, author of "Broadbandits" Veteran business and technology reporter Om Malik was there when it all happened, and now he has written about the great telecom heist in his new book “Broadbandits! Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist.” A former writer for Forbes, Malik later moved to Red Herring and now writes for Business 2.0. His own interests changed and evolved as the industry around him changed. He started writing about PCs and the Internet, then moved on to telecommunications. In his book, he combines personal interviews, published reportage and his own knowledge of the financial markets and telecommunications technology to piece together a breathtaking story of how the shenanigans of a handful of men and a dozen companies left the telecom industry in a shambles and shareholders and investors broke while making the big players rich beyond their dreams. “Poof! $750 Billion is Gone,” says the Web site on the book, www.broadbandits.org. “Forget the dot-con; the biggest bubble in the history of the modern world was the telecom bubble. At its peak in February 2000, Wall Street valued the telecom companies at $2 trillion — that is more money than the entire Third World debt and change. Today the entire sector is worth less than a third of that.” The basic statistics are staggering. Over 15 companies have filed for bankruptcy, and that’s just for starters. Several others are walking down the same path. And don’t think it’s just rich investors and trust fund kids who are hurting. It’s average Joe and his or her pension which has taken a beating. Not just one or two, either. Its estimated that while corporate fat cats squirreled away their own money into safer havens, they played fast and loose with employee funds, and after the telecom crash, 400,000 employees have been hit with a double whammy—they have lost both their jobs and retirement savings. “‘Broadbandits’ is the story of the new gold rush,” says the Web site. “It is an engaging behind- the-scenes look into the telecom bubble, with tales and anecdotes about mavericks who turned simple light and glass fibers into veins of gold, financiers who got greedy and fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture capitalists who thought they’d tapped into the mother lode, crooked forecasters, self-proclaimed pundits and hapless entrepreneurs who believed that they were changing the world. “The book introduces a colorful cast of characters — from the son of a former Brooklyn garbage man to the scion of a blueblood Yankee family — and tells how they got swept up in the mania. It gives the inside story of how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive calls ‘high-yield heroin’ and it also takes a critical look at how well-meaning government actions can sometimes have disastrous results.” Malik says that several factors led to the huge scam: The cult of the CEO, unrealistic growth expectations, the fact that CEOs completely lost sight of their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, and the fact that most CEOs lacked the guts to tell Wall Street something all of them knew — that this bubble was going to burst. Here’s a quick look at the dramatis personae:
The Sidekicks
“Unlike the dotcom bubble, those who helped create and nurture the telecom bubble are still a shadowy bunch, and their stories (with the exception of Global Crossing chairman Gary Winnick) remain largely undocumented,” says the “Broadbandits” Web site. “There are some who became fabulously wealthy. ‘Broadbandits’ will tell you exactly who made off with how much and some who never even got to the million-dollar mark before crashing and burning. If all this sounds relentlessly gloomy, the book will end by taking a look at some of the bright spots the future may hold, and what broadband and telecommunications might look like ten years from now.” “Between 1996 and 2001, what went wrong was the execution of the broadband dream. The six-year-long broadband bubble was the result of a ‘here-and-now’ culture where all of us became obsessed with our ‘net assets’” and forgot about our net worth,” Malik writes in Forbes.com in an essay adapted from his book’s epilogue. “From the very start, the deregulation of the telecom business was flawed; the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was drafted without taking into account the coming Internet tsunami. Baby Bells such as Verizon and SBC Communications, which are among the highest contributors to politicos, ensured that they have a home field advantage.” It’s not all over yet. Up to $100 billion in fiber network investment could be written off in the next three years. Malik’s book goes right behind the scenes and puts the spotlight on the slick operators who made a quick buck, the “experts” whose fall from grace has been as spectacular as the dizzy heights they had once ascended. Plenty of honest entrepreneurs lost out too, and in the resulting hangover, even good ideas are orphans — venture capitalists are just too risk-shy to entertain unconventional ideas. Malik is harshly critical of what happened, but he says something good came out of it. Here’s what his critique about what happened in Forbes.com: “Greedy chief executives undermined the American free market system by stuffing