WORDS TO LIVE BY : Dewi Sukarno - JUDIT KAWAGUCHI

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Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008

WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dewi Sukarno

By JUDIT KAWAGUCHI

Dewi Sukarno, nee Naoko Nemoto, 68, is the widow of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. When she married him in 1959, the then 19-year-old Japanese beauty was no accidental Cinderella: From age 5, she had meticulously prepared herself for a leading role in history. Much like Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the 16th-century daimyo who catapulted himself from humble beginnings to the nation's most powerful post, the cultivated Dewi rose to the challenge to support Sukarno's nation-building. The pair established strong ties between Japan and Indonesia, but following assassination attempts, a military coup and ultimately her husband's death in 1970, Dewi went into exile from Indonesia. By the '80s, though, she was back in Jakarta working on major deals for American and European engineering and construction contractors. After 40 years abroad, in 1999, she moved to Tokyo, where she runs several companies and charities, and a household where 11 dogs chase staff and guests around.

Words will capture a woman's heart faster than riches. I could have married many wealthy men before I met Sukarno. But he asked me to be his inspiration, his strength, and the joy of his life. I knew I would never hear such poetic words again even if I lived to be 100. So I dedicated my life to him.

We all have lots of opportunities. Only those with no purpose or aim fail to realize all the chances they are presented with.

Everything was calculated. In 1945, Tokyo was devastated. I looked at the sky and promised myself that I was going to fly out of this place and see the world.

I was a child of anger. Now I'm grateful for the experience of war and poverty, because it made me strong. I only wanted to know about world history. Then, I wanted to make history.

Even if we are poor, literature can make our lives rich. My uncle had lots of books and I borrowed them all: Stefan Zweig, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Andre Gide, Emily Bronte, all of Shakespeare and more. I created a world in my head that was fair, just, fun and full of color.

People who ask for advice never succeed. I never got any. Asking for advice means one wants to confirm whether one is right. I know I am, so I don't need to ask anyone anything, ever. And if and when I am wrong, I take full responsibility for my mistakes. Not that I've made many.

It's shameful to feel guilt and atonement. Japanese politicians should get rid of their inferiority complex about the war. All Japanese need to feel more pride. Those who make Japanese feel guilty are the real criminals. I am amazed at the strong guilt complex Japanese have about World War II. Japan entered the war for its own survival. At that time, other nations had imposed economic sanctions against us. To be or not to be, we had no choice.

A dream is nothing unless you make it come true. The difference between successful people and dreamers is the effort and work they put into a day. Most people dream of this and that, sitting down, doing nothing. I dream, get up and work for it.

Behind every success, there is always tremendous sacrifice. If you want to get something, you always have to lose a lot, too. I lost my beloved mom and brother. If I didn't marry Sukarno, they'd be still alive. My mother missed me too much and her heart broke. Two days after her death, my brother committed suicide. That day was my 22nd birthday. Those two deaths crucified me. I will always wonder if there was a way to have saved them.

People often give names to things to hide their real nature, not reveal it. Between 1966-69, General Suharto's people, backed by the United States, killed over 1 million Indonesians with the excuse of "red-hunting." Of course, those victims were not all communists; many were just followers of Sukarno. The White House wanted Sukarno out of the way because he was becoming too popular and was uniting Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Arab countries. He was creating a third force to balance the power of the world. This third force was later called the Third World by people who gave it a meaning that was very different from what Sukarno envisioned.

God never even existed. If he did, the world would not be this unfair. I have studied every religion and come to this conclusion. We create our own gods; it's a state of mind.

I can handle anything. I'm a fighter, and I never give up. From 1980-90, I worked in Suharto's regime under his cronies and fought humiliation every day. These were people in high positions who used to be below us.

If you stand apart, they will try to shoot you down. The United States and the Soviet Union dominated the world around the 1960s via all-out war, trade embargos or covert operations. The U.S. needed Indonesia, which is the third-richest country in natural resources. But Sukarno had just achieved independence from the Dutch and didn't want to be controlled. The U.S. requested that Sukarno allow them to have military bases in Indonesia in order to control the Pacific, but he refused, while Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand all accepted U.S. bases. Therefore the Pentagon hated Sukarno, and the CIA tried to assassinate him five times.

Once you marry a man with real power, you can't just marry anyone. When I went into exile in Europe, Paris society rolled out the red carpet and admired me as the Pearl of the Orient. Prince Aga Khan, the Duke of Sabran, I met so many charismatic men, but none compared to Sukarno.

