Accidental Blogger

Chasing the Paliban (Sujatha)

Sarah Palin made it to my corner of the woods, this Saturday afternoon. "Thousands" lined up to meet her, per the gushing report from the Washington PA Observer-Reporter

(Note, the website page had been read 297 times by the time I saw it. Are there thousands of people in Washington PA, or was the true number of gawkers and admirers just barely over 2000, which would have qualified for the use of the plural?)

"Thousands of people stood in a queue outside Sam’s Club at Trinity Point Saturday morning, many standing in line overnight, for a chance to see Sarah Palin and have her autograph a copy of her new book.

...

Sharon Jacobs of Greer, S.C., along with her sister, Amy Gerwing of Venetia, got into line about 8:30 p.m. Friday outside the store. For Gerwing, it was not only an opportunity to have her books signed but to thank Palin for the note she sent to the Peters Township woman when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Palin sent her a note offering words of encouragement from herself and her husband, Todd Palin. Gerwing said a friend of hers sent Palin an e-mail about her diagnosis. Palin sent the note a few weeks later.

Jacobs said while her sister is a big Palin supporter, she was ambivalent about the former Republican vice presidential nominee who may be pointing for her own run to the White House.

“I am trying to educate myself and learn more about her,” Jacobs said. 

-----------

Why didn't the folksy note translate into unquestioning adoration for Palin, I wonder. Maybe Palin's early departure leaving 400-odd unsigned books at Noblesville, Indiana yesterday had them wondering about the wisdom of relying on Palin.

Also, some camped there overnight in their enthusiasm - at least 40 people were in line at 8:30 pm on Friday, as they formed new friendships over mutual admiration of Palin. "He said Palin is likable because she is a down-to-earth conservative woman. "She hunts," he added."

For this area,  like many others, is Hunter's Paradise, the land of the brave, the free, the 'bitter who cling to their guns and religion'.

Bow Wow!

For some people nothing President Obama does can pass leadership muster. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, "If Barack Obama walks on water, some will criticize him for not knowing how to swim."  
 
Okay, okay, so Obama bowed  a bit too deeply before the emperor of Japan.  May be he wasn't coached properly by the White House protocol office. Or perhaps, he is just too polite. Whatever. At least he didn't hold hands and do a silly dance with the Saudi royals. And since when is Dick "shoot your friend in the face" Cheney the model of courteous behavior? 

 


 

The Recession As Racial Equalizer (Dean)

What's going on here? It's a bittersweet human interest tale with some facts and figures mixed in, not too cloying.

Blacks and whites have encountered one another in increasing numbers recently in the crowded waiting rooms of the welfare office and at the food pantry, where many of both races have ventured for the first time. Struggling black-owned businesses are attracting the attention of white patrons. Neighbors are commiserating across racial lines.

[...]

Across the country, there have been many reports about the recession’s racial divide, as blacks have lost their jobs and houses at far higher rates than whites. But Henry County, about a 30-minute drive south of downtown Atlanta, has a very different profile from the rest of the nation. In Henry, the median income of black families, $56,715 in 2008, approaches that of whites, $69,728 (nationally, the average income gap was $20,000). Blacks in Henry County, many of whom are retirees from the North or professionals who work in Atlanta, are more likely than whites to have a college degree.

That does not mean that Henry County is a perfect laboratory of equality. Blacks made up a disproportionately high number of those seeking government assistance both before and after the slowdown. Since 2006, the number of blacks on Medicaid has more than tripled, outpacing the increase among whites.

But it seems as if a point is being missed when a black man's preemptive apology—"I’m not racist, but it’s harder for black men."—goes unremarked, indeed, is used to convey a facile notion of equality, one for which racism is little more than a personal preference. I have a hard time swallowing the notion that the leveling phenomenon of Henry County is a silver lining of the economic cloud. If a bridge is spanning a racial divide, it's more likely due to a shared oppression than to a sudden recognition of common needs and ambitions. Wealth and power can be wholesomely color-blind when targeting subjects to exploit.

The Fort Hood Massacre

Two views on why it happened:

Charles Krauthammer's "call it like it is" excoriation of political correctness.

What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs. ...

....Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague's religion?

One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question -- condescending, politically correct and deadly -- is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center."

Ah yes, those Jersey men -- so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.

Frank Rich's more nuanced and actually, more scary analysis of the danger that lurks in places from Killeen to Kabul. (Read the whole article)

Oba Mao

The Chinese enthusiastically await President Obama. He is by far the most popular foreign leader in China.  To commemorate the visit artists have created the likeness of Obama in Chinese Red Guard uniform on t-shirts and other paraphernalia (not for sale) and a flaming Obama statue (because he is so hot).

 

Uneasy Alliances

Since Ronald Reagan first began flirting with the religious right, the ultra conservative base of the Republican Party has become steadily more empowered. Although for both Reagan and Bush Sr. lip service to the far right wing was political expediency, nearly three decades later, the one time fringe players have become the king makers of the GOP. Paul Krugman chronicles the transformation of the wing nuts from the role of the exploited to that of whip crackers.  Conservatism is no longer defined merely by its opposition to taxes and social services. Anyone seeking leadership in the Republican Party must also prove their Christian credentials. Rather unsurprisingly, the party's politicians are caught in a trap of their own making. As Pakistan is finding out, you cannot cynically pander to religious fundamentalism for political gain and hope not to play by its rules. Newt Gingrich is the latest GOP hot shot to realize that to succeed in his own party, he must bear the cross.

