First of all, do you think I am exaggerating? I am not. Here, take a look at some of these links on this ship breaking industry.

1. Ship breaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
2. The science behind the complaints
3. Two photo essays  here and here.
4. A video essay here.

Video: Derek Hess in Bangladesh : Shipbreaking Yard Chittagong.

See what I mean by Dante’s hell? Naked feet treading over hot oily sand, breathing in noxious fumes without any safety equipment, clearly devastated ships, fires and sparks around the place, dark eyes and mud, earnings in the bottom layers and garbage pickers. It is indeed a hell on earth. But, according to some estimates, there are more than a million people across the world directly engaged in ship breaking, almost 200,000 in Bangladesh itself.

For very underprivileged people in poor countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc., the fact that they have any kind of employment is important. It will make the difference between starvation and existence. But this thought seems to have passed people by. When people get shocked at the sight, think about why ships are not being broken up in the USA, UK, Japan, Greece or on the shores of Italy? Well, we in the west have put in so many rules, regulations, laws, notifications and ordinances, that recycling equipment is simply not cost effective to break up ships here, especially when you have lower cost locations available. You have to wear special shoes, wear a gas mask, worry about decontamination of the ground and so on and so forth. And if you lose your job, you will always have a welfare cheque or you can move to another job.

But there are no such human health, safety or environmental requirements in Alang in Gujarat in India or in Chittagong in Bangladesh. And still people are glad to have those jobs. If you put in requirements for gas masks and decontamination in Chittagong, then what will happen? The ships will go to Sierra Leone to be broken up there instead. The 200,000 people in Bangladesh will starve because as you know, jobs or welfare cheques are not really readily available there. So while you blanch at the nightmarish conditions, do look at the smiles on the faces as well, they are doing honest jobs which the west have made uneconomic to be done in their own lands. But look at the Greenpeace site, quite an interesting site to read. The judgment call on employment versus environment protection is very difficult to make. Not an easy one at all.

There is an international convention which bars the transfer of hazardous waste between countries, namely the “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal”. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? It was drawn up in 1992 and almost 170 countries have signed up to this declaration, but it does not seem to be stopping the trade very much. An example of a successful usage of this convention to stop a dirty ship from landing on the shores of Pakistan or India was the case of the scrapping of the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 2006.

After a huge global protest campaign by Greenpeace, who protested against the French violating the Basel Convention, the French decided not to send the ship to India to be broken up and the poor ship is currently tied up at the Naval port of Brest, gently rusting away. Quite a big victory, no? It would have been so, if at exactly the same time, several other ships loaded with asbestos would not have been in the process of being broken up in Alang, India, and if no more French ships loaded with asbestos had landed in India. Or if Greenpeace had continued to campaign to make sure no more asbestos laden ships landed in Alang. But life goes on. An indication of the importance of this subject to Greenpeace can be seen at their main site for ship breaking. Notice the last date of update? It is early 2006. I suppose the cameras and reporters have gone away, but the labourers who are breaking up the ships are still there.

The other main reason for scrapping in these countries is that they provide good quality steel at rock bottom prices. Bangladesh is notoriously lacking in raw commodity materials and by some estimates, this ship breaking industry provides up to 90% of the iron and steel usage in the country. Similarly, other countries utilise scrap steel in their domestic iron and steel industry. Have you seen the prices of steel recently? They have gone up through the roof. The Global Carbon Steel Composite Index has gone from 138.3 in February 2006 to 217 in March 2008. So for the poor countries that have to purchase steel, it makes more sense for them to get it in this way.

The European Union and the International Maritime Organisation seem to be working up the courage to implement a convention on doing pre-cleaning of the hazardous materials on the ships before they end up on the breakers beach and ship breaking in general. These hazardous materials are really bad, such as asbestos, dioxins, oil, chemicals, you name it. Now this is a very tricky area and will be very difficult to implement. Who pays for the clean-up? Does the last owner of the ship pay for it? Does the owner of the last cargo on that ship pay for it? Who will enforce the ruling? Do you enforce the ruling where the ship has been tied up at the last port of call? Or where the ship has been registered? (Can you imagine a country like Liberia or Sierra Leone taking this action?). Or do you make sure that every cargo owner pays some element of the cargo fees aside for eventual cleanup?