Look at history as it is. History is the lies of the winners validated by biased reporting. I can never trust the media anywhere, anytime. The news is usually incorrect, and the problem goes beyond local journalists who might be honest and try their best. The information supplied to them is all wrong and controlled by the powerful. Recently, MI6 and the CIA admitted to supplying fake facts to news organizations during my husband's presidency. Today, mobile phones provide fresher news and bring us closer to the truth than day-old newspapers.

Independence means luxury. I'm spiritually, physically and financially free. I don't owe anything to anyone.

Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She is a volunteer counselor and a TV reporter on NHK's "Out and About." Learn more at: juditfan.blog58.fc2.com/

The Frugal Teenager, Ready or Not - Excerpt From New York Times

By JAN HOFFMAN
Published: October 10, 2008, The New York Times

WHEN Wendy Postle’s two children were younger, saying “yes” gave her great joy. Yes to all those toys. The music lessons. The blowout birthday parties.

But as her son and daughter approached adolescence, yes turned into a weary default. “Sometimes it was just easier to say, ‘O.K., whatever,’ than to have the battle of ‘no,’ ” said Mrs. Postle, a working mother who lives in Hilliard, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Columbus.

This year her husband’s 401(k) savings are evaporating. Medical bills are nipping at the couple’s heels. Gas prices are still taking a toll. Mrs. Postle recently decided that although she and her husband had always sacrificed their own luxuries for Zach, 13, and Kaitlyn, 15, the teenagers would now have to cut back as well.

“No” could no longer be the starting gun of family fights. It would have to be an absolute.

“I tried to tell Kaitlyn, ‘We’ll get the Hollister jeans at a thrift store,’ ” Mrs. Postle recalled. “She got angry and said: ‘That’s gross! Other people wore them!’ ”

Indulged. Entitled. Those labels have become hot-glued to middle-class and affluent teenagers born after the last major economic downturn, in the late 1980s. They were raised in comparatively flush times by parents who believed that keeping children happy, stimulated and successful, no matter the cost, was an unassailable virtue. A 2007 study by the Harrison Group, a market research firm in Waterbury, Conn., found that nearly 75 percent of parents caved in to their children’s nagging for new video games, half within two weeks.

But as the economy totters, many families have no choice but to cut back, which may lead to a shift in their thinking about money and permissiveness. Last week a semiannual survey of 7,000 15- to 18-year-olds by Piper Jaffray, an investment bank and research firm, showed that annual discretionary spending by teenagers, whose money comes from allowance, gifts and part-time jobs, had dropped 27 percent to $2,600, from its spring 2006 peak of $3,560.

“Parents are suddenly saying ‘no’ and their kids are saying, ‘What do you mean?’ ” said Robert D. Manning, an economist at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of “Credit Card Nation.”

These are difficult conversations. Panicked, stressed parents are struggling to explain and impose restraints, just when teenagers are expecting more spending money, not less. Many adolescents respond with anger at what they see as a bait-and-switch world, fear for their families and confusion about budgeting.

Family therapists, teachers and parents tell anecdotes about teenagers who are badly rattled by the news, in denial, or both. A daughter is shaken as her mother calls for an emergency family meeting. The son of a Wall Street financier whose fortune has collapsed tauntingly tells his father he can take care of himself: he will sell more marijuana.

“It is an unbelievable shock to affluent families that their lifestyles are gone for good,” Dr. Manning said, “and their children are ill prepared for it.”

Mrs. Postle’s teenagers asked whether the family was poor. Mrs. Postle, who teaches economics at the Columbus chapter of Junior Achievement and whose husband manages heating and cooling commercial installations, felt insulted.

The family was not poverty-stricken, she responded, but staying solvent was costly. Although many parents consider finances the province of grown-ups, Mrs. Postle decided her children were too insulated. She showed them the monthly bills.

The teenagers were stunned. When her son saw the mortgage bill he thought it was an annual payment.

American teenagers, many of whom have weak quantitative skills, are generally naïve about finance. In a 2007 study for Charles Schwab, the financial services company, 62 percent of teenagers believed they were prepared to deal with the financial world after high school. That boast was undercut when they were probed about topics like check-writing and paying bills.
One recent morning, students in an economics seminar at Elisabeth Irwin High School, a private school in Manhattan, displayed an emerging grasp of the financial meltdown. But when discussing their personal finances, many just seemed bewildered.

National surveys put older teenagers’ average monthly allowance at $100 and upward. At Elisabeth Irwin, the weekly allowances ranged from $20 to $150. Some parents gave students strict allocation instructions; others, only vague direction.

And while many had debit and credit cards, some were hard pressed to explain the difference. “I don’t understand why I got charged for an overdraft,” one junior said. One girl admitted to having once run up $5,000 on her credit card. Lesson learned! Now she rarely uses the card. “ I make my mom buy it!” she said.

