The End of Christian America/IWMF Accepting Applications for Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship Promoting Human Rights Journalism

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. And the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, but history shows that religious doubt and diversity have always been quintessentially American, and this may be a period when religion is less a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory.
It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.
"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.
According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.
Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe.
Still, in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, fewer people now think of the United States as a "Christian nation" than did so when George W. Bush was president (62 percent in 2009 versus 69 percent in 2008). Two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is "losing influence" in American society, while just 19 percent say religion's influence is on the rise. The proportion of Americans who think religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" is now at a historic low of 48 percent. During the Bush 43 and Clinton years, that figure never dropped below 58 percent.
Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, and that the country has now entered a post-Christian phase. Christopher Hitchens —a friend and possibly the most charming provocateur you will ever meet—wrote a hugely popular atheist tract a few years ago, "God Is Not Great." As an observant (if deeply flawed) Episcopalian, I disagree with many of Hitchens's arguments—I do not think it is productive to dismiss religious belief as superstitious and wrong—but he is a man of rigorous intellectual honesty who, on a recent journey to Texas, reported hearing evangelical mutterings about the advent of a "post-Christian" America.
To be post-Christian has meant different things at different times. In 1886, The Atlantic Monthly described George Eliot as "post-Christian," using the term as a synonym for atheist or agnostic. The broader—and, for our purposes, most relevant—definition is that "post-Christian" characterizes a period of time that follows the decline of the importance of Christianity in a region or society. This use of the phrase first appeared in the 1929 book "America Set Free" by the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling.
The term was popularized during what scholars call the "death of God" movement of the mid-1960s—a movement that is, in its way, still in motion. Drawing from Nietzsche's 19th-century declaration that "God is dead," a group of Protestant theologians held that, essentially, Christianity would have to survive without an orthodox understanding of God. Tom Altizer, a religion professor at Emory University, was a key member of the Godless Christianity movement, and he traces its intellectual roots first to Kierkegaard and then to Nietzsche. For Altizer, a post-Christian era is one in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds." In 1992 the critic Harold Bloom published a book titled "The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation." In it he cites William James's definition of religion in "The Varieties of Religious Experience": "Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine."
Which is precisely what most troubles Mohler. "The post-Christian narrative is radically different; it offers spirituality, however defined, without binding authority," he told me. "It is based on an understanding of history that presumes a less tolerant past and a more tolerant future, with the present as an important transitional step." The present, in this sense, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." (In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 30 percent describe themselves this way, up from 24 percent in 2005.)
Roughly put, the Christian narrative is the story of humankind as chronicled in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—the drama of creation, fall and redemption. The orthodox tend to try to live their lives in accordance with the general behavioral principles of the Bible (or at least the principles they find there of which they approve) and anticipate the ultimate judgment of God—a judgment that could well determine whether they spend eternity in heaven or in hell.
What, then, does it mean to talk of "Christian America"? Evangelical Christians have long believed that the United States should be a nation whose political life is based upon and governed by their interpretation of biblical and theological principles. If the church believes drinking to be a sin, for instance, then the laws of the state should ban the consumption of alcohol. If the church believes the theory of evolution conflicts with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, then the public schools should tailor their lessons accordingly. If the church believes abortion should be outlawed, then the legislatures and courts of the land should follow suit. The intensity of feeling about how Christian the nation should be has ebbed and flowed since Jamestown; there is, as the Bible says, no thing new under the sun. For more than 40 years, the debate that began with the Supreme Court's decision to end mandatory school prayer in 1962 (and accelerated with the Roe v. Wade ruling 11 years later) may not have been novel, but it has been ferocious. Fearing the coming of a Europe-like secular state, the right longed to engineer a return to what it believed was a Christian America of yore.
