Shunya's Notes

My Daughter, the Terrorist

I stumbled upon this documentary film from 2007 (haven't seen it yet). It explores "what happens to a population that has experienced more than a generation of warfare," and "how people become suicide bombers, a choice that seems completely incomprehensible to most of us":

In Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, some rebel women end their lives as suicide bombers that have killed hundreds over the years. A Norwegian documentary film that follows two 24-year-olds training to do just this has enraged the Sri Lankan government, but raises important questions about the conduct of war and its consequences.

The women are from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), often called the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority since the 1970s. The demand has arisen, they say, in reaction to abuses and discrimination by the Sri Lankan government.

A third of the Tigers are women.

More here.  (Watch the trailer; the movie is not yet available in the US.) From the movie site, I also discovered the relatively new Society for Terrorism Research (STR), which invited a screening of this film at its first annual conference last year.

The Society for Terrorism Research (STR) is an international, multi-disciplinary organization of theoretical and empirical researchers in such behavioral sciences as anthropology, biology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and others. Its mission is to enhance knowledge and understanding of terrorism. Research on terrorism should include and integrate theoretical frameworks and findings from multiple disciplines. Thus informed, more effective policies worldwide will be able to reflect diverse models of complex causation.

Sounds promising, even though Scott Atran is conspicuous by his absence from its governing, advisory, and journal editorial boards.

On American Jingoism

Shortly before the "shock & awe" attack on Iraq, and for months after, public support for the war was high in the US. This was reflected in the 70-80% approval rating for Bush, who had no doubt hoped that the war would turn him into a great president and American hero. Alas. But even today, many US politicians who once supported Bush but now criticize him, do so with the logic that they didn’t support this kind of war, one that would be so badly run. Bush, they say, should have sent in more troops and supplies, and planned "to win the peace". In other words, they supported an operationally smarter war. They reflect not on the idea of war itself, but on a war that America would have won.

A minority of Americans did oppose the war from the start and called these politicians irresponsible, ignorant, and morally complicit. But what about the other 70-80% of Americans who had also approved? Most of them even re-elected the same politicians, knowing their devious course of action. Aren't they just as irresponsible, ignorant, and morally complicit? 

It's not enough to argue that Americans were lied to about Saddam's nukes and his links to al-Qaeda. With the exact same "evidence", why did Americans support the war, when much of the rest of the world opposed it? Why was the threshold for using the military option so low in the US? Aren't the same people now receptive to the saber-rattling against Iran (including casual threats of obliteration)?

What is it that makes Americans, and hence their politicians, so jingoistic? This jingoism, combined with US military might and the ordinary American's ignorance about the cultural complexities of much older societies, is today a blight upon the world. In Iraq alone, it has helped kill an estimated million people, and turned millions more into refugees. In the excerpt below, professor Tony Judt offers a compelling explanation for why "the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military":

Americans, perhaps alone in the world, experienced the twentieth century in a far more positive light. The US was not invaded. It did not lose vast numbers of citizens, or huge swathes of territory, as a result of occupation or dismemberment. Although humiliated in distant neocolonial wars (in Vietnam and now in Iraq), the US has never suffered the full consequences of defeat. Despite their ambivalence toward its recent undertakings, most Americans still feel that the wars their country has fought were mostly "good wars." The US was greatly enriched by its role in the two world wars and by their outcome, in which respect it has nothing in common with Britain, the only other major country to emerge unambiguously victorious from those struggles but at the cost of near bankruptcy and the loss of empire. And compared with other major twentieth-century combatants, the US lost relatively few soldiers in battle and suffered hardly any civilian casualties.

Shantaram: A Review

Gregory David Roberts, the author of this semi-autobiographical novel, is an ex-junkie and an ex-con. A one-time gun-runner; dealer in drugs, black-market currencies, and forged passports; favored associated of a Bombay mafia don; escapee from an Australian maximum security prison, Roberts gives us a novel based closely on the events of his remarkable life and calls it Shantaram, "man of peace." You are right to be skeptical. The story's narrator is not a peaceful man and the book is loaded with enough violence to propel the modern Bollywood-styled blockbuster that it's slated to become (starring Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan, directed by Mira Nair, 2009). But then, to get caught up in that is to miss the point; Shantaram is the story of a violent man's search for the man of peace within himself.

The story begins in the early 1980s, with the narrator already a fugitive from the law. Having jumped from the towers of his Australian prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for armed robbery, he escaped with the help of friends to Bombay, where he hopes to stay out of trouble and lose himself from the law. He has no plan and little money, nor has he been to India before. But he is almost immediately in love with Bombay and within hours of being in the city, he meets the comically affable, young cab-driver, Prabakar, who, in the course of a day, helps him escape from a scene of mob violence, finds him a cheap hotel, and sets him up with a little dope to smoke. When Prabaker asks to know his name, the fugitive instinctively fishes for a false one and suggests "Lin," short for "Lindsay." Prabakar is tickled by this name, gleefully remarking that it sounds like an Indian word for "dick." Thus, it becomes the appellation for the man who struggles to know himself through the course of the narrative, faltering and stumbling, even as the earnest and loving Prabakar shines ever more brilliantly as the foil to Lin’s depravity.