To “earn” spending money, some students were required to do minimal chores, others to maintain minimal civility.

Regardless of family means, most did not have after-school jobs.

“I’ve never had a job,” said Nazir Khan, 16, a first-generation American whose father is a cook and whose mother is an occasional caregiver. “My parents want me to focus on schoolwork.”

They all felt the pressure and the desire to acquire: their knowledge of brands and prices was encyclopedic. “The stuff it takes for them to be perceived as middle class is extraordinary,” said Tom Murphy, who teaches the high school’s “Economics and Society” seminar. “Laptops, Xboxes, iPods, phones — and it’s nonnegotiable.”

The messages about money from their families struck some as contradictory. Joe Sharp, 16, said his parents had given him whatever he wanted. But his grandmother would talk about World War II and rationing. “I’d say, ‘It’s not the war, we’re fine,’ ” he said. “But she taught me that saving is definitely important.”

After class, one girl said: “We are so being bribed. I’m bad at math but if I get an A, my father will give me a designer bag.”

And yet, she added shyly: “I love the gifts but I’d really like to spend time with him. But my parents are working harder than ever and they’re so worried. I don’t want to force him to spend time with me. I can be a real earache.”

Discernable in their anecdotes were the abrupt, flailing efforts of parents to rein in their teenagers, as difficult economic times bear down.

One girl said: “My dad will buy three new shirts but then he’ll tell me to cut down on my spending. So I don’t know what to think.”

A junior recounted a fight with her father. She had shouted: “I can afford the things I buy because I don’t have to pay expenses or rent.” He had retorted: “Now you’re going to: $25 a night and $15 for your friends who stay over!” (Threat rescinded.)

Some students were beginning to translate the economic crisis personally. A few thought it had become unseemly to flaunt goods with designer labels. Ruth Jurgensen, the principal of the diverse school, noted that many students were alarmed about dwindling college aid.

Even their fear frightens them. Chappell Laird, 16, knows that her father, a restaurant owner, and mother, a photographer’s agent, are affected by the economic downturn. But she doesn’t seek further information. “It scares me to know more,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”

Parents hardly relish these conversations. As they sit down with their teenagers, they are agonizing over their own feelings of failure. “Parents are going to feel they’re not giving their kids everything,” said Madeline Levine, a California psychologist who writes about adolescents in her book “The Price of Privilege.” “The kids are going to be confused. They’ve never known not having what they want. And the parents are going to have to tolerate their kids’ anger.”
Wendy Postle said her teenagers have become angrier and more argumentative about money. “They seem so selfish,” she said. She wondered whether the fault was hers, whether that early lavishness was a parental failing.

In familial relationships, money can be a proxy for love and trust, said Steven J. Goldstein, a psychologist who teaches at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in Manhattan. When money has to be limited, underlying tensions become exacerbated. In his practice he has recently seen adolescent eating disorders become more severe and mood swings increase.

But for some families, he added, the financial crisis has been a rallying point, compelling them to articulate values and priorities for the first time. An unemployed father, he said, learned to speak with his teenagers “in such a way that they wouldn’t panic, but gave them a sense that he was going through a different journey, not one just filled with success.”

Last month Hildegaard Link’s two daughters, 15 and 11, rushed home, frightened by headlines about the stock market. The older one “totally freaked out,” recalled Ms. Link, a civil engineer in Brooklyn. “She asked: ‘What does this mean for me? For my family?’ ”

Ms. Link reassured her but asked whether everyone could do with a little less. “Let’s brainstorm.”

The girls made choices: lessons for either drum or violin, every two weeks; fewer restaurant dinners; one new school outfit. “They were not resentful,” Ms. Link reported. “They were relieved to be part of the process.”

Market researchers say that teenagers are, out of necessity, adjusting. Jeffrey Klinefelter, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, said last week’s survey showed that the amount teenagers allocated for clothes had increased 1 percent, but that they were patronizing stores with lower-priced labels.

Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group, the market research firm, said he had seen an evolution in family negotiations. As parents drop housecleaning and lawn services, they are asking their teenagers to pitch in, for pay.

“That reduces the cash flow for parents without reducing discretionary spending for kids,” he said. “Parents are asking kids to take responsibility for what is really important to them.”

Anecdotes like these prompt economists and therapists to find something positive in all the economic turbulence. “The sooner we have these conversations in the family and as a society,” said Dr. Manning, the economist, “the sooner we can focus on core values, and have a more realistic dialogue about the meaning of happiness and money.”