their coffers; Wall Street encouraged the management of broadband companies to adopt short-term metrics; and investors simply played along. And the little guys just got slaughtered. The greedy chief executives who failed upwards should be penalized, and I would not shed a single tear if any one of them is sent to the big house up the river. They deserve it.” But something good came from the bubble as well. “Baby Bells, which had been sitting on the DSL technology for almost a decade, were forced to roll out the service because Covad and NorthPoint put pressure on their T-1 business,” he writes. “Sure the Bells won, but so did the consumers. @Home’s early success prompted cable companies to make Internet access a priority. Comcast today has made high-speed Internet access its top priority. Long-distance phone prices are down into single digits. While these developments will not replace the lost dollars in the 401(k) of a telecom worker, they hold some hope for the population at large.” - Bob Metcalfe Om Malik has the courage to write that instead of reporting EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, the CEOs he calls broadbandits reported their own style of EBITDA —earnings before irregularities, tampering, and dubious accounting. His pen is as wicked as Mark Twain’s. - Blaise Zerega Broadbandits weaves together a story of greed, money, power and crime to reveal to the millions of people who lost their investments in telecom stock where, and to whom, their hard-earned dollars went. - Charles Dubow Rare, for a book in its field, Broadbandits is an attractive, stodge-free read. Accessible, even mischievous, it should prove instructive not merely to geeks, (disgruntled) venture capitalists, and bankrupt telecom tycoons, but also to that species most neglected of all—the lay reader. - Tunku Varadarajan Broadbandits is a fast-paced tale of the key players responsible for inflating the telecom bubble. Many were fools, many others rogues, some managed to escape with riches, some were ruined. With an unforgettable cast, Broadbandits is a sobering account of monumental financial waste and the derailment of hundreds of thousands of lives. - Andrew Odlyzko - Deepak Goyal is a freelance writer. He lives in Kolkata. |TOP| Infotech India The Nascent-Apollo Health Card initiative, beginning on a pilot basis in over 40 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu, is expected to benefit thousands of students, who will get a card with their health and academic records. “The students will have to pay a one-time nominal fee during their admissions. They can access medical facilities from Apollo group’s network of hospitals during the four years they study engineering,” Society for Integrated Circuit Technology and Applied Research CEO M.S. Vijayaraghavan said in Bangalore. Nascent — National Smart Card Consortium of Enterprises — is a national body formed by government agencies like Electronic Corporation of India Ltd, Society for Electronic Transactions and Security and SITAR to establish indigenous development of chip-based smart card solutions to sensitive applications including the proposed national citizen’s identity card. Nascent has tied-up with the Chennai-based health services giant Apollo Hospitals group, which has a network of hospitals and health clinics in Tamil Nadu, and has a third party administrator unit to cover health insurance for the initial venture. Keep Govt. Out, Says Murthy “The first step is to phase out the role of government in all economic activities. The inefficiency of our public sector reiterates the need of this,” he said in Delhi while delivering the keynote address for G.B. Pant Memorial Lecture. Citing the example of a government-controlled industry like sugar, he said the raw material prices have made exports unviable with operating profit last year falling by 18 percent and net loss reaching Rs. 95 crore. On the other hand, in Delhi’s power sector, where private companies have recently taken over the distribution, load-shedding has been reduced by 15.9 percent and consumption has increased. All development activities for the common man — education, healthcare, shelter and food distribution — should be handled by reputed private sector institutions, Murthy said. “We have failed because of a lack of management talent in the government,” he said, while stating that the nation of a billion people is far off from achieving many of its goals. Hi-tech Crime The witness, Tom Vorgitch, a U.S. national, was examined by the metropolitan magistrate and his statement recorded through video-conferencing for which arrangements were made by the National Informatics Center, a CBI spokesman said in New Delhi. In keeping with Supreme Court guidelines, Indian Consul at San Francisco Vinod Sharma was present with the witness to ensure that there was no other person in the room while evidence was being recorded. Sharma also ensured that the witness was not coached, tutored and prompted, the spokesman said, adding that the entire proceedings took three hours. The case came to light in August last year when an IIT-graduate computer engineer, Shekhar Verma, was arrested by CBI for allegedly stealing the debug code of a software worth $60 million and trying to sell it to other