Within a few days, Lin finds himself settled in Prabakar’s slum, living cheek by jowl with 25,000 of India’s destitute who have migrated from every corner of India to live in this city of dreams. He finds himself cast as the slum “doctor,” dispensing first aid to the stream of humanity that flows past his shanty door, and is quickly drawn into the lives of his neighbors, learning Hindi, making friends, and fully participating in the life of the community. He remains among them for two years, but he never reveals the truth of his past to any of his fellow slum-dwellers.

It is through Roberts’s observations of and attachment to the life of the slum that this book plants its foundation and Lin gropes for his own moral ballast. In vivid detail, Roberts lays out the lives of the slum-dwellers, the everyday mechanics by which they live, aiding each other in times of want, coalescing in a moment into efficient squads to combat floods, fire, and cholera. Justice is reckoned by a headman, who rules solely through the respect of his constituency, and dispensed by the community at large. As Lin is immersed in this cast of characters of every condition and persuasion, each one fully textured and brought to life as individuals with their own aspirations, needs, choices, he marvels at the miracle of it, at its inherent peace. That such a tangled mass of humanity, representing such a multitude of languages, beliefs, and lifestyles, could function as this chaotic, unified whole awes him. It’s only possible, he surmises, because of a kind of love, born of necessity, that fills up the wretched gullies, and spills out on all who come near, even a low-life such as himself.

And this, ultimately, is what Shantaram comes to be about: Love, in all its forms and degrees. The love of our fellows, our parents, our brothers and sisters and friends and mates. The love of ourselves. That most human engagement which drives us, completes us, injures us, heals us, ruins us, saves us. Never pure, simple, or clean, often untrue, it is nevertheless our unavoidable condition and our only hope. For such a tough guy, surprisingly, Roberts never flinches from his subject.

Standard Operating Procedure

Spring is in the air but we know you well, discerning reader. You're not into vacuous rejoicing. We applaud your instinct to hold the scents and scattering blossoms of spring as oh! so flippant. You yearn for the falling leaves of autumn and pine for the voluptuous bouts of sorrow and depression that define true thinkers. Well, there's light at the end of your springtime tunnel! Standard Operating Procedure, a new film by Errol Morris on the horror of Abu Ghraib, has arrived to plunge you into the bluest of autumnal blues at a theater near you:

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America's image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few "bad apples"€? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it. Many journalists have asked about "the smoking gun"€ of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—€”and the subsequent coverup—could happen?

Breaking the Galilean Spell

The scientific mind holds it as self-evident that all natural phenomena are bound by the laws of nature. We study such laws in physics and express them in the language of mathematics. The idea that all natural phenomena are also reducible to a sum of their parts, that micro components (iteratively down to sub-atomic particles) both describe and predict macro behavior, is called reductionism. Introduced by Descartes, its current proponents include Dennett, Dawkins, and Pinker.

The idea that reductionism has limits, particularly for highly complex systems like the biosphere and human culture (a wholly natural phenomenon), has also been around since at least Aristotle ("the whole is more than a sum of its parts"). Emergentism, as this hypothesis is called (or holism), claims that the fundamental laws of nature eventually run out of descriptive and predictive steam—not due to the inadequacy of our science but due to irreducible and unpredictable properties inherent in complex systems. Both reductionism and emergentism remain epistemological (as opposed to scientific) claims, though reductionism can boast of some inductive success on the verification front.

Stuart Kauffman, a scientist at the forefront of the idea of emergence, has written a new book, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion, where he fleshes out this concept in more detail. Here is a brief excerpt:

Emergence is therefore a major part of the new scientific worldview. Emergence says that, while no laws of physics are violated, life in the biosphere, the evolution of the biosphere, the fullness of our human historicity, and our practical everyday worlds are also real, are not reducible to physics nor explicable from it, and are central to our lives. Emergence, already both contentious and transformative, is but one part of the new scientific worldview I embrace.

Even deeper than emergence and its challenge to reductionism in this new scientific worldview is what I call breaking the Galilean spell. Galileo rolled balls down incline planes and showed that the distance traveled varied as the square of the time elapsed. From this he obtained a universal law of motion. Newton followed with his Principia, setting the stage for all of modern science. With these triumphs, the Western world came to the view that all that happens in the universe is governed by natural law. Indeed, this is the heart of reductionism. Another Nobel laureate physicist, Murray Gell-Mann, has defined a natural law as a compressed description, available beforehand, of the regularities of a phenomenon. The Galilean spell that has driven so much science is the faith that all aspects of the natural world can be described by such laws. Perhaps my most radical scientific claim is that we can and must break the Galilean spell. Evolution of the biosphere, human economic life, and human history are partially indescribable by natural law. This claim flies in the face of our settled convictions since Galileo, Newton, and the Enlightenment.