But that project has failed, at least for now. In Texas, authorities have decided to side with science, not theology, in a dispute over the teaching of evolution. The terrible economic times have not led to an increase in church attendance. In Iowa last Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage, a defeat for religious conservatives. Such evidence is what has believers fretting about the possibility of an age dominated by a newly muscular secularism. "The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization," Mohler says. "As those moral teachings fade into cultural memory, a secularized morality takes their place. Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes. For the better part of the 20th century, the nations of Western Europe led the way in the abandonment of Christian commitments. Christian moral reflexes and moral principles gave way to the loosening grip of a Christian memory. Now even that Christian memory is absent from the lives of millions."
Religious doubt and diversity have, however, always been quintessentially American. Alexis de Tocqueville said that "the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States," but he also discovered a "great depth of doubt and indifference" to faith. Jefferson had earlier captured the essence of the American spirit about religion when he observed that his statute for religious freedom in Virginia was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination"—and those of no faith whatever. The American culture of religious liberty helped create a busy free market of faith: by disestablishing churches, the nation made religion more popular, not less.
America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods." The essential political and cultural question is to what extent those gods—or, more accurately, a particular generation's understanding of those gods—should determine the nature of life in a given time and place.
If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.
Judging from the broad shape of American life in the first decade of the 21st century, we value individual freedom and free (or largely free) enterprise, and tend to lean toward libertarianism on issues of personal morality. The foundational documents are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (though there are undeniable connections between them). This way of life is far different from what many overtly conservative Christians would like. But that is the power of the republican system engineered by James Madison at the end of the 18th century: that America would survive in direct relation to its ability to check extremism and preserve maximum personal liberty. Religious believers should welcome this; freedom for one sect means freedom for all sects. As John F. Kennedy said in his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960: "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist … Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."
Religion has been a factor in American life and politics from the beginning. Anglican observance was compulsory at Jamestown, and the Puritans of New England were explicitly hoping to found a New Jerusalem. But coerced belief is no belief at all; it is tyranny. "I commend that man, whether Jew, or Turk, or Papist, or whoever, that steers no otherwise than his conscience dares," said Roger Williams.
By the time of the American founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic's signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not. The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.
Political victories are therefore intrinsically transitory. In the middle of the 19th century, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney argued that "the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin"; Christians, he said, are "bound to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God."
Worldly success tends to mark the beginning of the end for the overtly religious in politics. Prohibition was initially seen as a great moral victory, but its failure and ultimate repeal show that a movement should always be careful what it wishes for: in America, the will of the broad whole tends to win out over even the most devoted of narrower interests.
As the 20th century wore on, Christians found themselves in the relatively uncontroversial position of opposing "godless communism," and the fervor of the Prohibition and Scopes-trial era seemed to fade a bit. Issues of personal morality, not international politics, would lay the foundations for the campaign for Christian America that we know as the rise of the religious right. The phenomenon of divorce in the 1960s and the Roe decision in 1973 were critical, and Jimmy Carter's born-again faith brought evangelical Christianity to the mainstream in 1976.
Growing up in Atlanta in the '60s and '70s, Joe Scarborough, the commentator and former Republican congressman, felt the fears of his evangelical parents and their friends—fears that helped build support for the politically conservative Christian America movement. "The great anxiety in Middle America was that we were under siege—my parents would see kids walking down the street who were Boy Scouts three years earlier suddenly looking like hippies, and they were scared," Scarborough says. "Culturally, it was October 2001 for a decade. For a decade. And once our parents realized we weren't going to disappear into dope and radicalism, the pressure came off. That's the world we're in now—parents of boomers who would not drink a glass of wine 30 years ago are now kicking back with vodka. In a way, they've been liberated."
And they have learned that politics does not hold all the answers—a lesson that, along with a certain relief from the anxieties of the cultural upheavals of the '60s and '70s, has tended to curb religiously inspired political zeal. "The worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties," says Mohler. "They invested far too much hope in a political solution to what are transpolitical issues and problems. If we were in a situation that were more European, where the parties differed mostly on traditional political issues rather than moral ones, or if there were more parties, then we would probably have a very different picture. But when abortion and a moral understanding of the human good became associated with one party, Christians had few options politically."