In another part of the world, where the west is fighting an ill defined war, it is hard to tell between friend and foe. Sometimes therefore, friends end up paying a steep price. (Link: my sister, Mandira)

The AMA questions US government policies towards gays

The American Medical Association (AMA) has just concluded its bi-annual policy conference in Houston during which the organization addressed public health policies including the cost and management of medical care in America. This year the AMA has come out in favor of health care and insurance reform. Also, it has weighed in on gay marriage and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the US military. The AMA favors the former and opposes the latter. According to the largest physicians' group in the US, denying marriage (or legal partnership) rights to gay Americans and requring them to conceal their sexual orientation while serving in the armed forces, jeopardize their health. 

Weighing in on two contentious gay-rights issues, the nation's largest group of doctors sent the message Tuesday that government policy is hazardous to homosexuals' health.

The policy-making arm of the American Medical Association, wrapping up its four-day biannual meeting in Houston, adopted one resolution saying that bans on same-sex marriage contribute to health care disparities, and another calling for a repeal of the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy because the AMA says it's detrimental to the health of gay and lesbian individuals in the service.

“The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force thanks the AMA for taking these positions today,” Rea Carey, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy organization, said in a statement. “The AMA is making it clear that these discriminatory policies pose significant, real-life threats to the health and well-being of thousands of people across the country.”

Jenny Tyree of the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family responded that the same-sex marriage resolution seemed based on information drawn from gay rights groups and reflected that “political agenda.” She said such disparities are a health insurance problem, not a marriage problem, and added that the insurance problem “should be fixed rather than mess with marriage.”

The AMA took no position on whether gay marriage should be legal.

(cartoon by Tom Toles)

Who Is a Jew in England? (Joe)

Potentially misleading subject adapted from the headline of this NYT article.  An Orthodox Jewish high school in London is refusing to admit a Jewish student who is not, by Orthodox standards, Jewish, because he is not Jewish.  Predictably, there's a court challenge.  By my definition, the kid is obviously Jewish: his father is Jewish, his mother converted to Judaism in a progressive synagogue, he was raised and identifies as Jewish.  By the orthodox church's definition, he isn't because his mother converted in a progressive synagogue.

I was surprised, when reading the article, to see that the appellate court ruled that the school's decision was was based on race, rather than religion, and therefore constitutes unlawful discrimination.  An appeal from that to the high court follows, so we'll see what winds up happening.  Without doing any actual research on the specific issue, I'm pretty sure that in the U.S. a court would or could not decide that question based on the first amendment's religion clauses, and I'm nearly certain that a court would refuse to do so based on the internal-affairs doctrine.  Under the internal-affairs doctrine, courts (at least federal courts) do not exercise jurisdiction over the internal affairs of religious organizations, and will not define religion or decide internal religious affairs if they can avoid it. 

You can see the problem: a court tells a Jewish organization or entity how it must define its Jewish membership.  First amendment principles, which I find normatively attractive, do not favor government dictating religious issues.  This is apparently a contentious issue within the Jewish community.  Government deciding religious matters threatens secularism and pluralism.  Yes, the school's decision is offensive, and yes, a court order can remedy this student's problem.  But at the same time, it can't settle the debate in the community, and is likely to only exacerbate tensions.  This demonstrates the limits of law in settling important cultural matters.

A further complication is that Britain has publicly financed religious schools that are allowed to give preference to applicants within their own faiths, which I assume would be unconstitutional in the U.S.  Once the government starts getting involved, where does/can it draw the involvement-uninvolvement line?  If it's not secular, I don't see how this can work.

Health Care Reform -the Cliffs Notes Edition (Sujatha)

The bill passed yesterday that Pres.Obama was ecstatic enough to personally email me about it at 1:03 am. And here I thought that only Hillary Clinton got 3 am calls.
Here is the  section by section summary link  of the HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care For America Act

All's  well and good,even with a restrictive clause on abortion funding in order to get the conservative Blue Dog Democrats to not derail the bill. But little things niggle.
Such as errors in the statement of intent to ensure that insurance companies will be required to pay out at least 85% of the plan money towards treatment of the enrollee.

"Sec. 102. Ensuring value and lower premiums. Amends the Public Health Service Act to require health
insurance issuers in the small and large group market to meet a medical loss ratio of not less than 85%, effective for plan years beginning January 1, 2010. Directs the Secretary to require that plans in the individual market also meet a medical loss ratio of not less than 85% so long as it does not destabilize the existing individual market. If plans exceed that limit, rebates to enrollees are required. In determining the methodology for the medical loss ratio, the Secretary is to design it to ensure adequate participation by issuers, competition in the market, and value for consumers."

A better summary  would have said "If plans do not meet the minimum medical loss ratio, rebates to enrollees are required." This is a section summary, so one would have to read the actual bill for the specific language, which I haven't.

But there is a whole box of goodies, most of which take effect on Jan 1, 2010. No more pre-existing condition based denials, no more rescission, no lifetime caps, immediate provision for a large group of high-risk uninsured till the proposed Health Insurance Exchange (aka Public Option, if I'm not mistaken) comes into existence, etc., etc.

In the spirit of not lettling the perfect be the enemy of the good, we have a bill, warts and all, passed in the House of Representatives. The next milestone will be the Senate Health Care bill and debate- the next blockbuster thriller.
Stay tuned for the epic battle 'Duel in the Sun', starring  Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, Evan Bayh et al.
(Teaser: Will Bayh block debate, even though he said he wouldn't? Will the GOP and Joe Liarman succeed in thwarting the efforts of Harry Reid  to get the bill out the door? Will it Snowe or won't it?)

Other Links:

Generate a side-by-side comparison of all the different flavors of Health Care Reform proposals.

Ezra Klein's summary of How the Big Bad Insurance Companies work.

Wendell Potter, ex-CIGNA executive's testimony to Congress regarding health insurance company practices.