companies for a fortune. The case was registered against Verma by Manu Parpia, managing director of Mumbai-based Geometric Software Solutions Company, for whom the engineer had worked. Expanded Capacity Chief general manager of the circle K/ Mahadevan told reporters in Madurai that though BSNL’s CellOne had started operation late in October, had integrated its pilot cellular phone project with the main project with equipment from Motorola and Siemens, and was No.1 in the circle with a market share of 34.63 percent. He said BSNL continued to finetune its cell operations and very soon all its defects including billing problems would be rectified. The Tamil Nadu circle had the capacity to give 60,000 more cell phone connections apart from 278,000 already existing connections. Indian Airlines had shown interest in taking BSNL cell phone for its officials. Referring to the shortage of pre-paid cards of certain denominations, he said the pre-paid cards had arrived and the situation would ease soon. The Tamil Nadu circle also proposed to give 100,000 Wireless Local Loop connections within two months. The WLL phone would replace 3,500 rural radio public phones as they were maintenance free. Cyber Cafes for Railway Stations “The first cyber cafe will be inaugurated tomorrow at New Delhi Railway Station. Based on the feedback of the users, we are intending to extend to over 200 important stations in the country in the first phase by the end of this year,” Kumar told reporters at the commissioning of the optic fibber communication link on Bangalore-Secunderabad, Secunderabad-Vijayawada-Chennai and Chennai-Ooty-Bangalore in Bangalore. He said the cyber cafes would be extended to all railway stations in the country, based on the initial success. Stating that Railtel had set a target of laying optic fibber cable for over 40,000 km in the country, Kumar said nearly 21,000 km have already been laid. The railways was experimenting with providing broadband Internet access on moving trains, the first such in the world, he said. The service would be launched on a train this year. Huge U.S. Order “The solutions will be deployed globally using PeopleSoft version and .Net technologies,” Hexaware Technologies chief executive officer Rusi Brij said June 25 in Mumbai. However, he did not divulge the contract amount or the name of the client, citing a non-disclosure agreement, but hinted that the customer was a major software and product development firm. The project, to be completed by early next year, comprises upgradation, implementation, development and integration of PeopleSoft and .Net technology platforms, he said in a release. The new system would support all HR functions including performance management and recruiting, he said. The project would be handled using onsite/offshore delivery methodology, he added. TICEL Biopark “Construction activities for the Rs. 620 million, 145,000 sq ft facility are going on in full swing while enquiries are pouring in from leading Indian and foreign biotech firms for acquiring space in the park,” he told reporters at the sidelines of a function here. He said agreements with the first list of clients were expected to be signed in the next two months. One of the early birds was VIMTA Labs of Hyderabad, which would be setting up an exclusive facility in the park to address the quality testing requirements of biotech companies. The proposed VIMTA biotech laboratory would be equipped with all requisite molecular biology equipment, including the latest mass spectrometers, Dr. S.P. Vasireddy, chairman and managing director of VIMTA Labs, said. Biotech in Kerala As part of this, biotechnology parks would be set up in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi to attract biotech-based industries in a big way, Kunhalikutty said in a reply. The project would aim at increasing the investment and employment potential of Kerala’s inherent strength in the area without harming biodiversity. A special officer had been appointed for follow-up action. The project also envisaged mutually complementary roles for research institutions and the industry. The state agency, Kinfra, had begun discussions with industrialists in the biotechnology field. Creation of a herbal village to conserve medicinal plants and spices was also on the anvil, he added. India-China IT Ties Dwelling upon the progress made by India in the software field and China’s leaps in the hardware sector, Vajpayee told an industry gathering in Shanghai that “our respective competence provides a natural ground for an effective alliance in the IT industry.” The strong international brand recognition of Indian IT firms was an asset that can enrich an India-China IT partnership, the prime minister said in a speech. Observing that technological advantage could be sustained only with research and continuous innovation, he said if countries like India and China were to concentrate on specific areas of their technological advantage, they could benefit far more than by competing across the spectrum. “In combination, rather than in competition, Indian and Chinese IT industries can be a potent force. This is a principle which has far wider application in South-South co-operation,” Vajpayee said on the penultimate day of his six-day