OBAMA'S VICTORY SPEECH- HE IS INDEED SUPERB

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PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Renewing America

Jan 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

George Bush has left a dismal legacy, but Barack Obama can do much to repair the damage

CORBIS

SHORTLY after midday on January 20th, Barack Obama will sit for the first time at the desk where the buck stops. The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, but it seems particularly so this month. A global recession of a severity not seen for perhaps 80 years; a new war in the Middle East and old ones in Africa; missions very far from accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan; a prickly Russia and a rising China. These international challenges must jostle for the president’s attention alongside noisy domestic concerns like rocketing unemployment, the desperate need for a better health-care system, exploding deficits and failing cities. The burdens, surely, are too many for one man to bear.

Yet neither America nor the world seems to see it that way. A crowd of 2m or more is making its way to Washington, DC, to witness the inauguration of Mr Obama. Billions more will watch it on television. All will do so in a spirit that has been missing for a while—one of optimism. This is not just because a presidency knocked sideways by the events of September 11th 2001, is ending. Next week’s inauguration also bears witness to America’s awesome power of self-renewal. Because he is young, handsome and intelligent, and also because as the child of a Kansan and a Kenyan he reconciles in his own person one of the world’s most hateful divisions, Mr Obama carries with him the hopes of the planet.

Too much so, for sure. But what might the world realistically hope for from Mr Obama’s presidency? Many would argue, after the disaster that surrounded George Bush’s Iraq adventure, that to rebuild its foreign relationships America must become a more modest giant, more obviously constrained by international law and more committed to working even-handedly for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. In some ways, that is surely right. Less of Mr Bush’s Manichaean arrogance would be welcome.

With us, not withdrawn

This does not mean that America should become more isolationist. Most of the world’s biggest problems still cry out for its leadership; and an America that withdraws to heal its domestic wounds will not serve the world well. No one seriously imagines that peace can come to the Middle East without America. Neither Russia, nor China, nor the EU has any appetite to lead efforts to confront nuclear proliferation by Iran or North Korea. Sometimes, as with Kosovo in the 1990s, America needs to act even when the UN hesitates. Above all, America must lead efforts to grapple with the global recession, through its dominant position at the IMF, its vital role in resisting the siren call of protectionism and the stimulative effect of the vast government outlays Mr Obama is planning. Yet a president who understands, as Mr Bush did not, that America is not the uncontested hyperpower of the 1990s—one who values “soft power” more than the hard version—will be a change for the better. An America led by such a man will listen more carefully to and work more closely with allies and rivals, will strive harder to respect the laws it has signed up to and might enter into new commitments, for instance to tackle climate change.

A renewal of America’s respect for constitution and law would be welcome at home as well as abroad. George the Second disdained the rules of governance established by his forefathers. He wiretapped citizens without authority, secretly permitted the use of torture and dismissed prosecutors on political grounds. Mr Obama seems determined not to follow his example. He has appointed a liberal outsider to run the CIA and a noted academic to head his office of legal counsel. America’s, said one of its founders, should be “a government of laws and not of men”. Under Mr Bush and Dick Cheney, it often seemed the opposite.

But it is the domestic economy which will consume most of Mr Obama’s time. And here American renewal must take two opposite forms. In some ways, the times cry out for more active government: for stronger regulation of banks and near-banks, for much more short-term government spending to counteract the contraction elsewhere in the economy, and for the establishment of a basic health-care system for everyone. But Mr Obama also needs a plan to shrink other aspects of government over the longer term. Without reform of expensive entitlements, the federal government faces bankruptcy. Cutting entitlements at the same time as buying hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of bad loans from Wall Street is difficult politics, to say the least. But at least Mr Obama has acknowledged that he will have to do it. A more equitable health system coupled with a path towards budget reform would, on their own, make Mr Obama’s presidency a remarkable one. And at least he has the votes in Congress to make it happen.

What chance success?

Mr Bush (see article) had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Mr Obama seems to be different. By offering the most prized cabinet job to his rival, Hillary Clinton, and by keeping on Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who has done a good job, Mr Obama has shown a determination not to surround himself with cronies. He has put together a team which has impressed almost everyone with its calibre and its centrism. He has been tough already, dispatching blunderers and being prepared to admit to mistakes. He has repeatedly warned Americans that he will have to do unpleasant things.