A puzzle on gay marriage (prasad)

1. Roughly equal parts of the country want gay marriage, civil unions without marriage, and no legal recognition whatsoever. I'm assuming the second category is what 'swings' in marriage votes as in California or Maine.
2. Ad campaigns that cleverly use the words 'gay' and 'children' in the same sentence seem, at least for now, to be effective against marriage equality
3. The number of people who're fine with gay adoption and fertility treatments is rather larger than the number who want marriage.

Now point 2. suggests to me people who're willing to suffer consenting adults doing as they please, but who draw the line at imposing externalities upon children, perhaps until there is conclusive research. This has been seen in Europe; Belgium for instance made same sex marriage legal before gay adoption.

Point 3 instead suggests those who don't think teh ghey destroys childhoods or seduces and corrupts youth, but who want to feel superior to gay folk, people whose psychologies are well described by John Holbo:

What makes these arguments so weird is the mildness of the underlying opposition to homosexuals and homosexuality – the implicit inclination to be basically tolerant. ‘C’mon, gays, you know you’re ok, and we know you’re ok, and you even know that we know you’re ok, but we don’t like it, so can’t there be some way that we can insist on us being a little better than you? It can be a small thing. Symbolic, but slightly inconvenient for you, so people know it’s also serious?’

I'd like to know what the relative fraction of these sub-populations is! Going by the data-points given,it seems like at least ten percent of America is comfortable with gays adopting, but not with gays marrying. That would suggest 3. (not 2.), but I don't understand why *this* population would have unusual difficulty with gay marriage being "taught in public schools", whatever that means.

What is going on here? What are these people thinking? Might there be low-hanging fruit with outreach efforts aiming to bring marriage and adoption views into harmony? Obviously some people will decide to disapprove of both gay marriage and adoption, but it's plausible to me they'd be outnumbered by those who'd move the opposite way. Even if not, gay adoption isn't a particularly hot or touchy issue, so taking that hit for a boost on gay marriage might be worthwhile. In any case, the constitutional hurdles involved in restricting a sub-population from adopting or seeking reproductive treatments are rather higher...

[Actually, never mind. It might just be a significant Rove-effect, though the media hasn't emphasized one; did evangelicals turn out in disproportionate numbers in Maine? In any case, it seems like targeting the bizarro anti-marriage pro-adoption ten percent might be useful]

Proving allegiance in hostile times - saving the Lost Battalion

A poignant war story, more than six decades old, describes the desperation and anxiety of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Citizens of the US, they had to prove their loyalty to their country in those uncertain times of suspicion and hostility. Sometimes that involved acts of conspicuous courage and valor.

Even 65 years later, Astro Tortolano thinks almost daily of his struggle to survive in the Vosges Mountains of northern France in October 1944.

Surrounded by German soldiers after stumbling into a trap, Tortolano and about 280 men in the 1st Battalion of the Texas 141st Infantry Regiment of the 36th Infantry Division rationed food and bullets. They fended off Nazi assaults. They thought all hope of surviving was lost.

Six days into the crisis, different soldiers — members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team — broke through enemy lines and led Tortolano and the surviving 211 members of the 1st battalion to safety.

“I'll be forever thankful,” the now 88-year-old said. “I've never forgotten how they saved us.”

Tortolano and 39 members of the 442nd and 141st reunited at Houston's Hyatt Regency Hotel Sunday for a special dinner hosted by the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation to honor them.

The aging veterans, many in their late 80s and 90s, flew in from all over the country this weekend for a possible last meeting between the “Lost Battalion” and their saviors — men in the now legendary 442nd, made up of Asian-Americans, mostly of Japanese descent.

When they met each other, they embraced and swapped stories of old times. And on Sunday, together possibly one last time, they remembered all that they had been through in 1944.

The majority of soldiers in the 442nd were known as Nisei, sons of Japanese immigrants in the United States.

Even with relatives being forced into relocation camps around the U.S., roughly 4,000 men initially agreed to fill the 442nd's ranks in 1943. The 442nd was united by a common bond: At a time of deep discrimination against Japanese-Americans, its members wanted to prove that they were Americans through and through.

“We were proud to do this,” said George Sakato, 88, a California native who joined the military when he was 20. “We wanted to serve our country.”

Shipped overseas after a few weeks of training, the 442nd saw some of the war's fiercest fighting. Members were sent to North Africa and saw intense battles in Italy. There, they developed their fearsome reputation as a respected fighting force.

Before long they were ordered to France. Having absorbed other Nisei from a sister battalion, that is where the 442nd encountered the Lost Battalion.

• •••

The rest of the story here.

The real reason why Pakistan is fragile

Staying on the topic of Pakistan for one more day - this time I bring you a book review by Indian journalist Manoj Joshi. Written by Pakistani born author Farzana Shaikh, the book examines the underlying causes of Pakistan's political and existential turmoil. According to the author, turning its back on the country's multicultural south Asian past and a deliberate (and sometimes conflicted) attempt to redefine itself as a militant (and military) Arabized Muslim nation may have played a role in precipitating an identity crisis in Pakistan. Created more than sixty years ago by the partition of British India, during the Cold War of the last century, Pakistan was used by the United States as its client state in South Asia as a buffer against both the former Soviet Union's influence in the region as well as India's socialist leaning "non-aligned" international stance. Should Pakistan once more reclaim its softer south Asian roots to counter the artificially imposed Arabic influence? Does making peace (even an uneasy one) with India offer Pakistan an option to settle the upheaval at home? Who knows? In politics things don't always work out the way common sense dictates.