official visit to China. U.K. Likes Indian IT Addressing a one-day joint symposium on “International Business Perspectives of India: 2003 and Beyond,” he said there had been skill shortages in the U.K. and Europe in the IT sector and many had been filled by highly-educated Indian professionals. “It is in both our interests that they should be able to obtain work permits here,” he said, adding that the latest Home Office figures indicated that of the more than 22,000 work permits issued to people of Indian nationality in 2001-2002, 60 percent were IT professionals. India topped the list of countries from where skilled manpower came to the U.K. O’Brien said in the WTO context India has strong interests in obtaining secure long-term access for such professionals through the General Agreement on Trade and Services Mode 4 on the temporary movement of persons. Stating that EC’s recent GATS offer was good for countries like India, he said, “It covers intra-corporate transferees, business visitors and contractual service suppliers in no fewer than 22 service sectors.” Connect 2003 Connect 2003 plans to focus on the opportunities in IT in domestic market, e-Governance in states of India, opportunities in value-added BPO in Tamil Nadu and on enterprise verticals including BFSI, transportation and healthcare sectors, Tamil Nadu IT Minister D. Jayakumar said in Chennai July 1. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is being invited to inaugurate the conference which would showcase Chennai as a major IT destination. Connect 2003 will feature international delegations from Malaysia and Sri Lanka, besides delegations from the U.S., Europe, Middle East, Singapore and Asia Pacific region as well as IT ministers, IT secretaries from all over India. Tamil Nadu IT secretary Vivek Harinarain said the conference would showcase Tamil Nadu’s strengths as a value-added BPO destination. The conference would also highlight the state’s capabilities in BPO especially its domain knowledge in accounting, automotive, engineering designs and healthcare. The headquarters of the Society for Electronic Transactions is being set up in Chennai, he said, adding that this was a matter of pride for the state. The state government had agreed to provide three acres of land and also contribute Rs. 6 million towards membership fee. The society was for the time being operating in a 5,000 sq ft complex in Nungambakkam here, he said. The exhibition also features a product launch pad for exhibitors. Connect 2002 witnessed 12 product launches, and more than 20 new products are expected to be launched at Connect 2003, CII Tamil Nadu’s past chairman R. Parasuraman said. BEL Bags Order The Digital Microwave network, comprising 28 microwave links, would enable high quality transmission and networking of speech data and fax messages among all district headquarters and state HQ at Chennai, a BEL statement said. BEL would carry out system design and manufacture, supply, install and commission the 2 GHz 8 MB microwave radios, antenna, multiplexers and exchanges along with towers and power supply system in seven months, it said. The total value of the project is Rs. 80.2 million. NASA Woos Indian Guru Manek, who has not had any solid food for the past eight years, as claimed by his wife, Vimlaben, has been surviving only on water and solar energy. Manek, who is already in Orlando in the U.S. giving a series of lectures on solar energy, visited Kozhikode recently to participate in a felicitation function. Vimblaben said from Kozhikode her husband required only two liters of water a day and had not taken a morsel of food since 1995, imbibing most of his energy from the sun. Manek gazes at the sun only during “safe periods” of an hour after sunrise and just before sunset. It takes a person at least seven months to master this technique of gazing at the sun and imbibing energy through the eyes. As the body cells commence storing solar energy, gradually, the hunger pangs vanish, Vimlaben claims. Manek has fasted for 211 days at Kozhikode in 1995, 411 days at Ahmedabad from January 2001 to February 12, 2002. Last year, in the U.S., he fasted for 130 days surviving only on water, she claims. Itanium 2 Processors Senior company officials told a news conference in Bangalore the new server processors were built on the broad choice of software and operating systems and architectural strengths of Intel processors, extending the company’s products for high-end enterprise computing. They said the new Itanium 2 processor delivers up to 30 to 50 percent greater performance than the previous Itanium 2 processor (codenamed McKinley), while maintaining system compatibility with the previous Itanium 2 processor and two future Itanium processors (codenamed Madison 9M and Montecito). According to the company, the 32-bit Xeon processor MP 2.80 GHz is compatible with existing Intel Xeon processor MP-based platforms and delivers up to ten per cent or greater performance over its predecessor and better transaction-processing performance than the RISC-based platforms at half the cost per transaction. “The combination of our two enterprise architecture has addressed the diverse needs of enterprise computing from top to bottom,” Intel India president Ketan Sampat