More here.

When Languages Die

I have previously argued the importance of human diversity, including in the context of languages. Over half of the 7,000 languages in the world today are poised to die in a few decades, an event without parallel in human history. In a recent book, When Languages Die, author K. David Harrison asks: "What is lost when a language dies? What forms of knowledge are embedded in a language's structure and vocabulary? And how harmful is it to humanity that such knowledge is lost forever?" Here is a review by David Perlman:

A tiny community of reindeer herders in Siberia holds intimate knowledge of the lives, the foraging and the rutting season of their priceless animals, and it's the kind of information that is vital to anyone concerned by the loss of human cultures -- and to biologists worried about the loss of species diversity anywhere in the world.

Of the 426 members of Siberia's isolated Chulym people, only 35 still speak Tuvan, their ancient language, fluently, and they're all older than 50. Everyone else speaks only Russian, according to K. David Harrison, an adventuresome linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Harrison has lived with the Chulym and hopes to preserve their vanishing language.

The Chulym can fully describe a "2-year-old male castrated rideable reindeer" with only the single word chary, and to Harrison, that not only shows how ancient languages differ from their modern counterparts, but is symbolic of a worldwide loss in important cultural diversity.

More here. 

Additional reviews here and here, an interview with the author, and Colbert's take on the topic. Also check out the ambitious Rosetta Project, "a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers building a publicly accessible online archive of ALL documented human languages."

Of Monks and Ferraris

A couple years ago, a childhood friend who lives in New Delhi, handed me The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma—a self-help book on spirituality and "eastern wisdom", which, curiously, was all the rage in Indian yuppie circles. At first, I attributed this to pride in the author's Indian roots and his huge (financial) success in America.

Readers of this blog will know that I'm deeply suspicious of this genre, replete as it is with New Age charlatans preying on people's angst and insecurities. Still, due to my friend's gushing praise and insistence, I began reading the book. I recall it now as a struggle on every page and often thinking of Dorothy Parker's words from long ago: this is not a book to be tossed aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force. I finally caved in midway, putting her words into action. It dawned on me that the book's transnational appeal lay in its very fatuousness (it has been published in 30+ countries, becoming a huge seller in the US, Israel, India, Mexico, and Canada, but apparently not in Europe).

I then read its customer reviews on Amazon (I often scan the lowest ratings first for critiques that might disqualify a book from my reading list). Mine was of course the minority reaction, but it was there alright. One person couldn't even get past the title—what's so great about selling one's Ferrari, he asked? Why did the monk not give it away? But it was the hilariously scathing review below that most delighted me.

I was recommended this book because I work too much. Every page that I managed to get through was painful. This book is the saddest and most excruciating way to introduce Buddhist philosophy. It is a "Fable" with a capital "F". Nothing in the book is true. If something in the book has been based on a true concept it has been so badly distorted by this text that it is no longer even close. To summarize for those that don't need the rest of the review to know that this is a book to skip, here is a banal platitude from the book that forced me to emit an audible groan while I was reading it: "Your `I can' is greater than your IQ"

It starts out with this absolute fat jackass womanizing alcoholic unscrupulous lawyer, that would essentially be better off dead, and that I personally hated to read about, and would hate to know, and wouldn't talk to except to make rude noises at if I did know him because I was related to him or something. You are then told that he is basically a good person but unless your "I can" is greater than your "IQ" you aren't fooled even for a second. Then he has a heart attack and goes to India and meets a guru, and turns into this soft and supple bi-curious sounding freak that wears long red robes and pours tea all over a former colleagues wife's Persian rug to illustrate concepts that aren't really true. In essence he's an even bigger jerk that is now ultra self-important because he's this transformed guru come back to bring enlightenment to all the normal people that weren't alcoholic womanizing hoodlums to begin with.

The Other Guantanamo

David Vine, author of the forthcoming Island of Shame: The Secret History of Exile and Empire on Diego Garcia, chronicles yet another sorry saga of American imperialism.

On the small, remote island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and Indonesia, the United States has one of the most secretive military bases in the world ... this huge US air and naval base has been a major, if little known, launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past year, the George W Bush administration has made improvements that point toward its use in a possible attack on Iran. The administration recently admitted what it had long denied and what journalists, human-rights investigators and others had long suspected: the island has also been part of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) secret "rendition" program for captured terrorist suspects.

More here.

Is India a Science Superpower?

Not quite, says Meera Nanda, philosopher of science, in this 2005 article in Frontline, which ends with these words:

If India wants to become a genuine "science superpower", Indian scientists will have to do much more than just get integrated into the global pecking order of corporate research and development. They will have to develop a genuine culture of open, fearless questioning and experimentation within their laboratories and in the larger culture outside the walls of the laboratory.