When that party failed to deliver—and it did fail—some in the movement responded by retreating into radicalism, convinced of the wickedness and venality of the political universe that dealt them defeat after defeat. (The same thing happened to many liberals after 1968: infuriated by the conservative mood of the country, the left reacted angrily and moved ever leftward.)
The columnist Cal Thomas was an early figure in the Moral Majority who came to see the Christian American movement as fatally flawed in theological terms. "No country can be truly 'Christian'," Thomas says. "Only people can. God is above all nations, and, in fact, Isaiah says that 'All nations are to him a drop in the bucket and less than nothing'." Thinking back across the decades, Thomas recalls the hope—and the failure. "We were going through organizing like-minded people to 'return' America to a time of greater morality. Of course, this was to be done through politicians who had a difficult time imposing morality on themselves!"
Experience shows that religious authorities can themselves be corrupted by proximity to political power. A quarter century ago, three scholars who are also evangelical Christians—Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden—published an important but too-little-known book, "The Search for Christian America." In it they argued that Christianity's claims transcend any political order. Christians, they wrote, "should not have illusions about the nature of human governments. Ultimately they belong to what Augustine calls 'the city of the world,' in which self-interest rules … all governments can be brutal killers."
Their view tracks with that of the Psalmist, who said, "Put not thy trust in princes," and there is much New Testament evidence to support a vision of faith and politics in which the church is truest to its core mission when it is the farthest from the entanglements of power. The Jesus of the Gospels resolutely refuses to use the means of this world—either the clash of arms or the passions of politics—to further his ends. After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the dazzled throng thought they had found their earthly messiah. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." When one of his followers slices off the ear of one of the arresting party in Gethsemane, Jesus says, "Put up thy sword." Later, before Pilate, he says, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The preponderance of lessons from the Gospels and from the rest of the New Testament suggests that earthly power is transitory and corrupting, and that the followers of Jesus should be more attentive to matters spiritual than political.
As always with the Bible, however, there are passages that complicate the picture. The author of Hebrews says believers are "strangers and exiles on the earth" and that "For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come." In Romans the apostle Paul advises: "Do not be conformed to this world." The Second Vatican Council cited these words of Pius XII: the Catholic Church's "divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has not given it any mandate or fixed any end of the cultural order. The goal which Christ assigns to it is strictly religious … The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal."
As an archbishop of Canterbury once said, though, it is a mistake to think that God is chiefly or even largely concerned with religion. "I hate the sound of your solemn assemblies," the Lord says in Amos. Religion is not only about worshipping your God but about doing godly things, and a central message of the Gospels is the duty of the Christian to transform, as best one can, reality through works of love. "Being in the world and not of it remains our charge," says Mohler. "The church is an eternal presence in a fallen, temporal world—but we are to have influence. The Sermon on the Mount is about what we are to do—but it does not come with a political handbook."
How to balance concern for the garden of the church with the moral imperatives to make gentle the life of the world is one of the most perplexing questions facing the church. "We have important obligations to do whatever we can, including through the use of political means, to help our neighbors—promoting just laws, good order, peace, education and opportunity," wrote Noll, Hatch and Marsden. "Nonetheless we should recognize that as we work for the relatively better in 'the city of the world,' our successes will be just that—relative. In the last analysis the church declares that the solutions offered by the nations of the world are always transitory solutions, themselves in need of reform."
Back in Louisville, preparing for Easter, Al Mohler keeps vigil over the culture. Last week he posted a column titled "Does Your Pastor Believe in God?," one on abortion and assisted suicide and another on the coming wave of pastors. "Jesus Christ promised that the very gates of Hell would not prevail against his church," Mohler wrote. "This new generation of young pastors intends to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry. Expect to see the sparks fly." On the telephone with me, he added: "What we are seeing now is the evidence of a pattern that began a very long time ago of intellectual and cultural and political changes in thought and mind. The conditions have changed. Hard to pinpoint where, but whatever came after the Enlightenment was going to be very different than what came before." And what comes next here, with the ranks of professing Christians in decline, is going to be different, too.
Read more about NEWSWEEK's poll on religion in America here .
With Eliza Gray