And if the fees are not paid, then where is the money to clean it up going to come from? General taxation And if so which general taxation? Do you wish this to be paid out of EU funds or national funds? If so, why would say Luxembourg have to pay for clean up of ships while it is totally landlocked? Do you change the penalties by size of the ship or by the cargo capacity of the ship? There are quite a lot of questions to be answered, but it seems like some form of a convention will emerge very slowly, with loads of holes and exclusions. Then countries will sign up slowly, the industry will shift its patterns, and over many decades or so, get to a stage where a global standard has been agreed, implemented, operationalised and policed. Long way to go yet! If you think I am joking, head over to the International Labour Organisation website and see the conventions they have written, the number of parties who have signed up and then look around to see if that has made much of a difference, these things take time.

I love ships, I adore their shapes and I love their behaviour. They are definitely human to me and that could be the inner sailor in me speaking. They are definitely contrary, need to be handled very gently and carefully and are very expensive to run. So much so, that Admiral Chester Nimitz said, “A ship is always referred to as ‘she’ because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.” Ships talk and murmur. Seriously, they do. Listen to them and you can hear them talking, murmuring, creaking, screeching and whining. Not on those cruise ships, they are not ships, they are gaudy ornaments, sound-proofed and carpeted all over. But a warship, a tanker, a container ship, a cargo vessel, any serious vessel, who treat the sea warily and with respect, they talk to you.

Docks talk about ships taking birth in yards, joy you feel when the ship hits the water in the rush. It is very much like a human birth. Signing of the contract, the bringing together of men, materials and money in a womb like yard and the final birth as the ship rushes down and splashes into the water to be finally born. When a ship sinks and dies, it cries. Submariners who have torpedoed ships frequently talk about the sadness they feel when the ship dies. They talk about the haunting ship’s death groans when they hear the crumpling of the ships hull as it sinks down to the ocean depths.

But perhaps that is indeed the right grave for ships, the ocean depths. To be driven up a beach and then stripped naked, all the hull and steel cut away with flame torches, all the furniture and fittings unscrewed and unbolted, the oil drained away, till nothing is left but a patch of oil stained sand is somehow very distressing. But perhaps the fact that in the ship’s death, she has given back something to the humans who built and rode her while she was alive, makes the manner of her death worthwhile.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

I have spoken about Islamophobia before and have been warning about its prevalence for some time now. And regretfully, the situation is far from improving; instead it is getting worse. One can see that just looking at the rise in terrorist attacks and hate crimes, lurid headlines, anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in retaliation, etc. And the more this happens; the less the space becomes for moderates on both sides.

As I warned before, the world knows about the demonisation of a minority and knows what happens if that monster is let loose. We have seen that behaviour against Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, Hindus, Irish, English, Tutsi, you name it, it has happened. If there is a minority, the chances are that phobias, discrimination, genocide etc. against them have been in play.

So if you look at the report, the worry is clear. Muslims around the world are definitely in the cross-hairs of a variety of people. And you can very well see that in the pronouncements of some of the wilder variety of some politicians across the world; the subtle demonisation of Muslims in the mainstream, tabloid, and online media; and the increase in attacks on Muslims (or even Sikhs who these attackers thought that they looked like Muslims).

So yes, that definitely needs to be sorted out. From what I understand, the OIC asked for an annual report on Islamophobia to be tabled at the annual sessions of the OIC. The authors of this report are not clear nor are the terms of reference of this report.

But first the good points in the document. Yes, there are some good points in there. For example, the authors have collected a good selection of Islamophobia research sources. A reasonably good selection of political Islamophobic statements has also been collected in Section 2.1 and they have also done a good survey on what people have done to combat Islamophobia from a governmental, NGO and individual perspectives in section 1.6.