This will require an overhaul of science education so that science is not treated as merely a matter of rote learning of technical formulas, but is integrated into a new secular understanding of nature and life. It is not enough for the institutions of higher learning in India to produce doctors and engineers who can perform well in the West, or in the IT/BT jobs imported from the West. They must produce critical thinkers who are engaged with larger issues that affect the cultural climate of their societies.

Until then, India will remain the "pseudo-science superpower" of the world.

I haven't read much by Nanda. While this article seems reasonable, other bits I've read—like the opening pages of Prophets Facing Backwards—seem to me rather shrill and simplistic, and her analysis of modern India too reliant on caricatures of both "postmodern intellectuals" (ascribing them too much influence in India) and the religious. It was no surprise when I noticed Dennett's endorsement of her book, which her publisher has paired with Dawkins' on Amazon. To her credit, she has sharply distanced herself from Harris. If I can motivate myself to read her forthcoming, God and Globalization in India, I'll attempt a proper review.

Jensen on Pro Publica

Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at UT Austin, analyzes the "grand" ambitions of Pro Publica:

Pro Publica, an initiative launched last month in the United States to help revitalize investigative journalism ... reminds us of important values at the core of the craft of journalism, but also exposes the common political confusions of mainstream journalists that so often undermine their best efforts.

Launched with a multi-million dollar [philanthropic] grant ... Pro Publica plans to function as an independent newsroom staffed by some of the country’s top journalists, offering stories to a variety of media outlets under various distribution arrangements ... So far, so good. There’s a problem: Managers of the profit-hungry corporations that produce most of the country’s journalism have fewer resources to do their jobs, which predictably leads to less of the investigative journalism that requires time and money. The proposed solution: Committed journalists, backed by well-intentioned benefactors, step in to fill the gap through Pro Publica.

But the more vexing problem — and what may make the project, in the end, largely irrelevant — becomes clear in reading the mission statement of the group, which includes these crucial two paragraphs:

More here.

Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?

Here's something you're unlikely to see in the US press:

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn't newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.

Meanwhile, the US president is focused on his "legacy." He's aided in the effort by a new Fox documentary eulogizing him and claiming that he's been credited with "some of the most eloquent and visionary speeches ever delivered by an American president." And as the show goes on, with President Bush comparing himself to President Lincoln, it sounds increasingly like a joke. Was this program produced by satirist Stephen Colbert? Unfortunately not. Here's a taste (approx. 10 minutes):

Watch the full documentary here.

Peirce on Muslims in Britain

Gareth Peirce, a UK lawyer who has since the 1970s represented individuals accused of involvement in terrorism from both the Irish and the Muslim communities, finds instructive parallels between their situations:

The history of thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, as it is being written today, might give the impression of a steady progression towards an inevitable and just conclusion. The new suspect community in this country, Muslims, want to know whether their experience today can be compared with that of the Irish in the last third of the 20th century. It is dangerously misleading to assert that it was the conflict in Northern Ireland which produced the many terrible wrongs in the country’s recent history: it was injustice that created and fuelled the conflict. Before Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers shot and killed 13 unarmed Catholic demonstrators who were marching to demand not a united Ireland but equal rights in employment, education and housing (as well as an end to internment), the IRA was a diminished organisation, unable to recruit. After Bloody Sunday volunteers from every part of Ireland and every background came forward. Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, ‘shoot to kill’, the use of torture (hooding, extreme stress positions, mock executions), brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name these actions were taken, remained ignorant: that the state was seen to be combating terrorism sufficed. Central to the anger and despair that fuelled the conflict was the realisation that the British courts offered neither protection nor justice. The Widgery Report into Bloody Sunday, which was carried out by the lord chief justice, absolved the British army and backed its false account of 13 murders, ensuring that Irish nationalists would see the legal system as being aligned against them.

We should keep all this in mind as we look at the experiences of our new suspect community.

More here.

Robert Fagles, 1933-2008

Robert Fagles, translator par excellence of the Iliad and Odyssey, is dead. I have fond memories of reading both nearly a decade ago during my year in Amsterdam, the Iliad while traveling in the Peloponnese, punctuated by visits to the evocative ruins of Troy and Mycenae, cities of the Homeric epics. In commemoration, here are the closing words from Fagles' introduction to the Iliad.

The Iliad remains a terrifying poem. Achilles, just before his death, is redeemed as a human being, but there is no consolation for the death of Hector. We are left with a sense of waste, which is not adequately balanced even by the greatness of the heroic figures and the action; the scale descends towards loss. The Iliad remains not only the greatest epic poem in literature but also the most tragic.