N.B.RELIGION
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009

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IWMF Accepting Applications for Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship Promoting Human Rights Journalism
Washington, D.C. – The International Women’s Media Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2009-10 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, named for the 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award winner and Boston Globe correspondent who was killed in Iraq in May 2003. This program, created with Neuffer’s family and friends, aims to perpetuate her memory and advance her life mission of promoting international understanding of human rights and social justice while creating an opportunity for women journalists to build their skills.
One woman journalist will be selected to spend an academic year in a tailored program with access to Boston-area universities as well as the Boston Globe and New York Times. The flexible structure of the program will provide the fellow with opportunities to pursue academic research and hone her reporting skills covering topics related to human rights. The fellow may also participate in the Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism.
The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is open to women journalists whose focus is human rights and social justice. A successful applicant will be dedicated to a career in journalism in print, broadcast or online media and will show a strong commitment to sharing knowledge and skills with colleagues upon the completion of the fellowship. Excellent written and spoken English skills are required. A stipend will be provided, and expenses, including airfare and housing, will be covered.
Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2009, and the fellowship will run from September 2009 – May 2010.
For further information, visit www.iwmf.org/neuffer or e-mail neuffer@iwmf.org. Applications are available at https://www.iwmf.org/neufferapplication.aspx.
Founded in 1990, the International Women's Media Foundation is a vibrant global network dedicated to strengthening the role of women in the news media worldwide as a means to further freedom of the press. The IWMF network includes women and men in the media in more than 130 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.iwmf.org.


(Re-Edited by :MUKTI MAJID/Editor-Publisher)

Orbicom /Expert meeting in Beijing to discuss Cyber Network for Learning LanguagesUNESCO and the Chinese National/'Emerging Development Opportunities:

Orbicom
Orbicom is an international network that links communications leaders from academic, media, corporate and government circles with a view to providing for the exchange of information and the development of shared projects. While Orbicom is supported by internationally-based institutions, media, governments and corporations, Orbicom's mandate derives from UNESCO's New Communications Strategy unanimously adopted at the 1989 General Conference. This Conference foresaw that new communications technologies would have a significant impact upon the complex processes shaping economies, the environment, social justice, democracy, and peace.

Expert meeting in Beijing to discuss Cyber Network for Learning LanguagesUNESCO and the Chinese National:

UNESCO and the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO are organizing an expert meeting in Beijing, from 26 to 27 March 2009, in order to study the feasibility of establishing a Cyber Network for Learning Languages.

The Cyber Network for Learning Languages is a proposal introduced by China to UNESCO’s Executive Board in September 2008, aiming at harnessing the power of information and communication technology to advance the learning of languages and establishing an online-based network for learning languages. It also has for objective to give wider and more affordable access to language learning resources worldwide.

The meeting will gather around 20 experts from all regions of the world working in the field of computer assisted language learning, including educators and teachers, computer and information technology specialists, as well as managers of existing online platforms for language learning.

The promotion of languages and multilingualism lie at the very core of UNESCO’s mission and objectives. Languages are the vehicle for communication, for understanding between cultures and for dialogue among civilizations. In this context, the learning of languages is a crucial dimension, for which facilitating the development of open learning resources and open source tools for e-learning of languages is an important avenue.

