Accidental Blogger

Are votes actually for sale? (prasad)

Here's a question for the 6th of November, now that we've all been through two years of electioneering, but before the actual results influence (corrupt?) intuitions: did Citizen's United actually change anything big? There are many ways of getting at that question, and the answer probably depends on what you value, but my instinctive response is to say no, it didn't matter much, at least in terms of partisan outcomes:

1. If the metric is election outcomes, then I claim the impact has been negligible. Both Romney and Obama raised and spent more money, but it was basically a standoff. They both have demonstrated the ability to raise the ~billion dollars of money needed to wage a campaign.

2. I suspect campaign spending is hitting diminishing returns already in terms of ability to influence outcomes. The recent swings I remember from this election (Clinton's speech, Romney's 47% video, the first debate, Sandy and Christie) all had nothing to do with money. Basically, we've moved to a new equilibrium with ~twice as much spending, but the issues influencing elections *differentially* in favor of one candidate continue to be one or more of:

- pretty low-information: random goof-ups, media controversies and similar tripe

- largely stochastic: economy crash, bin Laden death, Libya, hurricane

- cultural and strongly emotion/values driven, pretty resistant to *monetary* influence: rape/contraception, religion, gays.

3. If you worry about the wastage of a billion odd dollars of money, then sure, this is an issue. I would argue that it doesn't underwrite the amount of panicked/outraged commentary that decision generated. To set a scale, we're *comfortably* in sub-chewing gum territory.

I'm being rather too blunt here; if I spent ten more minutes on this post I'd be able to write down a para on ways that the spending rise (and more importantly, the composition of this rise) has mattered. But it's useful to make zeroth order statements at the outset, and it sure seems like Citizen's United and campaign finance have mattered rather less than people were forecasting back in 2010.

Support the savage (prasad)

There's an ad you can see in New York subway stations, that says "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." The NY subway authority initially refused to allow the ad, placed by Pamela Geller, saying it was demeaning, but a court ruled that the FIrst Amendment didn't allow them to apply that consideration. The (Muslim, liberal, feminist) columnist Mona Eltahawy didn't like the ad much, and got arrested while spray painting it. I haven't much to say about the speech issues here, or about whether Eltahawy should have been arrested. What I want to get at rather is the nature of her opposition to this ad. As far as I can tell, her objection is that it deems Arabs uncivilized, and uses a word like "savage." 

But here's the selfsame Eltahawy, from just three months ago:

So: Yes, women all over the world have problems; yes, the United States has yet to elect a female president; and yes, women continue to be objectified in many "Western" countries (I live in one of them). That's where the conversation usually ends when you try to discuss why Arab societies hate women.

But let's put aside what the United States does or doesn't do to women. Name me an Arab country, and I'll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in Egypt -- including my mother and all but one of her six sisters -- have had their genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating "virginity tests" merely for speaking out, it's no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband "with good intentions" no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political correctness. And what, pray tell, are "good intentions"? They are legally deemed to include any beating that is "not severe" or "directed at the face." What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it's not better than you think. It's much, much worse. Even after these "revolutions," all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian's blessing -- or divorce either.[emphasis added]

 

Civilization metrics aren't unique; there are going to be radical incommensurabilities between my rankings and those produced by someone with a conception of the Good that's at root sharply divergent from mine. I cannot persuade the Salafi Imam that a life of sexual license and debauchery is better than one spent covered in drapes. Plus even people who broadly agree will disagree about the proper situational weighting of different goods. Still, any metric I could endorse for ranking the Israelis and the Arabs today by 'civilization' would almost certainly have to rank one of these rather higher than the other. In fact, Eltahawy endorses explicit rankings herself:

Not a single Arab country ranks in the top 100 in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, putting the region as a whole solidly at the planet's rock bottom. Poor or rich, we all hate our women. Neighbors Saudi Arabia and Yemen, for instance, might be eons apart when it comes to GDP, but only four places separate them on the index, with the kingdom at 131 and Yemen coming in at 135 out of 135 countries. Morocco, often touted for its "progressive" family law (a 2005 report by Western "experts" called it "an example for Muslim countries aiming to integrate into modern society"), ranks 129; according to Morocco's Ministry of Justice, 41,098 girls under age 18 were married there in 2010.

Any metric that'd appeal to an NY subway-goer viewing that ad would have to take some things very seriously indeed: things like religious freedom, the equality of men and women, impersonal but revisable standards for the treatment of people under law, the production and consumption of literature, science, music, art, cinema and mathematics; political freedom and the ability of man to exert some control over his political dispensation, robust and transparent institutions, and the treatment of minorities or outsiders. That last of course covers quite directly the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. But it's going to be very hard for Eltahawy to pretend the Israelis aren't more civilized than the people they oppress. She has issued her rankings already; she doesn't get to walk them back out of a simple dislike of Geller's rhetorical purpose in deploying them. Them's the civilizational rankings, and - to quote her - "the hell with political correctness." [Please take such obvious qualifiers as today/currently/contingently/non-essentially for given.]

 

But this situation is extremely common! The history of cultural encounters between the civilized and the "savage" where the former are more powerful, IS very substantially the story of civilized people killing, enslaving, robbing and oppressing their less civilized fellows. Any American who's studied his history should know this viscerally. The important thing is to realize that there are two different valuable commodities here: ethics and culture. As important aspect of the first, we have how decently/fairly/kindly a people treat - and believe they ought to treat - those around them. This is not the only part of ethics - we must consider how they treat each other as Eltahawy v1.0 sees, and the values they espouse for all - but it's an important part. As proxy for the second, we may consider roughly their pedagogical/inspirational value: the books they write, their ideas and music and philosophy and whether they stared at the stars and proved theorems or traveled far and wide to discover wondrous new things and people. These are both important things, and they're not the same thing.

A word like 'civilization' conflates them both, and several things besides. Civilized people believe their intellectual and cultural accomplishments are worthier than those of others (less civilized people often agree with that assessment). They also believe (like all others) that their ethical values are superior. What civilization does is to introduce an extra element of hypocrisy to the mix: V.S. Naipaul gets at something important, about civilization and the lie, in A Bend in the River:

Those of us who had been in that part of Africa before the Europeans had never lied about ourselves. Not because we were more moral. We didn't lie because we never assessed ourselves and didn't think there was anything for us to lie about; we were people who simply did what we did. But the Europeans could do one thing and say something quite different; and they could act in this way because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilization. It was their great advantage over us. The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everyone else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves. Being an intelligent and energetic people, and at the peak of their powers, they could express both sides of their civilization; and they got both the slaves and the statues.

