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.
Two eager contestants, tooting their horns and dissing each other. The media readying us for fireworks, sharp attacks, a "do or die" fight. Showdown in Texas is how CNN bills the live event. No, not a big boxing night, only the 19th Democratic Primary debate in Austin. Held in a giant auditorium, the event is less debate, more performance and spectacle, with snappy phrases, choreographed delivery, calculated show of charm and emotion. With millions watching and thousands cheering lustily, what matters above all is the air of authority and confidence—in voice, body language, rhetorical flourishes. The people want theatrics, verbal sparring, sticky moments. People-meters report audience sentiment in real-time. Smooth, photogenic pundits wait in the wings to offer post-debate punditry. Welcome to democracy in America.
It is no small miracle when—despite all the dubious qualities required to survive the endurance test that the primaries have become—a worthy candidate still emerges. This time, Obama holds that promise. He seems to me more decent than others and exudes a more nuanced, reflective, and principled approach to issues, though his platitudes and populism worry me ("yes we can", "turn the page", opposing Nafta, promising lavish economic stimulus packages). He'll likely be less jingoistic and less ideological than others. I'm encouraged by his years in Indonesia, which surely help him see an equal humanity in non-Americans (as should his father's Kenyan and Muslim heritage). This is hugely positive, if you pause to think about it.
But while Obama may be a fine person, will he focus on the right things and deliver results? Unless he does, he'll not make a fine president. Beyond all the voluptuous talk on hope and change, here is my list of the "right things" I want the next American president to focus on:
An amusing, insightful essay on the legacy of MK Gandhi by the noted sociologist Ashis Nandy:
There are four Gandhis who have survived Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s death. Fifty years after Gandhi’s (1861-1948) assassination, it may be useful to establish their identities, as the British police might have done in the high noon of colonialism. All the four Gandhis are troublesome, but they trouble different people for different reasons and in different ways. They are also useable in contemporary public life in four distinct ways. I say this not in sorrow, but in admiration. For the ability to disturb people — or, for that matter, be useable — one hundred and thirty years after one’s birth and fifty years after one’s death is no mean achievement. Frankly, I do not care who the real Gandhi was or is. Let academics debate that momentous issue. Contemporary politics is not about ‘truths’ of history; it is about remembered pasts and the problems of fashioning a future based on collective memories. For better or for worse, Gandhi seems to have entered that memory.
Experts on Islamic terrorism are now everywhere, spouting wisdom on countless media outlets and blogs. Most of them—including scholars, novelists, scientists—reflexively summon their gut to explain what turns Muslims into terrorists, marshaling anecdotes and selective data as evidence. The Qur'an is the underlying cause to some, sociopolitical inequities to others; virgins in paradise explain much to some, follies of US foreign policy to others; hatred of "freedom-loving" West suffices for some, dislocations of modernity to others. Rare is the attempt to understand terrorists themselves as social and moral beings (as, for instance, in the movie Paradise Now).
An insightful analyst of modern terrorism is Scott Atran (see my previous post on Sacred Conflicts). He has done pioneering field research on suicide bombers and the social dynamics of terrorist networks. Watch this remarkable lecture he gave at the Beyond Belief conference in Nov 2007 (attached below). The same material is summarized in this slideshow for the US State Department (I'm surprised they invited him and wonder how he was received). Here are ten conclusions I've selected from it:
Global Al-Qaeda is now a viral, social movement and political ideology, not a well organized operation with command and control. Young men self-radicalize in their social groups as soccer and camp buddies, neighbors and schoolmates, etc.
The new wave of terrorism is about "youth culture", not the Koran. It cannot be checked by military means or elders spouting niceties from the Koran, but with ideas and proposals for action that address their sense of injustice and moral outrage.
Prison radicalization in the USA vs. Europe differs significantly: Foreign-born Muslims, like Jews, are underrepresented in US prisons. But Muslims in European prisons are wildly over-represented (for many of the same reasons that Blacks in US prisons are over-represented). Nevertheless, prior religious education is a negative predictor of radicalization.