They also talk about how inter-faith initiatives have been established, which can at best improve inter-faith relations and at worst, not do any harm. The majority of the recommendations in the conclusion of Part I that they made to combat Islamophobia are quite bang on target and make pretty good sense. They should be read by anybody who is interested in this rather dreadful phenomenon. Section 1.5 specially is a very good overview of the situation of Muslims in Europe and USA, although some inconsistencies should have been addressed in a better way, such as praising Pope Benedict XVI in Section 3.5, but fulminating against him on page 3.

Looking at the document, I would conclude that this was done by some under-graduates from a 3^rd grade university hidden in a country-side somewhere, who have no idea about modern life and have suddenly stumbled upon the internet with their first lesson being Google search. As a result, this document starts off with the best of intentions and ends up rather fanning Islamophobia instead of helping to reduce it. It suffers from the following major defects:

• Total misunderstanding of the basic principle of Freedom of Speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to irritate and upset others. Freedom of speech does not include the right to discriminate against others though. For example, I can take the mickey out of suicide bombers wanting virgins and ending up with raisins. Or you can call me an infidel and say your religion is better than mine. These are completely acceptable, I have no issues. But you cannot tell others to kill me nor can I tell others to kill you. That is incitement to violence. The author seems to have deep intellectual issues in understanding this basic matter.
• Confusing racism with Islamophobia. Race belongs to a genetic category generally exhibited on the basis of a physical appearance. Islamophobia is a fear of Islam. Two totally different things. While in certain cases (such as black Muslims), they might blow over into being the same, but to confuse both of them as one shows muddled thinking. Muslims are not a race, and they do include a variety of different races and ethnic groups.
• Methodological and terminological confusion, which emerges from seriously flawed selection of incidents and coverage of incidents. Almost 50% of the incidents noted in the Appendix are not Islamophobic in nature, but belong to the category of freedom of speech or simple crime category. Islamophobia exists already without trying to add to it.
• A totally wrong emphasis on legal protections. They try to go deep into legal aspects of various conventions and institutions. But you see, those are already established, anti-discrimination laws exist, anti-violence laws exist anti-incitement laws exist and they are sufficient. For example, they are talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and completely forget that they themselves have repudiated it and have come up with a Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Here’s an idea! How about the OIC signing up to and transcribing to domestic law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as most of the rest of the world has done?
• Be very careful about complaining about being a victim, because it only stands up when you yourself have not victimised someone else. Now if you look at the OIC minorities, one can come up with many examples of victimisation that they themselves have done. And we are talking about Muslims victimising Muslims here, forget about non-Muslims. Ranging from Shia, Sunni, Ahmadi, Baha’i, Ismaili, Darfurians and then all the way to the other side like Jews, Christians, Hindus Buddhists, etc. have been victimised in OIC countries. Now, consider the reaction if such a report on anti-Baha’i or anti-Shia or anti-Semitic discrimination is presented at the OIC? How about considering the fact that many if not most current anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are carried out by European Muslims?
• A totally imbalanced view of history. This entire report was so imbalanced in terms of its historical coverage that one does not even know where to start. What about the entry of Islam into the Caucasian world? Or the Chinese area? How about how it managed the entry and existence in South Asia and Africa? Islam has perhaps victimised more in many countries and regions than had been victimised against. Perhaps this is why their geographical scope of the report is so muddled (to avoid any facts which destroy their argument?)
• Significant challenges in the identification of the causes of Islamophobia. First of all, there is not one form of Islam; it is not a single view, sect or a monolith. More importantly it is not the role of the state to define it. So if you are an Ahmadi or a Shia or a Sunni or what have you, we simply do not care! If you have religious differences, then by all means, discuss them, but do not kill for those differences. For example, the list of seven points raised by the Runnymede Trust defining Islamophobia can, unfortunately be equally applied to anti-Semitism, Anti-Hinduism, Anti-Shia… in OIC countries, where they will be totally applicable. Consequently, ALL root causes of Islamophobia as identified in section 1.4.1 are completely wrong and misallocated.
• A clear misunderstanding of the role of the media and the level of control people can actually exert over them. Most – if not all – of the OIC have no or very little press freedom. On top of that, the Arab League, a subset of the OIC, has decided to take fuller control over their TV Media since February 2008. That is not how the media works in other countries. Do check out independent organisations such as Reporters without Borders.
• Israel – Palestine conflict. This is something that I can never understand. Curiously, more than 3/4^th of all dead Palestinians have been killed by their fellow Arabs compared to the numbers killed by Israelis, but besides that breathtaking hypocrisy, I still cannot understand why they would include it in here. Or exclude say something like Bangladesh and Sudan? Pretty bizarre and intellectually vacuous.