Civilized people realpolitik fully as coldly as anyone else. The Israeli strategy of placing many of their people in settler pockets is a transparently wicked land-grab. But civilized people don't like thinking such things about about themselves, and try to reorganize the intellectual landscape to suit them. So even though vastly more Palestinians are killed by Israelis each year than vice versa, the violent side is the Palestinians with their Hamas and terrorism. And this frame works because the Israelis are civilized and the Palestinians are not.

Surveying the history of European and American involvement in the Middle East, it would take a pretty brazen sort of person to insist that Middle Easterners aren't vastly more sinned against than sinning. Iran/Saudi Arabia/Yemen/Syria/Libya/Afghanistan haven't been overthrowing democratically elected US governments and bankrolling dictators, or carving out parcels of other peoples' land to compensate their own victims, or deeming the US too irresponsible to keep nukes while having and using their own, or maintaining hundred-to-one kill ratios. But those are the places that are dangerous festering grounds of instability. Because occasionally there is blow back, itself re-framed as hatred of "freedoms", which yes, Al Qaeda despises, but no, not enough to crash planes into buildings for. If Rage Boy were more civilized, he wouldn't be agitating over Muhammad cartoons. One of the more heartless ironies of being uncivilized is you don't even aim your rhetoric right.

Support the savage. Do so proudly; his treatment is shameful. But don't think he'd generate a society you'd like to live in. That's decades away, or more.

Why I Am More Conflicted Than Anna - About The Cartoons

(Note: I am bringing this six year old post to the front in view of the recent events that are unfolding in Egypt, Libya and now Yemen.)

Anna posted her sensible thoughts on the brouhaha over the Danish cartoons which have inflamed passions in the Muslim world.  The result has been protests in several Islamic countries, some of them violent. Danish embassies have been attacked, burnt and Danes and Norwegians (and the EU) have been threatened with kidnappings and other bodily harm. I categorically condemn all violent protests. Muslims are justified in expressing disgust and outrage at these silly cartoons but they are not justified in burning buildings and threatening violence.  Having said that, there is an issue here that has not been adequately addressed in this context.  PZ Myers of the immensely popular science blog "Pharyngula", an unswerving proponent of free speech and unapologetic opponent of religious fundamentalism of all stripes, had two very good posts on this matter. He asked a subtler question than most have asked.  He wondered whether the outrage on both sides (Muslim and non-Muslim, especially in Europe) had only to do with free speech and Muslim overreaction. Or did it to a fair extent, also result from racism and socio economic deprivation of Muslims in Europe and the generally impoverished condition of Muslims in Islamic nations . The comments on both posts ran fast and furious and I would guess that opinions were equally divided on this issue. There was some commentary that I interpreted as  self serving explanations of European sensiblities, openness and secular democratic values clashing with the backward mentality of European Muslims. I posted a comment there regarding this matter - my own take on why European racism is indeed a player in this latest conflagration. My comment addressed primarily the opinions of a Danish reader who in my view, was somewhat disingenuous in his insistence that the Danish society is bending over backwards to accomodate the Muslims among them while also protecting freedom of speech and secular values and that racism had nothing to do with the latest uproar. I am publishing my comments for the readers here. I was a bit angrier in my tone than is my usual style in public.

Ruchira Paul said:

"Freedom of expression is paramount in democratic societies, including the right to criticize, vilify and mock religion - all religions. No contest there. Having said that, so is the wisdom to not waste this freedom in making trivial and predictable points. What did the Danish cartoons accomplish in establishing? That medieval religious fundamentalism permeates Muslim societies much more deeply than any other religious group? That Muslims consider themselves under siege almost to the level of paranoia and are likely to resort to violence for real or perceived threat/insults to their faith? That most Islamic nations curtail freedom of speech in their own countries and want to do the same in others, in the name of religion? Ho hum. Which one of these came as a surprise to anyone? To all the freedom of speech purists here, PZ Myers and Nullifidian have it right this time. Their nuanced take on the issue is not a zero sum game - it is neither anti-free speech nor pro religion. To prove an intellectual point, when the adversary is operating on a purely emotional level, is not only unwise, it is a waste of energy. Islamic fundamentalism (like all others) has to be resisted, attenuated and eventually eliminated. But it will not happen by engaging in juvenile displays of provocation through theological football as Jyllands-Posten was attempting to do. The resistance will have to take place in the realm of universal human rights, rationality and common decency. "My democracy can beat up your prophet" is hardly a strategy that is likely to work. Mr. Lund, don't waste your breath.

While we are discussing fundamentalism, let us not ignore the context of racism which PZ Myers alludes to. It is perhaps worthwhile for most Americans to recognize the prevalent zeitgeist in Europe. Mr. Lund's erudite sophistry notwithstanding, Europeans as a whole, are much more racist and xenophobic than the average American. I say this as a brown skinned person (not Muslim, not uneducated) who has lived in both continents. European secularism and pacifism are results of exhaustion from four hundred years of oppressive colonialism (the Bible in one hand and a riding crop or gun in the other) and two great wars which nearly annihilated the continent. All the calls for assimilation - "you are here - you must be like us" is BS. The non-Europeans are marginalized, ghettoized and the implicit message to them is "stay in your place." In spite of all overt racism in the US, an immigrant can hope to realize professional and social ambitions in the US - not in Europe. Mr. Lund would argue that the Scandinavian countries were not involved in either colonization or warfare. True. But the mindset of these homogeneous countries is not very different when faced with people who are "different". In fact, George Bush's disastrous action in Iraq and the middle east, is at some level, more honest than what the Europeans are up to vis-a-vis their immigrants. Kill a hundred thousand Iraqis to impose your values? Why not? How is that worse than treating minorities within your borders like s--t with the vestigial hauteur of ex-colonists? A much more honest course of action will be to deport all those whom you are not going to assimilate anyway -ever, and go back to the idyllic existence of Hans Christian Andersen, milk, cheese, football and Lego. Why the pretense? Only to feel holier than thou - especially, holier than those unsophisticated cowboy Americans? Mr. Lund's casual crack about dating one of the last ten Parsis notwithstanding, his "secular" countrymen are much less likely to date a Parsi, a Hindu, a Buddhist and god forbid a Muslim than the average "religious" American. 'Nuff said."