Homer's Achilles is clearly the model for the tragic hero of the Sophoclean stage; his stubborn, passionate devotion to an ideal image of self is the same force that drives Antigone, Oedipus, Ajax and Philoctetes to the fulfillment of their destinies. Homer's Achilles is also, for archaic Greek society, the essence of the aristocratic ideal, the paragon of male beauty, courage and patrician manners—”"the splendor running in the blood," says Pindar ... And this, too, strikes a tragic note, for Pindar sang his praise of aristocratic values in the century which saw them go down to extinction, replaced by the new spirit of Athenian democracy. But it seems at first surprising that one of the most famous citizens of that democracy, a man whose life and thought would seem to place him at the extreme opposite pole from the Homeric hero, who was so far removed from Achilles' blind instinctive reactions that he could declare the unexamined life unlivable, that Socrates, on trial for his life, should invoke the name of Achilles. Explaining to his judge why he feels no shame or regret for a course of action that has brought him face-to-face with a death sentence, and rejecting all thought of a compromise that might save his life (and which his fellow citizens would have been glad to offer), he cites as his example Achilles, the Achilles, who, told by his mother that his own death would come soon after Hector's, replied: "Then let me die at once—€”rather than "sit by the ships ... / a useless, dead weight on the good green earth".

And yet, on consideration, it is not so surprising. Like Achilles, he was defying the community, hewing to a solitary line, in loyalty to a private ideal of conduct, of honor. In the last analysis, the bloodstained warrior and the gentle philosopher live and die by the same heroic, and tragic, pattern.

The World Is What It Is

Patrick French has written an authorized biography of VS Naipaul: The World Is What It Is. Outlook India has published three extracts—the first from French's introduction to the book; the second charting how Naipaul's views on India evolved and changed over 30 years; and the third from a later chapter, in which Naipaul loses one wife (Pat) and gains another (Nadira), even as he discards his mistress (Margaret). Here is the tantalizing last paragraph from the third extract, reflecting the complex, turbulent, and messy nature of his relationships:

And then there was Margaret. To avoid the awkwardness of telling her about his marriage, Vidia remained silent; she learned the news of Nadira's existence from the newspapers. Margaret was distraught, a broken woman, but she was not wholly surprised. She had realised at the end of 1995 that something was wrong, and that Pat's death would alter her position. She had long thought that Vidia would not end his life without going back to someone of his own ethnic background. In her view, perhaps rightly, she knew him better than anyone else had ever known him, or would know him. She saw she had become superfluous, believing Vidia needed a woman for sex and to do things for him, but not for any deeper support. And even a decade after their relationship had come to its sad end, Margaret would still write that her years with him had been the most terrible and wonderful of her life, and that he had taught her everything she knew, mentally and physically.

Also read Robern McCrum's essay on meeting Naipaul to talk about this biography.

The Truth About Autism

As with many disorders of the brain, the gap between the reality and perception of autism can be large. Amanda Baggs is at the forefront of a movement that’s forcing researchers to rethink autism. Do watch the video referenced in the article below.

The YouTube clip opens with a woman facing away from the camera, rocking back and forth, flapping her hands awkwardly, and emitting an eerie hum. She then performs strange repetitive behaviors: slapping a piece of paper against a window, running a hand lengthwise over a computer keyboard, twisting the knob of a drawer. She bats a necklace with her hand and nuzzles her face against the pages of a book. And you find yourself thinking: Who's shooting this footage of the handicapped lady, and why do I always get sucked into watching the latest viral video?

But then the words "A Translation" appear on a black screen, and for the next five minutes, 27-year-old Amanda Baggs — who is autistic and doesn't speak — describes in vivid and articulate terms what's going on inside her head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. In a synthesized voice generated by a software application, she explains that touching, tasting, and smelling allow her to have a "constant conversation" with her surroundings. These forms of nonverbal stimuli constitute her "native language," Baggs explains, and are no better or worse than spoken language. Yet her failure to speak is seen as a deficit, she says, while other people's failure to learn her language is seen as natural and acceptable.

And you find yourself thinking: She might have a point.

More here. Amanda also keeps a blog.

Avnery on the Candidates

Uri Avnery, writer, peace activist, and an Israeli Jew with a refined moral conscience, evaluates the remaining US presidential candidates—McCain, Clinton, Obama—including their attitudes to Israel.

Here a Jew will pop the classic question: Is it good for the Jews?

The people who claim to speak for the American Jews, the "leaders" who were not elected by anyone, the chiefs of the fetid "organizations", are conducting a dirty campaign of defamation and sly hints against [Obama]. If his middle name is Hussein and he is black, he must be an "Arab-lover". Also, he did not distance himself enough from the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

The same "leaders" are in bed with the most loathsome racists in the US, obscurantist fundamentalists and blood-stained neo-cons. But most American Jews know that their place is not there. The unholy alliance with those types will inevitably come home to roost. The Jews have to be where they have always been: in the progressive camp, striving for equality and the separation between state and religion.

It must be asked: Is it good for Israel?

All three candidates have groveled at the feet of AIPAC. The fawning of all three before the Israeli leadership is disgusting. They all show a lack of integrity. But I know that they have no choice. That's how it is in the USA.