In this context I will share with A.B. readers something very odd that I heard nearly a decade ago. In September, 2000 my husband and I were on a vacation in the beautiful state of Goa on the western Indian coast. One morning I woke up at an unholy early hour due to jet lag. With nothing else to do and the hotel's dining room not yet open for breakfast, I sat listening to an early morning TV interview with an Indian engineer who was also an amateur astrologer. The man made various predictions about world affairs. Two of them have stuck in my memory.  He said that in the upcoming US elections the following November (remember this was the year 2000), Al Gore would be the winner but there might be some "problems" with the results. The other prediction he made was that in 2013, India and Pakistan will form a loose federation with a common currency and that most hostilities between the two countries will cease. I don't believe in either homeopathy or astrology but stranger things have happened. Now on to Manoj's review.

Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (New Delhi/London, Foundation/Hurst, 2009)

Review by Manoj Joshi (Mail Today - November 1, 2009)

The uncertain national identity and contested relationship to Islam lie behind Pakistan’s social and political upheavals, says Farzana Shaikh.

INDIA HAS had difficult relations with Pakistan since inception, but that is understandable given our history. But today there is a widespread sense of exasperation in relation to that country across the world, as well as a sense of alarm. Just what is this country of 160 million people, some of great talent and industry, all about ? Farzana Shaikh’s book title provides perhaps the most comprehensive and well argued answer.

Shaikh, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs ( Chatham House) in London concludes that the country’s uncertain national identity and contested relationship to Islam lie behind its social and political upheavals and its uncertainty as a nation. As she perceptively notes, the problem is not with Islam itself, but with “ the uncertainty about its influence over Pakistan’s identity as well as with the lack of consensus over the very terms of Islam.” She goes on to add, that it is the arguments and the fights over the “ multiple meanings of Islam” that result in the “ doubts about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of being Pakistani.” India, of course, looms large in the Pakistani consciousness. As Shaikh has noted, “ much of the uncertainty over Pakistan’s identity stems from the nagging question of whether its identity is fundamentally dependent on India.” Fear of Indian hegemony, political, economic and cultural, has kept Pakistan in a campaign mode against India. To maintain effective parity against its much larger neighbour, Pakistan has sought external alliances, spent an unconscionably great amount of money on defence, made nuclear weapons and finally unleashed a covert war with the help of Islamist jihadis. In fact Shaikh sees Islamabad’s Afghan policy as yet another attempt to shore up its fragile identity by seeking parity with India in the form of assuming the role of a regional hegemon.

In some ways the book takes off where her first book, Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India 1860- 1947 , ended. In answering the question "Why Pakistan?” she has argued that two rival discourses of Islam — the communitarian and the Islamist — have struggled “for ascendancy in defining Pakistan’s national identity.” The first was the discourse visible in the secularist politicians like Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Muslim middle- class of central India who played such a key role in the founding of the state. The second is the Islamist discourse “grounded in a religious and at times radical reading of Islam.” The tension between the two yield many ambiguities, but there are also uncertainties associated with the fact that Partition was the consequence of an endgame gone awry, for which the principal political actors of the time — Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and others are responsible.

The problems in defining Pakistan spills over naturally into the other question “Who is a Pakistani?” Shaikh points out, that the definition of ‘the Pakistani’ is still “deeply contested.” It is not just the microscopic Hindu and Sikh minority, the Ahmediya community or even the mohajir whose "Pakistaniness” is questioned, Shia Muslims who comprise anywhere up to 20 per cent of the country’s population are looked on with suspicion. Today, with the radicalisation of the Deobandis, even the Ahle Sunnat or Barelwis are feeling the heat. This of course, does not take into account the alienation of the Pashtuns, the Baloch, Sindhis and the residents of the Northern Areas of occupied Kashmir.

A Shifting of Battlefronts? (Sujatha)

Something rather strange was evident from the reports of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit last week to Pakistan. The articles suggest that her visit was not met with garlands and roses, but howls of protest and bitterness. What happened to the much-vaunted bonhomie of 'Amerika-Pakistan Bhai- Bhai"?

In a nutshell, reality struck and realpolitik happened. As President Obama mulls over the request for 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to fight what is increasingly turning out to be an unwinnable counter-insurgency and guerrilla war, recent press articles have been highlighting the strain that this has placed on the US-Pak relationship, with  barely any pious lip-service to the usual  'Indo-Pak rivalry' pablum.

Now is the time for plain-speaking. Mrs.Clinton was never one to mince words:

"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Pakistan squandered opportunities over the years to kill or capture leaders of the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
While U.S. officials have said they believe Osama bin Laden and senior lieutenants have been hiding in the rugged terrain along the border with Afghanistan, Clinton's unusually blunt comments went further as she suggested that Pakistan's government has done too little to act against al-Qaida's top echelon."
...
""With the country reeling from Wednesday's devastating bombing that killed at least 105 people in Peshawar, Clinton also engaged in an intense give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore. She insisted that inaction by the government would have ceded ground to terrorists.
"If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice," she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.
Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told reporters that Clinton planned to meet late Thursday with the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to get an update on the offensive that began Oct. 17 against Taliban forces in a portion of the tribal areas near the Afghan border."

The shrinkage of effective control of the Pak-Afghan border has been a problem dating back farther in time than any of the controlling interests in the area care to remember. Nobody rules those zones, no country can claim complete sovereign control over them, just the warring tribal factions that have made their homes there for the last few centuries.

The Pakistani military has been happy to play along with the tribes when it suits, or encourage the decimation of inconvenient leaders and 'collateral damages' indirectly through the numerous drone airstrikes run by the US. It increases the hatred of the US, in that approximately a third of those killed are civilians, per some reports. The Taliban and AlQaeda inflate the numbers of the innnocents, the better to encourage fresh recruits. A fairly detailed analysis of how Pakistan pulls the punches is available here on a post by Manoj Joshi (Ruchira's brother-in-law, and a journalist)

Further credence to just how deep the wound runs in those areas is evident in this interview with reporter David Rohde, who recently managed to escape after being held hostage by one of the tribal warlords of the Haqqani faction. 