KAITLYN POSTLE is having a bumpy adjustment. She has a weekend baby-sitting job and can’t wait to turn 16, so she can find work at a mall.

“I used to ask for things and my parents would say, ‘We can’t do that,’ ” she said in a phone interview. “So I would throw a tantrum and get an attitude. They used to give in a lot. But that doesn’t work now.”

The good news, she said, is that when she shops at thrift stores, she can buy more for her money. But now that she has a temporary license — freedom! — how will she pay for gas?

She assumes she will have to attend a local college and live at home. “I don’t have a problem with that,” she said. “Whatever. That way, I won’t have to pay for everything.”

In the background, a half-shout of protest could be heard. “Of course,” Kaitlyn added, “my parents aren’t too happy about that.”

Generation Faithful - Excerpt From New York Times

Photo credit : Google

Generation Faithful
Youthful Voice Stirs Challenge to Secular Turks
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 13, 2008

ISTANBUL — High school hurt for Havva Yilmaz. She tried out several selves. She ran away. Nothing felt right.

“There was no sincerity,” she said. “It was shallow.”

So at 16, she did something none of her friends had done: She put on an Islamic head scarf.

In most Muslim countries, that would be a nonevent. In Turkey, it was a rebellion. Turkey has built its modern identity on secularism. Women on billboards do not wear scarves. The scarves are banned in schools and universities. So Ms. Yilmaz dropped out of school. Her parents were angry. Her classmates stopped calling her.

Like many young people at a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Ms. Yilmaz, now 21, is more observant than her parents. Her mother wears a scarf, but cannot read the Koran in Arabic. They do not pray five times a day. The habits were typical for their generation — Turks who moved from the countryside during industrialization.

“Before I decided to cover, I knew who I was not,” Ms. Yilmaz said, sitting in a leafy Ottoman-era courtyard. “After I covered, I finally knew who I was.”

While her decision was in some ways a recognizable act of youthful rebellion, in Turkey her personal choices are part of a paradox at the heart of the country’s modern identity.

Turkey is now run by a party of observant Muslims, but its reigning ideology and law are strictly secular, dating from the authoritarian rule in the 1920s of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a former army general who pushed Turkey toward the West and cut its roots with the Ottoman East. For some young people today, freedom means the right to practice Islam, and self-expression means covering their hair.

They are redrawing lines between freedom and devotion, modernization and tradition, and blurring some prevailing distinctions between East and West.

Ms. Yilmaz’s embrace of her religious identity has thrust her into politics. She campaigned to allow women to wear scarves on college campuses, a movement that prompted emotional, often agonized, debates across Turkey about where Islam fit into an open society. That question has paralyzed politics twice in the past year and a half, and has drawn hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest what they call a growing religiosity in society and in government.

By dropping out of the education system, she found her way into Turkey’s growing, lively culture of young activists.

She attended a political philosophy reading group, studying Hegel, St. Augustine and Machiavelli. She took sociology classes from a free learning center. She met other activists, many of them students trying to redefine words like “modern,” which has meant secular and Western-looking for decades. She made new friends, like Hilal Kaplan, whose scarf sometimes had a map of the world on it.

Their fight is not solely about Islam. Turkey is in ferment, and Ms. Yilmaz and her young peers are demanding equal rights for all groups in Turkey. They are far less bothered by the religious and ethnic differences that divide older generations. “Turkey is not just secular people versus religious people,” Ms. Kaplan said. “We were a very segregated society, but that segregation is breaking up.”

In a slushy week in the middle of January, the head scarf became the focus of a heated national outpouring, and Ms. Yilmaz one of its most eloquent defenders.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to pass a law letting women who wear them into college. Staunchly secular Turks opposed broader freedoms for Islam, in part because they did not trust Mr. Erdogan, a popular politician who began his career championing a greater role for Islam in politics and who has since moderated his stance.

Turkey remains a democratic experiment unique in the Muslim world. The Ottomans dabbled in democracy as early as 1876, creating a Constitution and a Parliament. The country was never colonized by Western powers, as Arabs were. It gradually developed into a vibrant democracy. The fact that young people like Ms. Yilmaz are protesting at all is one of its distinguishing features.

In many ways, Ms. Yilmaz’s scarf freed her, but for many other women, it is the opposite. In poor, religiously conservative areas in rural Turkey, girls wear scarves from young ages, and many Turks feel strongly that without state regulation, young women would come under more pressure to cover up.

The head scarf bill, in that respect, could lead to less freedom for women, they argued. But for Ms. Yilmaz, the anger against the bill was hard to understand.