Cross-posted from Neutral Observer
In a recent cricket match played between India and Australia in Sydney, the Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh 
was accused of hurling a racist insult at Andrew Symonds, an Australian player who, I learnt
recently, is of Caribbean descent. Symonds had been the subject of insulting taunts and gestures by some spectators in the stadiums of India where the Australian team had toured a few months ago. On January 4, 2008, in the middle of a tense game situation in Sydney, there was an exchange between Symonds and Harbhajan, after which Symonds accused Harbhajan of calling him a 'monkey'. This was backed up by two of his Australian team-mates, Matthew Hayden and Michael Clarke. Harbhajan Singh denied using any racist insults.
The two umpires did not hear anything and the microphones attached to the stumps did not pick up the insult either. Harbhajan's batting partner and cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar also said later that Harbhajan had not used any racist language. The matter was reported to the umpires, who eventually brought it to the attention of the off-field match referee. A hearing was held by the referee after the match was over; he found Harbhajan guilty as accused and handed out a three-match ban.
The ban unleashed a furore in India. The TV channels were outraged. Predictably, a few effigies were burnt for the benefit of the cameras. Websites were flooded with the outbursts of Indian cricket fans. Everybody and his uncle weighed in on the matter. The Indian cricket board, by far the wealthiest and most influential of such boards in the cricket playing countries, made threatening noises about calling off the tour if the ban were not lifted. An appeals process exists in cases such as these, so an appeal was filed. The international body that manages cricket, the International Cricket Council (ICC), decided to postpone the appeal hearing till the end of the month in order to salvage the two remaining matches in the test series. On Tuesday, January 29th, the appeal was heard by a commissioner of the ICC who also happens to be a judge from New Zealand. He found that the charge was not proven. Harbhajan was however convicted of a lesser charge of using abusive language.
This bare summary hardly does justice to the story. In order to get a fuller picture, we have to recall some background. Cricket is played extensively in very few countries - all of whom were formerly part of the British empire. Introduced by the British into the colonies of the empire, it was initially meant for and played by the elites. From the start of the 20th century, international games were run by the English and the Australians via a body called the ICC - the Imperial Cricket Conference. An Indian team, usually captained by a maharaja, started playing international games in 1932. After the departure of the British, cricket steadily gained popularity in the countries of the subcontinent. Pakistan started playing international cricket soon after 1947, Sri Lanka did so in the 1980s, as did Bangladesh in the 1990s.
Here is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in NY City. He was killed exactly a year later when he was only 39. This is how one Christian preacher bravely spoke out against the Vietnam war. A tad different, shall we say, from the Rapture-ready evangelical preachers of today.
... Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
...
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
Further down in this impassioned speech, he quotes a Buddhist leader from Vietnam:
"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
Recently, the crew of a US naval cruiser in the Persian Gulf was alarmed by the actions of some nearby Iranian speedboats, potentially sparking a confrontation. Commenting on the almost-incident, US Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson quipped, "I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing."
Okay, is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen or heard the stereotype—the caricature—often enough to get his joke? I didn’t think so. In fact, in the past six years, we’ve heard some version of this joke so many times that it’s already come to feel old. There’s a whole battery of these jokes by now, with themes ranging from Islamic terrorism to… um, Islamic terrorism. And while America has a nice little collective chuckle over this, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been quite so funny if Thompson had made an equivalent joke about Jews, Mormons, or Baptists, for instance. I have to wonder why fair-minded, clear-thinking people aren’t up in arms over this.
I remember only two years ago when a politician referred to a young Indian-American as “macaca” and—though it never became entirely clear what the hell he was even talking about—his political career was effectively destroyed by a backlash against that single imprudent utterance. And last year former US President Jimmy Carter was hounded by the American press and accused of anti-Semitism for comparing the condition of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to life under South African Apartheid.