 

Mr. Lund characterized my comment as a "rant" but did not address the issue of European racism.

Update: Here is more proof that Mr. Lund (and some other defenders of secular European even handedness) are deluding themselves. See this article in  Guardian UK  - via Leiter Reports. Delicious irony of the "unholy" kind.

Excerpt:

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

But the Jyllands-Posten editor in question, Mr Kaiser, said that the case was "ridiculous to bring forward now. It has nothing to do with the Muhammad cartoons.

"In the Muhammad drawings case, we asked the illustrators to do it. I did not ask for these cartoons. That's the difference," he said.

"The illustrator thought his cartoons were funny. I did not think so. It would offend some readers, not much but some."

Lilly M. Ledbetter's DNC Speech - Elections 2012 (John Ballard)

By John Ballard

For those who don't know me, I'm a newbie here at Ruchira's generous invitation. More about that later when I have time, but at the moment I want to post a timely video from last night's DNC Convention. I don't have the durability I once had to watch days of speechifying, but I'm good for two or three hours when they're like those last night. I was specifically iterested in two other than that of Michelle Obama: Julian Castro, mayor of San Antonio, one of the party's rising young stars, and Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, who has had his differences with the party in the past.

Everyone speaking last night was obviously trying to hurry along and the effect struck me as somewhat off-putting becuase live crowds simply don't hurry when they are really fired up. In this day of sound-bites and broadcast journalism, three-, five-, sometimes ten-minute ovations and demonstrations on the convention floor that were once part of the fabric of the national conventions, are as obsolete as rotary phones. But thanks to state-of-the-art jumbo video and sound systems everything that happens on stage has become bigger than life.

So as a Southerner I was especially impressed with Lilly Ledbetter herself. Great movies have been made with actors playing the parts of real people such as Julia Child or Erin Brokovitch. But last night the real Lillie Ledbetter took the stage and delivered one of the best speeches of the evening. 

Labor Day Links

Once again, I can do no better than post links to a few interesting stories I came across.

A terrible political "documentary" by a delusional desi.

Can a doctor do this? Apparently yes, according to the AMA's guidelines.  

Not exactly a Marathon Man.

This was bound to happen sooner or later - it is after all, an independent art form! (the winner below)

 

 

Rape as contraception!

The media have been all atwitter with the news of congressman Todd Akin's (R-MO) radio interview where he claimed that a woman cannot get pregnant as a result of a "legitimate rape."

"If abortion could be considered in case of, say, a tubal pregnancy [which threatens the mother’s life], what about in the case of rape?" asked KTVI host Charles Jaco, in a clip that was disseminated by Talking Points Memo. "Should it be legal or not?"

"It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare,” Akin said, referring to conception following a rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child."

I haven't heard the expression before.  Most of us know what constitutes rape and so does the law and it is never legitimate. So what was Akin thinking? I have a suspicion that for many men, rape occurs only if the victim is first beaten to a bloody pulp before she submits to non-consensual sex. If she is not  brutalized during the process, rape could not have taken place. Why, the woman may have actually enjoyed the encounter or just changed her mind about consent after the fact. 

Congressman Akin is among many others on the right who oppose abortion under most circumstances, including rape and incest. Some of them suspect that women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies will cry rape if that constitutes legal grounds for abortion. So in order to leave rape out of the abortion debate it would be convenient if it can be proved "scientifically" that a woman cannot get pregnant as a result of rape. (Incidentally, Akin is a member of the House science commitee. That should give us pause)

The Republican Party (even its Tea Party wing) is sufficiently embarrassed by Akin's "gaffe" to demand that he pull out of his senate race against Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).  I wonder why the GOP is acting with such alacrity. After all, it is not the first time that a right wing politician has opposed the exemption for rape when legislating abortion laws or made flippant and ignorant remarks about it. It is widely believed that the Republicans fear that Akin's opinions if aired in the media for long will also shed light on Romney's running mate Paul Ryan's views on rape and abortion. Ryan has worked closely with Akin in the House to co-sponsor an anti-abortion bill. Only in that bill, the expression was "forced rape." Well, I guess we can now legitimatley ask Ryan what the definition of "voluntary rape" is.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a business / person ...

Didn't Mitt Romney know that if he ran for the highest office of the nation, his personal taxes were going to be of some interest to voters and the media? Of course he did. But for some reason Romney has decided that it may do less harm to his candidacy if he were to brazen it out by not disclosing but a minuscule portion of his past tax returns than allow Americans to get a glimpse of his finances. His secretiveness has naturally given rise to much speculation as it deviates from the norm set by most past presidential candidates, including Romney's own father, of disclosing several years worth of tax documents. One thought is that the Romneys, despite their enormous wealth, may have paid very low taxes over the years compared to the average wage earner with far less income. It has also been suggested that there may have been some years when Romney paid no taxes.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada dropped a bombshell recently by declaring publicly that he has learnt from a reliable source that indeed Romney paid zero taxes for ten years during a period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Romney challenged Reid to reveal his source ("put up or shut up") and some Republican congressmen have called the Democratic Senate Majority Leader a liar. But as of yesterday, Reid was sticking by his assertions, adding that his source is a Republican with inside knowledge of Bain Capital, Romney's company. Now there is speculation about the identity of Reid's "source." The Daily Kos is reporting that it may be one of the two Huntsmans - father & son, both Jon, both ex-governors of Utah and Junior a past rival of Romney for the GOP presidential ticket. (If true, this may turn out to be a high power Mormon conspiracy / grudge fest. Reid, the Huntsmans and Romney are all Mormons. The Huntsmans are said to be friendly with Democrat Reid but can't stand Romney, their own party's candidate)

Whatever we find out (or don't) about Romney's tax returns between now and November, may be up to how much pressure the media and the Obama campaign can bring to bear on the Romney camp and the latter's ability to withstand it. But for now, it doesn't look like Romney has made a coherent or convincing case as to why he should not make more of his tax returns public. Here is a report in the Washington Post.