So one day, armed with a microphone and a strong sense of justice, Ms. Yilmaz marched into a hotel in central Istanbul and, with two friends, both in scarves, made her best case.
“The pain that we’ve been through as university doors were harshly shut in our faces taught us one thing,” she said, speaking to reporters. “Our real problem is with the mentality of prohibition that thinks it has the right to interfere with people’s lives.”

Ms. Yilmaz’s heartfelt speech, written with her friends, drew national attention. They were invited on television talk shows. They gave radio and newspaper interviews. Part of their appeal came from their attempt to go beyond religion to include all groups in Turkish society, like ethnic and sectarian minorities.

After Ms. Yilmaz left high school, she joined a group called the Young Civilians, a diverse band of young people who used dark humor and occasional references to the philosopher Michel Foucault to criticize everything from the state’s repression of Kurds, the biggest ethnic minority, to its day of “Youth and Sport,” a series of Soviet-style rallies of students in stadiums every spring.

Their symbol was a Converse sneaker. Their members were funny and irreverent. One once joked that if you mentioned the name Marx, young women without head scarves assumed you were talking about the British department store Marks & Spencer, while ones in scarves understood the reference to the philosopher.

In a tongue-in-cheek effort to change perceptions of Kurds, the group ran a discussion program called “Let’s Get a Little Kurdish,” which featured sessions on Kurdish music, history and — in a particularly rebellious twist — even language.

By March, the month after Parliament passed the final version of the head scarf proposal, the debate had reached a frenzied pitch. Ms. Yilmaz and some friends — some in scarves, some not — agreed to go on a popular television talk show. The audience’s questions were angry.

One young woman stood up and, looking directly at another in a scarf, said that she did not want her on campus, said Neslihan Akbulut, a friend of Ms. Yilmaz, who had helped to compose the head scarf statement. Another said she felt sorry for them because they were oppressed by men. A third fretted that allowing them into universities would lead to further demands about jobs, resulting in an “invasion.”

Ms. Yilmaz said later: “I thought, are we living in the same country? No, it’s impossible.”

They did not give up. They spent the day in a drafty cafe in central Istanbul, wearing boots and coats and going over their position with journalists, one by one.

“If women are ever forced to wear head scarves, we should be equally sensitive and stand against it,” Ms. Akbulut said.

One of the journalists said, “You don’t support gays.”

Ms. Kaplan countered: “Islam tells us to fight this urge,” but she said that did not affect a homosexual’s rights as a citizen. “I am against police oppression of homosexuals. I am against a worldview that diminishes us to our scarves and homosexuals to the bedroom.”

Ms. Yilmaz agreed. “When you wear a scarf,” she said, “you are expected to act and think in a certain way, and support a certain political party. You’re stripped of your personality.”

The young women say that the scarf, contrary to popular belief, was not forced on them by their families. Some women wear it because their mothers did. For others, like Ms. Yilmaz, it was a carefully considered choice.

Though it is not among the five pillars of Islam — the duties required for every Muslim, including daily prayer — Ms. Yilmaz sees it as a command in the Koran.

“Physical contact is something special, something private,” she said, describing the thinking behind her covering. “Constant contact takes away from the specialness, the privacy of the thing you share.”

Still, in Turkey, traditional rules are often bent to accommodate modern life. Handshaking, for example, is a widespread Turkish custom, and most women follow it. Turkey is culturally very different from Arab societies, and for that reason interprets Islam differently. Islam here is heavily influenced by Sufism, an introspective strain that tends to be more flexible.

“You can’t reject an extended hand,” Ms. Kaplan said. “You don’t want to break a person’s heart.”
Young activists like Ms. Yilmaz are driving change in Turkish society against a backdrop of growing materialism and consumerism. Most young Turks care little for politics and are instead occupied with the daily task of paying the bills.

That is an easier task in Turkey than in a number of Middle Eastern countries, because Turkey is relatively affluent. After three decades of intense development, its economy is five times bigger than Egypt’s — a country with roughly the same population.

The wealth has profoundly shaped young lives. In cities, young people no longer have to live with their parents after marriage. They take mortgages. They buy furniture on credit. They compete for jobs in new fields like marketing, finance and public relations.

In past generations, women lived with their husband’s families, doubling their work.

“When you don’t have time to do anything for yourself, you don’t have time to question anything, even religion,” Ms. Kaplan said.

The economic changes that have swept Turkish society, bringing cellphones, iPods and the Internet, are transforming the younger generation. Young people are more connected to the Western world than ever before. A quick visit to a bookstore or a movie theater offers proof.

Observant Turks are grappling with questions like: Where does praying fit in a busy life of e-mail messages and 60-hour weeks? How do you hold on to Eastern tradition in a rising tide of Western culture?