So, it's no surprise that Clinton's attempts to charm the Pakistani women fell flat:

“Frankly, it was a waste of my time,” said one assistant professor from the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University (FJWU) in Rawalpindi, who asked not to be named. “[Clinton] wasn’t interested in hearing the about the layman’s problems or the reality of our daily lives.”

That caused many, such as Shazia Marri, the information minister of the Sindh province, to leave the meeting frustrated that their concerns were not heard.

“Emancipated women in Pakistan have a clear point of view that did not come across,” she said."
...
"Many women, including Zainab Azmat, a resident of the South Waziristan tribal agency, currently lecturing at Peshawar’s Institute of Management Sciences (IMS), complained that Clinton’s answers were too “reserved.” Ms. Azmat added that the intention of the meeting was unclear. “Why were we here? What did they want us to ask? What did they want to convey to us?” she asked."

Was it a waste of the women's time? Or a clear message to Pakistani powers-that-be that old equations no longer hold?

The Secretary of State of the United States didn't need to indulge in face time that could have been handled by lesser diplomats. This may very well have been her sole respite from realpolitik, a vestige of holding on to personal relationships built during her days as First Lady, a sort of pre-emptive mea-culpa for what is going to happen to the comfortable world of these women.

"You had one 9/11, we are facing 9/11's everyday", to paraphrase one of the indignant 'townhallers' who came to meet her.

The "war on terror' (pardon the usage of a now-obsolete term) is now expanding in fronts, moving like a not-so-stealthy cancer from the hills of Waziristan into the once-safer cities and urban areas of Pakistan. Who knows where it is headed next?

Putting the caste system on notice

The United Nations high commissioner on human rights has decided to target India's caste system.

Navi Pillay, the South African judge who became the United Nations high commissioner for human rights last year, is moving to the forefront of a campaign to free more than 250 million people from the indignities and horrors of caste discrimination. No previous commissioner has dared to openly take on this pernicious system, the majority of whose miserable victims live in India.

"This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years," Pillay says. "It's time to move on this issue."

For Pillay, who is of Indian descent, the subject of caste has been hidden too long by obfuscation on the part of governments, not only in India, that have successfully argued in UN conferences that existing international conventions against human rights abuses do not apply. Caste did not figure in the official conclusions of a conference on racism and other forms of intolerance in Durban in 2001, after intense lobbying by India, and remained on the periphery of a review of that conference earlier this year.

That being the case, Pillay said in an interview in her New York office on a visit from her headquarters in Geneva, there may well have to be a new international convention written to apply directly to caste.

The campaign is gathering momentum among a wide range of global nongovernmental organizations, religious groups and, lately, a few governments working from a draft document on eliminating discrimination based on work or descent--in other words, being born into predestined deprivation, assigned to the most menial of jobs and segregated socially from the better born.

Pillay would like to see this draft endorsed by the member nations of the Human Rights Council and by all governments, many of which are in denial over the harmful effects of the caste system.

She relayed a story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. They wanted to make the point that despite India's frequent assertions that "untouchables," who call themselves Dalits ("broken people"), were no longer condemned by birth to do this job, there were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the filthy, soul-destroying work continues.

"They have good laws in India, and they have media; they have well developed civil society organizations," Pillay said. "So how come there is no implementation of these good laws, these good intentions?" Discrimination by caste is unconstitutional in India, which also has affirmative action programs for Dalits and others at the bottom of society. Dalits have risen to high office through politics, though even democracy has not helped most of them.

The UN Human Rights Council has sometimes correctly and successfully campaigned against rights violations in many oppressive countries. But the world body's resolutions and proceedings are often riddled with politics of the day. Some nations which deserve to be humiliated are rightfully condemned while egregious misconduct by some others are swept under the rug by intense lobbying and the all powerful veto of interested parties. I am sure Pillay's move against India's racist culture as practiced against its own citizens of "lower" castes will face stiff opposition from the Indian government and its allies. It will be interesting to see the American government's position, now that India is its vital ally in the "war against Islamic terrorism."  

Some day there will be liberaltarians. But not today (D)

To someone who's broadly liberal, but doesn't think so ill of corporations as these people, and on the whole rather approves of free trade and globalization, this Reason article by Kerry Howley should feel like a friendly handshake from across the divide. She sounds libertarian, but in a nice, sensible sort of way:

I call myself a classical liberal in part because I believe that negative liberties, such as Min’s freedom from government interference, are the best means to acquire positive liberties, such as Min’s ability to pursue further education. I also value the kind of culture that economic freedom produces and within which it thrives: tolerance for human variation, aversion to authoritarianism, and what the libertarian economist F.A. Hayek called “a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.”

But I am disturbed by an inverse form of state worship I encounter among my fellow skeptics of government power. This is the belief that the only liberty worth caring about is liberty reclaimed from the state; that social pathologies such as patriarchy and nationalism are not the proper concerns of the individualist; that the fight for freedom stops where the reach of government ends. It was tradition, not merely government, that threatened to limit Min’s range of possible lives. To describe the expanded scope of her agency as merely “freedom from state interference” is to deny the extent of what capitalism has achieved in communist China.

As former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints leader Warren Jeffs can tell you, it’s possible to be an anti-government zealot with no interest whatsoever in individual liberty. If authoritarian fundamentalist compounds are your bag, the words personal agency will hold no magic for you, and Min’s situation will smack of social chaos. But libertarians for whom individualism is important cannot avoid discussions of culture, conformism, and social structure. Not every threat to liberty is backed by a government gun.

