Baithak

If 2,319,258 are already incarcerated than what difference would a few more make? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be there along with former Sec. of Defense and Colin Powell and the other generals - as war criminals!

Report: 1 percent of U.S. adults behind bars

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report.

San Quentin State Prison in California holds more than 5,200 inmates.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population “is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime,” the report said.

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Here, in the Great White North we live in the shadow of a behemoth - the U.S. And in a sense we are more susceptible to its rumblings than other far off countries.

There was a time when Canada had an independent foreign policy. Lately, like the poodle Bush had across the pond, Ottawa has been trying to out do everyone. Specially under the current minority government of Stephen Harper, who when ordered to jump by the U.S. neoconzix asks ‘how high’.

Canada, as you know has committed troops to Afghanistan. A majority of Canadians wants them pulled back. Harper has elicited the Liberals commitment to extend the deployment of its troops till the end of 2011.

Haroon writes about it in his column.

Canada clings to war as strategy for Afghanistan

Haroon Siddiqui

The Liberals are talking their way out of their political quagmire in Afghanistan. They are joining the Conservatives in extending our military mission there.

The Liberal-Tory consensus comes amid increasing divisions among NATO allies as well as in the emerging power centres of post-election Pakistan over what do about the endless Afghan war.

The Liberals are now as irrelevant on Afghanistan as the American Democrats have been on Iraq.

The Liberals initiated the combat mission in Kandahar and the Democrats supported the Iraq war. Each has had difficulty pretending to be the party of peace.

By contrast, the Conservatives have been as sure-footed as the Republicans. As advocates of war, both have had clarity of purpose.

Stephen Harper and Gen. Rick Hillier are also using the same unsavoury tactics as George W. Bush and the American commander in Afghanistan – namely, that any democratic expression of doubt about the war is tantamount to aiding and abetting the enemy.

You are either with the Tories or you are “an agent for the Taliban,” says House Leader Peter Van Loan.

The Liberals had a chance to carve out a clear position between a continuing commitment to an overly American combat warfare or abandoning Afghanistan altogether. John Manley, besides recommending an extension of the military mission, had called for a series of parallel steps to boost the civilian component of our commitment: A re-engineering of CIDA’s failed efforts, a greater emphasis on reconstruction (there hasn’t been much, even in areas where there is little fighting), democracy-building initiatives and a regional solution in concert with Pakistan and others.

The Liberals did nod in that direction but, in the end, let the government cherry-pick Manley’s report.

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Just read two interesting takes on plagiarism. First one is from the Daily Times editorial and the second one is a news report from DNA.

Teachers should not defend plagiarists!

A general body meeting of the Punjab University Academic Staff Association (PUASA) has taken a very strange stance on the matter of plagiarism among the university faculty. The teachers condemned the compulsory retirement of six professors — one from the psychology department and five from the physics department — against whom plagiarism was proved. Their plea was that removals were effected to pressurise the teachers. But the question is: pressurise for what? If the pressure is being felt against the tendency to copy other people’s theses then this pressure is demanded by a civil society already harassed by news of intellectual theft at the University.

Meanwhile, the vice-chancellor, Prof Mujahid Kamran, should be supported in his campaign against plagiarism in the once great seat of learning in Lahore. The Higher Education Commission has been keeping its grants in abeyance during the time it took for the University to punish the plagiarists. It has now released the funds. Meanwhile, at the Government College University (GCU) in Lahore a similar action against an erring teacher has earned the gratitude of those who want to see our teachers better rewarded for original research. Unless plagiarism is treated with toughness, merit will not be properly recognised. *

and from mumbai

Mayank Tewari

NEW DELHI: Some of India’s most reputed academics, including a vice chancellor and the director of a top Delhi engineering college, are under investigation for plagiarism, as the cancer of copying from other people’s work spreads across all layers of Indian higher education.

DNA had last week reported how a professor at the Sri Venkateshwara University in Tirupati had plagiarised 70 scientific papers, and published them in international journals, only to be finally exposed.

But the professor continues to teach at the varsity.

With no severe punishment for such academic fraud and in the absence of guidelines, Indian higher education institutions are witnessing massive spread of the malaise, because published scientific papers are key to promotions and good postings.

“Even researchers from some high profile institutes like the IITs are indulging in plagiarism,” says Dr KL Chopra, president of the Society for Scientific Values, which is dedicated to detecting scientific fraud.

Last week, the vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University, Prof PK Abdul Aziz, was asked to go on a long leave by the Uttar Pradesh governor till allegations that he copied his Phd thesis are refuted.

Dr Ranjit Singh, Director of one of India’s top engineering colleges, Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology in Delhi, is being investigated by the institute’s governing for allegedly copying the works of other scientists and claiming them as his own. Turn to

“What India needs are clear regulations and guidelines to deal with scientists who have been found guilty of misconduct in research or plagiarism,” says Dr KL Chopra, who is a former director of IIT Kharagpur. The Society for Scientific values exposed Prof Abdul Aziz and Prof Ranjit Singh.

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Op Art served as a visual device in Colin David’s paintings. The black and white background design with its linear optical illusion forms an ever-changing relationship with the form, which was either a nude or clothed figure. It is always the dynamic ‘patterned’ space rather than the form that holds the interest of the viewer. The nude became the painter’s forte and in later series it was set against verdant landscapes.

In the early post 1947 decades the artist adopted Modernism not as perpetuation of the First World hegemony but as a metaphor for change and economic freedom. In Pakistan the painters frequently borrowed classicised images of miniature paintings like Picasso did from Greek art and synthesized it with the grammar of modernism. Even if a European painter inspired them, it remained as a point of departure. The modernism that emerged in this region is not a derivative art but a stylistic adaptation used to articulate the experiences of a society in flux and in need for a dynamic expression.

It was the first generation, taught by the pioneer modernists that initiated a break from the straitjacket of formalism to deal with the reality of their lived experiences. The society was no longer being viewed in stereotypes or idealised images, but as an evolving nation faced with the challenges of transition, from a colony to a democracy.

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