In spite of this, Obama succeeded in getting out one courageous sentence. Speaking before a mainly Jewish audience in Cleveland, he said: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

More here.

A Sunday in São Paulo

I often think of Brazil as the most diverse, complex, and beautiful country in the Americas, and I am fortunate to have traveled through many parts of it. Its wild nature is famous enough and its society is an intricate patchwork of global and indigenous cultures. In June 2001, I spent a Sunday walking the streets of São Paulo, a city that strongly reminds me of Bombay. It is the most energetic and cosmopolitan metropolis of Brazil, its financial and entertainment hub, and a city of great opportunity and strife. Of Brazil, I wrote in an essay:

Futebol, sun, sand, sex, hard bodies, music, dance, tropical fruits, and drinks—picture-postcard Brazil. But there is plenty to ruffle this youth-worshiping light-heartedness and hedonistic living in the present: extreme wealth disparity, urban violence, corruption, unemployment, illiteracy, high birth rate, cast off children, the horror of growing old. Children are ubiquitous in Brazil—half the population is under twenty. Evangelists strive for their souls in small towns and big cities ... Yet, Brazil has also made important strides. Communication, roads, transportation, housing projects, drinking water, and sanitation have come a long way. Multiple races and traditions coexist reasonably well. Villages and large cities rarely betray the kind of crushing poverty one finds in many other developing countries.

Here is some footage from my Sunday in São Paulo, with ordinary people, downtown, Liberdade (Japan town), evangelical Christians, soccer fever, street musicians/performers, sleaze district, prostitutes, the homeless, etc. The most hilarious part is that of a Japanese-Brazilian man in a public square, bursting spontaneously into dance—which later morphs into martial art moves—all to atrocious Christian pop!

(Music soundtrack by Adriana Calcanhotto, Cesaria Evora, Jerry Mulligan, Jane Duboc, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil.)

A Child of God

I ran into her in Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. She was a pilgrim at the festival of Buddha Purnima, which celebrates the Buddha's enlightenment.

I don’t know her story. I regret not speaking to her, or even inquiring about her. I confess I was too dumbstruck, able only to take this photo from across the road, approach her to drop some coins in her bowl, and slip away.

Her teeth and hair suggest she is young. Is she a victim of fire or chemicals (accidental or criminal)? Does she have a family? How does she regard herself? What is a typical day in her life?

Lights, Camera, Action

I am pleased to announce a brand new channel on Shunya — Videos!

Videos should complement the other two channels: Articles and Photos. We will produce original videos besides linking to others on the web. Initially, the original videos will come from the 75+ hours of footage I've taken around the world, most during 2000-05—I've already posted the first five. When appropriate, I'll also showcase some of my favorite music from each region, as I did in the White Desert video. Text captions will be minimal, just enough for context. It's too bad my day job is not as much fun and no one has yet offered to turn my hobbies into a vocation. So a labor of love this remains.

This is also the 200th post on Shunya's Notes in sixteen months. Stay tuned for many more!

Hedges on the New Atheists

Chris Hedges, journalist and war correspondent, on why New Atheists like Hitchens and Harris are as dangerous as Christian fundamentalists:

I think a lot of their popularity stems from a legitimate anger on the part of a lot of Americans toward the intolerance and chauvinism of the radical religious right in this country. Unfortunately, what they've done is offer a Utopian belief system that is as self-delusional as that offered by Christian fundamentalists. They adopt many of the foundational belief systems of fundamentalists. For example, they believe that the human species is marching forward, that there is an advancement toward some kind of collective moral progress -- that we are moving towards, if not a Utopian, certainly a better, more perfected human society. That's fundamental to the Christian right, and it's also fundamental to the New Atheists.

You know, there is nothing in human nature or in human history that points to the idea that we are moving anywhere. Technology and science, though they are cumulative and have improved, in many ways, the lives of people within the industrialized nations, have also unleashed the most horrific forms of violence and death, and let's not forget, environmental degradation, in human history. So, there's nothing intrinsically moral about science. Science is morally neutral. It serves the good and the bad. I mean, industrial killing is a product of technological advance, just as is penicillin and modern medicine. So I think that I find the faith that these people place in science and reason as a route toward human salvation to be as delusional as the faith the Christian right places in miracles and angels.

In other words, material progress without moral progress—the two have no obvious correlation—only raises the stakes for humanity. The New Atheists conflate the two, thus creating a justification for a neo-con imperial agenda. Read the transcript of the full interview here.

Gandhis of Olive Country

Another path to peace? Palestinians revel in Gandhi and the non-violent struggle (Aimee Ginsberg in Outlook India):

I'm sitting with Robert Hirschfield at the corner ice-cream shop, tall windows facing the street, steaming mint tea in our glass mugs. Outside, a large group of angry young PLO supporters are waving their fists and their kaffiyas, shouting slogans against the Hamas' massacre of 14 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members in Gaza. We are in Ramallah, the interim capital of Palestine, two American Jewish writers, and I am thinking we are crazy. Hirschfield, 68, is comfortable. He has been travelling through Palestine for a month now, researching his book on Palestinian non-violence.