The man who once said “corporations are people” apparently doesn’t believe the inverse.

When pressed on why he’s not releasing more tax returns in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mitt Romney justified it by saying: “I’m not a business.”

Bloomberg asked Romney whether, if he was investing in a company, he would want to see more than two years of financial reports, likening that process to the American people electing a president. But Romney suggested the standards aren’t the same for people and businesses.

“I’m not a business,” he said. “We have a process in this country, which was established by law, which provides for the transparency which candidates are required to meet. I have met with that requirement with full financial ­disclosure of all my investments, but in addition have provided and will provide a full two years of tax returns.”

This is the candidate who, almost exactly one year ago, got into a somewhat-heated exchange with a heckler in Iowa in which Romney made that case that “corporations are people” — that is, what happens to corporations affects the people who work for them.

“Of course they are,” Romney said at the time. “Everything corporations earn
also goes to people.”

So according to Romney, a person is not a business but a business is a person for tax purposes. Ah well. I guess that can be defined as opportunistic logic. I have been wondering about something else. During this time when hot words are being exchanged between Reid, Romney and some GOP politicians, one prominent Republican who may know more about this matter than anyone outside Bain Capital's accounting office, has maintained total silence. John McCain had vetted Romney as a possible running mate in 2008 at which time he examined twenty three years worth of Romney's tax returns. McCain has not said a word against Reid or in favor of Romney. 

Patriotism, offshoring and ethics (prasad)

Matthew Yglesias at Slate makes the case that Romney should simply shrug and say offshoring is a Good Thing, instead of making silly claims about "retroactive retirement." He says basically that it is good for jobs to be located where it's most efficient, that in terms of wealth creation this is positive sum, that the problems it causes in the US are distributional, and that the preferred way of handling these is via taxation, welfare and job training. It's a good article (I'm not convinced it's good politics, another reason to support this :) ), in the 'lets infuriate the NAFTA-bashing portions of the electorate' genre. I do agree with most of what's said, but what provokes this post is the following:

A couple of hundred of years of catastrophic misgovernment and imperialist exploitation left billions of Asians languishing in dire poverty. When Asian governance started improving, Asian workers’ productive capacity and earnings potential skyrocketed. This has been a triumph for human welfare but a disaster for Americans whose skills have been radically devalued in the process.

The reason I like this is that captures a certain zero-sum logic, and I want to write about the ethics of that situation. Far too many on the American left act as if globalization and trade hurt everyone instead of just first-world workers as workers, and it is important (if rhetorically inconvenient) to mark the distinction. As I see it, anti-outsourcing rhetoric from the left is basically anti-humanitarian for reasons of patriotism. Patriotism here might well be acceptable - no doubt most Americans want their president to benefit fellow Americans, not the globe at large. What's not right is not even acknowledging, or thinking about the tradeoffs. Some examples of the unexamined patriotic view follow:

1. The patriotic argument against globalization is unthinkingly extended to a sort of amorphous first-world solidarity. I've had plenty of well-meaning American friends speak with casual dismay of Canadian or French or UK jobs going to China or India or Vietnam. Few have managed to explain (to their own satisfaction, forget mine) why jobs going from rich French people to poor Vietnamese should make Americans sad instead of happy, or why this isn't a huge increase in global utility. Mind you, none of these people actually believe whites/Christians/Westerners count more, it's just they've never really made themselves consider, you know, the rest of the globe in their thoughts about globalization. Most people I've made this argument to have managed to see the point that Americans should rejoice in Canadian or Australian jobs going to raise third world standards , reducing global inequality, even if they as Americans, they have a patriotic reason not to want American jobs to do the same. I am not quite sure if that argument works, but they've typically never even thought about it before.   

2. Especially with the increased outsourcing of white-collar jobs (where it's hard to say believably that your customer service guy with a thick accent is being exploited) some of the rottenness that's always been at the heart of the anti-sweatshop movement is made clear: to a substantially under-acknowledged extent, anti-sweatshop is about labor protectionism, not humanitarian concern for the world's poor. Globalization and sweatshops have been basically good for China, not bad. And don't pretend to me that American labor unions are motivated principally about giving the Chinese good jobs, and not to 'keep American jobs American.' The recent media interest in Apple and Foxconn (never mind that the suicide rate at Foxconn is actually lower than even that for the US) similarly was carried out, for the most part, without mentioning that the Chinese benefit from their iJobs, and that "bringing the jobs back home" would help Americans workers and hurt the Chinese. Which is fine, if that's what you want, but remains a pretty sketchy thing to sell as humanitarian benevolence.  

3. Even if it's defensible for a private American citizen (or company) to care more about Americans, it's not obviously ethically obligatory. It seems morally permissible to lack the patriotic jobs preference. To give an intuition jogger, few, even those who're very patriotic, would say Bill Gates is being wicked to spend his foundation money fighting malaria in Africa instead of trying to improve American high school education. The idea that firms moving jobs offshore are being immoral is actually rather harder to justify than the claim that they are merely not immoral not to. Indeed, leftist ideologies tend to value in-group preference less, which is to my mind as unambiguous a reason for preferring them as any.

Again, I don't really think trade-with-redistribution (or even trade-without-redistribution, it's just worse that what might be) is zero-sum. But it's useful to think about what kinds of moral arguments follow, at least if you're uncomfortable with explicitly parochial perspectives. Hell, considering the existence of absolute poverty, or even just the decreasing marginal utility of money, trade could be substantially negative sum and still be a net moral positive for humanity.

The un-American president

The right wing recklessly charges its opponents of harboring socialist / communist sympathies whenever there is a disagreement on taxes, spending or war. Democrats in congress as also Democratic presidents and presidential candidates since FDR have been targets of such scurrilous attacks. President Obama is no exception. But in his case, the additional suspicion of un-Americanness is repeatedly voiced. It may be meant as a dog whistle aimed at the conservative base but most of us understand that "un-American" here is but a thinly veiled reminder of Obama's skin color. Here is John Sununu, the mostly forgotten White House chief of the first President Bush taking Obama to task for not understanding American capitalism and values. In doing so, he brought up Obama's childhood in Hawaii, smoking pot as a young man and beginning his career in Chicago as sure indicators of alien roots. (Really? Hawaii, Chicago and pot smoking?) He forgot to mention Columbia, Harvard and a pair of white midwestern grandparents who played a major stabilizing role in Obama's upbringing. How soon we forget the brickbats thrown at us when we are hurling them at someone else. Sununu himself was born in a foreign country (Cuba, for heaven's sake!) to foreign born parents (both) and was suspected of having anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian sympathies by some American supporters of Israel.