Islamophobia exists, hate crimes have seriously stated happening in many countries and that is something to be worried about. All parts of civil society have to take part in ensuring that this canker of Islamophobia does not emerge from the dark evil corners of our souls. This includes you and me, the media, NGOs, churches and mosques, the government and international organisations, etc. But this has to happen for the right reasons, not for the spectacularly wrong and intellectually vapid reasons as stated in this report. All this will end up doing (and has already done) is to provide ammunition to the right wing that the OIC, as the premier Islamic organisation, takes decisions based upon policy papers which a zoned out undergraduate would hesitate to submit. And by the way, try to understand the concept of free speech. People who are out there trying to control free speech are basically engaging in Neanderthal behaviour and should not be upset if their speech is ignored, unheard or even mis-understood.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

I have already written about refugees before but this time  I want to look at what do the Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Refugees in India, Kosovo Albanian Refugees, Palestinian Refugees in various Arab countries, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, Hutu refugees in Zaire, Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Cuban refugees in USA and all the other refugees all over the world have in common? Well, they have all been used by “other people” for their own needs and agendas. And these “other people” use these refugees as part of an explicit strategy, not for purely humanitarian objectives. I was quite surprised when I worked through the argument.

Using refugees for strategic purposes seems to have a very long history, especially in the post World War II period. And generally, if managed properly, it works. See the examples which we have? While the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war is considered by many as perhaps the best example of the “Just War” theory, the fact remains that India did use the Bangladeshi refugees as a reason to poke Pakistan in the eye. As a matter of fact, that entire episode of Partition with millions and millions of refugees is still being played out by strategic use of the refugees in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

The Mohajirs in Pakistan are used as a strategic bloc by their own leaders, as well as so many other political and religious leaders in Pakistan. The ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Pundits are used in the greater strategic Hindutva discourse and are ignored strategically by the Indian government for the overall secular discourse. The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were used strategically by the Indian central and State governments, as well as political parties to push their varied agendas just like the Singhalese and Sri Lankan Muslim refugees were themselves used by Singhalese politicians to push for a nationalist objective.

Pakistan, USA and Saudi Arabia used the Afghan refugees to push for their various nationalistic, ideological, autocratic and religious strategic objectives. It is quite well known how the refugees were armed and pushed into Afghanistan to fight against the Communist Godless Russians. So Pakistan wanted to do it to get its strategic depth and play to USA; and USA wanted to contain USSR, while Saudi Arabia didn’t want the godless communists anywhere near them. Thailand used the Cambodian refugees as a buffer to the poxy gits in Cambodia, while the Hutu refugees (who were in turn responsible for the Tutsi genocide) were armed by Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko to fight an insurgency in Eastern Zaire! And all these cases generally worked for the strategy.

The entire Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo mess was and is heaving with refugees. The refugees have been pulled and pushed from and to all sides, and have been used disgracefully and hypocritically by almost all parties starting from the head honcho himself, Slobodan Milosevic. That was one spectacular example of ethnic cleansing and strategic use of refugees that went bad. The other two most hypocritical uses of refugees are the use of the Cuban refugees and second is the use of the Palestinian refugees. The Cuban refugees have been fleeing the totalitarian and authoritarian communist regime for the past few decades to the USA. And for purely ideological reasons, the USA has been using them to hit back at Fidel Castro and his regime.