The response at the site, both from the first discussant, and especially in the comments section, is far from congenial. People like Jonathan Haidt have said that differences in moral intuition between liberals and libertarians are hard to detect in tests, that the divergence in views really traces back to substantive disagreements about the tendencies of different economic and political institutions. If the commentators at Reason magazine are representative of American libertarians though, that seems implausible to me. These aren't kinda-sorta liberals who're distinctively committed to the thought that freedom entails the freedom to be wrong, or who're atypically sensitive to state power grabs or bureaucratic inefficiency. Going by the views expressed, not to mention the level of vitriol, libertarian_Reason is closer to being a social and cultural conservative who in addition really, really hates the gummint, even when it does things he might like.

Howley does achieve a quite beautiful parody of her adversaries:

Potential Libertarian: What’s libertarianism?
Seavey: A philosophy of freedom and property rights.
Potential Libertarian: Oh, right. Freedom like civil rights?
Seavey: No, not that kind of freedom.
Potential Libertarian: Oh. Freedom like the freedom to be openly gay?
Seavey: No. That has nothing to do with liberty.
Potential Libertarian: Oh. Um…
Seavey: Let’s talk about easements!

Update: on the other hand, this discussion of Howley's post is not just thoughtful and civilized, it's carried out largely by people who do fit Haidt's profile. Perhaps I've just rediscovered for myself that comparable blogs can have comments sections of wildly differing quality.

U.S. Government Does Not Assassinate People (Joe)

That would be, rumor has it, illegal.  The government does, however, engage in this (see also here).  But, you know, a secret C.I.A. Predator drone program in which C.I.A. operatives in Virginia are remotely terminating people who rank highly on our "they're terrorists, kill 'em" list (or else on Pakistan's "people we want the U.S. to kill" list, but they're probably bad people, too) is definitely totally probably maybe not at all the same thing as an illegal political assassination.  Did I mention that this is all classified as covert and not subject to public scrutiny?  And that under the Obama administration the use of drone warfare has increased dramatically?

Fun times we live in, eh?

EDIT: I have no opinion on the wisdom or legality of this program.  But I would invite others to comment.

EDIT II: I also have no opinion as to the existence of this alleged program.  People are also invited to comment on that.

A Diplomatic Diary: Maddening Nigerians, Dishonest Nicaraguans, Lewd Thais, Unimpressive Canadians ...

And bloviating bureaucrats! Recently disclosed letters from UK diplomats to their home office in London reveal the contempt and exasperation they harbored for their foreign hosts. To their credit, the supercilious officials sniffed equally impatiently at cocktail parties and the "stuffiness" of their own ministry.

LONDON - It's not exactly diplomatic - details of what British ambassadors really think about their foreign hosts were disclosed Sunday following the release of a series of frank, and sometimes outright rude, letters to London from embassies around the world.

Canadians are deeply unimpressive, Nigerians are maddening, Nicaraguans often dishonest and the Thais commonly lewd, British diplomats claim in notes sent to Britain's Foreign Office over the past five decades.

The letters were disclosed to the BBC under Freedom of Information laws.

Lord Moran, high commissioner in Ottawa between 1981 and 1984, claimed Canadians had limited talents.

"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do - in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever - tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once," Moran wrote in his letter, according to files released to the BBC.

The letters also reveal how diplomats were bored by endless rounds of cocktail parties, and exasperated by the British government's failure to shake off its stuffy image overseas.

Until 2006, ambassadors retiring from their post or moving country traditionally sent a valedictory dispatch to London, offering their candid personal assessment of the country in which they had served.

In a 1967 memo, Roger Pinsent, Britain's outgoing ambassador to Nicaragua, was scathing in his criticism.

"There is, I fear, no question that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans," Pinsent wrote.

Two years later, David Hunt - then high commissioner to Nigeria - said the West African country's leaders had "a maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interests."

"Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," Hunt claimed in his letter.

Anthony Rumbold, Britain's ambassador to Thailand from 1965 to 1967, mocked his hosts for an apparent lack of culture. "They have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music; their sculpture, ceramics and dancing are borrowed from others, and their architecture is monotonous and interior decoration hideous," Rumbold wrote.

"Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all," he said.

Other diplomats used their letters to criticize British bureaucracy, and the sometimes dull world of international relations.

The rest of the diplomatic report card here.  I guess bureaucrats are  the same everywhere - always pompous and mostly contemptuous of what they are in charge of overseeing.  The Brits I suspect, are especially jaded.  Although Nicaragua, Nigeria (and other African countries) and Thailand bear the brunt of bitter and hostile criticism, I find the condescending assessment of Canada as a nation satisfied with utter mediocrity, a withering low blow.  Wonder if it will prompt Ottawa to opt out of the Commonwealth.

The Nobel President

President Barack Obama is this year's surprise winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a surprise for me too when I woke up this morning and saw the news. It is unusual for world leaders to win this honor so early in their career without much of a political or social legacy to their credit.

OSLO — The Nobel Committee announced in Oslo that it has awarded the annual peace prize to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

The award cited in particular Mr. Obama’s effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said.

The announcement shocked people from Norway to the White House. “There has been no discussion, nothing at all,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, in a brief telephone interview.

Mr. Emanuel said that he had not yet spoken directly to the president. A senior administration official said in an e-mail message that his press secretary, Robert Gibbs Mr. Gibbs called the White House shortly before 6 a.m. and woke the president with the news.

The president was humbled to be selected by the committee,” the official said, without adding anything further.

The White House has made no official comment.

Well, the news must be particularly heartening for the president. What with things getting rather messy in Afghanistan, on health care and in Copenhagen, he must have been feeling beleaguered lately. Even Saturday Night Live has turned on him.

So, congratulations to President Obama for becoming a Nobelist. Hope this energizes him to go out and fight for the promises he made during the campaign. Otherwise, I feel like Glenn Greenwald is feeling - a bit skeptical.  

