Anonymous News

What Is Israel's Goal in Gaza?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:43:00 +0000

According to the Washington Post, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told President Shimon Peres, "Nobody in this world understands what are Hamas' goals and why it continues to fire missiles."

Olmert's observation begs the question: if Hamas is so unpredictable, exactly what is Israel's goal in continuing to fire missiles on Gaza?

The Post goes on to say, "Israel sealed off an area around Gaza on Monday, declaring it a "closed military zone," amid indications that the army may be preparing for a ground offensive. Meanwhile, Israeli jets continued to strike targets across the narrow coastal strip, including a security compound and the homes of suspected Hamas operatives."

Yesterday, I observed that the Israeli operation was unlikely to end Hamas' rule in Gaza. The Israeli government has appeared to have reached the same conclusion: so long as there are any Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis will have to contend with rockets.

The Post goes on to write, "Israeli military officials said Monday that their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network that the Islamist movement relies on to stay in power in the strip."

The vast support network that the Islamist movement relies on? Is that strategy, or justification?

Hamas' intentions may be unclear, but Olmert's intentions are obvious. He will not stop. This much is obvious in the Post story.

Does this seem alarmist? Extreme? I hope it isn't the case - but denying the possibility won't help anyone. When an Israeli soldier tells international media that his mission in Gaza is "cleansing" and then the Israeli Army censors the video, what else can we assume is going on that we don't know?

Both Ban Ki Moon (Secretary General of the United Nations) and the European Commission have called for an end to all hostilities.

The Jerusalem Post has been positive in its coverage, insisting that the Operation has won international support and has killed only terrorists. Today, a headline declares the Israeli government will consider suspending the operation. But the story makes clear that Olmert is not, in fact, considering a suspension. (Ha'aretz runs the same story under the headline, "Olmert: Gaza offensive to go on until aims achieved.) The JPost story also says that the operation has killed "mostly uniformed terrorists." The JPost's characterization is, on the surface, absurd. Terrorists are not a country. They are not an organized Army. They do not, by definition, wear uniforms. The "uniformed terrorists" statement is unusual enough that it almost demands further explanation. But none is forthcoming.

Ha'aretz (fast becoming my favorite source for news on the Gaza situation) says, "most of them members of Hamas security forces but at least 64 of them civilians, according to UN figures." "Hamas security forces?" Very different phrasing from "uniformed terrorists."

The Palestinian News Network refers to the Operation as a "massacre," saying "Targets are vast while those hit include children and families in mourning." No mention of Hamas at all.

(I should mention that the Palestinians have responded with rocket fire of their own. So far, their rockets have claimed the lives of 4 Israelis. Israel's rockets have killed 360. This is certainly not a battle between equals nations.)

Strange and Disturbing Video From Gaza

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:00:00 +0000

"Arrangements" like the one between the Israeli army and international reporters (mentioned in the video below) are common in conflict zones. But that doesn't make them likable, especially where human rights conflicts are concerned. It's amazing that the Israeli news channel was brave enough to challenge the embargo.

Uncommon Opinions on Israel's Attack on Gaza

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:23:00 +0000

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Hamas (the militant group that Israel is allegedly trying to target) could have prevented the current attacks on Gaza by letting the cease-fire stand. Sounds as if Abbas is trying to justify that fact that he's been a completely ineffective President.

Over at the pro-Israel Elder of Ziyon blog, the blogger blames Hamas for everything, including (apparently) the fact that Gazan civilians are dying from Israeli fire: "What is slightly newer is the desire to use the traditionally Western concept of the sanctity of all human life as a weapon itself. In other words, in Hamas' calculus, the public relations value of the media reporting that Gazans are dying due to lack of medical supplies is far more important than keeping the people alive." Ignoring the fact that this blogger is clearly a bigot (sanctity of human life is a "Western concept"?), it seems like he's using the whole "Hamas is violent" argument to justify killing Gazan civilians. He is right, though, that Hamas seems to put their own political gain above all other causes, including individual Palestinian lives.

On the other hand, to say that "they could have just been nicer and then we wouldn't have had to bomb them" is a suspiciously convenient argument for Israel.

It's the argument popular with the leadership: Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak said of the attacks, "Hamas controls Gaza and is responsible for everything happening there and for all attacks carried out from within the Strip." Key phrase: "Hamas controls Gaza." Does that justify attacking anyone or anything in Gaza?

The more human reality is be found on sites that feature the aftermath of the attacks.

On the International Solidarity Movement site, where a Palestinian resident of the border town Rafah says, "After an inhumane siege that left Gaza with little to lose, people are being asked to say goodbye to the last remains of their former lives. ”

(Somewhat disturbing) images from the attacks on the Gaza strip to be found at Rafah Today.

The pro-Palestine In Gaza blog has pictures from the Shifa Hospital ICU (where most of the injured Palestinians are being treated) and some of the bloggers claim that Israel is targeting mosques and civilians. Remember that Gaza is a very small area, and that it is notoriously difficult to prevent civilian casualties even in a much larger country.

Ha'aretz seems to have very even coverage of the situation. Key phrase from their story: "The strikes have driven Hamas leaders into hiding."

The tragedy appears to be this: terrorists are the cockroaches of the political world. After the attacks, the Hamas leadership will emerge unscathed. The few Gazan civilians who didn't die in the attacks will have little left to lose, and all the more reason to support Hamas. After all, who else cared when their families were killed? Who else said it was wrong?

If it sounds like I'm in favor of the Palestinian side here, it's only because it seems (at first brush) that despite Israel's justifiable frustration, their strategy probably won't eliminate terrorism. The United States tried the same "shock and awe" tactic in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it didn't work for us either. Yossi Alpher says just this in an analytical essay. He also talks about how closing the crossings was bad strategy, too.

Despite the humanitarian suffering on both sides, Ghassan Khatib argues that both Hamas and Israel are using the violence as a bargaining chip in the bid for a more favorable ceasefire agreement.

Which suggests that, as in any war, both sides are playing for their own political advantage, and the innocents are still the unfortunate ones who get to suffer for it.

Image credit: University of Texas Library.

The Media Rumor Mill Grinds Out More India-Pakistan Tension

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:44:00 +0000

Multiple international newspapers report today that the Pakistani government has moved troops away from the borderlands of Waziristan and refused them permission to go on annual leave. A look at the stories with emphasis on the attributions, and my own comments afterwards.

The New York Times' Richard Oppel Jr. writes a story headlined: "Pakistan Moves Forces as Tensions with India Rise." The story's first paragraph reports information about the Pakistani troop movements. Oppel attributes the information to "senior Pakistani officials," but the story makes clear that in fact there are only two senior Pakistani officials, both of whom spoke anonymously. Oppel also writes, "A senior military official said in an interview that the decision to sharply restrict leave for soldiers was taken 'in view of the prevailing environment,' namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. "

All journalists paraphrase sources, but it's interesting that Oppel's source said only "in view of the prevailing environment." That prevailing environment includes a suspected US airstrike in Waziristan that killed eight people, as well as a Christmas Eve terrorist strike in the Pakistani city of Lahore. But Richard Oppel chooses to interpret the "prevailing environment" as "deteriorating relations with India."