He likes it here. "There is an aliveness, an open and present friendliness, a warmth," he says. Outside, the shouting gets louder. I, sorry to say, think of Daniel Pearl; Hirschfield of Mahatma Gandhi.

It was the visit of Arun Gandhi—the Mahatma's grandson—to Palestine in 2004 that first caught Hirschfield's interest. "In the United States," Hirschfield says, "Palestinians are seldom portrayed as anything other than terrorists. Sure the terror is real, and Israel must defend herself. But why stigmatise the whole of the Palestinian people?" It was this point Arun Gandhi addressed ... "Imagine yourselves marching by the thousands behind your leaders, demanding the right to be treated as human beings," he had asked a large audience of Palestinians and their Israeli sympathisers. "Sit at the roadblocks and sing your songs. March to the wall and dance your dances."

No mass march followed this perhaps naive plea, but Arun's message was absorbed, part of a continuing Palestinian debate on the viability of a nonviolent (NV) resolution to the Israeli occupation.

More here. Also read about Mubarak Awad, the man who brought Gandhian methods to Palestine.

A Memorial: My Lai, 1968

Forty years ago today the people of a little village in Vietnam, called My Lai, were subjected to unspeakable atrocities at the hands of a group of young soldiers who were there to persecute America's war against communism. The massacre was ended by the heroic actions of a 24 year old helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who stepped in to save the villagers, backed by his 18 year old gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and their 20 year old Crew Chief, Glenn Andreotta.

According to the Seattle Times, these were the conditions:

AFTER THREE MONTHS in Vietnam, Charlie Company (Task Force Barker, 11th Brigade, Americal Division), had suffered 28 casualties, including five killed, and was down to 105 men. All the casualties were from mines, booby traps and snipers rather than battles in which troops could clearly identify an enemy. The day after a booby trap killed a popular sergeant, Charlie Company was given orders to invade an area believed to be a North Vietnamese stronghold. Though it is generally agreed commanders ordered soldiers to destroy the villages and "neutralize" the area, there is controversy over whether the directive included killing civilians. The U.S. military's official report found that "from 16-19 March 1968, U.S. Army troops massacred a large number of noncombatants in two hamlets of Son My Village, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of Vietnam. The precise number of Vietnamese killed cannot be determined but was at least 175 and may exceed 400." Later reports tallied 504.

In the spirit of not forgetting, not papering over what war really does to people—civilians and soldiers, both—here are the words of Lawrence Colburn, recalling that day:

Slaughter in America

A recent Humane Society sting operation at a California slaughterhouse brought to light some very cruel treatment of farm animals (see the investigator's video; viewer discretion advised). The media attention caused a minor outrage and the largest beef recall in the history of the nation. Many wondered if cruelty is all that rare in the American meat business. Donations to animal rights groups followed (not unlike the spike in donations to charities following ads of emaciated children in god forsaken countries). Guilt assuaged, let's do pork chops for dinner.

Curiously enough, what bothered people most was the cruelty itself, and the nutritional safety of meat from downer cattle. In other words, if all USDA rules were followed, in letter and spirit, the complaints would dissolve and people would go back to maintaining their equanimity about the industrial-scale raising, killing, and processing of animals for food and things. Notably, the USDA—US department of agriculture—regulates this industry. This is on par with agriculture? What does this reveal about the American society's relationship with animals? How many little Eichmanns now thrive among us, within us?

Nearly ten billion mammals and birds are slaughtered each year in the US alone (a million per hour). How are they processed? The time-lapse footage below from the visually resplendent film, Baraka, has some details for chickens, mixed-in with scenes from modern life (a more disturbing one here. Also check out cartoonist Mark Fiore's, Doreen the Downer.)

On Nuclear Energy

A compelling presentation on why nuclear energy must be a significant part of a clean energy solution (Gwyneth Cravens and Rip Anderson). What's needed next is a slick production -- "An Inconvenient Truth, Part II" -- to tie it all together using more charismatic presenters.

White Desert, Egypt

The Western Desert, a vast expanse that starts at the western bank of the Nile and continues well into Libya, is the desert of deserts. Covering a total of 2.8 million sq km and bordered by Libya in the west, Sudan in the south and the Mediterranean in the north, it is a world of desolation and beauty -- and one of the few places in Egypt where you can go for days at a time without seeing a soul. Five isolated but thriving oases dot this otherwise uninhabited expanse: Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, Bahariyya, and to the north-west of these, Siwa.  (—LP, Egypt).