The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.

Stumble or fall?

Jan 8th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition

Will the global financial crisis halt the rise of emerging economies?

Illustration by S. Kambayashi

NOBODY talks about “decoupling” any more. Instead, emerging economies are sinking alongside developed ones. In 2008 emerging stockmarkets fell by more than those in the rich world, and financial woes forced countries such as Hungary, Latvia and Pakistan to go cap in hand to the IMF. Taiwan’s exports have plunged by 42% over the past year, and South Korea’s by 17%; even China’s have shrunk. Singapore’s GDP fell by an annualised 12.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, its biggest drop on record. Is this the end of the emerging-market boom?

Over the five years to 2007, emerging economies grew by an annual average of more than 7%. But in the past three months their total output may have fallen slightly, according to JPMorgan, as the fall in exports was exacerbated by a sudden drying up in trade finance. For 2008 as a whole, average growth in emerging economies was still above 6%, but recent private-sector forecasts suggest that this could slip to less than 4% this year. That is grim compared with the recent past, though still robust set against an expected 2% decline in the GDP of the G7 countries.

Short-term pain is only to be expected. But some economists argue that emerging markets’ longer-term prospects have been badly hurt by the global financial crisis. From Brazil to China, they claim, the boom was driven largely by exports to American consumers, easy access to cheap capital and high commodity prices. All three props have now collapsed. In particular, as America’s housing bust causes households to save more, they will import less over the coming years. This could reduce emerging economies’ future growth rates.

Yet emerging economies’ reliance on America is often exaggerated. The surge in their total exports as a share of GDP since 2000 might, on the face of it, suggest that their boom was powered by rich-world demand. But their dependence on exports to developed countries has barely budged, at just under 20% of GDP (see chart 1). Most of the growth in exports has been within the developing world.

For sure, emerging economies will not return to their exceptional growth rates in 2007 (no bad thing either, since many of them were overheating). But it is equally wrong to assume that they cannot recover until America rebounds. There are good reasons to believe that emerging markets’ share of world growth will continue to climb (see chart 2).

Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, argues that most emerging economies are not plagued by America’s deep structural problems, such as an overhang of debt, which could cramp growth for several years. Although 2009 will be a painful year for poorer countries, those with high savings and modest debt could recover fairly quickly. On many measures, such as government and external balances, emerging economies look much sounder than the big rich ones.

Unfortunately, aggregate numbers conceal many horrors, most notably in eastern Europe. Countries such as Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey have huge current-account deficits and foreign debts. Between 2000 and 2008, the ratio of foreign debt to GDP dropped from 37% to 20% in Latin America and from 28% to 17% in emerging Asia, but jumped from 45% to 51% in central and eastern Europe.

As foreign capital dried up, GDP fell by 4.6% in Latvia and by 3.5% in Estonia in the year to the third quarter of 2008. Capital Economics, a research consultancy, expects another 5% drop this year. Hungary’s economy is expected to contract in 2009. Turkey may also be heading for trouble. Its debt-service payments due in 2009 amount to 80% of its foreign reserves, the highest ratio of any big emerging economy.

Russia has run current-account surpluses for many years, yet it has also been badly hit by an outflow of capital and a credit freeze. Banks and companies are finding it hard to roll over their foreign debt. Official reserves have fallen by $160 billion, or 25%, since August. As a result of lower oil prices, Russia is likely to run its first current-account and budget deficits in a decade, and its economy may well contract in 2009.

Asia’s export-led economies have been hurt by the collapse in global demand. Output is already falling in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, current-account surpluses and modest domestic debts mean that most of the region is much less exposed to the credit crunch than eastern Europe is. Asia has two other advantages. First, as a large net importer of raw materials it will benefit from the plunge in commodity prices, unlike Latin America. And second, with the exception of India, Asian countries have low public-debt-to-GDP ratios, giving them more room for fiscal stimulus than other emerging economies. Such policies take time to work, but after a nasty 2009, Asia is well placed to be the first region in the world to recover.