Oppel goes on to write, "The redeployment came as Indian authorities warned their citizens not to travel to Pakistan given the heightened tensions between the two nations, news agencies reported." He cites only other "news agencies" as his source.

Then he writes, "The senior official also refused to say where the troops would be redeployed, although The Associated Press quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that the Pakistani Army’s 14th division was being sent to Kasur and Sialkot, near the Indian border." The source: another news agency.

Finally, he writes, "In India, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, summoned the leaders of his country’s armed forces to discuss the security situation, Indian media reported on Friday." The source: Indian media.

According to Nirupama Subramanian's story in the Hindu, "Pakistan’s armed forces are on a “high alert” and all leave of absence has been cancelled for troops on account of the tensions with India, military officials here told journalists on Friday." At first it seems as if the government officials held an authorized news conference. No such thing. Subramanian goes on to write, "Also, there were unconfirmed reports, quoting unnamed intelligence officials, that the Pakistan military had pulled out some soldiers from the border with Afghanistan and redeployed them in the east."

So now the soldiers have been redeployed to the East? Interestingly, the Hindu story also notes, "The reports are bound to cause alarm in Washington, which is seeking to prevent any adverse fallout of the India-Pakistan crisis on its “war on terror’ in Afghanistan." This interpretation barely appears in the New York Times story.

Sebastian Abbot goes even further in his story for the Associated Press, practically editorializing when he writes, "The move represents a sharp escalation in the standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbors."

Of his sources: "The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation." Abbot also credits another anonymous source at the end.

A story by Sajjad Malik in Pakistan's Daily Times says, "Reports in Indian media said Pakistan moved its 10th Brigade to Lahore and ordered the 3rd Armoured Brigade to march towards Jhelum, following a heavy concentration of Indian troops on the borders. " Malik goes on to write a story taken entirely from Indian media sources, which in turn seem to have been lifted from the Associated Press story.

Zahid Hussain, in a story for England's Times Online, doesn't bother to attribute any of his statements about Pakistan's troop movements.

In conclusion: multiple international news stories about an escalation in tension between two nuclear neighbors all came from three Pakistani military officials who spoke to journalists on background.

It seems as if this story proves the "echo chamber" theory of mass media: after a little while, international stories all turn into a ring of news outlets randomly citing each other. More importantly, these journalists would never be able to write these type of stories if they weren't relying on an established assumption: India and Pakistan dislike each other and are once more on their way to war.

But how has this assumption been established? Largely by the media.

(India and Pakistan have fought three wars in the past fifty years, so real tension exists. But that doesn't mean reporters should automatically be able to assume a fourth war is in the works.)

The Problem with Covering Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:01:00 +0000

The Washington Post ran a story yesterday headlined, "Pakistani Jets Scramble as India Hardens Tone."

The November terrorist attacks on Mumbai have been compared to September 11, 2001. But three days after that attack, the United States Congress authorized military action against Afghanistan, another sovereign nation. A month after similar devastation occurred in Mumbai, Indian government officials are still saying, "We will take all measures necessary as we deem fit to deal with the situation."

Which brings me to the Post's headline. How does a statement like the above, by India's foreign minister, count as a hardening of tone? On Tuesday, according to a story in The Hindu, Indian PM Manmohan Singh said, "The issue is not war, but terrorism being aided and abetted by Pakistan. We want Pakistan to make objective efforts to dismantle the terror infrastructure."

Nearly a week before Singh's statement, George W. Bush gave a speech in Pennsylvania where he referred to the US relationship with Pakistan as his legacy. According to the Post, Bush told a group of students, "A country that was a supporter of the Taliban before September 11 today is a strong partner of the United States."

In a Newsweek commentary on the subject, Fareed Zakaria wrote, "The Pakistani government has never made a fundamental decision to turn its back on the culture of jihad."

There are many issues here: one is the marked difference between how the US press treats India post-attack and the way it treated the US post-attack. This might be expected. The other is the media's uncritical acceptance of Bush's fondness for Pakistan (he would not be the first president whose choice of allies we might later regret).

The Washington Post seems to have bought into the attitude that war between India and Pakistan is inevitable, and it is merely a matter of time before it occurs. (For those who don't believe this, look at the first paragraph of the Post's story about Singh's Tuesday speech. The focus is entirely on the military preparations rather on the substance of Singh's words. The story is different from the Hindu coverage.) By focusing on the possibility of war (which neither nation desires), the Post article obscures the real and important policy issue at hand: Islamabad's questionable commitment to fighting terrorism. (And we might ask why the Post is so obsessed with war: because wars sell newspapers?)

By contrast, the Hindu has consistently presented the counter-argument: that war is not the central question here. From a Pakistani perspective: regardless of whether the government wants to turn its back a culture of jihad, can it afford to? (Zakaria address this question, too.) And if not, what does that mean for diplomats?

Zakaria goes on to write, "The problem with Islamic militant groups in Pakistan is not that they are hard to find but rather that they are in plain sight."

The solution to the problem of Pakistan's terror groups won't arrive if our president keeps issuing statements like, "A nation that produced 15 of the 9/11 hijackers now serves as a staunch ally in the war on terror." (And what is the point of the Reuters story about this speech, which reproduces the text without offering any perspective?)

The world must face and address the problem of Pakistan's terrorist groups. These groups exist and thrive despite the Pakistani government's commitment to fighting terror. And while newspapers should take a critical look at Pakistan (and statements by its government), they shouldn't promote war hysteria either. The two can be reconciled: Zakaria does just that in his piece.

Contradictions in Article about Zimbabwean Poverty

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:44:00 +0000

When Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman made "Born into Brothels," a film about poor children in Calcutta slums, critics said the filmmakers "exploited" the children, or used the shocking images of the children's poverty to increase their own fame.

Journalists suffer the same setbacks as artists. In an article about Zimbabwe, New York Times writer Celia Dugger points out the rising levels of starvation in a country that once had a self-sufficient agricultural sector.

She writes, "American-financed charities and the World Food Program have been feeding millions of Zimbabweans since late 2002, at a cost of $1.25 billion over the years." But later on, when Dugger interviews rural farmers, they suggest a different problem: "Even when food aid has come, only those in the ruling party hierarchy have gotten any, the farmers said."

It would not be the first time in history that military juntas diverted humanitarian aid. The same situation occurred in Indonesia (during the Suharto years) and presently, in Myanmar (after the cyclone). International sources (World Bank, IMF) agree that almost all international aid shipments suffer some "leakage"—a euphemism that usually means "theft."

Later on, she writes, "[The dictator] took his vengeance, unleashing veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war and gangs of youth to invade and occupy highly mechanized, white-owned commercial farms that were then the country’s largest employer and an engine of export earnings. In time, thousands of farms were taken over. Farm workers and their families — about 1 million people altogether — lost their jobs and homes, according to a 2008 study by Zimbabwean economists for the United Nations Development Program."

Dictatorship does not automatically result in low economic growth, but neither does it immediately translate to widespread prosperity. Other dictators before Mugabe (notably Castro) have nationalized white-owned commercial farms with greater levels of success. In fact, nationalization of foreign-owned businesses was a major focus of independence movements in many Latin American countries. Dugger does not say whether the farms paid the workers a decent wage, or whether (in other hands) the nationalization might have enriched the Zimbabwean people.