In Jan 2003, Usha and I traveled through four of the five Oases in Egypt's Western Desert (or Eastern Sahara), including a special excursion to the hauntingly beautiful White Desert, known for its otherworldly white chalk rock formations. In Farafra, we hired a 4x4, camping gear, a driver who doubled as a cook, and drove about 50 km over shifting sands.

Usha, with her keen eye for detail, spotted seashells in the sand, a thrilling discovery for us. It is one thing to know that the Sahara was once below the sea, another to see proof of it. Also visible are remains of ancient lava flows—bits of lava rock rolled around for millions of years, eventually turning into lots of black spheroids, inch-wide in diameter. Our "tent" had two right-angled walls (to act as windbreakers) and no roof. We saw a gazillion stars and the white rocks looked beautiful in the moonlight. But even four blankets didn't feel enough when the temperature dropped to near freezing that night. Here are some scenes from the trip, set to some music I like from north Africa.

A funny aside: The book Sahara, describes "four major ethnic groups of the Sahara, including the [Muslim] Tuareg, whose men rather than the women wear veils ... Tuareg women tell the men that 'a child can sleep in the womb for years, or even forever.'"

This [provides a cheating] wife a welcome and convenient pretext for representing to her husband in a respectable light any increase in the family that may have taken place in his absence.

Ghost Town in the Levant

Scenes from my visit to Quneitra, Syria, 2001. (Wikipedia on Quneitra.)

Teotihuacan, Mexico City

In early first century CE, Teotihuacan was just a hamlet. Its population then grew as people from the Valley of Mexico began arriving there. With a larger labor force at its disposal, the local rulers grew richer and devised a master plan for a new city with the great building projects of the pyramids of the sun and the moon. The plan was inspired by the Aztec conception of the universe, and indeed, as the place where the universe itself originated. It also made Teotihuacan the grandest city in Mesoamerica during the Classic Period.

Teotihuacan's control of the obsidian mines at Otumba and Pachuca allowed it to centralize the production of obsidian goods, some for domestic sale, the rest for export. With this, and its monopoly on the distribution of Thin Orange pottery, Teotihuacan developed a trading system that embraced almost every region of Mesoamerica, including places as far away as the Maya area, the modern state of Guerrero, and the area around the Gulf of Mexico.

Teotihuacan's metropolitan feel, its trading system, and the religious prestige it accrued from its giant pyramids and related ceremonies, attracted a floating population that enriched the quality of life in the great city. At its peak between 150—450 CE, it stretched over 30 square km and had a population of between 150,000 and 250,000.

After flourishing for centuries, Teotihuacan collapsed c. 750 CE, partly due to adverse pressures from the new population centers that sprang up on the Mexican plateau. However, evidence of fire, and the systematic, devastating ways in which the buildings lining the Avenue of the Dead were destroyed point to the main cause of its collapse being internal rebellions. [—Preceding text adapted from a display at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia (Mexico pics).]

Here is a ten minute video from my second trip to Teotihuacan in July 2002, along with Mexico City footage from the Zocalo, Plaza Garibaldi, and the excellent Museo Nacional de Antropologia, which contains many artifacts from Teotihuacan. 

Halloween in the Castro

Here is some anthropologically curious footage I shot in the Castro district of San Francisco on Halloween night, years before the famous event was forced to downsize due to a violent incident in 2006.

Wolfe on Porn

A thought-provoking article by Naomi Wolfe on the impact of porn on men and women:

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.

The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

More here.

Small Thrills

Cross-posted from Neutral Observer

As I grow older, I seem to get an unusual kick out of small discoveries - something I remember from my childhood. Maybe it is because I have become cynical about grand insights and world-changing ideas.

Many years ago, I had heard this song, from the Hindi film Ek Musafir Ek Hasina.  The song is  unremarkable, except for this refrain in Asha Bhonsle's voice:

zaban-e-yaar man turki, man turki namidanum

I never knew what it meant. It was clearly in some foreign language, but it nevertheless stuck in my head. Recently, I was reading a book about the history and culture of the Mughals by Annemarie Schimmel. Imagine my delight when I read that the strange sounding line was a lament first penned by Amir Khusro, the great poet, musician and scholar who lived from 1253 to 1325 CE. He lived during the first century of Turkic rule in Delhi and its environs. Though his ancestors were of Turkic origin, he himself was unfamiliar with the Turkish language as it was spoken by the Turks in India at that time. He wrote this line in Persian, the literary language of northern India from the thirteenth through the eighteenth century. Translated, I believe it means:

The tongue of my friend is Turkish, but I know no Turkish.

I have no idea why Shewan Rizvi, the lyricist, included this line in the Hindi film song. It has absolutely no connection that I can fathom with the rest of the song.

So, Amir Khusro wrote the line sometime in the 13th or early 14th century, Rizvi incorporated it into a ditty in 1962, I heard it for the first time in the 1980s, and finally discovered the meaning in 2008. Thanks to the internet, you can listen to the song (the audio is not great), read the lyrics, and speculate on the beauty of it all.