China is crucial to Asia’s fortunes. Many economists expect GDP growth to slow to around 7% in 2009, down from almost 12% in 2007 and its slowest rate for almost two decades. Thousands of factories have closed in southern China, triggering concerns that rising unemployment will cause social unrest. This prompted the government to unveil a large fiscal stimulus in late 2008, which should help to boost growth in the second half of this year. With debts of only 18% of GDP, the government has plenty more room to boost spending. And if China has to rely more on domestic demand, this will help to steer it onto a more sustainable path.

A comparison of China with India in any case shows that exports are not the main thing that determines how vulnerable economies are to the global crisis. India’s exports as a share of GDP are much smaller than China’s, so one might expect it to be holding up better. But a big chunk of Indian investment—the main driver of recent growth—has been financed by overseas borrowing or new equity issuance. Both have dried up. The government’s huge budget deficit also limits its room for fiscal easing. On January 2nd India announced its second monetary and fiscal stimulus package within a month, but the extra spending is tiny. Standard Chartered thinks that GDP growth will dip to 5% in 2009, well below its recent 9% pace.

Latin America’s prospects lie somewhere between those of Asia and emerging Europe. Weak commodity prices could push the region into running a large current-account deficit, just as private-capital inflows decline sharply. Latin America also has less scope for fiscal stimulus than Asia, because many governments (including Argentina and Brazil) used the windfall from higher commodity prices to boost spending rather than cut debt. Goldman Sachs forecasts that Brazil will grow by only 1.5% in 2009, whereas Mexico’s GDP could fall by 0.5% because of its stronger trade links with America. The bank reckons that both should recover fairly quickly. Argentina is another matter. Credit-default-swap spreads on its government debt have surged to horrifying levels, signalling that investors see a high risk of default.

During the past five years virtually all emerging economies boomed. Now their fortunes will diverge much more. The most important factor determining how they cope with the recession in the rich world will be whether they are high savers, able to stimulate their own economies, or big borrowers. If international investors continue to shun risk and rich-world governments swamp markets with their own borrowing, it will be hard for emerging-market governments to issue bonds and for banks and firms to roll over debts. Some developing countries will therefore remain sluggish for longer than others.

Overall, however, their long-term prospects remain good, thanks to structural reforms and better macroeconomic policies over the past decade. In December the World Bank forecast that GDP per head in poorer countries would rise at an annual pace of 4.6% during 2010–15, similar to that during the past decade, and more than twice as fast as in the 1990s. That word “decoupling” may yet get dusted off again.

Pummelling the Palestinians

Dec 30th 2008 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

If the Israeli onslaught on the Islamists of Hamas silences them for a while, it could alter the odds in Israel’s coming general election

Reuters

“BY THE time we’re finished,” Israel’s deputy chief of staff, General Dan Harel, told a group of mayors from towns close to the Gaza Strip on December 29th, “there won’t be a Hamas building left standing in Gaza.” They could well believe him. In four days of bombing that began with a massive, sudden raid on December 27th, Israeli jets, unmanned drones and helicopters killed some 350 Palestinians, smashing offices belonging to Hamas, the Islamist movement that has run the strip since booting out its secular Fatah rivals a year-and-a-half ago, as well as police stations, ministry buildings, Gaza’s Islamic university, refugee camps and workshops. In a raid by 40 aircraft on December 28th, dozens of arms-smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt were destroyed.

The onslaught is meant to stop Hamas firing rockets at Israel. But the general predicted that “the worst is still ahead”. UN agencies said between 50 and 90 of 300-plus killed in the first three days were non-combatants. If tanks and artillery enter the fray, civilian deaths may mount faster. In the past year, before the latest onslaught, 420-plus Gazans had been killed in Israeli raids, at least a fifth civilian, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights lobby.

In the first four days of “Operation Cast Lead”, four Israelis (including one soldier) were killed by Palestinian rockets, bringing the total number of Israeli civilian deaths at Hamas’s hands in 2008 to five. Three of the victims were struck down in the towns of Netivot, 12km (seven miles) east of Gaza, Ashkelon, 11km up the coast, and Ashdod, a port, 30km north of the strip. Villages even farther away were hit.

Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said the operation had been planned for months, long before a shaky six-month ceasefire with Hamas ran out on December 19th. Intelligence sources identified scores of Hamas targets in the densely populated territory, where 1.5m Palestinians, more than half of them refugees or their descendants, have been hemmed into the sandy coastal strip some 40km long.

Stopping or drastically reducing Palestinian rocket fire will be the political touchstone of this military campaign, as it was in the month-long war between Israel and Hizbullah, Lebanon’s well-armed Shia movement, in the summer of 2006. At that time, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, who is to step down after an election on February 10th, had hoped that air raids would silence the missile launchers. Three weeks later, with a third of Israel virtually at a standstill because Hizbullah’s missiles are far more lethal than Hamas’s mostly home-made projectiles, a massive Israeli ground force was finally sent in but got bogged down against Hizbullah’s dogged fighters. An eventual ceasefire left Hizbullah claiming victory and Israel’s generals and politicians locked in recrimination.

“After Lebanon,” says Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the foreign affairs and defence committee of Israel’s parliament, “everyone understands that rocket fire can’t be silenced by air power alone.” But everyone understands, too, that Hamas, completely outgunned from the air, seeks to lure Israeli ground troops into the heavily built-up Gaza Strip to engage them with street-fighting guerrillas. Hamas, too, has been preparing long and hard for this showdown.

As in all its wars, Israel feels it is fighting against the clock. Its diplomats say they sensed an initial surge of approval, albeit muted, from many world capitals and even among moderate Arab governments. George Bush’s administration has been plainly in Israel’s corner. But the high death toll and the prospect of a lot more killing if the operation is “broadened and deepened”, to use Mr Barak’s words, could spur European governments to pay more heed to protests mounting in the Arab world.

Israel says it intends its armed incursions, if they come, to be brief and not to drag it into a renewed occupation of the strip. If the Hamas regime collapses under the onslaught, so much the better, though there is no certainty that the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, forcibly ousted from Gaza by Hamas in June 2007 but still in charge in the Palestinians’ bigger West Bank, would be able to return to power.

If Hamas does stop firing rockets, Mr Barak’s standing could rise fast. Mr Olmert is formally still in charge until a new government is formed after the election. But the Gaza operation is widely seen as Mr Barak’s. He and his Labour party have been trailing well behind the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and her Kadima party and Binyamin Netanyahu and his hard-right opposition Likud party. In desperation, before the onslaught, Mr Barak had mounted a campaign on billboards and on the internet, declaring himself “not nice”, “not cuddly” and “not trendy”. If Hamas’s rockets are silenced, albeit for a while, Israel’s voters may warm to those harsh qualities.

Volvo Ocean Race Stopover in Kochi- An Overview

Last week saw the much-awaited event in Kochi- Volvo Ocean race stop over.
Neither the terrorist siege nor the pirate threat could cast a shadows on the mega event. The event marked Kochi in the maps of international ocean tourism map. The Volvo Ocean Race started its journey from Aliconte in Spain and had stopped over at Cape Town, South Africa. Kochi is its second stopover. The Race covers over 39000 nautical miles covering 4 continents and 11 countries.

The Race Village was inaugurated by Hon’ble Minister for Labour PK Gurudasan. On his inaugural speech he said that the Stopover would contribute towards the tourism and investment growth in the state. He said the state is proud to host such an event of international recognition. The two acre Race Village included the various commercial stalls, exhibition pavilions and housing facilities for the race members, officials, and media persons. The organizers had arranged various programmes for the public including cultural feast by renowned artists. The Chandrayaan stall of ISRO(Indian Space Research Organisation) was the center of attraction.

The power paragliding event by world champion Mathieu Rounet also unfurled at the Race Village before hundreds of spectators. In the Snake Race held at the Mattanchery Channel ,Puma Sreeganesh chundan of Tiruvarpu Boat Club captained by James Kutty won the first place. Southern Air Command conducted sky-diving and air display. Kochi-Kavaratti offshore race was also an event of attraction.