Not that it worked. Fidel is fine and has retired with his Havana cigars. He is a happy man, and all those American presidents and other grand poo bah’s who used the refugees have also gone. So I am not very sure now about what was the result of using those refugees and sending them to their deaths. Similarly, the Palestinian refugees. I have spoken about them and the actual whine to pain ratio is perhaps the highest with them compared to all refugees. But that is not the point. The point is that almost every other government has used them for their strategic needs. Your own citizens being restive about jobs or cost of bread? Use the refugees as a reason to rattle your sabre’s at the Jews / Israel? Do not give them citizenship, treat them as bargaining counters, keep them in camps, use their people as propaganda, use their situation in the United Nations, etc. etc. And it is just not the government, but also the common people ranging from Journalist Associations in the UK to the USSR wanting to tweak the noses of the Americans to Saudi Arabian Islamic Charities to Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Economic refugees and migrants also get it in the neck, whether you are talking about the BNP talking about the Asian refugees or the Conservative Party talking about the Eastern European migrants. How about that Raj Thakerey fellow, who was recently fulminating about internal economic migration inside India?, Or the huge debates around the East German migrants into Western Germany and using them for political purposes?

But this essay is more about the political refugees who cross borders. Unfortunately, our international security and political institutions do not have anything functional to fight these nasty hypocritical folks who use the refugees for their own ends. At some point in time, it is but natural that the legal and political framework will extend to cover the use or rather the abuse of these poor displaced refugees. And it is at that time that decisions taken today will come back to haunt them. If you do not believe me, just see Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein, who tried to use population transfers as a weapon of war and politics… So whenever you hear anybody fulminating about refugees, do not take them at face value, there is almost always an ulterior motive.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

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Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta[http://piquancy.blogspot.com] works in an investment bank in London. He also lectures at several universities around the world, and is currently undertaking research at Kings College London on terrorism. The essays in here are strictly his opinion and do not reflect the position or opinion of his past or current employers.

[Read post by Bhaskar Dasgupta]

The House of Al Saud is built on land which is criss-crossed with tectonic fault lines which are almost constantly moving. And the al Saud way of handling these fault lines is not to improve the house by making it flexible, open and earthquake proof but to try to pour concrete down the fault line chasms. The concrete is radical Islam, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, sectarianism, oil money, corruption etc. with predictably sad results. And that is just now, what will happen in 10 years time? One way of finding out is to take a detailed look at the Saudi education system sausage machine to see what will come out on the other end. The answer is that the supply of ideology, money and people from Saudi Arabia to fuel global jihad will actually increase.

Saudi Arabia (like Pakistan), is one of the artesian wells of global Islamist terrorism and the rulers are frankly what can be politely described as robbers. To cover their thuggery, they draw on the cloak of Islam. I came across a very interesting factoid (from Juan Cole and Mai Yamani’s academic work). In 1801/02, a big bunch of Saudi robbers from the Second Saudi Kingdom, supposedly operating under a fatwa which allowed them to rob and steal from the accursed infidel Shias, attacked Karbala and ransacked it. Karbala at that time and even now, was a place of pilgrimage and is a very big shrine. Given the nature of shrines, it was a very rich town.

As it so happens, a huge amount of Indian money (Lucknow) went to Shia Iraqi shrines to make canals, repair shrines and for general upkeep. So here we are, the fruit of the oppressed Indian farmer being collected by Shia rulers of Lucknow and they live up the high life with that money. Then, feeling guilty about their sins and to express their piety, they give the money to Iraqi Shrines (don’t you worry, this also happened with the Sunni Rulers in India, like the Begums of Bhopal who got hostels constructed in Mecca).

Then the Wahhabi Al Saud’s come rocking up with thousands of camels and rob Karbala. But then, robbing temples and shrines was quite common back then (remember Somnath?). But the crucial thing to remember is that this happened under religious cover and justification, just like what other religious terrorists do as well. Another interesting aspect, this raid by Al Saud on Karbala is not well known or even desired to be known. In my attempts to get more information, there was a deafening silence from all the avenues. Generally, you get tons of information, but in this case? Besides some academic work, not much is known about this attack.