But it's not her job to speculate on what might have been. Yes, Mugabe put millions of people out of work when he nationalized the white-owned farms. But white-owned farms were an exploitative system to begin with, one that took the profits of a country's natural resources away from its residents.

This last point is one that the article does not bother to explore in detail. Instead, Dugger paints a somewhat boring and predictable picture of Zimbabwe: on the brink due to Mugabe's policies, and despite the Herculean efforts of the "First World."

This article also seems exploitative, if only because it doesn't bother to address its own contradictions. Zimbabwe faces real and very deep problems: hyperinflation due to seignorage run amok, inefficient nationalization of industry, uneven distribution of land (wealth), etc. These problems litter history, they are not unique. But Dugger's treatment is superficial, and it relies on assumptions that work against each other (food aid is effective, the junta is corrupt) (white-owned farms were big employers, profit from white-owned farms did not go into Zimbabwe's GDP). As a result, it seems as if the author is just gawking at poor people.

NYTimes Article Suggests Arab Women Sprout Wings

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:52:00 +0000

There is an interesting, although somewhat fanciful, article in the New York Times today about young Arab women who become flight attendants because the career offers an unusual amount of personal freedom.

On the surface I have nothing against this piece, but the past year has seen a host of articles in the American media about young Arab women and the various ways they attempt to date, work, worship equally, etc. In other words, to adopt more Western customs. The article seems to fall into a predictable mold: on the one side, the intelligent young women who become flight attendants, and on the other, traditional Arab culture.

The article says:

"Many of the young Arab women working in the Persian Gulf take delight in their status as pioneers, role models for their friends and younger female relatives. Young women brought up in a culture that highly values community, they have learned to see themselves as individuals."

They have learned to see themselves as individuals? This generalization seems out of place and also moralistic.

"For many families, allowing a daughter to work, much less to travel overseas unaccompanied, may call her virtue into question and threaten her marriage prospects. Yet this culture is changing, said Musa Shteiwi, a sociologist at Jordan University in Amman."

There are two recognizable camps in this debate. The first is the "West," which in this case means America. The other is "Arab culture," which in the context of this article seems to mean, "everything that American culture is not."

However, on American Bedu, (a website by a former American diplomat now married to a Saudi), the list of what Saudi women can and cannot do does not follow that predictable pattern.

For example, as has been said many times, it is against the law for Saudi women to drive. But Saudi women can work, have their own bank accounts and have their own businesses.

A close family friend of mine was once in school to become a Koranic scholar (he is Iranian). Although he left seminary, I remember having this same debate with him and he recited to me (in classical Arabic, no less) the portions of the Koran that say that married women retain property after their marriage. Women living in feudal England had none of these rights, but women in modern England do. So the "whatever the West is not" definition doesn't hold.

The right to financial independence, for women, seems to be a very integral part of traditional Arab doctrine.

And while it may seem that prejudice and practicality have made that independence impossible for Arab women, can we be sure of that fact? The journalists and scholars who shape our awareness of Arabs have worked off a shorthand definition of Muslim culture—"whatever American culture is not"—for so long that none of our assumptions make sense.

Are War Crimes Prosecutions Fair?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:52:00 +0000

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda yesterday sentenced three men to life in prison for their role in the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s.

War crimes trials are an interesting phenomenon. They exist because the world believes the perpetrators of genocides and mass murders should be held accountable. This is a sound humanitarian theory, but it's interesting who gets prosecuted.

A New York Times story about the sentencing mentions the possible role played by France in the genocide, saying "The Tutsi rebels have argued that the militant Hutu, perhaps with France's help, may have been involved, hoping to create the pretext for a long-planned extermination of the Tutsi." No one from France was tried.

A story in Australia's PerthNow says, "The genocide saw extremist Hutu militia slaughter minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus over 100 days, leading to accusations that Western nations watched them unfold without moving to stop them." But no one from a Western nation has been tried.

A similarly awful situation is currently underway in the Congo. Flagrant human rights abuses occur daily, which leads the Times correspondents to wonder if similar justice could ever be pronounced there. They quote an Africa scholar, who says, "'Everybody has dirty hands' in eastern Congo."

The United States government knew about Hitler's concentration camps long before it chose to enter World War II. That decision has always seemed hideous. Practical, perhaps, but still hideous.

In college, I studied the Indonesian massacre of 1965, in which almost one million Indonesians were murdered by their neighbors on suspicion of being communists. No one knows who fueled and provoked the incident, but many believe that the CIA was involved (1965 was the height of anti-Communist fervor in the CIA, and they did plan similar missions elsewhere).

In Indonesia, and in World War II Germany, and now with Rwanda, those in authority have tried to say that the genocides were "spontaneous." A genocide is never spontaneous. It's a planned and systematic strategy, and also the boiling-over of generations of indrawn hatred. But it is definitely not spontaneous. The very idea of a "spontaneous" genocide is ludicrous—when was the last someone randomly turned to his neighbor and said, "I was going to go to the store today, but I think I'll exterminate your entire family instead."

When it comes to crimes against humanity, very few hands are clean. Such is the nature of these crimes. Although the men who received their sentences yesterday no doubt deserved that and maybe worse, it all comes back to the Times quote. Everybody has dirty hands. This might be part of the reason why the world is so enthusiastic (but still so selective) about prosecuting war crimes after the fact. (After all, no sentence could ever really even out what happened in Rwanda.)

For those who doubt that the prosecution is selective, understand that some people think George Bush should be tried for war crimes based on the US military's torture record and the civilian deaths in Iraq. If prisoner torture and civilian deaths in Iraq seem like necessary "collateral damage" in times of war, perhaps that's a semantic rather than a realistic differentiation. What's the difference between a "war crime" and "war"? Legally speaking?

I don't know. Also, is it fair that regular US soldiers, acting on the implicit encouragement of their superiors, received court martials for their role in the prisoner abuse scandal while those at the top of the military chain of command got off scot-free? Because that's certainly not the philosophy the UN is currently practicing in the Rwanda case.

Chasing pirates in Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:08:00 +0000

Jeffrey Gettleman, who writes for the New York Times, has a story up today about his time chasing pirates on the deck of an Italian Navy ship. According to international reports, piracy more than doubled in 2008, and will continue to do so.

Everyone understands that, Johnny Depp franchises aside, pirates are bad, but Gettleman also delves into the somewhat sensitive territory of why they might be good. In particular, he says pirate revenue supports several Somali villages that otherwise get no assistance from their weak central government.

A story by Dina Ezzat in Egypt's Al-Ahram covers the problem in more detail: the Somali government is on the brink of failure, and other countries hesitate to intervene because they don't want to ignite an international conflict. Ezzat says pirates kidnap humanitarian aid shipments as well as trade vessels. Keep in mind, though, that Egypt stands to lose a lot of revenue if the pirate situation isn't stopped and shippers detour their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope. So they have a vested interest in whatever intervention is necessary to stop Somali piracy.

Meanwhile, a Reuters story in Somalia's Hiiran suggests that the economic crisis will starve the poorest residents of the world, leading to food riots. A mere fraction of the money that has gone into the financial rescue packages worldwide could make a huge difference.

"It is an issue of global peace and security," said the Executive Director of the World Food Programme.