said. MGB, Zenith Infotech Addressing newsmen here, SMGB chairman T. Thomas Mathew said Zenith Infotech would supply hardware and software and give training to the bank’s personnel. The entire process of computerization would be completed by 2005. As a result of total computerization, the bank aimed to increase the banking hours, provide better customer services and utilize its manpower more effectively, Mathew said, adding in the first phase branches in Thrissur and Palakkad districts and a few major branches in Calicut and Malappuram would be computerized. Stating that the project was a cost-effective one, he said while private banks spent about Rs. 350 million to Rs. 500 million to computerize branch, SMGB would spend an estimated Rs. 500,000 only per branch. “We will also not charge the customers for this,” he said. Akash Saraf, joint managing director, Zenith Infotech, who signed the contract for the project costing Rs 110 million, said the project was unique as banks usually undertook computerization only for accounting works.
Opinion
 Different Land, Déjà Vu: From Brezhnev to Bush - By Ashok Deo Bardhan The manufactured pro-war antics during the Iraq war in the “marketplace of ideas” in the nation that calls itself the leader of the free world brings back memories of Brezhnev’s ossified Soviet Union, writes Ashok Deo Bardhan. As one who spent his undergraduate days in Moscow during the twilight years of the Brezhnev era, and who now lives in the U.S., I must confess to an increasingly disturbing sense of déjà vu. Perhaps it started with the manipulation of the media in the run up to the Iraq war, the scripted press conferences, the dispatches of journalists “embedded” with the coalition forces — a masterly invention that would surely have made the apparatchiks of the old regime blush with pride; or maybe it is the environment of rising intolerance for dissent and disagreement with the “party” line during the war and indeed the post-war period. Or perhaps it is the proliferation of a whole new genre of jokes? Of course, the Soviet Union in its stagnation phase was in many ways quite different from the triumphalism and in-your-face hubris of present day U.S., but many have noticed significant points of similarity. The major newspapers here have been nothing more than cheerleading mouthpieces, initially for the war effort, and now for the post-war agenda of the U.S. administration, although of course being certainly more entertaining and less sedate than the Soviet press of old. For the TV networks, on the other hand, the Iraq war represented nothing more than a unique opportunity to jointly showcase their servile deference to the state information machinery, their penchant for the graphic imagery of the “beauty of war,” as they described it, and the presentation of news with the flair and detachment of a video game. The high point in this entire journalistic farce was the absurd, “Animal Farm”-like atmospherics surrounding the president’s pre-war press conference in early March. The entire White House press corps sat through the spectacle like timid and obedient school children, and submitted themselves to the process of going through a pre-planned, pre-approved charade. Nothing was left to chance. God forbid if the slightest whiff of spontaneity managed to insinuate itself into the proceedings! The questions were pre-selected, as were the journalists who were supposed to “ask” the questions with the right mix of sincerity and histrionics. Suffice it to say the journalists were the better actors that day, with Bush slipping up and nearly giving the game away by blurting out to the CNN correspondent John King, who wanted to ask his question out of turn, “wait a minute, this is scripted.” Sure enough, the major television networks and the newspapers continued with their good work the next day by air-brushing the embarrassing slip-up, and eliminating any hint of the extent to which the event had been pre-determined. In the post-war scenario the media has not yet managed to extricate itself from this feverish embrace. The collapse of the Iraqi regime is now being used to drive home to the anti-war protesters the supposed futility of their opposition to the war, and the word “propaganda,” which used to be taboo in the U.S., is now openly bandied about, as in “the importance of winning the propaganda war” for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. While one does not wish to draw absurd parallels to the overtly state-controlled media of the former Soviet Union, one should be mindful of an important fact: in the Soviet Union it was common knowledge that the media was controlled and hence there was a kind of an equilibrium in terms of understanding misinformation or disinformation. In other words, people were adept at reading between the lines, at checking for the veracity of what was mentioned but also for the awkward news that was conveniently skipped, and were pro-active in their search for information. Paradoxically enough they frequently ended up being very well informed indeed. Here, the pretense of media independence has been carefully cultivated, although in wartime even that crumbles. This kind of “managed independence” can in fact be particularly insidious and can lull many