But that religious cover by the Wahhabist sect is twinned by this institutionalised state driven robbery and we can see it when Al Saud took over the country, when the Saudi state faced the various insurrections/rebellions, when it took over the Holy Cities from the Husseni family, to the current giant corruption scheme that the 22 thousand royals (The Royal to Commoner ratio is approximately 1 royal to 1000 Saudi’s compared to 1 royal to 5 million Brits) run on top of the Saudi State etc. etc.

Very simply, the idea is, the Al Saud’s cream off all the wealth, the Wahhabi clerics get to define and run the religion and the 2 Holy Cities, and the local Saudi’s get sandwiched between loads of oil money on one side and religious hell/brimstone from the other. Between these two oppressive and bizarre sides, are you surprised that the country which has provided most of the money and a significant proportion of international jihadi’s come from this country?

So what do you do when you cannot do anything with the Royals (they are our allies, aren’t they?) or the Wahhabi’s (they are religious leaders and therefore untouchable). You go after the feedstock of terrorism, the common man. One way to turn these jihadi’s around is to educate them in a better way and that is by modifying the education system and curriculum?

Here are some statistics on Saudi Arabia’s education system from the recently released World Bank report. It is not that Saudi Arabia is not spending money on education, far from it. It spends a huge amount of money; almost 7% (average over the past 4 decades) of public expenditure is on education. Its expenditure per pupil can perhaps legitimately said to be the highest in the world.

You can’t say that they are not in school either; Saudi enrolment figures are around the world average. But in terms of quality, it leaves much to be desired. Mathematics skills are below average. And based upon an econometric formulation, the authors determine that despite a full generation worth of very high investment in education, the returns in terms of academic levels in Saudi Arabia are atrocious, especially when measured in secular, global and scientific terms such as mathematics skills.

So what do they study? 76% of students study humanities. Which may be fine for civil servants, car dealerships, religious teachers etc. but you do need some mathematics and science bits somewhere. (here’s a mind blowing statistic for you, public sector employment in Saudi Arabia as a proportion of total employment is over 80%!). And about 50-60% of the curriculum can be termed as religious education. Both rather unsuited for what a modern knowledge based scientific economy needs.

But don’t think this state is because they are illiterate, they aren’t, only 1 in 5 is illiterate. Even in the case of females, and it is only 30% illiteracy which is pretty good. While women outnumber men in school and college, the female labour participation is poor (in 2003, it was 20.2% compared to about 40% in Asia and 35% in Latin America). And the youth bulge is growing, the current fertility rate, albeit dropping, is still at about 6 children per Saudi Women. So we have a large number of students and a bad curriculum. What can you do? In normal countries, you have governments, parliaments, judiciary, media, non-governmental organisations, etc. which can help to change the direction of the education system.

Well, I said that the Wahhabi’s control the education system, so they need to be checked. But how? That’s the question, who will bell the cat? They control the judicial system, they control the ministry of Islamic Affairs, all the mosques, they control the religious police, the three huge Islamic Universities, the Ministry of Hajj, the Ministry of Religious Endowments, the Ministry of Finance, and all forms of communications whether it be radio, TV or the printed word. And of course, there is no democracy.

So you cannot force changes to the education system via the normal mechanisms of politics, democracy, judicial reform, media campaigns or religious authority because this group of Wahhabi’s rule the roost. And the royals will definitely not say anything to the Wahhabi’s because their rule is predicated on the Wahhabi approval. So nothing much can happen despite the recent efforts to set up independent universities.

So you end up with a rapidly growing student population, whose education is under the control of these Wahhabi’s, being taught subjects that are spectacularly unsuited to the modern world, being ruled by grasping corrupt rulers, and with no hope that their education system can be reformed. So when you have unemployed or underemployed youth, with their heads crammed full of religious fundamentalist nonsense, what do they do?

Off they go to do the inner struggle business in the country, in the neighbourhood or around the world. With the sad result, like in Pakistan, the supply of jihadi’s will increase not decrease. And the ironic fact is that these jihadi’s are actively turning against the Al Saud’s for the past 30 years. For example, Osama Bin Laden and company actively hate these al-Saud’s just like what Juhayman al-Otaibi did in 1979. Poetic Justice or chickens coming home to roost?