To recap: Driven by poverty and lack of government oversight, some poor Somalis have started to earn a lucrative living through piracy in the Gulf of Aden, off the Horn of Africa. By doing this, however, the pirates are driving shipping revenue away from Egypt, a state already "worried by the expanding influence of political Islam." Should further financial woes beset Egypt, one can only assume that this would bolster their own more militant groups (an example personified best by a pre-invasion Iraq). The Egyptian government would like to intervene in Somalia, but this would look opportunistic when that country has already suffered so many decades of war. Meanwhile, foreign governments have put much of their financial werewithal into financial bailouts, worried about "systemic risk" to the world economy. Even a fraction of the bailout money would have made a major difference to poor nations, according to the UN World Food Programme. It's safe to assume that they include Somalia in "poor nations", since it is already at risk of "security" issues such as food riots and the growth of terrorism due to desperate poverty. But on the other hand, even if foreign governments had donated this money to the World Food Programme, the aid would never have reached the poor citizens of Somalia because of the pirates who have sprung up and are currently helping give money to the poor people of Somalia.

Kashmir: a new Gaza?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Abdus Satar Ghazali, executive editor of the American Muslim Perspective, has an essay in Al-Ahram about how the United States is reshaping the Middle East and South Asia.

In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman writes that Arab Palestinians were shuffled between Syria and Lebanon following World War II. The PLO evolved and became a symbol not just of the Muslim voice, but of a growing (international) sense of Muslim disenfranchisement. He has been criticized for it, but that's probably why Columbia University scholar Rashid Khalidi wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is central to the Arab identity.

Today, the Hindu carries a short story called "Pakistan invokes the K word." The K-word is "Kashmir," the contested borderland between India and Pakistan. Originally granted to India by international convention, Pakistanis believe Kashmir should belong to them and refer to it as "Indian-occupied." Military clashes are common along the border.

The question is: is Kashmir turning into a new Gaza Strip? A central stalemate and a romanticized ideal for both sides? A built-up store of resentments that no geographical boundary will ever be able to resolve? (It's already gone a long way in this direction - terrorism has made the region almost uninhabitable.)

And what role do journalists have in the creation and maintenance of such a dispute?

Ponder this: the Hindu article is titled "Pakistan invokes the K Word." In fact, Pakistan invoked the K word after agreeing to ban a militant group, and the delegate only pushed for a "resolution." On the surface, this was not intolerant.

Meanwhile, Ghazali blames the US for reshaping Pakistan. In fact, it's the Pushtu tribes along the Pakistan-Afghan border who are pushing for more territory, and might in future get it.

The point is, neither of these articles seems completely honest, but both contribute to a sense of a 'threatened' Pakistan, territory beset on all sides. This is exactly how resentments and fears breed monsters. We've already seen it happen to a greater extent in the Middle East.

Why do they Hate Us, Again?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:31:00 +0000

This was the question on everyone's minds following the September 11 attacks. Since then the question has been mocked as simplistic, ignorant, hawkish, and Bushian. So how did it become part of the general debate over terrorism? Some people blame the media, but when I Googled the question "Why do they Hate us" I found essays by several journalists (many of Arab descent) who'd tried to argue this with humanity and sense. Some of the ones I liked most are posted below, with commentary.

Mohsin Hamid, in the Washington Post. Hamid lived part of his life in America and part of it in Pakistan. He says, "How does someone like me reconcile his affection and frustration? Partly by offering a passionate critique. And partly by hoping for change -- by appealing, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did, to what is most attractive about the United States, to what it claims to stand for, to what is best in its nature." Interestingly, this King-ian philosophy often appeared in Barack Obama's speeches, too.

Fareed Zakaria, in Newsweek. Zakaria goes over the same policy history as Hamid, but he also says, "As we strike Afghanistan it is worth remembering that not a single Afghan has been tied to a terrorist attack against the United States." The moral here seems to be that the "Muslim world" is not some monolithic entity.

One of my favorite articles is Peter Ford's, in the Christian Science Monitor. Since he's writing a news story, Ford interviews Muslims from all over the world. He writes, "the buttons that Mr. bin Laden pushes in his statements and interviews - the injustice done to the Palestinians, the cruelty of continued sanctions against Iraq, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the repressive and corrupt nature of US-backed Gulf governments - win a good deal of popular sympathy."

Although his article isn't as good as some of the others, Olivier Roy does make an interesting point in The New York Times when he says, "[These terrorists] are for the most part Westernized Muslims living or even born in Europe who turn to radical Islam. They did not turn fundamentalist because of Iraq, but because they felt excluded from Western society."

Roy's remark is interesting because it leaves one wondering: Why would young Muslims feel alienated from their British or French peers, even prior to September 11th? In Orientalism, Edward Said says that the colonial nations (England, France) have a long history of stereotyping Arabs. Is this what some of those young kids felt? That next to their European friends, they would always be "the other"? No matter how fluent they were in English, or how much pop music they listened to?

My thoughts: it's naive to pretend that there isn't virulent anti-American sentiment in many, many Arab nations. Dislike for American policy is a part of those nations' popular consciousness. And there are valid historical reasons for it. But it's also naive to pretend that the Arab world is all about hating America. Like Anne Garrels says in Naked in Baghdad, Iraq was a very complex place prior to the US invasion. Maybe anti-Americanism offers an outlet, but it is not the only root of the problem.

Tomorrow: looking at this question through the eyes of several major English-language newspapers from the Arab world.

Colonialism? Not my cup of tea

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:26:00 +0000

There is a popular idea among certain—usually educated—Indians. I've heard it referred to many times in conversation. Someone will bring up the blank unfairness of colonialism, and others will respond with: well, hold on. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't we [Indians] owe the British colonial system something?

At the risk of being absolutist, I'm not really sure that we do. In the United States, we owe the British some of our cultural and political institutions. That's because the Pilgrims were Englishmen, and indeed, referred to themselves as such for years.

But Indians of the subcontinent? Not so much.

The first exhibit in the "we owe the British something" gallery is: education. Christian missionaries opened many schools in British India. They spread literacy to the outer reaches, perhaps, but they also spread Christianity. One might even say that, at least in the early days of empire, the first aim was really only tangential to the second. One might also say that while the British might have contributed "education" to India, it was a uniquely British education, one that refused to acknowledge the value or validity of anything Indian. In other words, the British taught Indians to discriminate against themselves. While that may have helped the colonial powers, it didn't do much for Indians. (See this essay on the myth of the Aryan invasion. The French author falls into the same trap of assuming that enlightened Europeans must bring the light of knowledge to the Indian masses, but still...)

The second exhibit is: railroads. But it was Indians, not British, who built the railroads through India and, to a lesser extent, Africa. Today, most of India's rural population still lives at least 70 miles away from a railway station. The British used Indian labor to build the infrastructure that was convenient to the British.

In other words, nothing the British did in India was undertaken with the goal of fortifying India, but rather of creating in India a more "model" colony, one easier for the British to administer. That Indians learned to disrespect their own labor and institutions was hardly a tragedy for the British.

The answer to the question, what do we owe the British? is highly complicated and individual. Some people will say the bad outweighs the good, others will say the good outweighs the bad. Overall, though, it's worth remembering that the British looked out for their own interests while they were in India. "Indian interests" did not exist for them as a separate concept from "British interests," and this attitude colored everything they did during their colonial rule.