Then there is the ever despicable Michele Bachmann whose McCarthyist tendencies have  been on shameless display for a long time. She sees enemies of America under every table, behind every bush and among her ideological opponents, especially if there is a whiff of "foreignness" about them, be it their skin color or non-Christian religious background. In her latest outburst she accused Huma Abedin, a long time aide of Hillary Clinton of being a possible Muslim Brotherhood plant in the Obama administration. She was appropriately upbraided by Senator John McCain for her ignorant mean hearted campaign. I suspect Bachmann's disgraceful slander against Abedin is a back handed way of suggesting that since Obama is a secret Muslim, he has appointed a Muslim mole in his administration to undermine America's security. Never mind that Abedin became Hillary Clinton's trusted aide as a very young woman, before she was anywhere near Obama. Interestingly, Bachmann's own foreign connections recently came to light. She never considered disclosing the fact while she shrilly paraded as the All American patriot. But the omission is understandable; Switzerland after all, is not Pakistan.

My Father: A Veteran's Story - The Battle of Graignes, Normandy, France, June 6-13, 1944

 

My Father: A Veteran's Story - The Battle of Graignes, Normandie June 6-13, 1944

My father, Frank P. Costa, Sr., died on August 26, 2010 at his nursing home in Catskill, NY. He was 93 years old. He was a combat veteran of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. 

Dad was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was in the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. His first combat jump was on the night of June 5-6, 1944 into Normandy France - the allied invasion of Europe. He was positioned as the first soldier to exit the plane when the green light jump signal was given. On his training jumps he would always get faint and queasy. He couldn't wait to get out of the plane and into the fresh air. So the jump sergeant sat this eager jumper next to the door of the C-47. Thedesignated landing zone was the area around Ste. Maire Egliese. The triple A flak was so heavy, the pilot made a right turn to avoid the danger and gave the jump signal at a purely arbitrary moment. Many of the pilots in the following planes, with other 507th paratroopers, followed the lead pilot's right turn. As a result, they landed more than 30 km from the drop zone.

Dad landed in a flooded field, up to his shoulders in water around 1 AM. He cut himself out of the risers of his parachute with his trench knife, but he lost his M1-A carbine. At about 5 AM, with the arrival of dawn, he was able to spot high dry ground and made his way out of the water. He regrouped with his regiment, part of it anyway, in the tiny hamlet of Graignes, maybe 15 km from Carentan. The village church with a tall bell tower was the most recognizable feature and occupied the highest elevation in a generally flat terrain. One-hundred seventy-six (176) assembled, including a few from the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. There was one Army Air Force fighter pilot. None of the surviving vets remembers where the fighter pilot came from nor what happened to him afterwards.

The 507th was a headquarters outfit. That meant they had mortars, 50 caliber 'light' machine guns, and lots of explosives. They also had a lot of communications equipment, but they were too far away to contact the main units of the Division. They had some great officers with them - a Colonel 'Pipp' Reed, a Captain, and number of Lieutenants. One was my father's Lieutenant, Frank Naughton. The first thing they did was ascertain where they were with the help of the locals. They were so far off the drop zone that it was off their combat map. After much deliberation and argument, the Colonel Reed decided to stay and set up a defense perimeter, rather than try to get back to the friendly lines through unfamiliar terrain and mostly flooded fields.

Veterans Affairs Nurses [Strikeout Nurses] Management Scrutinized After Patient Deaths (Norman Costa)

Nurse - Anonymous

Veterans Affairs Nurses Management Scrutinized After Patient Deaths in Two States (Norman Costa)

A re-editing of an article by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

ProPublica, April 30, 2012, 1:19 p.m. 

After a patient died last year at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan, federal inspectors discovered nurses in his unit [Management] had a startling gap in their skills [supervision and training of nursing staff]: They [Management] didn't understand [they were responsible for the competence and training of nursing staff as to] how the monitors tracking vital signs worked. 

Management - Gen. Eric Shinseki

None of the nurses [management] interviewed could accurately explain [their lapse in supervision and training of nursing staff, so that nurses could tell] what would happen if a patient became disconnected from a cardiac monitor — which allegedly occurred to the patient who died, according to an October 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' inspector general. 

The incident followed two deaths in the cardiac monitoring unit at a VA hospital in Denver that raised similar questions about nurse [Management] competency. 

Earlier this month, a broader review by the VA inspector general of 29 VA facilities found only half had adequately documented that their nurses had the needed skills. Some nurses "did not demonstrate competency in one or more required skills," but there was no evidence of [Management taking charge and providing the] retraining [for nursing staff], the report said. 

An outside nursing [management] expert who reviewed the reports at ProPublica's request called them "troubling" and said the fact that the [management] lapses weren't caught and corrected "signified much broader [management] problems." 

He Snapped! He Snapped? (Norman Costa)

He Snapped! He Snapped? (Norman Costa)

I have no words to address the actions of Sergeant Bales who did the shooting of civilians in Afghanistan, nor the horrors experienced by the dead and wounded, nor the bereavement of the families. I do have words, however, for the officers who have direct authority and control over the enlisted men and the non-commissioned officers in their charge.

Officers Are Always In Charge

Officers are responsible for the training and direct supervision of their soldiers. In turn, their superiors have the same responsibility, but of greater moment. They are supposed to set the example, the tone, and the limits of behavior for all their people.

An officer is supposed to know his or her men and, with the NCOs, watch them, direct them, lead them, and discipline them. It is the duty of the officers to curtail and restrain the violent impulses of their soldiers when the shooting and killing is over in combat.

A good officer will know when a soldier is beyond his discipline and contol, and then remove him from a situation where the soldier will harm himself or others. Senior officers can be oblivious to signs of emotional and personality dysfunction in their units.

In almost all tragedies, like the murders in Afghanistan, an after-event analysis shows there were signs the size of billboards that indicated something horrible and devastating was waiting to happen. In the case of the My Lai massacre, the officers themselves were in a state of decomposition, and there was no one looking out for their wellbeing and ability to lead.

