Ambimama - India

Condoleezza Rice, presidential confidant and family friend, made life easier for Bush. The choice of Colin Powell’s replacement says a lot about the Bush administration’s plans for its second-term foreign policy. Condoleezza Rice is first and foremost a loyal Bush acolyte, almost part of the family..

A foreign policy hawk, she gave strong backing to the Iraq war and the policy of pre-emption.

Fiercely loyal to the Bush family, in the immediate aftermath of September 11 she asked senior staff at the national security council to think seriously about “how do you capitalise on these opportunities” in order to change US foreign policy.

No Palestinian leader can accept the fragmented Bantustan Ariel Sharon has in mind. Coercion into accepting such a solution will hasten the rise of Hamas. That will be where US intervention, and Ms Rice’s role, will become decisive.

When beginning as Secretary of State, Rice pioneered a policy of Transformational Diplomacy, with a focus on democracy in the greater Middle East. Her emphasis on supporting democratically elected governments faced challenges as Hamas captured a popular majority in Palestine yet supported Islamist terror, and influential countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt maintained non-democratic systems with U.S. support.

During the administration of George H. W. Bush, Rice also served as the Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification.

In 2004 and 2005, she was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.

Sikh organisations in the US have received dozens of complaints from community members saying they were told to remove their turbans at airports for security checks in the wake of a new rule that subjects air travellers wearing head covering to additional screening.

“For a Sikh man, that’s like being strip-searched,” Singh was quoted as saying by Mercury News.

“It’s like asking a woman to take off her blouse in public,” he said. “It’s that bad,” said J.P Singh, president of the Sikh Centre of the San Francisco Bay Area in El Sobrante.

“The federal government has equated our most precious article of faith with terrorism,” said Amardeep Singh, the executive director of the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group for Sikhs.

“To send a message that the turban is dangerous sends the wrong message to society,” Singh told the New York Times.

The Sikh Coalition also alleged that the new policy was put into effect without consulting Sikhs, whose population in the country is close to 280,000.
Already, 2,000 Sikhs have signed a petition protesting the new security check.

Sikhs have often been confused as Muslims and its members often suffer from anti-Muslim sentiment. Hate crimes against Sikhs increased after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

News from BANGALORE
IT professionals are choosing multinationals over local companies, says a survey in a blow to the multi-billion dollar Indian industry already battling to recruit fresh talent.

IT professionals in India were asked to rank their top 20 employers for the survey which is closely scrutinized by the industry, recruitment centers and job seekers.

Overseas firms with offices in India, such as giant IBM, comprised half of the top 20, while India’s third-largest information technology company, software maker Wipro, failed to make it onto the list.

The survey released this week is bad news for Indian firms competing with global rivals to hire and retain talent amid a shortage of skilled workers.

“Multinational IT employers IBM, Capgemini, Sun Microsystems and CSC have mastered the art of managing Indian employees,” said Pradeep Gupta, whose company Cybermedia was responsible for the survey.

India’s biggest software maker, Tata Consultancy, which has 90,000 employees, retained its spot as the best employer to work for, followed by local rival HCL Infosystems.

But number two Indian software maker Infosys slipped four places to eight. And seven of the overseas firms were included on the list for the first time.

“Many India-based IT employers will need to balance aggressive recruitment with the warm and personal touch they used so effectively thus far, to retain people,” Gupta said.

Reasons for choosing MNCs

Employees cited career development opportunities, work-life balance, organisational culture, job security and technology as the top factors that provided them work satisfaction. Pay ranked seventh.

“We take the feedback seriously,” said Pratik Kumar, executive vice president for human resources at Wipro which has 72,000 workers. “We will try and understand the feedback and take appropriate actions.”

Wake-up call for Bangalore Tigers

The survey comes as Infosys and Wipro, which are based in India’s software capital Bangalore, are scaling up with larger revenues and headcounts. “Employees joining now might be expecting the same informal atmosphere which these companies have been known for. But the personal touch seems to have been lost in the numbers game,” the survey said.

“The Bangalore tigers need to get their act together,” it said. IBM, which wasn’t included in the rankings last year, placed joint sixth with Capgemini because of a strong brand image and “high standards of corporate governance,” training and development.

Other overseas firms that made it to the list were iGate at third, Synechron at sixth, Tavant Technologies at ninth and Sun at 10th. Local companies that found a place included RMSI at fourth, Hexaware at 13th, Cybage at 17th, AztecSoft at 18th, Aricent at 19th and Geometric Software at 20th.

Indian IT companies often complain of a talent crunch facing the 50 billion dollar industry, which is also grappling with wages rising at an annual pace of 15 to 20 per cent.

Dun and Bradstreet, a US-based provider of financial information, has said that the industry would face a shortage of 500,000 skilled workers by 2009.

IT companies dangle perks to hire and keep employees ranging from average annual pay raises of 20 per cent and overseas travel to casual work clothes, in-house gymnasiums, free meal vouchers and creches.

“The feel-good has reached its limit,” said Shyamanuja Das, executive editor of Dataquest, told AFP. “Now people are thinking about work-related stress, issues like corporate image and governance.”

Courtesy – New Indian Express, Chennai Edition

Before we continue to see IBM, Mac and Windows use the Media, let us watch this Apple Mac Ad

This was the commercial that inroduced the Apple Macintosh Computer to the world.

If a drop of water falls in lake there is no identity. But if it falls on a leaf of lotus it shines like a pearl. So choose the best place where you would shine..

Raindrops falling from the sky have nothing in mind except to hit the earth. No matter how tough the drop is it still reaches its destiny! Be positive always.

Never take some one for granted, Hold every person Close to your Heart because you might wake up one day and realise that you have lost a diamond while you were too busy collecting stones.

When you were born you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying

The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we have been missing until it arrives.

When the door of happiness closes, another opens; but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one, which has opened for us.

Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the ‘that’ makes your heart smile.

Send this message to those people who mean something to you, to those who have touched your life in one way or another and those who you want to let them know that you appreciate their friendship.

Remember this always in Life and have a blessed day