The head scarf debate ended abruptly in June, when Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the new law allowing women attending universities to wear scarves was unconstitutional, because it violated the nation’s principles of secularism.

Ms. Yilmaz got the news in a text message from her friend. In her bitter disappointment, she realized how much hope she had held out. “How can I be a part of a country that does not accept me?” she said.

Still, she has no regrets and is not giving up. “What we did was worth something,” she said. “People heard our voices. One day the prohibition is imposed on us. The next day, it could be someone else. If we work together, we can fight it.
Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

Personal music players hard on hearing

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Personal music players hard on hearing

Tuesday, 14 October 2008
News Credit : ABC/Reuters
that's too loud

For crying out loud: Regular listening at high volumes on MP3 players can permanently damage your hearing, European scientists say (Source: iStockphoto)

Up to 10% of users of personal MP3 or CD players may suffer permanent hearing loss because their music is too loud, a European study says.

The scientists say those people who listen at high volumes for as little as an hour a day across five years risk doing severe harm to their hearing.

The study by the European Union's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks says between five and 10% of listeners, equating to 2.5 to 10 million people in Europe, could be at risk.

It estimates between 50 and 100 million people listen to portable music players on a daily basis.

If they listen for only five hours a week at more than 89 decibels, they would already exceed EU limits for noise allowed in the workplace, the report says.

But if they listen for longer periods, they risk permanent hearing loss after five years.

The committee says the largest group at risk from "leisure noise" is young people.

It estimates that since the early 1980s the number of young people with social noise exposure has tripled to around 19%.

Across the same period occupational noise had decreased, the study says.
Teenagers need protection

This view is supported by a study last year by the British Royal National Institute for Deaf People fthat ound more than half of young people who use MP3 players listen for longer than five hours a week and at levels near 85 decibels.

The scientists' report attacks the concept of "leisure noise", saying children and teenagers should be protected from increasingly high sound levels.

Loud mobile phones are also criticised.

"There has been increasing concern about exposure from the new generation of personal music players which can reproduce sounds at very high volumes without loss of quality," the report says.

"Risk for hearing damage depends on sound level and exposure time."

Sales of personal music players have soared in EU countries in recent years, particularly of MP3 players.

The report estimates unit sales in the EU of between 184 and 246 million for all portable audio devices just over the past four years, of which MP3 players range between 124 and 165 million.

Mobile phones used at excessive volume also came under fire from Meglena Kuneva, the EU's consumer affairs commissioner.

"I am concerned that so many young people ... who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably," she says.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, will now look into whether technical improvements could minimise hearing damage and consider changes to safety standards to protect youngsters.

Luxury mall showcases wealth gap in India - Reuters Report

Photo Credit : Reuters

Luxury mall showcases wealth gap in India
Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:53pm EDT


By Krittivas Mukherjee NEW DELHI (Reuters) - With gold-plated ceilings, exotic fountains and the clink of champagne glasses, the Emporio Mall in New Delhi is the perfect place to wile away a hot afternoon browsing through designer boutiques.

The mall, adorned with palms and scented with lavender, is the exclusive playground of India's rich, which despite the effects of the credit crisis still have plenty of cash to buy designer accessories with thousand dollar price tags.

Getting access to this little piece of air conditioned paradise amid the hustle and bustle of the sweltering capital will cost $5. That's about one week's salary for 80 percent of India's billion plus population.

With a phalanx of security guards keeping out the destitute and a pricey admission fee, some social observers see India's first luxury mall as a symbol of an economic apartheid that they say increasingly divides the 'haves' and 'have nots' in India.

"The conditions, the ground conditions are not like those of Western cities," said Satish Deshpande, professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics.

"So, we are tending more and more toward a kind of apartheid, a kind of separation that is very sharp and sharply visible in our cities, in gated communities."

The widening wealth gap has major implications for India, which faces a general election next year, and has been plagued by waves of violence in its provinces that analysts say is at least partly due to the socioeconomic divide alienating segments of society.

The issue is likely to play a central role in next year's general election in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress party will seek re-election.

The party took power in a coalition government four years ago on a platform of more 'inclusive growth' for India's 'have nots', a promise upon which it has mostly failed to deliver.
Asia's third-largest economy has grown nearly 9 percent a year over the past four years, driven largely by consumer demand from the middle-class and soaring foreign investment. Despite the boom, official data shows an estimated 800 million of India's billion-plus people live on 50 U.S. cents a day.

The top 10 percent of India's population owns between 33 to 50 percent of the country's wealth, according to a range of estimates by the government, think-tanks and academics.