A combat officer has only two priorities, in the following order: 1. accomplish the mission, and 2. take care of his soldiers. If the officer didn't see it coming, then the officer has to pay as well - right up the line. A failure of this magnatude is rarely without warning signs announcing the coming.

How the Mind Works: The Dunning-Kruger Effect (Norman Costa)

How the Mind Works: The Dunning-Kruger Effect (Norman Costa)

A Facebook friend, Jose Del Solar, posted the folowing article on the Dunning-Kruger effect: Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is fascinating, and I've written about it before. In short, people with little knowledge are unable to appreciate their intellectual deficit. Instead they view themselves as very knowledgeable. They overstate their own intellectual competence. On the other hand, people who are very knowledgeable, see themselves as far less accomplished.

Most people will pass through a low knowledge episode or short period of the D-K effect in the course of being educated, growing, and learning. In fact, we may do it multiple times, usually before we get out of high school.

I remember one of my own experiences in 10th grade biology. We had many classes on human blood and the circulatory system. A friend and I agreed that we learned a great deal of the subject matter, compared to our total ignorance at the start of 2nd year biology. We could not imagine that there was more to learn, because it seemed, to us, as comprehensive as we could imagine.

It may sound cliche, but as we learn more and more we appreciate how little we know about the larger subject matter areas. D-K folks never get that far. The D-K effect is evident in just about any subject matter area you can imagine.

What I have found so bothersome, and troubling, is the number of people in positions of power (corporate, military, politics, varied institutions) who cannot imagine that there own knowledge of the world is deficient. The two most obvious examples that come to mind are George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin.

Even when they are brought up to speed on an area where they were deficient, they still cannot see that there could be more to come. To you and I, this is obvious, and we can't get our minds around the fact that they are completely oblivious. Palin was never embarrassed by the fact that she thought Africa was a country, not a continent. However, she was pissed that others made her feel inferior because she was not in the know.

One of the post-hoc giveaways of the D-K effect is that the person who leaves a position of great power is unable to manifest a sense of humility at confronting and dealing with the things that demanded great intellectual effort and new learning. They don't express a sense of awe and respect for what others who preceded them had to deal with, nor any sympathy or compassion for the next person who will occupy the seat of power they just vacated. Again, Bush and Palin are two great examples.

There is another phenomenon that I've observed, and it may be a variation on the D-K effect, except that you find it in otherwise knowledgeable and smart people. This happens when confronted with a problem to be solved, or an area of new knowledge that is important to the present situation. They come to an solution, or an understanding, very quickly and then they hold onto that idea or position with enormous tenacity. One exceptional example was Alexander Haig. He was the former Supreme Commander of NATO forces, Whitehouse aide to President Nixon, and former Secretary of State. I've known a number of these people in executive positions in IBM Corp. This is not a matter of blind adherence to ideology. It's a very different animal.

It is always interesting to try to divine the thought process of political figures. Since this is a Presidential election year, it's a more salient matter. Rick Santorum, in my opinion, formed every significant thought he ever had by the time he was 21. Intellectual life, since that time, has been a process of seeing anything new as a variation on what he already knows. There is a prearranged slot on the shelf for anything that comes along, and no need to create any new slots or reconfigure the old ones.

Mitt Romney, in my opinion, is very much aware of his intellectual limitations and the availability of other view points on just about any issue. Newt Gingrich is harder to read. I am not sure if he displays a thought process that discounts new learning, and overvalues what he knows, or if he is just being confrontational, insulting, and controversial as a strategy, or as a character defect.

I have this mental image of showing the article I referenced, above, to someone who lacks knowledge yet believes they know just about all there is to know. After reading the article they look up at me and ask, "Yeah, so what's your point?"

Robert Glaser, American Psychologist, 1921 - 2012 (Norman Costa)

Robert Glaser, American Psychologist, 1921 - 2012 (Norman Costa)

The New York Times printed an obituary for the renowned American psychologist, Robert Glaser. You can read it HERE.

Bob Glaser's major contributions to American psychology were in the fields of learning (educational psychology) and psychological testing. My doctoral degree is in educational psychology. It was impossible to write a paper on the subject of school learning and not have a reference or two to research by Glaser.

So, I went back to my graduate school bible on educational psychology to note the references to Glaser's research. The text was, "Educational Psychology, A Cognitive View," by David P. Ausubel, 1968. Here are some highlights of Glaser's research:

1. For meaningful verbal learning, as opposed to rote learning, the reinforcing value of Skinnerian feedback is discounted. Learners who respond covertly, or read the correct answer, are just as likely to learn and retain as those who produce an overt response that is reinforced.

2. One result of this is a more efficient learning experience. Learners do not need reinforcement at each and every step in the learning of meaningful verbal materials. Having a student construct a response, rather than reading it, shows no difference in outcome, except that response construction takes longer.

3. Breaking down learning tasks into small steps reduces learning errors, but increases total time to learn. In general, programmed learning is equal to, or slightly better than, more conventional methods of teaching.

4. When teaching the meaning of scientific terms, "...repetition has only a transitory effect upon retention...." "Spaced reviews produce significant facilitation in retention of the reviewed material."

5. Glaser made the distinction between norm referenced testing and criterion referenced testing. Norm referenced testing places the score of the individual relative to the average and standard deviation of a larger group (for example, all 8th graders in Houston, Texas public schools.) Criterion referenced testing compares a person's score to an agreed 'absolute' standard of performance. You find this in vocational testing for doctors, airline pilots, life guards, handlers of very hazardous materials, etc.

Bob Glaser came out of a corps of military psychologists who served during World War II. His research on programmed instruction came out of military research on training.

The technology and theories of psychological testing were developed for the selection of servicemen and servicewomen, and Army Airforce pilots, bombardiers, and navigators (the US Navy as well.)

Experience and knowledge gained in the war effort were transfered to universities after the war.

Bob Glaser was among many psychologists who cautioned the public and educators about the limitations of testing. "In a report that called test results “fallible and partial indicators of academic achievement,” the panel [headed by Glaser] warned educators to avoid letting them become “the major goals of schooling.”"

In my personal view, Bush's "No child left behind" legislation is a monument to the failure to heed that warning. It is also a monument to the politicization of testing, education, and the war on teachers.