Source: UNESCO-CI
'Emerging Development Opportunities: The Making of Information Societies and ICT Markets'

The first presents a comparative analysis of the stage of ICT development across a large number of countries, as well as the progress made in recent years. It does so though the conceptual notion of Infostates and relies on the most recent data released earlier this year by the ITU, in the form of the ICT Opportunity Index. It adopts a regional perspective and contains detailed analyses for economies in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.
* The second part breaks new ground by targeting the ICT sector and attempting to shed light on its magnitude, composition and evolution across several countries.'

Orbicom, 2007.

Much remains to be learned or understood better as the diffusion of ICTs continues to expand, technologies continue to evolve and numerous applications proliferate. Throughout, good research needs solid quantitative evidence, which is by itself part of the sought-after body of knowledge.

The research contained here hopes to contribute to this direction, both through the findings it presents and through the research horizons it seeks to open up. The publication comprises two parts.
The first presents a comparative analysis of the stage of ICT development across a large number of countries, as well as the progress made in recent years. It does so though the conceptual notion of Infostates and relies on the most recent data released earlier this year by the ITU, in the form of the ICT Opportunity Index. It adopts a regional perspective and contains detailed analyses for economies in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.
The second part breaks new ground by targeting the ICT sector and attempting to shed light on its magnitude, composition and evolution across several countries.
While such work has produced valuable insights in developed countries, the systematic quantification of the sector has not been attempted in developing ones. Such work becomes increasingly important as it provides a good framework to examine the much-talked about technological convergence, and offers a platform for a more substantive dialogue across jurisdictions within countries.
Expanding the scope of ICT investigations from the confines of telecommunications to the other manufacturing and computer services industries that comprise the sector, leads to a more comprehensive examination of national strengths and weaknesses. It also affords linkages with issues such as domestic capacity, human resources, trade, and science and technology. The second part of this volume also contains additional demand-side analysis in selected countries.

'Creative Content Online'

This website provides a 2006 European Commission Policy Paper on audio visual content that can be provided online. The policy was based in part on a public consultation also available on the website. The policy paper proposes 2 main measures:

* a new public consultation to prepare a recommendation on creative content online.
* a new stakeholder discussion group - the 'Content online platform' – which will look at forthcoming challenges.

and identifies 4 main areas requiring EU action:

* availability of creative content – if online content services are to develop, more good content is needed, actively licensed and accurately priced for use via the new platforms.
* multi-territory licensing of creative content - the lack of multi-country copyright licences makes it difficult for online content to fully benefit from potential access to the entire EU market.
* digital rights management systems (DRMs) – these technologies, often used to restrict access to high-value content (e.g. sports and movies), need to be made more interoperable, i.e. designed to work with all types of hard- and software.
* piracy / unauthorized file-sharing - cooperation is needed between service providers, producers and consumers, to:

- ensure an adequate online supply of easily available and attractive content

- adequately protect copyrighted works

- raise awaren
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Re Edited by :MUKTI MAJID on behalf of 'The Monthly Muktidooth',Dacca,Bangladesh.

Pakistan Govt. committed to live up to public aspirations: Gilani/Obama's bipartisan moment on foreign policy/Iran ready to restart nuclear talks with

Doyle McManus:
Obama's bipartisan moment on foreign policy

For now at least, Republicans have found little to disagree with in his handling of foreign policy.
Doyle McManus
April 5, 2009
Don't look now, but the United States is experiencing something unusual in its recent history: a moment of bipartisan consensus on foreign policy.

Over the last month, President Obama has launched initiatives in areas that were flash points of contention only a year ago: winding down the war in Iraq, escalating the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, negotiating with Iran, renewing efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and seeking warmer relations with Russia and China.

All those issues drew heated debate in the 2008 presidential campaign. But this spring, the prevailing Republican response to Obama's announcements has been silence -- even support.

Last year, John McCain called Obama too naive to be commander in chief. Last week, McCain expressed support for Obama's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, saying he was "confident that it can and will work."