Uneven economic growth is posing a serious security threat to India, Singh said last December, pointing out that a large proportion of recruits for militant groups came from regions untouched by India's scorching growth.

NO EUPHORIA FOR INDIA'S POOR

While the middle and wealthier English-speaking classes are profiting from an economic surge, it is unclear how well this is trickling down to hundreds of millions of Indians living in small towns and rural areas.

Analysts say the failure to deliver social justice and development to India's poorest regions have alienated people and helped open up economic, social and religious divides.

Socio-economic divides and governmental apathy are said to fuel some of India's deadliest insurgencies in which thousands of people have been killed, including a four-decade-long Maoist rebellion and several armed movements in the remote northeast.

A contest for jobs and development is in part the reason for a violent Hindu-Christian conflict raging in the country's east.

"These divides and disparities lead to disaffection, large-scale migration and discord," Singh said last year at a meeting of state chief ministers, drawing a rare link between economic inequality and internal security by a top government leader.

"In many cases internal security problems arise out of uneven development and we need to address this issue if we are to make any long-term headway in combating extremist elements," he said.

A government panel report last year on the informal sector said the buoyancy in the economy lead to a sense of euphoria at the start of this century.

"However, a majority of the people, who did not have even Rs. 20 a day for consumption, were not touched by this euphoria. At the end of 2004-05, about 836 million or 77 per cent of the population were living below Rs.20 per day," it said.

GATED COMMUNITIES

Inside the Emporio mall, the sybaritic grandeur is a sharp contrast to the grinding poverty of the Yamuna Pushta slum, one of New Delhi's most notorious, where the stench of raw sewage wafts from open sewers and barefooted children play in the dirt.

Visitors to the mall are greeted by porters who swing open glass doors leading into two huge oval atriums decorated with crystal chandeliers, fountains and pillars. The fittings on the three floors are burnished wood, etched glass and brass.

The mall sprawls over 32,500 square meters (350,000 sq ft) of retail space. It houses scores of exclusive brands such as Cartier, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Zegna, Chopard and Dolce and Gabbana.

Given India's rapidly expanding millionaire base, it is hardly surprising the country has emerged as a delectable destination for luxury brands, which until the mall opened were mostly sold in small boutiques in luxury hotels.

Retail consultant Technopak estimates that some 1.8 million households in India earn $100,000 or more a year, spending a tenth of that on luxury goods.
This adds up to a potential market of $18 billion, a figure that is expected to rise to $56 billion by 2012, assuming the financial crisis does not make too big a dent.

When India gained independence in 1947, the country embraced a socialist ethos where extravagance was looked down upon. That has changed with the freeing up of the economy since 1991.

The bullish embrace of ritz has made India's social divide starker.

The most coveted things in the world are as easily available here as the basic necessities of life are denied to a vast majority of its people. And perhaps no-where more so than inside the Emporio mall where an unabashed celebration of luxury is on full display.

Suresh Garg, a rotund businessman shopping at the Emporio, embodies the spirit of the new, hedonistic India.

"We have been pushed around for far too long - a Third World country," he said. "But now we have arrived. Now we are no less than anyone and we need to show it off."

(Additional reporting by Sunil Kataria and Rina Chandran; Editing by Megan Goldin)

Humorous Bush - Band Of Brothers - Days of Wine & Roses

Photos from the Bush family album during better days.
Credit : From - Why We Hate Bush.com

BUDGET TRAVEL IN ASIA

BANGKOK


HO CHI MINH CITY


BOROBUDUR TEMPLE


KUALA LUMPUR

Photo Credits :OXYMANUS

Budget Travel in Asia
Planning for a Cheap Trip

Article By Tim Leffel
The Resourceful Traveler Columnist for Transitions Abroad


Asia is a massive continent, with little in common besides the land mass. It stretches from super-expensive Japan to dirt-cheap Nepal, from tropical jungles to sub-zero Siberia, from the bizarro-land states of Turkmenistan and North Korea to the ultra-modern tech-savvy lands of Singapore and South Korea.

In terms of budget planning, it’s best to divide Asia into three areas: Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, and Asia-Pacific. The differences can be striking. Even budget travelers can easily blow through $100 per day in Japan. To spend $100 per day in Laos would require staying at a very fancy hotel, eating at the most expensive restaurant in town, and ordering imported French wine with dinner. Otherwise, $20 a day can set you up rather well.

Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia was the original budget overland trail, spawning the Lonely Planet guidebook empire with the first edition of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. It’s still the most popular region for budget backpackers, and for good reasons. Collectively, the whole area is a terrific value and you can go overland from country to country quite easily. With several new budget airlines plying the skies as well, you can also fly between them for a reasonable price. As a result, you can move around almost effortlessly through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma/Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Plus Bangkok is the undisputed hub for cheap flights to anywhere, so it’s a great crossroads no matter where you are headed.

You can get a healthy street stall or cheap restaurant meal for a dollar or two throughout the region. Except for a few major historic sights, you won’t pay much to go sightseeing either. Most backpacker couples go for months through four or five countries without spending over $15 for a private room, and often less than half that. In other words, you can do it all without having to cut back somewhere. If you are on vacation and have a mid-range budget, you can really live it up.

There’s plenty to occupy your time as well, no matter what your interests. Some people spend a whole year moving around this region and still feel like they’ve only scratched the surface. You can visit historic monuments: Cambodia’s Ankor Wat, Thailand’s Ayutthaya and Sukothai, Indonesia’s Borobudur and Prambanan, and Burma/Myanmar’s Pagan—for a start. You can scale volcanoes, raft raging rivers, trek through jungles, or snorkel and scuba dive somewhere new every week. You will stay at postcard-pretty beaches so perfect that you can’t believe you’re paying under $10 a night.

With monks, exotic food, and strange languages all around you, it always still feels exotic, even if you do see a McDonald’s around the bend. Go from Buddhist monks at dawn to hill tribe markets to Chinese temples to grand mosques—all within the space of a couple weeks.

If you’ve got some money left for shopping, this part of the world is close to nirvana. Quality handicrafts are a bargain throughout most of Southeast Asia. If you have to go back home soon for a job, you can get custom-tailored business clothes made for less than off-the-rack prices in your own country.

Budget estimates are always difficult since people travel in very different ways. In relation to each other, however, the most expensive country in Southeast Asia is Singapore. The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the popular beach areas of Thailand are in the middle. The lowest prices are in Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. There’s a rough correlation between comfort and price. Singapore and Malaysia are quite easy for travelers: transportation is efficient, people speak English, and you can usually drink the water. In Cambodia, Laos, and especially rundown Myanmar, it’s best to lower your expectations and not be in too much of a hurry.

Indian Subcontinent
India and Nepal are two of the most popular countries for budget travelers, by many accounts two of the cheapest places on Earth for shoestring travelers. Far fewer venture to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or Pakistan, but prices are dirt cheap in those countries as well. Tibet straddles many lines: it’s on the other side of the mountains and is technically part of China. Going there used to be arduous and somewhat expensive. Ironically, it is getting cheaper to visit as it becomes more accessible.

India is a world unto itself, one of the most exhilarating and maddening places on the planet. Both here and in Nepal, the poverty, poor sanitation, animal-filled streets, and polluted cities can be difficult for some people to stomach. But if you can handle it (and millions of tourists do each year), you’ll be treated to fantastic sights, colorful characters, and bargain prices.

The region is full of bedraggled backpackers on a quest for something: spiritual renewal, the meaning of life, the ultimate high, love—or just a place they can get by for $10 a day. At the high end, however, tourism is booming in India, so it’s not uncommon to see fancy hotels going for $350 a night. Here more than anywhere outside Africa, travelers with a hefty budget see a very different side of the country than those on a shoestring.

As far as geographic variety goes, you’ll find it all in this area: white-sand beaches, jungles, deserts, endless plains, hillside tea plantations, and the stunning Himalayas. The cities range from magical princely kingdoms to colonial outposts to the teeming craziness of Bombay and Delhi. You’ll experience many mental states here, but boredom won’t be one of them!

As in most budget destinations, you can get anywhere you need to go without ever renting a car. The extensive train network in India is not fast unless you spring for an express train, but it is always an interesting experience. Buses cover everywhere else, including the Himalayas region stretching across several countries.

Asia Pacific
The Asia Pacific region is generally defined as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. For our purposes, we’re putting Mongolia and Russia in there as well.

Prices in this region are often no bargain, so many of the foreigners passing through are either on package tours or are going there to work. The region employs tens of thousands of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. Independent travelers can mitigate the high prices somewhat by avoiding the cities and heading into rural areas, especially in China, but this doesn’t make much difference in Japan or Korea.

It’s not hard to spend $100 a day in Japan and $50 or more a day in Korea or the cities of the other countries. Still, plenty of backpackers do visit the area, going to see working friends, exploring China at length, or making a short stopover because of a flight connection. The various routes of the Trans-Siberian Express attract a lot of people too, with some stops along the way having ample budget travel facilities.

Be prepared to deal with more of a language barrier in this part of the world, especially outside of the cities: definitely pack a good phrase book.