Desperately seeking happiness

I don't want to come across as cynical or grumpy. In fact, I am for the most part a happy person and have nothing against other happy people. After all, most human enterprises, be it work, pleasure or leisure, are geared toward increasing the happiness quotient in our life's ledger book. Civilizing efforts through the ages - family, community, religion, philosophy, scientific and technological advances, medicine and government were organized and operated around the notion that we should employ these entities to identify what is "good" for us and what make us happy.

In recent years, the concept of happiness has spilled over from the confines of philosophy, literature, religion and the psychologist's office - from the merely personal to a collective concept. I first wrote about the broader definition of happiness when I introduced here a very interesting book by Anthony and Charles Kenny a few years ago. Government agencies too are now concerning themselves with happiness, going beyond economic indicators such as the GDP or the magic of the free market. Cut and dried number crunching is giving way to assessing the more nebulous Well Being Indices.  Leading the way in diagnosing national cheer was the tiny country of Bhutan. I wrote about it here and the New York Times had a four page article on Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness.  

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It is not surprising that Bhutan, a Buddhist country, is astute enough to appreciate that happiness  goes beyond personal material wealth. Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking the help of three Nobel winning economists to educate his own country on what constitutes a healthy and happy society.

So far so good. But what about the quest for individual happiness? Americans have for long relentlessly pursued personal fulfillment (gratification?) as defined by religious leaders, inspirational speakers, media personalities, financial institutions and peddlers of products and services. Do happiness seeking individuals add up to a happier society overall?  Not necessarily, says an article in Newsweek. Paradoxically, the obsessive pursuit of personal happiness may in the end, prove to be an obstacle to the very state of over all bliss people seek, say some observers of social trends. The anxiety to be happy (Oprah style) may in fact make us somewhat self obsessed and detract from collective contentment. The article makes some good points but I am afraid that in comparing Americans to Europeans or other "happy" people, there may be some risk of conflating complacency with good spirits.  I am copying Julie Baird's article in its entirety below the fold because Newsweek items have a tendency to "disappear" after a while. The most cogent point about happiness appears at the very end. It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable woman, who obsessed very little about her own happiness and made improving the happiness index of others her life's mission. She is said to have observed that happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct."

A Democrat who speaks his mind, for a change

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson is my kind of Democrat. He knows how to turn the tables on the Republican death squad in the health care debate.  See here and here.

Update: Nick Anderson illustrates Grayson's point.

Not seeing the oak for the acorn

Right wingers have always been very good at vilifying any organization whose politics don't match theirs, especially if those groups are advocates of the poor, minorities, women, immigrants or homosexuals. At one time or the other, groups like the NEA, ACLU, Planned Parenthood and even government welfare programs like Medicaid and Food Stamps have been objects of anger and derision. A favorite (and effective) tactic is to pick a grain of truth, an isolated incident, a statistically insignificant trend and occasionally, fabricated myths about these services and publicize them as true and widespread practices. Soon enough, with enough people repeating the highly exaggerated accounts of missteps and mismanagement, the organizations become tarred and feathered as un-American, wasteful, wanton and even immoral. The newest target of right wing ire is the community organization, ACORN, some of whose inept officials have been caught saying outrageous things on tape while being led on by conservative actors posing as pimps, prostitutes and other miscreants. (see this WSJ report dripping with gotcha sarcasm but not a word about entrapment) So, is ACORN really a group devoted to shady housing transactions, tax evasion, prostitution, voter fraud and even murder?  Are its employees quasi criminals masquerading as social workers out to defraud the system? Not quite so. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post explains the background of Acorn.

The embattled community organizing group is much in the news these days, thanks to the idiocies of a handful of now-suspended staffers having been filmed and YouTubed by a right-wing sting squad. Most of the stories present ACORN as, at best, a shady organization up to no good in America's inner cities, not to mention the nation's primary source of voting fraud.

What's been obscured amid all the polemics, or the polemics passing as news reports, is what ACORN is and does. Founded in Little Rock in 1970 as an organization agitating for free school lunches, Vietnam veterans' rights and more hospital emergency rooms, ACORN has grown in the past four decades into the nation's largest community organizing group. Based in low-income neighborhoods, it has nearly 500,000 dues-paying members, recruited by door-to-door canvassers, with chapters in 110 cities in 40 states. Nationwide, it has more than 1,000 staffers.

What are the projects on which all these staffers and members work? Raising the minimum wage, for one. ACORN conceived and led the successful initiative campaign to raise the wage in Florida in 2004 and in four more states in 2006. In the past four years, it successfully pressured seven legislatures in other states to raise their minimum wage as well.

Another major campaign has been to limit the interest and fees that banks charge homeowners. In the 1990s, ACORN spearheaded a number of legal actions, often joined by states' attorneys general, that compelled such lenders as Citigroup to change many of their practices. The group has led successful drives to outlaw the most egregious predatory lending in nine states. It also counsels thousands of inner-city homeowners and home buyers. (More here)

Now, I have no problem with incompetent and corrupt officials belonging to organizations that are beneficiaries of public money, being fired. If a crime is committed they should also be prosecuted whether they serve liberal or conservative causes. ACORN is currently being investigated and the federal grants it receives are under review. Well and good. However, another organization that has been implicated in murder, prostitution, financial irregularities and even torture, is operating with impunity. But it happens to be a Christian, conservative operation. The private security firm of Blackwater (aka XE) which the Bush administration engaged for supplying mercenaries for the Iraq war has never faced any criticism of its unsavory business practices from right wing commentators or elected officials. What is even more ironic is that the Obama administration continues to utilize Blackwater's services while squirming to distance itself from ACORN!