Note: I am using words like "British" and "they" in a strictly historical sense. It barely needs saying that modern Britishers do not colonize other nations.

Note, 2: This week's posts are brought to you by Orientalism, Edward Said's 1978 book about pre- and post-colonial scholarship.

Note, 3: As an American of Indian descent, my relationship with colonial England is more complicated than I'm admitting.

Thoughts on National Geographic and Orientalism

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:05:00 +0000

I'm finally reading Edward Said's Orientalism, after years of quoting snippets in papers and conversations (yes, I've been that person). With Said's theories in mind, I realize now what bothered me about Malaria, the epic treatise on the disease that recently appeared in National Geographic.

After a 2002 ethical snafu ended his career at the New York Times Magazine, one might expect author Michael Finkel to be more circumspect about flouting journalistic convention. Finkel is that rare breed—he's such a great storyteller that he sometimes forgets not all journalistic rules exist to be broken.

But it's not Finkel's signature lack of quotes that bothers me here, nor even his melodramatic personification of the malaria parasite itself. What bothers me is this: Finkel wrote a 6000-word essay on the ravages malaria has wrought on the people of Africa. He focused at length on Zambia, using that government's broad anti-malaria efforts as a case study for what other nations might adopt.

But Finkel does not quote a single African. Let's remember that in Finkel's article, it is Zambians who are catching, fighting, curing and dying from this disease. And yet, as far as Finkel is concerned, the twenty-first century might as well be the early days of empire, when all non-European people were considered "savages" fresh from the bush.

Omissions like Finkel's create a world of misconceptions and imperfect information. And the consequences of acting on imperfect information are vast, particularly from the perspective of global health policy.

Finkel's only possible defense could be that he didn't know or wasn't aware of the historic voicelessness of the people of Africa. But ignorance and lack of self- and social-awareness are hardly much of a defense. Finkel owed it to Zambia to let its people represent themselves. Instead, the closest he comes is quoting a Maryland-based scientist with an ethnic-sounding name.

As journalists we must be more honest about our biases, and more aware of where our work falls in the global spectrum of intellectual debate.

Combating "Orientalism" and voicelessness is not just a question of fairness. It is imperative if we want to formulate and implement policies—or even just function—in a globalized world.

The Drop Heard 'Round the World

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:08:00 +0000

The US economy is now officially in recession. Barack Obama is at work on a New-New-Deal, which economists are already discussing even though the tenets have not been drafted.

But the impact will not be on Americans alone. In India, the Hindu reports that John McCain flew over and talked financial shop with Indian PM Manmohan Singh (no contest as to who's the better economist there) but that the Indian economy expects to see less capital inflow and a decline in Indian exports. Remember, however, that this is an economy that was previously predicted to grow at 10% a year.

In Japan, the Asahi Shimbun reports that Japanese companies expect the downturn to last at least until 2010. Also, several major Japanese insurance companies have taken a battering in the stock market of late.

According to the China Daily, a government think tank there has predicted the economy will continue to grow at 9.8% (this seems overly optimistic, unless "think tank"="PR factory" in China). They do admit to a slump in housing prices and a drop in the CPI, but they expect a rise in industrial output. (Either China's industrial sector is the bionic man of the global economy, or something is fishy...also, no mention of a drop in exports...)

Germany's finance minister feels Germany has done all it can to help with the EU bailout, according to Deutsche-Welle. To be fair to Germany, that seems to be true. Economics have long agreed that Germany's economy suffered the most as a result of accepting the Euro. It appears they're still paying reparations for World War II.

The Russian construction industry is down, but Putin thinks it's "unfair" that international markets can negatively affect Russian stock prices, says the Moscow Times. Unfair? That's the recession in a nutshell. At least from where I sit. A seat that is not in a financial services office.

Italy, which has the largest budget deficit in the EU, just doubled the value-added tax on PayTV, which apparently has some Italians up in arms, according to Corriere della Sera. And by some Italians, I mean Rupert Murdoch, who owns the leading Italian PayTV stations "by a long chalk." Despite the skyrocketing costs of satellite TV, people are still immigrating to Italy in record numbers.

There are more nations to cover—originally I envisioned a G7+3 roundup—but in the meantime, read and ponder. Two points emerge from the mashup: 1) the economy is global, man. 2) journalism is global, too. (Some might say 2 follows from 1, but I am not of that group)

Notes from the Risk-Averse Underground

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:12:00 +0000

In response to this, Paul Krugman asks,

"Why not just turn GSE debt into Treasury obligations, rather than stuff the obligations onto the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve?"

In the comments, someone mentions that declaring GSE debt fully backed by the faith of the US government would add to the national debt - assuming, of course, that the GSEs wouldn't be able to meet their obligations out of pre-existing funds - and the Bush Administration doesn't want to add to the national debt. (Now they're worried about the national debt?...)

The real question is: how bleak a picture is it for the mortgage companies at this point? A while back, Calculated Risk predicted that the subprime mortgage failures would be followed by Alt-A and commercial real estate mortgage failures, which would really take the juice out of Fannie and Freddie.

At any rate, the Federal Reserve, in its ongoing efforts to creatively fulfill its original mandate, will operate a new Treasury lending facility that will loan money to investors who plan to buy securities backed by credit card, auto and student loans.

This is all well and good, but if I were an investor in those loans, I would already be skittish about possible foreclosures considering the recent rises in unemployment (a trend that is expected to continue). There's a good chance that many people won't be able to meet their obligations. The fact that the government will lend me money to buy such seemingly-risky assets wouldn't encourage me at all: should foreclosures occur, I will be left holding not only a trash asset but I'll also have to pay back my debt to the government.

Arguments against that earlier argument: those who are buying these assets are doing so in bulk, and a government loan might offset the perceived risk of a greater percentage of failures due to market instability.

Response to that earlier argument: since when does a loan offset perceived risk??

Response to that earlier argument: since the government started writing blank checks to financial institutions to ease the costs of their bad investment decisions, bad decisions that include but are not limited to buying on margin.

The other frightening possibility, of course, is adverse selection, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal: "It's unclear whether there will be restrictions on the types of investors who are able to borrow money, how the Fed will judge their credit worthiness and how the government will ensure they are using the loans to buy the intended assets."

Wasn't the grand lesson of the mortgage-backed-security crisis: Never lend money to absolute strangers?

Reviewed: The Color Purple

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:36:00 +0000

I only expect to read a book like the The Color Purple once in my life.

It's not just skillful, detailed, deeply human, full of love: it's the perfect mix of all those things.

The beginning entices with its suggestion of horrors and character development to come, but everything after the first five chapters surprises. If the novel seems, at first, to be a depressing narrative about Southern racism, Alice Walker's real talent is to turn that much-told story inside out, to rediscover within it a message of power.

Her characters change more rapidly than the world around them, but Walker's world (and perhaps reality, goes the suggestion) is an elastic place, one that accommodates itself to people rather than the other way around. The story wanders through jails and jazz bars, mission schools and malaria epidemics - the myriad mysterious places where human drama has an opportunity to thrive. Some would say it's about a few relationships: the confident love between protagonist Celie and her lost younger sister, or the uncertain affection between Celie and the beautiful lounge singer Shug Avery, or the reciprocal doubt between Celie and God. This is why, those voices will say, Purple is a story about women. And they're half-right: the book is only about one person: Celie herself, and that's why it's a story about women.