Glaser was only 4 years younger than my father, Frank Costa (1917 - 2010.) My father grew up in Manhattan on the East Side. Glaser grew up in the Bronx, where my family moved in the early 1950s.

Glaser had to leave New York University, a private institution, when his father suffered a business reversal. However, he enrolled at The City University of New York, a public institution, which provided tuition free education for all who were accepted. CUNY was able to provide free college education to the children of New Yorkers, even in the depths of the Great Depression. It was a high yield investment in the students, our city, state, and the country. When the population of the City University of New York became more black, yellow, and brown, it was discovered that the City and State of New York could not afford free college education for its citizens.

I am sorry the NY Times chose to cite Diane Ravitch's 2010 book in support of Bob Glaser's views, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” Ravitch was an intellectual goon in the Bush Department of Education who did as much as she could possibly do to discredit the views of people like Glaser, beat the crap out of teachers, and organize the transfer of many millions of tax payer dollars to politically connected testing corporations.

After leaving her post she had a conversion experience on her Road to Damascus, confessed her sinful life of murder and assassination, and embraced the teachings of the righteous educators who knew what they were doing all along. They could have found a more deserving person to contribute to Bob Glaser's eulogy.

The caste system in India - no one is immune...

Not even Islam or for that matter, any other major Indian religions which "officially" do not subscribe to social stratification by virtue of one's birth. Therefore it is not unusual to hear of "Brahmin" Christians, "Kshatriya "Sikhs and "Rajput" Muslims of high birth.The effects of the Hindu caste system go beyond the grotesque practices of exploitation and brutality for which it is notorious. Most social interactions from matrimony to business dealings are largely dictated by caste considerations. Indian politics are rife with loyalties and rivalries based on caste and religion. There are layers upon layers of cultural/ social / religious dimensions to regional and national politics in India, and the candidates for public office rely heavily upon identity politics. Communities in India irrespective of wealth and status, quietly practice their own individual forms of the caste system in private as well as public life, frequently giving shape to the political leadership. These differences are particularly sharp during communal unrest. In more placid times, people tend to think more of their own economic interests and the voting pattern of a particular religious group or caste cannot be taken for granted.  It is not uncommon for unethical politicians to instigate riots and disturbances close to elections in order to divide communities and then pander to one side or the other. Right now elections are being held in several north Indian states with sizable Muslim populations. Politicians are predictably watching the "Muslim vote bloc." But some are warning that to count the vastly diverse and complex Indian Muslim communities as a monolitic entity may prove to be a miscalculation. Shahid Siddiqui, a Muslim member of the Indian Parliament from UP explains why.

The myth of the Muslim vote bank, though denied by sociologists and debunked by psephologists, refuses to die. It reasserts itself with new vigour at every election. Even those well aware of the diversity within the community cannot resist building their arguments on this spurious claim.

The vote bank theory has been convenient for labelling Muslims and shoving them into handy brackets. It was done in India to explain the political behaviour of Muslims across regional, linguistic, caste, class and social barriers. Today it is done globally to gloss over inconvenient and inconsistent behaviour: it is a one-size fits all formula that cuts across regions and rides over locational differences and circumstances. Whether they are Thai, Chechen, Palestinian or European, Muslims are judged unfailingly by their faith and so-called beliefs. In this foretold story, everything is pre-decided: the crime, the culprit, the cause, the evidence and the punishment.

The vote bank

The idea that there is something called a “Muslim vote bank,” which behaves uniformly across the board, suits equally the Muslim leadership and its right wing Hindu counterpart. Muslim leaders and middlemen can bargain with political parties on behalf of this “collective” vote, as if individual Muslims have no opinion of their own and can be herded together in a pre-determined direction for a price decided mutually between the politicians and the community's self-appointed spokespersons. The Muslim vote bank helps communal Hindu organisations to manufacture their own “Hindu vote bank,” and use the whipped up Muslim threat to achieve their ultimate objective: a Hindu-Muslim electoral polarisation. The secular sections too have become unwitting participants in this game. Their intention is presumably to lift Muslims out of their sense of insecurity but the constant focus has only served to perpetuate the fear and victimhood that have been the bane of the community. Experts on 24x7 TV channels habitually use the vote bank theory to offer pat explanations for Muslim behaviour and to reach pre-fabricated conclusions.

I know I will be roundly attacked for these assertions for they question the very basis on which sectarian elements on both sides have built their arguments. The Muslim Ulema refuse to accept the ground reality of Islam in India which is as much mired in caste politics as any other Indian religion. The plain truth is that Muslim society is as divided as Hindu society and along the same caste and regional lines. Caste is such a formidable Indian/Hindu institution that no ideology can escape it: Islam, Christianity, Marxism, rationalism, modernism have all floundered on the bedrock of this hard reality. Islam became acceptable in medieval Indian society as a caste group and not as a religious group. Mughals, Pathans, Turks, Sheikhs and Syeds were regarded as sub-castes, so much so that other Indian converts to Islam came to be conveniently regarded as outcasts.

Then there is this story which points out the ways in which caste politics is now being exploited with Muslim voters by pandering politicians. What I found interesting in this article is what I had suspected all along. A community votes as a bloc when their existence or identity is threatened in some way. With right wing Hindu parties like the BJP mostly in a waning phase in Indian politics, Muslims in India are voting for pocket book issues and not cultural ones. More interesting is the Congress Party's shameless pandering to the community by awarding Scheduled Caste / Scheduled Tribe status to "low caste" Muslims. As I pointed out earelier, it is an open secret that in India, there is "always" a caste system, irrespective of the faith of a community and that there are indeed rich and poor Muslims in India whose livelihoods and status fall across social lines based on traditional occupations which mirror the Hindu caste system. But isn't it somewhat cynical and ironic to introduce this kind of stratification as policy for a religious group which at least on paper, doesn't recognize such classifications? The third interesting item in this news report is that the Muslim special groups which may benefit from the government quota are anxious not to anger the large and powerful Yadav community (a designated SC / ST Hindu community) of UP with whom the Muslims had in the past joined hands to break the upper caste Hindu monopoly in the politics of Uttar Pradesh. This is identity politics at its best - making strange bedfellows, creating and disrupting unlikely alliances and fostering atavistic tendencies.