Equally remarkable, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed that the new administration was dumping the Bush-era label of a "global war on terror" and sent super-envoy Richard C. Holbrooke to chat up Iran's deputy foreign minister, the response from the once-lusty right was almost imperceptible.

Some critics are still out there, of course. Former Vice President Dick Cheney charged that Obama's policies were making the nation vulnerable to terrorists, and paleoconservative scold John R. Bolton accused Clinton of "bumper sticker diplomacy." But neither Cheney nor Bolton found any echoes in the ranks of practicing politicians.

Why the sudden reticence on the part of conservatives who, only a year ago, delighted in shellacking Obama as soft on national security?

Part of it is simple distraction. The economic crisis, the federal budget and the battle over healthcare have crowded foreign policy off center stage, at least for a while. On those domestic issues, old-fashioned partisanship is alive and well.

Another factor is Republican exhaustion on foreign policy. The traumas of the Bush administration left them a legacy that needs to be refreshed and (as the political consultants say) rebranded -- but they haven't had time to do that yet. In a recession, they know they need to win voters back on home economics first.

But the biggest reason for bipartisan comity is that there isn't all that much for the Republicans to take issue with. Obama, the presidential candidate with the most liberal voting record in the Senate, has turned out to be a determined centrist when it comes to foreign policy.

"There is a rough bipartisan consensus in American foreign policy, and Barack Obama is in it," one of the original neoconservatives who promoted the idea of invading Iraq, Robert Kagan, told me.

In Iraq, Obama's first action once in office was to soften what had been the central promise of his campaign: withdrawal within 16 months. He now says he hopes to withdraw two-thirds of the troops in 18 months, but even that will depend on how things look then. In Afghanistan, Obama agreed to his generals' request for troops to launch a smaller version of the manpower-heavy counterinsurgency strategy that worked in Baghdad.

Obama's choices for top foreign policy positions reassured conservatives too. Clinton was the most hawkish Democratic presidential candidate; national security advisor James L. Jones Jr., a retired Marine general, had served as a McCain advisor; and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was, of course, a holdover from the Bush administration.

But this wasn't a postelection conversion. Obama began moving squarely into the center during the campaign, when he fended off conservative attacks by promising that his withdrawal from Iraq would be "responsible" and that he would do "everything" to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Despite his multinational upbringing, Obama's political agenda has always been primarily domestic. He didn't have developed positions on many foreign policy issues until he arrived in the Senate in 2004 -- and promptly recruited a conservative Republican apostle of bipartisanship, Sen. Richard G. Lugar, as a mentor. For a president whose central goal is an ambitious and, yes, liberal reshaping of the federal government's domestic role, disarming the opposition on foreign policy serves a useful purpose.

But that bipartisan centrism has not been universally acclaimed. A vocal challenge on foreign policy has risen from the leftmost wing of his own party, where leaders of the antiwar movement have reacted to his actions with distress. To them -- including some of Obama's staunchest supporters during the campaign -- the escalation in Afghanistan looks distressingly like the "surge" of troops into Iraq that Obama joined them in opposing only two years ago.

Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey called Obama's decision to keep some troops in Iraq longer than the promised 16 months "unacceptable," saying Iraqis would perceive the military presence as "an enduring occupation force." Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern said Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan would lead to a "war without end."

But they were minority voices. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led efforts to cut off funding for Bush's Iraq war, shows no inclination to legislate limits on her own president.

This bipartisanship moment won't last forever. Conservatives will regain their footing once they catch their breath. And once Obama's diplomacy runs into trouble, as it almost inevitably will somewhere in the world, they will have more to criticize.

Obama has already postponed a difficult decision until this fall, when his generals want him to approve an additional 10,000 troops for Afghanistan. If Iraq's fragile semi-peace collapses, he'll face another tough choice: whether to halt the U.S. withdrawal. If nuclear talks with Iran don't produce quick results, he'll have to decide whether to declare his own diplomacy a failure.