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

–

Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta[http://piquancy.blogspot.com] works in an investment bank in London. He also lectures at several universities around the world, and is currently undertaking research at Kings College London on terrorism. The essays in here are strictly his opinion and do not reflect the position or opinion of his past or current employers.

[Read post by Bhaskar Dasgupta]

There is this issue which I keep on stumbling over and which seems to be agitating so many people who are in the publishing business. There seem to be two camps, the first camp is the journalist camp and the second seems to be the bloggers camp. And boyo, do these two camps fight or do they? They fight over who is right and who is wrong, who is going to survive and who is going to die. But for what it’s worth, here is my take on this rather interesting debate in one corner of the world.

Let us define some words which will be used in this essay and are related to this area. And this is where I already started finding issues. A journalist can be a reporter who writes for a journal but also a person who keeps a journal or a diary, which may or may not be published. A blogger is a person who blogs (writes) about his thoughts on various topics in an online medium. A reporter is usually employed by a media house to report on daily or periodic going ons in the world. This reporting can be online, radio, TV, magazine, newspaper, etc. The reporter is also required or may create a blog or further discuss his/her story online.

Confused? Let me carry on, What about an essayist? Somebody who writes an essay which is usually longer than 800 words (the sort of word count which generally is more than a news story but is less than an essay which can be anything more than 1.500 words or upwards). How about a pamphleteer? It is a word which is not usually used that much these days, but it is also a type of writing on a particular topic. How about a columnist? A columnist is a person who usually has a brand name, writes on some particular topic on a regular basis in a newspaper, magazine, online and/or in print.

What about an author who can write fiction as well as non-fiction? So what’s the boundary between fiction and non-fiction? Very confused boundary indeed. Say a reporter is trying to explain the settings of a particular event such as the state of the nation address by the US President, George Bush. And he talks about “the swirling wintry blowing snow” which he uses as a metaphor to describe the challenges facing the US president. Now what is fiction and what isn’t? I strongly recommend this book which talks about the difficulties that a poet faces in a newspaper. ( W. Dale Nelson. “Gin before Breakfast: The Dilemma of the Poet in the Newsroom”. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007).

Do you see where I am going with this as to how difficult it is to categorise people? Or how about commentators? People who comment on particular aspects? Say a cricket match? Or the results from a conference? Or following a political campaign? Now the only difference I can see is that the person could be commentating online, on radio, on TV, in a newspaper, in a newspaper online, real-time… Now I have thoroughly managed to confuse myself. The only common thing that I can see in all these definitions is that they write for some medium with some expectation of being read. So no, I am not clear about the definitions at all.

Let me get my personal biases exposed. Well, for what it’s worth, I have been on both sides of the fence, and still am. A purist would say that I am not, I am still writing op-eds, so that’s not pure journalism, but then which reporter does not write facts with a bias or which columnist does not opine with some facts? Then there is the other debate around reporters and historians and I straddle that fence as well. Goodness, all that straddling fences and my backside is becoming numb. Blogging is something that I have recently picked up and it is an interesting experiment that I have been engaging in, but more about that later on. I also write essays, magazine articles, academic papers, commercial papers and have reported sometimes on certain events. Oh! I am also planning on writing some books. So I am afraid the fence is now dangerously looking like a bed of nails, well, with my heritage, I should be perfectly comfortable, no?

While debating this topic with a journalist friend, it suddenly heated up and she said that journalism requires passion and that I do not have this passion and more importantly I would not understand this passion. This puzzled me, what exactly is this passion and why is this passion different? And why on earth can I not understand or appreciate it? I write about terrorism, history, military science, politics, children, humour, media, business, technology, etc. etc. Now I don’t have a passion for dung beetles, so I do not write about them. I also have a very small readership and I do not charge them to read me, but I am very grateful to them for devoting time to read my witterings!