people into a false sense of informed consent and a continued state of uninformed gullibility. Of course, in the present age of Internet and global communications the credibility of Western media can be particularly fragile and its loss potentially irreversible. While journalists “in bed” with the army rode pillion and acted as public relations officers for the coalition forces, those who attempted even a modicum of independence, such as Peter Arnett, who got fired from NBC for giving an interview to Iraqi TV, became a casualty of this tension between conformity and free speech. Or perhaps, as I said, it’s the jokes: “President Bush spent the day calling names he couldn’t pronounce in countries he never knew existed.” — Jay Leno “War continues in Iraq. They’re calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized that spells ‘OIL.’” — Jay Leno “President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the U.N. to wage war, and I’m thinking, well, hell, he didn’t need the approval of the American voters to become president, either.” — David Letterman The international situation and the domestic political environment have given rise in America to that staple of Soviet life — the political joke. While Mr. Bush is, to put it mildly, a natural target of comedians and satirists, jokes embodying deep cynicism about the professed goals and objectives of the coalition forces, coupled with lack of respect for the political leadership have been doing the rounds, both on the late night TV shows, as in the ones above, and on the Internet, throughout the pre- and post-war period. Political jokes have always been more than just funny and entertaining: While exploiting the idiosyncrasies of the powerful, they can also be educational and analytical. Usually they reflect a deeper social and political reality, and portray a somewhat differently articulated unease. Often, they serve as an early warning indicator of alienation and powerlessness even in a modern democracy, not just in autocratic regimes where they might be the only way to let off steam. In the Brezhnev era, jokes were the only currency of political discourse and the only weapon ordinary citizens had for exacting some measure of psychological retribution and satisfaction. When the political leadership seemed to be saying: “Demonstrate for peace as much as you wish, but we will bomb as much as we want,” and with elections and other such corrective political measures far away in the future, political jokes began filling the void of political action. Another element in the similarity between the two regimes is the extent of dissent that is coming out into the open, and the nature of its participants. The period leading up to the war on Iraq saw the largest mobilization and manifestation of internal dissent in the U.S. in decades. Perhaps, never before had the dissonance between the governed and the leadership been so acute. But what was remarkable was the wide range of social and economic backgrounds of people expressing outrage at the machinations of the present administration. In addition to the usual shock troops of the San Francisco radical intelligentsia, anti-war rallies and events here in the San Francisco Bay Area attracted significant numbers of new entrants. The split in the establishment can be gauged from resignations of senior civil servants from the foreign policy establishment and in the arrest of people like Warren Langley, ex-president of the Pacific Stock Exchange. “People ask me who I’m representing,” Langley said. “I’m representing the establishment. And there are a lot of other people out there who feel like I do.” To paraphrase that famous saying illustrating the value of history — sometimes when a farce in history repeats itself, it is repeated as a tragedy. - Ashok Deo Bardhan is an economist in the San Francisco |TOP| Report:  What's Up, Doc? Ethnic Language Rights – A Siliconeer Report If you are sick, you may need more than a doctor. The New California Media has launced a campaign for ethnic minorities with poor or no English speaking skills to guarantee access to interpretation services is vital. A Siliconeer report. Last month, the New California Media launched a two-year, $2.5 million social marketing campaign with ads placed in nearly 200 ethnic media organizations across California. The ad appears in 14 languages, reaching Arab, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Filipino, Iranian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Laotian, Thai, Hmong, Latino, Armenian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Romanian and Pan-Asian audiences. Funding for the campaign was provided by a grant from The California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation. The ad informs ethnic communities that it is the right of every Californian who is not proficient in English to access interpreter services in hospitals, clinics and other health care settings. “These ads are not only an effort to raise awareness about a basic civil right; they also represent the first time a major health foundation is investing in a partnership with ethnic media organizations as a way to communicate health care information with California’s new majorities,” adds Sandy Close, founder and executive