But speaking of Muslims as fanatics and terrorists is not even considered bad manners; it’s seen as a comic expression of the truth. Suggesting that it might be a bit more complicated—that it’s ridiculous and hateful to so simplify a group of people who comprise not less than 22% of the world population at last count, across nationalities, skin colors, political beliefs, socioeconomic levels, athletic abilities, educational backgrounds, language groups, intelligence levels, talents, personalities, local histories, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds, varying degrees of faith and religiosity, and whatnot (you know, the ordinary human variety you might expect to find across nearly a quarter of humanity distributed around the globe)—gets you branded as an apologist for terrorism, if you’re not Muslim, and may well get you worse if you are.
I’m sorry, I really don’t understand the math here.
[Above: Random photos of Muslims]
It’s no wonder that the Muslims held up as media darlings in the US right now are Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, who (unwittingly) fuel the rhetoric of those who need to convince themselves that Muslims have a greater capacity for “evil” or are in need of saving by the West. Having listened to an interview with Ms Ali, it’s my impression that she actually intends to deliver a more nuanced message of Muslim realities. But as a hopeful newcomer to the West, she perhaps doesn’t realize how she plays into the hands of the haters, that her real contribution is finally but to put flesh on the American Nightmare. I understand that she’s a brave and intelligent woman who has surmounted unimaginable horrors in her life. But presenting herself as an expert on Muslims, when it’s not clear that she knows much about the history and culture of Muslims across the globe, and focusing exclusively on the local cultural pathologies that caused the trauma she suffered—important though it is—to the exclusion of a broader view or deeper understanding, does nothing to humanize the caricature of Muslims or advance the dialog. Few of her readers in the US will read her pronouncements with any kind of informed perspective or insight. Because most Americans frankly don’t want much perspective and insight on Muslims. It’s well known that understanding makes it much harder to vilify and kill people. So the only Muslims who get airtime in the States are the ones who say what we want to hear. It lets us feel not just vindicated but downright open-minded and receptive in our collective willful ignorance.
Can't figure out who to vote for? Never fear: Here's another one of those political quizes that compares you with the candidates on several current issues. The pencil icon in the accompanying picture indicates where I stand and the circle around it indicates the standard deviation for the test. There's only one candidate in the race who falls within a standard deviation of me... no surprise.
Of course, the quiz isn't perfect; it doesn't weigh answers depending on how important the issue is to you, for instance.
Take the quiz at Electoral Compass USA. The quiz is apparently a research project put up by a Dutch group.
A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the minds and machinations of two political animals:
A few weeks after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama told his staff he wanted to meet with Hillary Clinton. In her years as a senator, Clinton had deftly navigated many of the challenges that now confronted Obama. She had come to the Senate as a national figure whose celebrity eclipsed (and therefore imperiled) her status as a freshman senator. She had a broad but shallow base of support among the voters she represented. And she, like Obama, held national political ambitions that depended heavily on how well she performed in the Senate.
On February 1, 2005, the two talked for an hour in Clinton’s cheerful, canary-yellow Senate office. Obama developed a good sense of the Clinton algorithm for success: Don’t be a showboat. Keep your head down. Choose the right committees, the ones that will allow you to deliver tangible benefits to your state. Go to hearings, stay the whole time, wait to speak, follow the lead of the chair or the ranking member, and remain quiet and humble at press conferences.
More here.
Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, remembers Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007):
... while she could be exasperating, confused, insecure, loud, immature, vicious, venal, desperate, whatever — one weakness you would never associate with Benazir was physical cowardice ...
You have to experience Pakistan’s street politics to understand how chaotic and dangerous it can be. Ours has mellowed hugely in comparison. At the best of times, a popular politician in Pakistan takes huge physical risks. Crowds, chaos, din, drums and dust, just the raw energy of the Pakistani street leaves India far behind. Perhaps it is because of the spasmodic nature of that democratic process, each rally is some kind of mass catharsis. Or, perhaps, as a Pakistan journo once told me, “It is just that we are a mostly Punjabi nation.”
More here. (Another view from Amit Baruah in the Hindustan Times.)
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