Last week, McCain warned Obama that his biggest trouble was likely to come from the left. With no apparent irony, he urged the president to consult closely with the Democratic leadership in Congress "to prevent ... a resurgence of antiwar activity."

The Arizona senator offered Obama an offhand but chilling warning from history. Obama's decision to postpone his decision on the additional 10,000 troops for Afghanistan, McCain warned, smacked of "Lyndon Johnson-style incrementalism."

Only two months in office, and Obama already faces Johnson's dilemma: a war policy that divides his own party. Maybe bipartisanship isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Cont...
Photo:Sebastien Bozon / AFP/Getty Images
Hillary Rodham Clinton, second from left, President Obama and other world leaders meet in Strasbourg. He won only limited support for his Afghan strategy, but “he’s getting a lot more than Bush could have gotten,” one analyst said.
The U.S. sought troops to fight the Taliban, but Obama still calls the commitment 'a strong down payment' on the Afghan mission.
By Henry Chu
April 5, 2009
Reporting from Strasbourg, France -- NATO announced Saturday that it would send about 5,000 additional troops and trainers to Afghanistan, a boost that President Obama hailed as "a strong down payment on the future of our mission" there, but one that failed to include the combat forces Washington had sought.

The commitment came at the conclusion of Obama's first summit of the most powerful military alliance in the world, an event marked by pageantry and protest here on the border between France and Germany.

The American leader had hoped to parlay his immense popularity in Europe into stronger promises of military support for the Afghan war, which has drawn increasing criticism on the continent. Throughout Obama's visit, which started in London, European leaders have jockeyed for position next to him and screaming crowds have gathered for a glimpse of the president and the first lady.

But even as European leaders emphasized the importance of the Afghanistan mission, the boost announced Saturday pales in size next to the 21,000 additional U.S. troops that Obama has pledged to send to help fight the resurgent Taliban.

The new NATO troops will include 3,000 soldiers on temporary assignment to assist in securing national elections scheduled for August. The remainder will provide training for the Afghan army, to encourage its transformation from a ragtag band into a professional, well-equipped military.

Conspicuously absent are the extra combat troops that the U.S. had requested, an indication of how deeply divided many NATO countries remain about the war effort and their role in it.

Nonetheless, the president portrayed the commitment as a victory in his campaign to refocus efforts on stabilizing and building Afghanistan after the politically and financially ruinous diversion of the Iraq war.

"Keep in mind it was only just a week ago that we announced this new approach. . . . We've started to match real resources to achieve our goals," Obama said. More resources were still necessary, but "these commitments of troops, trainers and civilians represent a strong down payment on the future of our mission in Afghanistan and on the future of NATO."

Obama's comments came as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 60th anniversary, welcomed two more countries into the fold and named its next secretary-general, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose candidacy had generated strong opposition from Turkey, the alliance's only predominantly Muslim member nation.

But all eyes were on Obama on his maiden European voyage as president, and on the divisive issue of Afghanistan. For months, since before Obama's election, the U.S. has been trying to persuade its NATO allies to cough up more troops for the battle against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters believed to be hiding along the border with Pakistan.

In detailing a new strategy last month, the Obama administration pledged 4,000 additional U.S. troops to serve as trainers, raising to 21,000 the number of additional forces being deployed by Obama. That will boost the overall U.S. military presence to nearly 60,000, serving with about 35,000 NATO troops.

White House and Pentagon officials have acknowledged in recent weeks that their hopes for extra combat troops from NATO had dissipated. Instead, they repeatedly have pointed to a wide range of nonmilitary contributions that NATO countries could make to Obama's strategy, including military training and economic development.

Such adjustments in expectations reflected not only the unpopularity of the war but also the difficulty the administration faces in repairing the U.S. image abroad sufficiently to win support from international leaders. In part, Obama has tried to appeal to ordinary Europeans in the hope of tempering animosity toward the United States.