Is this passion a desire to report facts? Then I have that. Is this passion to communicate? I would be a poor teacher and writer if I did not have the desire to communicate. Is this a passion to search for facts? Well, I think I do like to check and read up on facts. Me and my sister spend hours debating and delving into the strangest things which nobody else seems to understand or care for. Now besides making us strange, it also makes us passionate. Or is this passion solely restricted to people who work as newspaper reporters? Do TV people not have this passion? How about radio people? How about people who write for charities? Or how about special investigators who investigate war crimes or development agencies who help in the development of famine stricken or medical problem infested areas? Or does this relate to the use of printers’ ink, but surely the use of printers ink is sort of outdated anyway. Sniffing glue I have heard, but sniffing printers ink? How about Rudyard Kipling who is famous for his books and stories, but was also a great journalist of his time?

So you might well ask, what DO I think about the future of the media? Well, I have written about this before. Also, here’s a classic debate about bloggers and journalists. At a recent Business Week Conference , I heard one of their senior editors say that the line is blurring between the journalists and bloggers. Previously, a story would be filed and they would forget about it. But now, they are expected to defend their stories online in a rollicking debate. So where does one draw the line? And if I am submitting my blog entries to a site like DesiCritics which have an editorial process, is that site a news-site or a bloggers site or what? Life is changing, my friends!

I am also not so sure about this passion for facts. In a debate about MEMRI (I already talked about how none of the media outlets are actually thought to be totally fair and balanced). Even the doughty BBC frequently gets accused of getting its world famous journalistic independence and “lean” wrong. Somebody once did an analysis of the political leanings of the BBC group on Facebook and found that the number of left liberals is vastly and overwhelmingly greater than the conservatives. Take the Middle East Reporting for example, whether you are talking about MEMRI, Jerusalem Post, NY Times, CNN, FOX, BBC or Al Ahram, each and every one of these media outlets have made spectacular howlers in reporting.

I mean, when you have a mainstream media outlet publishing howlers such as saying that President Sarkozy of France is a Zionist agent, then one seriously wonders. So while both bloggers and journalists go for facts and figures, both make mistakes and while one has an editorial process to trap mistakes, the line is blurring as bloggers may and do get some comments and feedback about obvious mistakes and different opinions (such as my post about the EU Budget. Where is this desire for facts and freedom of speech when the US Media actively collaborates with the US Government to suppress facts in the name of national security ( which I can understand, btw)?

Bill Keller, executive editor, New York Times, delivering the 2008 Memorial lecture at the Chatham House in London talked  more about the challenges facing journalism from new media and Web 2.0, how they have so many reporters on the ground in Iraq and along with the strong sense of standards, that distinguishes between reporters and bloggers. Well, agreed. But how come that this does not explain how most of the reportage which we have recently started to see like Typhoon Sidr, Glasgow and 9/11 Terrorist Attack and the Christmas Tsunami were from bloggers who were using their blog sites, video cameras, YouTube and even uploading into mainstream media sites such as BBC? He talks about how Google never reported from a riot or never stood in the middle of a tsunami. Well, neither did he nor his band of intrepid men. So he isn’t so right about the reporters on the ground bit and not so right about the standards bit (he himself admitted for example that his newspaper ignored the Holocaust as it was happening!!) so I am not very sure what is the difference he is claiming.

Now that I have come to the end, I am even more confused about the difference. Is it the money? I mean, if you get paid and received a fixed salary to write stories, do you become a journalist? How about people who make money out of writing stories online such as through Ad-Sense or some other advertising medium? Or those who are independently wealthy and do not need the money but write as a second career? I just had an amusing thought. Would the ancient world’s town crier and the stone column carver have had a similar debate three centuries ago? So no, this debate is facile, the mediums are changing, the fact remains is that we are all communicating and being social animals. To concentrate on the means of communicating to the exclusion of the content is wrong and misguided.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

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DR.Bhaskar Dasgupta[http://piquancy.blogspot.com] works in an investment bank in London. He also lectures at several universities around the world, and is currently undertaking research at Kings College London on terrorism. The essays in here are strictly his opinion and do not reflect the position or opinion of his past or current employers.

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