director of NCM. “It is essential that a culturally competent outreach effort include partner-ships with the state’s ethnic media as that is where many within California’s limited English proficient residents get their information,” said Robert K. Ross, M.D., president and CEO of The Endowment. The media range from well established in-language dailies like La Opinion, Sing Tao Daily, Philippine News and Rafu Shimpo to emerging media like Tadias, a new Ethiopian publication serving San Jose; KBIF, a local Central Valley radio station with Hmong programming; and Horizon TV, an Armenian station in Southern California. Less than a week after the first ads began appearing, audiences are responding. On Al-Akhbar newspaper’s Web site, the ad received more than 2,000 hits, and the publication’s offices received numerous phone calls about the language access issue. |TOP| Honor  Ankur Luthra’s photo by Bart Nagel Being the Change Overachiever with Heart – By Ankur Luthra Rhodes Scholar. Phi Beta Kappa. UC Berkeley’s top medal. Ankur Luthra, who has won them all, was honored speaker at the commencement ceremonies. Here’s what he told the new graduates.
I begin with a thank you to the paragon of selflessness: my parents and grandparents. To be concise, you are the reason for all my success and I love you more than anything. I stay true to the quote I told a close friend as a high school freshman: if, in my old age, I can say with confidence that I am half the person my parents and grandparents are, I will know my life has been a success. Second, because we live in a time of troubling international situations, I would like to make a short comment. I am neither a foreign policy expert nor historian qualified to give a detailed vision on the future state of international relations. All I know is that all people all over the world are members of a bigger classification: humanity. And whether it be our troops and government who fight to defend our nation and rights every day, many thanks and may God bless them, or whether it be the Palestinian children who are often caught in the crossfire and lose their innocence before they can even explore it, I hope for the safety of the innocent all over the world and their Godspeed return to the love of their families and a future of freedom and peace. And now I turn my attention to my fellow members of the Class of 2003 as well as present Cal Alumni. You, fellow Cal friends, are blessed with the distinction of graduating from one of the world’s finest institutions. Congratulations, and professors who made this possible, thank you. You have been able to bask in the aura of both academic radiance that is created by the amazing diverse students and brilliant professors here and the social radiance of Greek Life, Telegraph, and a BART ride to San Fran. And God Bless the football team, we Class of 2003 seniors are graduating with a long-awaited 30-7 Big Game thrashing. Go Bears! But more than anything else, you have graduated from a University, that aside from being an unparalleled undergraduate experience, is a symbol of standing up for positive change, often against popular opinion. The University shares that symbolism with one of my inspirations: Mahatma Gandhi. One of his sayings is what I live by: be the change that you want to see in the world. I ask you: what change do you want to see? To figure that out, I ask: what bothers you? Like me, the digital divide and general disparity in educational opportunity? Maybe the room for improving the support structure for battered women as with a fellow finalist? How about homelessness or the spread of AIDS in many undereducated Third World countries? If nothing bothers you, I am deeply saddened. Complacency and selfishness are the core ingredients to a fading soul. If something, anything, bothers you, I challenge you to do something about it. You ask “Can I make a difference?” With confidence, I say absolutely. You ask, “But how vast could that difference possibly be?” Good question; it reminds me of a surgeon in India I read about who works for free. After a morning bombing, he saw an afternoon waiting room of hundreds of dying men unable to afford care who turned to him to save their lives. When the doctor was told by an onlooker he cannot possibly make a significant difference considering he could only save a few of the hundred, the doctor replies, “Ask the last man I saved how significant my difference was.” That’s the beauty of making a difference, my friends. It is not judged on extensiveness; it is judged on heart, dedication, and patience. Be the change you want to see in the world. Along the way, you may be called idealistic, even stupid. I have been given this classification at times as well when expressing my bold vision and acting on it. I smile, genuinely. Remember, those who have accomplished the most amazing feats were the ones not smart enough to know those very feats were impossible. I can almost guarantee people will call you crazy. The self-satisfied tend to think impact-makers are crazy. I would take it as a compliment, actually. After all, those who were crazy enough to think they could change the world were the ones who did. And I’m next. And you’re next. We, the Cal Class of 2003, are next. And through it |