The war is increasingly unpopular with many Europeans, making their leaders leery of sending more soldiers. Yet participants at the NATO summit agreed that the mission in Afghanistan was vital even as they brushed aside American requests to significantly beef up their forces.

"We need to understand Afghanistan is a test case for all of us," German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared.

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, summit co-hosts, expressed appreciation for Obama's strategy.

"We cannot afford to lose, because there [in Afghanistan] some of the freedom of the world is at stake," Sarkozy said, adding that Europe was "a strong pillar" the U.S. could rely on.

In addition to the troops and military trainers, NATO countries pledged $100 million to a fund for the Afghan army.

Although many Europeans were grateful to have any American leader other than the widely reviled former President George W. Bush, some political realities were too tough to overcome.

Obama charmed the audience at a town-hall-style meeting Friday in Strasbourg, during which he took the opportunity to emphasize the importance of the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Yet on Saturday, antiwar and anti-NATO protesters thronged parts of the city, at one point setting fire to a hotel and causing police to resort to tear gas to beat them back. Several arrests were reported.

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Iran ready to restart nuclear talks with EU

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Iran is ready to restart its negotiations with the European Union (EU) over its nuclear enrichment program, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here on Tuesday.
"I would like to announce our readiness to restart immediately the negotiations with the EU 3 (Britain, France and Germany) to resolve the issue," Mottaki said.
Mottaki made the remarks at a news conference after the conclusion of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Coordinating Bureau (NAM-CoB) Ministerial Meeting in the Malaysian administrative center of Putrajaya.
Iran will respond to the call of the NAM and will resume negotiations on its nuclear enrichment program with other parties "without any preconditions", Mottaki told reporters.
Earlier, the NAM ministerial meeting released a statement, encouraging Iran to "urgently continue to cooperate actively and fully with the IAEA" in order to resolve the outstanding issue.
When asked whether Iran will resume direct talks with the United States, Mottaki attributed to the suspension to latter's "bad temperament"
"Iran might resume the direct talks over its nuclear program if Washington changed its behavior," said Mottaki.
Iran is a member country of the 45-year-old movement, which includes 116 members of the worldwide. Enditem

Editor: Nie Peng

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Pakistan Govt. committed to live up to public aspirations: Gilani
LAHORE, Apr 5 (APP): Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said Sunday that the government was fully committed to live up to public aspirations and counter internal and external challenges effectively. The Prime Minister was talking to newsmen here at Utility Store, Shadman where he checked the quality and prices of commodities.
To a question he said that peoples’empowerment was the philosophy of Shaheed Zulifkar Ali Bhutto who had given the slogan of “Roti, Kapra and Maakan”.
Now implementation of this philosophy is need of the hour so that
ample employment opportunities could be provided to a large number of jobless youth and houses to shelterless people across the country.
The Prime Minister said that the increased flow of direct and indirect investment would bring employment for masses while the government was working on a programme to provide one million houses to shelterless people throughout the country.
“The houses to be made available to shelterless people might be smaller in size but must be in large number to cater to the requirement “ , he said.
Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said that Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) would be enhanced which will also include health insurance scheme.
To a question, he said that PPP would soon take decision regarding joining of Punjab cabinet.
To another question, he said that the trial of Shaheed Zulifkar Ali Bhutto needs to be reopened so that the nation could be informed about the facts of the case of their most popular leader who had given the nation unanimous constitution and nuclear programme.
Responding to yet another question, he said that Pakistan People’s Party would continue its reconciliation policy to strengthen the federation.
About terrorism, he said that media,parliament,civil society and all political parties should help in stamping out the menace of terrorism in the region by giving concrete and viable suggestions.
Regarding investigation of terror‑incidents,he said that he would not blame any one in this regard unless and until a final report regarding the elements behind these heinous occurrences is submitted to him.

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(Sorce from various news services complementary reedited by 'The Monthly Muktidooth',Dacca,Bangladesh.)