In April 2002, the CIA paid Blackwater more than $5 million to deploy a small team of men inside Afghanistan during the early stages of US operations in the country. A month later, Erik Prince, the company's owner and a former Navy SEAL, flew to Afghanistan as part of the original twenty-man Blackwater contingent. Blackwater worked for the CIA at its station in Kabul as well as in Shkin, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they operated out of a mud fortress known as the Alamo. It was the beginning of a long relationship between Blackwater, Prince and the CIA.

Now the New York Times is reportingthat in 2004 the CIA hired Blackwater "as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda." According to the Times, "it is unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance."

The Timesreports that "the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune." A retired intelligence officer "intimately familiar with the assassination program" told the Washington Post, "Outsourcing gave the agency more protection in case something went wrong." The Postreported that Blackwater "was given operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders and was awarded millions of dollars for training and weaponry, but the program was canceled before any missions were conducted."

Jeremy Scahill's report in the Nation here and a video of Scahill in conversation with Bill Maher here.

"The US war" is now the other one (D)

More US troops have died this year in Afghanistan than in Iraq, the first year starting 2003 that's been true. Obviously that fact reflects both that the US Iraq toll has been coming down since 2007 (for reasons of surge or Anbar Awakening or whatever) and that Afghanistan seems to get more horrible each year. I suspect each of those things is going to give a certain Mr. McCain renewed clout in the coming weeks/months as these calls for increased troop deployment in Afghanistan play out. Even last year Obama and the Democrats basically conceded the rhetorical battle over the surge to the Republicans, to the point that I think McCain managed to hold Obama to a virtual tie at least on the Iraq war.

Nuclear Fail and blow up (D)

One of the top scientists handling India's 1998 nuclear tests has acknowledged that the tests weren't quite the unqualified successes they were officially hailed as. Specifically, it seems the thermonuclear (fusion) test was a dud. People outside India have said such things before, as have Indians off the public record, but it is potentially quite significant / uncomfortable that an important Indian scientist has publicly done the same:

His view was that India should not sign the CTBT and that it needed to conduct more thermonuclear tests.

“There is no country in the world,” he emphasised, “which managed to get its thermonuclear weapon right in just one test.” He said that he had also pointed to the fact that western seismic experts had doubted India’s claim that the three simultaneous tests on May 11 had a combined explosives yield of 60 kt.

The Santhanam revelation could have major reverberations in the country’s security policy. The Indo-US nuclear deal, for instance, rests upon the assumption that India will not test again.

It is also likely to make it difficult for the Manmohan Singh government to sign the CTBT, an issue that has gained considerable salience in the Obama administration’s non-proliferation policy.

[...]

Karnad, a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, felt that the Indian need to test again “is less a matter of opinion than of fact.” In his view, Santhanam’s “extremely courageous stand” had struck a fatal blow at the foundation of the Indo-US nuclear deal “predicated on India’s never testing again and at any accommodationist policies the Manmohan Singh regime may be considering vis-a-vis the CTBT and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty”.

Cicero Is Dead (Joe)

To steal a phrase from some blogger named Joe: "this, this is sad news."

RIP, Senator.  You will be missed.

(Cicero?  Was I supposed to say something Camelot-themed?  In my defense, despite some serious background in the Arthurian tradition, it's not immediately apparent to me where Ted fits in.  Also, Rome is kind of great.)

UPDATE: just FYI, there are some very interesting comments on this post from Anna, Dean, and Ruchira.  Check them out if you're interested in politics, Kennedy, or how we discuss/view dead people.

"ObamaCare" and Conservatives (Joe)

A few quick thoughts:

1.  Calling it "ObamaCare" is demeaning and stupid.  There's no possible universe in which that's even decently descriptive, if accuracy is any (not even the) goal.  (This is similar to my objection to referring to George Tiller as an "abortion doctor.")  I'm not sure if this is a smart political description: it may lead to negative impressions of the new health care world order, but it also may lead to negative reactions to the speaker (of the term "ObamaCare") who is not taking things seriously.

2.  Calvin Massey (who I previously called out for making himself look like an idiot--and not the Ezra Klein type--with his comments on the Skip Gates affair) comments here.  Most interesting to me is his insistence that a (federal) government mandate to citizens to purchase health insurance is a nontrivial, nonjustifiable intrusion on human liberty.  Oh no, you have to purchase a minimal level of health insurance!  Seriously?  What does that say about the conservative mind?  (And from a law professor who, due to his financial position, would never consider not having health insurance anyhow!)  If made in good faith -- and there are good reasons to think this assertion is not made in good faith, for instance the underlying federalism concern of the post, which would have to accept a state-initiated mandate (which reminds me, again, that libertarianism and federalism are inconsistent, although no conservative will ever admit this) -- then the conservative mind is a neurotic, disturbed, even insane place.  If not made in good faith, then of course it coincides nicely with the theme/claim running through this blog for the past four (?) years that conservatives act/argue in bad faith.

3.  Law geek types are discussing the constitutionality of major health care reform.

• Calvin Massey: it (the health insurance mandate on its own) is, or at least should be, unconstitutional.
• David Rivkin and Lee Casey: it is unconstitutional under current law, "even under the most aggressive commerce clause cases."  [Ed.: this is pretty clearly wrong as a doctrinal matter; it's an all-around ridiculous op-ed -- see also Orin Kerr: "Given Rivkin & Casey's views of the Constitution as seen in their past op-eds, I assume they think the only way health care reform would be constitutional is if the President ordered it under his Commander in Chief power."]
• Jack Balkin: of course it's constitutional; the battle over the New Deal has already been fought and decided in the courts.
• Jonathan Adler (a conservative at the Volokh Conspiracy): it's plainly okay under Supreme Court case law.
• Sandy Levinson: from a political science perspective, the courts just won't fight this; there definitely won't be five votes. [Ed.: ding ding ding! we have a winner!]