Unlike many novels that confront social ills, Purple is neither funny nor subversive. It's an outspoken declaration of universal rights, a ripping-good story and a homily. It's that rare thing: a book created from ideology and literature that compromises neither.

Read if it you like: Maya Angelou, William Faulkner, Erica Jong
Skip it if you prefer: Borat

Only in America, Again

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:21:00 +0000

In Slate, David Berreby debunks the meme that America is the only nation where a member of an ethnic minority could win the country's highest elected office.

He cites examples from history, like Britain's Jewish Prime Minister Ben Disraeli, and other more contemporary examples, like India's Sonia Gandhi and Kenya's Daniel arap Moi.

In fact, most people who said "Obama could only happen here" probably meant "Obama would never happen in Western Europe," because many Americans don't have a keen grasp of ethnic tensions in Asia, Africa and South America. (I don't say this out of vitriol: even the best school curricula these days don't trace human movement before Europe's Age of Exploration, philosophy before the European Enlightenment, or literature before the Bible. This is changing, but it was the case for many years, and the result is an American public that can't tell the difference between Kikuyu and Kalenjin.)

The Disraeli example is a good one, especially considering that Victoria's reign was primetime colonialism and racism was in full churn. Disraeli didn't try to hide his religion, but then again, he couldn't have.

But the "Great Dialogue" on race was different in Disraeli's time. Just examine modern France: President Nicolas Sarkozy ran against a far-right candidate who wanted to expel all immigrants. (It is a testament to the other French politicians that they resigned power rather than risk this outcome, but why does that surprise us?) The nation recently passed a law against hijab in schools, not the act of a nation at peace with its religious diversity (Although Turkey has similar laws, Muslims aren't a minority there). And of course, France suffered riots as recently as 2005 (which politicians and pundits quickly blamed on young North African Muslims.)

Italy, faced with a renewed influx of Muslims from North Africa, has seen a disquieting rise in neo-Nazist cliques, particularly among its youth. But not just there: far-right factions now rule politics.

Meanwhile, everyone knows by now of the ethnic fighting between Darfur's Arab militias and its non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit farmers. And what about the crisis between Rwanda's Hutus and Tutsis, now raging between Congo's fragmented ethnicities?

What about the skin color-based prejudice that might even have helped the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi coast to her 2004 victory in India? (To be fair: Gandhi's Congress party set themselves up as the antithesis to the more right-wing BJP, and that's no doubt the big reason that Indians voted for her.) Nonetheless, just in 2007, author Anita Jain discovered that Indian corporations hire white women just to attend high-profile events.

These nations don't make up the whole world, and neither does the United States. But greater mixing has created greater confusion. The international conversation about race hasn't been static, nor has it followed a steady path towards greater tolerance. When people say "Only in America" what they might mean is, at a time when that conversation has gone downhill in many places, Obama's story is inspirational.

"Only in America" is also miles better than the motto we had before: "Never in America."

What's Love Got to Do With It: Marrying for Money In Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:08:00 +0000

Hannah Beech, in Time ASIA, writes that "Japan, under the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been notoriously slow in implementing policies like flexible hours for working mothers, enhanced day-care options and financial incentives for bearing more children."

At first I was wary of yet another article in which a Western author pointed fingers at the Eastern world. But Beech acknowledged early on that the problems Japanese women face are universal. And it's fair to mention that gender equality lags in the Japanese workplace.

Beech blames this gender equality gap for the country's very low birthrate, a problem that is expected to have adverse consequences on the Japanese economy as soon as 2010. Young Japanese women, expected by society to quit work once they have children, opt out of marriage and children altogether.

In an even more depressing article about how marriages occur in Japan, Kaoru Yamadera writes, "While women are looking for stability in their future husbands, men are seeking high incomes from their future wives."

Of course, Yamadera's observation is hardly news. Marriage has always been a romantic entanglement with an economic side (or an economic entanglement with a romantic side, depending on your point of view). In the years before housework was mechanized, a man owned his wife but he also owned the monetary value of her labor.

With the mechanization of housework but the rising costs of such technology, it makes sense that men and women will enter the workforce, and that they will marry partners with similar earning potential. (And by the way: working mothers are hardly news either. Among the poor and middle classes, women have always had to work to supplement family income, the whole world over. It's only recently that this system has become necessary even for the relatively elite.)

One of the factors that contributed to America's 1990s prosperity was, in large part, the immigration of educated men and women from countries like India, China and Japan. Like Yuka Tanimoto, the young Japanese woman in the article, many of these women felt that "business culture [in their native country] was not changing quickly enough for people like [them]."

Many of these immigrants succeeded in America because they relied on the dual income of two highly-educated parents to support a family.

I could cite the example of my own mother, who left a successful business career in India to immigrate to the United States with my father. People often ask immigrants why they would ever leave home. For her, the choice was simple: marry an American-based man and work, or marry an Indian-based one and quit. Almost all Indian in-laws of her time expected their daughters-in-law to quit work after marriage (or, more accurately: to quit working outside the home after marriage.) She came to the United States, has worked her entire life, and has been able to give her kids more options as a result.

The Asian gender gap (now narrowing in many places although not, apparently, Japan) has benefited the United States. I know many, many women who made the choice my mother did, and they have not only contributed millions to American GDP, they've also invented new products, new advertisements and life-saving drugs. They've paid for their children's Ivy League educations and international vacations and after-school classes. They've had to.

The dual-income family has also been part of the rise of the American middle class. When families moved away from the single-earner model, they found they could double or even triple their annual income overnight. Families in Japan, faced with a tough economic climate, will have to embrace this model or they'll miss out on the full potential of their economy.

Commander-in-Chief of Beliefs?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Barack Obama ended his election-night speech with "may God bless America," a softer take on George W Bush (and John Kerry's) "God Bless America." Obama's faith seems a more open kind, or at least more open to question.

Being non-Christian in America is no easy road. We are still a Christian nation, and the growth of racial minority populations has done little to change that. Those who refer to our nation's founding say it rests on "Judeo-Christian values," forgetting the debt that secular humanism owes to Hinduism's perennial philosophy. Those more inclusive-minded allude to "Abrahamic faiths," but again, for us Hindus, it's a miss.

Some progressives say that the absorption (the subversion?) of religion by politicians started with George W. Bush. A claim that, while it may feel good, is obviously false: George Washington began his First Inaugural Address with "fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe." Since it is most natural to invoke God's help when starting something new, it makes sense to examine inaugural addresses: the first speech from a President to his country.

John Adams, setting the blueprint for future Bush, saved God for the end of his 1797 inaugural, concluding with a plea to "that Being who is supreme over all." Jefferson asked for the blessing of the "Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe." Madison opted for "Almighty Being," Monroe addressed "fervent prayers to the Almighty," JQAdams quoted a Psalm and asked for "His favor," Andrew Jackson, vaguer yet, had faith in "the goodness of that Power."

The early presidents might have been satisfied with cursory references to God, references marked not by their specificity but by their universality. They spoke often of the "Almighty" but left it at that.