By inaugurating the closing ceremony , Union Minister for Tourism, Ambika Soni told that the Kochi has proved to the world that terror threats would not affect the country’s travel and tourism industry . The public shook hands with the sailors and took their pictures as they moved to the boat one by one. It was estimated that almost 50000 people thronged to the Race Village during weekdays and for sure the number would be much more during the weekends to see the cultural programmes and exhibits.

"Fair Media necessary in a democratic nation"

The media must be fair and accurate as the chunk of the population relies on it for news. Media plays a significant role in our society today. It is imperative, as it shapes an individual’s opinion, said X, noted freelance journalist and media person from Britain.

Talking at an interactive session with the Bhavans, Girinagar students, in connection with Volvo Ocean Race stopover here on Tuesday, he said that a journalist might not be writing a happy story always. He will have to overcome various adversities. As a journalist, you need to find good stories, which should be satisfying for the reader. A journalist will have to write from both sides of the story. He should have right mentality and thinking capacity to cater to the ideas of all types of readers.

For a question, an acclaimed Radio Journalist from Britain, Y said that radio journalism is thrilling if you have the right ideas on the issue. A radio journalist should have right skill in the language in which you are reporting.
He said ocean race reporting was sensational in the manner in which the race was carried on.

To the Journalism aspirants

As some tips to the journalism aspirants, X said, a journalist should never say no, to whatever job he has been asked to do. Every single person you meet is important. Each one has a story to tell. Behind every single door, there is a story. A journalist should have good contacts. You should collect phone numbers from each person you meet. It is not a regular job. Answering a question, he said journalism is a rewarding job if one does not go behind fake stories. He sparked laughter among the students when he said a journalist need to have good shoes as 90 percent of the job is time wasting and waiting.

Ocean Race Experience
When asked about Volvo Ocean Race experience, Y said that the sport is adventurous and exciting. He said the sport is not the sport of millionaires but the sport of ordinary people with extraordinary talents. The sailors had to move through many difficult moments, as there were no good food and toilets. They also had to go through rough weather and ocean conditions.

Mukund P Unny
+919446521741

Baracking the Glory- President Obama

Last week saw the emergence of a  genius in world stage.  He wasnt just an ordinary Senator. He wasnt just a lawman. He wasnt just apoltician. Moreover he wasnt just an ordinary man .He was much more than that. He was an extra ordinary person and an excellent orator. It is not simply his speech that is compared to Martin Luther King's, their dreams and  .Martin Luther King had a dream where "the sons of slaves and and the sons of slave-ownres are to sit around a table of brother-hood".  On this occasion we realise this dream. " Through the darkest of hours and through the toughest of times" we leap forward. Yielding all these supports, we can say that Change has come to America. 

Obama's political journey has been quite impressive. His college days in Harvard Law School were  stepping stones for glory. H

is skill 

in the English language , in writing and in speaking was the greatest talent, after, his knoledge in law and political science. His speech in Democratic National Convention was the breakthrough in his career. It was after that speech that people in political arena started noticing him as a future leader. 

Obama had been widely ,in his , campaign accused of his Marxist connection. It is much more dangerous to be called as a Marxist in America, much more than being called as Terrorist. That much is the Conservatist wave over there. His policies , ofcource has some socialist element, but he has managed to emerge out all those charges.

He has promised tax-cut for working class which has been a boon for the common people. He has a vibrant and most impeccable economic policy.He is anti-war and plans to combat poverty.

The most gigantic task which rests on Obama is to fight one of the worst economic crisis of the century . What everyone look forward is whether Obama can be Franklin D Roosevelt II who managed Great Depression of 1930s. Obama has also a task to uphold Climate imbroglio. He will have reform the pollution rules in his country(as his country is the largest contributor of climate change) and lead all other countries in this regard.

Barack Obama has showed his skill in campaigning and has been a huge croud-puller. Now , the task which lies before him is to rightly lead the nation in the lines of law& order and bring back the nation into the growth trajectory. Let God bless him and United States of America to build the nation block by block , brick by brick and bring laurels to the nation

Mukund P Unny

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

+919446521741