The pattern changed with Lincoln. Harried and distrusted by many, Lincoln came to the capital in desperate need of whatever authority he could muster. Fittingly, he was the grand-daddy of God references, calling on the divided Union to have "faith in Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land." President Garfield introduced the signoff familiar to Americans from the past eight years, concluding his address with an invocation of the "blessings of Almighty God." The next several Presidents tempered their signoff, appealing often to the "faith of our fathers," drawing upon Christianity more as a tradition than a religion.

The signoff changed again with JFK, LBJ and Nixon, all of whom referenced God in heaven as (sacreligious as it seems!) second to man on earth. JFK believed that "here on earth God's work must truly be our own," articulating the mantra of personal service that defined his famous speech. LBJ reiterated the idea that America had made its own destiny, saying "we have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit." Even Nixon had "confidence in the will of God and the promise of man." JFK, LBJ and Nixon were products of a progressive revolution in religious thinking. For the first time, the nation faced real religious diversity: a growing but strong Jewish minority, JFK's Catholicism - the common bond of Protestant Christianity was no longer common. It had been swallowed by faith in another near-religious ideal: American democracy.

And then, with Carter, it all changed again. Carter opened his speech by quoting from Micah, a quote popular with Presidents for its optimism. He didn't do a signoff. Reagan did the signoff, but it was a basic "God bless you" at the end, a religious reference that seemed (forgive me, Reagan fans!) somewhat perfunctory.

George HW Bush wa nothing like his predecessor. He started with a lengthy prayer to the Heavenly Father. Not for him the vagary of "that Power" or "God bless you." He not only recited a prayer, he asked the Nation to join him in it, something no other President had so forthrightly done.

Clinton and W fell into Reagan's mold, opting for "God bless you all, and God Bless America."

What is most interesting about the evolution of Presidential references to God is how little they have changed over time. They don't necessarily correlate to party, or even to a President's personal religiosity. If anything, the Founding Fathers' lack of detail when discussing God reflected more their dedication to a nation larger than one man. Their speeches focused on the promise of America, rather than the personality of its newly-elected leader.

And this, at heart, might be the complaint some had against Bush. His "God bless America" was no different from any other President's, and less than most. But it symbolized his greater Presidential philosophy, one in which abstinence-only sex education, restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research, and abortion bans were all permissible.

In a sense, the role of God in the Inaugural Address reflects the changing role of personal politics in the development of America. For our first President, building the nation was a task for men, one in which they might or might not receive the blessing of God. For our 43rd President, preserving America became a job for God first, and men second. (The problem, as some will point out, is that there are different ways to interpret the will of God. The Founding Fathers, of course, knew this - religious conflict was one of the problems that had compelled their ancestors to America in the first place, and one of the reasons they were so vague when calling down the blessings of the "Almighty" upon the country.)

It will be interesting to see how Obama interprets this tradition in his own inaugural address. Although I have never met him, it seems from all accounts that he is deeply committed to his faith, and just as much to the moral principles embodied there (and elsewhere).
Further Reading, for those who want to analyze the "religious signoff" in inaugural addresses:
Van Buren: Divine Being
Harrison: reveres the Christian religion
Tyler: no inaugural address
Polk: invokes the "aid of that Almighty Ruler of the Universe"
Taylor: "the goodness of Divine Providence"
Fillmore: no inaugural address
Pierce: "kind Providence which smiled upon our fathers"
Buchanan: "humbly invoke the God of our fathers"
Johnson: no inaugural address
Grant: directs "the prayers of the nation to Almighty God"
Hayes: looks for the "guidance of that Divine Hand"
Arthur: no inaugural address
Cleveland: "invoke His aid and His blessings"
B. Harrison:"God has placed upon our head a diadem"
McKinley: "invoking the guidance of Almighty God"
T. Roosevelt: "gratitude to the giver of Good"
Taft: "the aid of Almighty God"
Wilson: "God helping me"
Harding: plights his troth "to God and country"
Coolidge: hopes to "merit the favor of Almighty God"
Hoover: "guidance of Almighty Providence"
FDR: "we humbly ask the blessing of God"
Truman: "faith in the Almighty"
Eisenhower: begins with a prayer
Ford: no inaugural address
Clinton: "God bless you all"
W: "God bless you all, and God Bless America"

Whose Deficit Is It, Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:38:00 +0000

I know it's bad sportsmanship to shoot at a lame duck, however:

Paul Krugman has a lot of neat graphs up about FDR. FDR is to Democrats what Reagan is to Republicans. Krugman uses the phrase "expansionary fiscal policy" and says that the problem with our current system of government is that it encourages elected officials to cut taxes and services during boom years, and raise taxes and lower services in bust years.

What the public needs is just the opposite: higher taxes but lower services in good years, and lower taxes and more services during bad years. In order to make this happen, governments would have to plan ahead, and the sad but obvious truth is that planning ahead is not a strategy that the voters reward. A politician could raise taxes during a good year, but by the time people came up on bad years and thanked him for his wisdom, they'd already have voted him out of office for daring to raise their taxes during an expansion.

Anyway, Democrats have a reputation for being the "tax and spend" party, although I wonder how much of that is because they inherit bad economies from their predecessors. As has been pointed out before, Clinton gave W a prosperous nation. W is giving Obama a seatbelt and barf bag.

W's policies definitely qualify as fiscally expansionary (Anyone who still thinks W was a true conservative...wouldn't be reading this blog) but the question is this: by going the non-long-range-planning route, did W help create the current recession? Certainly, he has exacerbated it, because our government has few saved resources at a time when it needs them most. But did he actually precipitate it?

At what point in history and economics does expansionary fiscal policy become plain bad business?

A Study in Presidential Contradictions

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Barack Obama is famous for lifting whole chunks of his speeches from previous orators. He's especially fond of MLK Jr., FDR, Lincoln.

On the occasion of his Fourth Inaugural, FDR spoke to a nation about to triumph in World War II. The war may have turned in favor of the United States, but FDR himself was exhausted. His speech clocks in at 6:22, one of the shortest inaugural speeches ever. The campaign had been uneventful and the result never in doubt. Out of a total 524 electoral votes, Roosevelt won 432.

Roosevelt speaks with genuine-seeming conviction and honesty. He says, "Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet. But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of democracy."

And also: " We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that, 'The only way to have a friend is to be one.'"

These words would be more encouraging if they did not come from the same man who, just three years before, had signed Executive Order 9066, allowing that any US citizen who had at least one-eighth Japanese, German or Italian ancestry could be forcibly removed from their home to a detainment camp.

Indeed, the Constitution was not perfect. Neither was FDR. People will argue that Presidents do what is necessary, but even so, FDR's Order is a massive moral lapse, of a type that our current President (another "war president," and one not known for humanitarian policies) would find distasteful.

In his Grant Park acceptance speech, Obama referred to FDR, saying "When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, [we] saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose."

Like FDR, Obama knew that in giving this speech he was making history. He will make it again on his inauguration day, just like FDR did. To a degree, this is a president's privilege: whether they want it or no (although why wouldn't they?) American presidents are guaranteed a place in world history.

No one expects that a President will be perfect (actually, that's a lie: everyone expects it, but after the inevitable disappointment they pretend that they didn't). After eight years of disappointments, Barack Obama captured our hopes because he was one person in whom we had yet to be disappointed. But that day will come. Despite the high hopes aroused by his campaign, Obama isn't perfect. And I'm a bit afraid, at this point in time, after all the conflicted feelings I've had during this election, of finding out the details of his imperfections, of discovering (at the same time he does) the lapses of which he might be capable.

There's a saying "the bigger they come, the harder they'll fall." It might seem pessimistic, but because of the high hopes Obama has created around himself, he will at some point fall. People will realize that he can't correct atmospheric irregularities, solve the economic crisis, negotiate truces in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring our troops home safely, provide affordable medical care to everyone in the US, lower taxes for the middle class, reduce our national deficit, wean us off foreign oil, find Osama...the list goes on.

But because of who Obama is - our first black president, our first minority president, our first "international" president - part of me can't stand to see him fail. It's almost personal.

Reviewed: Possession

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:00:00 +0000

AS Byatt's Possession won England's prestigious Man Booker Prize in 1990. Which just goes to show that while Americans might have our fair share of baggage brought over from the Motherland, not every taste made the crossing.

Byatt's heroes are sleuths/academics, a hybrid familiar to the American reader ever since Dan Brown stumbled upon an idea in a Papal audience. Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey are self-consciously witty, subversively smart, oppressed by the sexual - in short, quintessential Victorian scholars, with the added and appropriate kink that they come from quaintly-named parts of the British Isles.

The story starts out slow. Roland, an impoverished postgrad, bogs down in his studies because of his long-term girlfriend. The fire has long since gone out, but Roland has neither the heart nor the balls to end it. Meanwhile, Maud Bailey is a feminist English professor whose best friends are all lesbians.

Roland and Maud (and doesn't that sound like the title for a children's series set in Surrey?) meet because they discover a clandestine romantic affair that occurred years ago between Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Ash and LaMotte were Victorian poets. Roland is an Ash scholar, Maud specializes in LaMotte.

In between tramping about the countryside, driving expensive cars and running away to Brittany, Roland and Maud swap sexual fantasies. Turns out they both hanker to sleep in a clean white bed. Entirely alone.

While the romantic subplot may lack in intensity ('slow burn' would be a hyperbolic description) the plot eventually delivers. Roland and Maud trace the Ash/LaMotte affair through a series of passionate letters, sad excerpts from Ash's wife's diary, and several suggestive poems. It all comes to a climactic end when R&M interrupt a grave robbery set during a hurricane, someone turns out to be someone else's lovechild, and everyone has a good 'tut-tut.'

Unlike some authors, who would leave the original texts to the reader's imagination, Byatt writes the Ash/LaMotte letters, several of Ash and LaMotte's poems and the diary entries. These primary sources make up entire chapters of her text, creating the Ash/LaMotte story even as Roland and Maud uncover it.

Obvious throughout is Byatt's respect - one might even call it reverence - for literature itself. If the Victorian drama of her final scene is lost on some readers, it certainly wasn't lost on Byatt herself. She deliberately calls her novel a "romance," a throwback to an era when people used drawing rooms, nations had colonies and a woman's most prized possession was her "virtue," which she inevitably "surrendered."

Read it if you like: the director's commentary version of movies, Jane Eyre
Skip it if you prefer: the Da Vinci Code

Sex, Lies and Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0000

The Washington Post recently ran "Study First to Link TV Sex to Real Teen Pregnancies," an article destined from the headline to incite controversies. Maybe because the editors knew that 90% of the Post audience would read this story, they overlooked the fact that it's not a very well-written article.

There are the standard journalistic no-nos: relying too heavily on a single source (in this case Anita Chandra, who gets top billing because she claims that sexy TV leads to teen pregnancy. The author also buries opposing viewpoints at the end of the study, and gives the middle of the article over to regurgitated arguments over the value of abstinence-only sex education.

The treatment of the subject also highlights the importance of having journalists write about subjects they are familiar with. Even a beginning sociology student would have realized that this study gave way too much credence to the theory that TV sex led to teen pregnancy. As my college economics professors constantly reminded us, correlation is not causation.

For starters, teens attracted to sex on TV might be more interested in sex to begin with (after all, isn't this akin to saying that people who watch the Food Channel are more likely to cook? Isn't that the standard spiel Food Channel sales folks give to advertisers?) For another, kids who watch a lot of TV probably don't spend as much time on school/homework/a job/etc, which means they also have more free time for sex.

These are just a few of the powerful arguments against the study's validity. The first (that teens who like sex will watch sexy TV) does come up in a quote at the very end of the article. But in my opinion, a responsible journalist would have put that argument first.

As written, this article is nothing but fodder for teen-sex alarmists, rather than the examination of a sociological phenomenon that it could be.

Who Knew, Electors?

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:24:00 +0000

A comment that not a lot of liberals are making right now: despite Obama's recent overwhelming (and in some ways, heartwarming) victory, the electoral college still makes no sense to me.

CNN called the national election for Obama before polls had even closed on the West Coast. This is partly because the conclusion was foregone (something that can't be said of 2000 and 2004) but still. On an ideological level, it bothers me that we can elect a President without consulting a large proportion of our nation's population. Something about it seems undemocratic.

Reviewed:Life of the Skies

noreply@blogger.com (Shades of Beige) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:19:00 +0000

I came to Life of the Skies through Paul Krugman. Krugman is an economist, and the book is about everything but economics; this may be why it appealed to him and why he recommended it on his blog.

Life is about birdwatching, but it's no standard roundup of the birds of North America. Too personal to be a guidebook, too grounded in nature to be merely a work of philosophy, Life is a true melange of ideas and genres, at the same time a highlights tour of Western philosophical thought and a birder's guide to American poetic history.

Despite his claims that birding requires no movement, that in fact birders can spend years examining the ever-changing landscape of their own neighborhood skies, author Jonathan Rosen covers a vast physical arena in his search for birds. He goes swamp-mucking in Louisiana's disappearing bayous and chasing myths in Israel's contested territories.

But his real distance feat is to cover as many subjects as he does. Rosen sticks to the big questions: how did man evolve? what do we owe our fellow animals? and the perennial favorite: what is man's place in the universe?

Rosen saves himself from triteness by being almost surprisingly honest (for a memorist, anyway). He admits that he has no idea what the answers to these questions are, but that other thinkers before him have taken a shot at it. He wonders whether birds are the missing link between God and evolution, and why poets like Robert Frost and Walt Whitman felt such a strong compulsion to write about the "life of the skies". What does nature mean, exactly, and why does it mean so much to us? Rosen's prose invites reflection, but doesn't dictate its direction.

Reading his book, I remembered that back when my parents were buying their current house, they chose it because of its large backyard. They wanted to be closer to nature. Years later, I read about how suburban sprawl has destroyed America's wilderness by boxing it off into residential plots. This relationship - so much the story of America's development - underlies Rosen's questioning. He suggests, delicately, that we have used and appropriated "nature" for our own ends. But he also appreciates that this usage is inevitable, that nature is an idea, and therefore a human construction.

At heart, Life is a great naturalist work, one that illuminates the paradox of observation. People have been looking at nature for centuries, but all we've seen is ourselves looking at nature.

Read it if you like: Thoreau

Skip it if you prefer: really, there's no reason to skip it