Catholic Cardinal Francis George: Gay Pride = Klan Rally? (Norman Costa)

Catholic Cardinal Francis George: Gay Pride = Klan Rally? (Norman Costa)

FutureNews Network (FNN) - June 2012, Chicago, IL, USA

A record 850,000 people came to Chicago today to watch or take part in the Annual Gay Pride Parade. By all accounts, it was loud, fun, quirky, colorful, at times bordering on the ourrageous and risque, and a great success, according to parade organizers. 'It's all about pride,' said the President of the organizing committee for this year's event. 'It's about pride in ourselves, our friends, our community, and in Chicago for being a great city of tolerance and inclusion.'

Only six months ago, there was concern about the reaction of the Catholic Church. Our own Cardinal Francis George likened the rhetoric of some members of the GLBT to that of the KKK. The Cardinal said that to them, the Catholic Church is the enemy.

The Cardinal was prompted to make his remarks, because the parade route was changed and would pass right in front of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, RC Church, on West Belmont Avenue. The local pastor was very concerned because Sunday morning church goers would find it very difficult to get through the crowds and cross the parade route to get to Sunday Mass.

Predictably, there was an outcry over Cardinal George's remarks.  What seemed like an inevitable confrontation between the Catholic Church and the parade organizers, was transformed into a cooperative display of community spirit. It began when the Cardinal apologized for what he described as intemperate and uncharitable remarks. 

The Cardinal, himself, negotiated with the city and the parade organizers. Local parishioners organized themselves as escorts and path makers through the crowds, and crossing guards to get church goers safely across the street. The whole thing was supervised by the police so that there would be a minimum of interruptions for church goers and the parade. 

The real news was not the agreement on escorts and crossing guards, but a large sign put up by Cardinal George, in front of the Church. It had the schedule of Masses. 

'SUNDAY - 8:00 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. 
AGLO Mass - Sunday 7:00 p.m. - Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach'

In addition, the sign read, 'After the parade, come back for Mass, or for private prayer and meditation in our Church. All are welcome.'

We learned that both Cardinal George, and pastor Father Thomas Srenn officiated at the 7:00 pm AGLO Mass. No one expected the overflow crowd for the AGLO Mass. The only problems were two people who tried to disrupt the Mass, but they were quickly excorted out by plain clothes police. 

The Cardinal was asked if the Church would do the same for next year. 'Of course,' he said. 'That is why the Church is here.' When asked if he would do anything different, he was quick to say, 'Yes. Next year we will have two AGLO Masses, and sufficient time and priests to hear confessions beforehand.' 

A CNN reporter asked if there was anything else he would like to say. He said, 'Bless all gay Catholics, all gay people, and all children of God!' The reporter was heard to say, 'Amen.'
 

Can Gross National Happiness = Gross National Irony ? (Sujatha)

So much for the concept of Gross National Happiness, a concept developed and promoted as an index of well-being by the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2005. While efforts to quantify it were widely publicized and discussed, nobody seemed to take the Bhutan government to task for its treatment of the ethnically Nepali Lhotshampas and their being forced out of the country. There is an entire population of them resettled or waiting to be resettled in other countries.

"Over 105,000 Bhutanese have spent more than 15 years living in refugee camps established in Nepal by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Thousands more are living outside the camps in Nepal and India, and some in North America, Europe and Australia."

I came across one of those Bhutanese Nepali refugees a few weeks ago, as I mention in my personal blog post" Threaded"

For some refugees, the change of location has led to a hope for a new life, for example, a group settled in Pittsburgh, PA. (Article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

"They arrive, for the most part, at Pittsburgh International Airport with little more than the clothes they are wearing. They must quickly learn to navigate an unfamiliar city, speak English, adjust to American practices and organizations, find work and send their children to school.

Their journey here and the acculturation process after they arrive involve layers of international groups, U.S. government agencies, a resettlement organization and social services."

But for some it is too much to handle, with tragic results.

"He was found dead hanging in a laundry room Friday morning,” Bhanu Phuyel, another refugee resettled in the same city, told ekantipur.com from the US….Six members of the family were sharing a two-bed room apartment along with another family with four people. They had not received any other facility except food card.

[Jit Bahadur Pradhan] was annoyed with the circumstances, and used to complain with his two sons that the situation there was no better than in the camp in Nepal."

Will these dispossessed ever have their questionnaires added to those back home in Bhutan? What will happen to its much-vaunted high GNH quotient then?

Gross National Happiness does equal Gross National Irony, in this case.

 

Vaclav Havel: The good, they die young (Norman Costa)

Vaclav Havel: The good, they die young (Norman Costa)

Vaclav Havel Dies: Former Czech President Dead At 75. Read HERE.

by WILLIAM J. KOLE and KAREL JANICEK, 12/18/11 10:44 AM ET, in Huffington Post

PRAGUE — Vaclav Havel wove theater into revolution, leading the charge to peacefully bring down communism in a regime he ridiculed as "Absurdistan" and proving the power of the people to overcome totalitarian rule.

Shy and bookish, with a wispy mustache and unkempt hair, the dissident playwright was an unlikely hero of Czechoslovakia's 1989 "Velvet Revolution" after four decades of suffocating repression – and of the epic struggle that ended the wider Cold War.

He was his country's first democratically elected president, leading it through the early challenges of democracy and its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, though his image suffered as his people discovered the difficulties of transforming their society.

A former chain-smoker who had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails, Havel died Sunday morning at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant Sabina Tancevova said. His wife Dagmar and a nun who had been caring for him the last few months of his life were by his side, she said. He was 75.

"A great fighter for the freedom of nations and for democracy has died," said Lech Walesa, his fellow anti-communist activist who founded neighboring Poland's Solidarity movement. "His outstanding voice of wisdom will be missed."

Among his many honors were Sweden's prestigious Olof Palme Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, bestowed on him by President George W. Bush for being "one of liberty's great heroes."

An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.

"Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred," Havel famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he always strove to live by.

"It's interesting that I had an adventurous life, even though I am not an adventurer by nature. It was fate and history that caused my life to be adventurous rather than me as someone who seeks adventure," he once told Czech radio, in a typically modest comment.

Havel first made a name for himself after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reforms of Alexander Dubcek and other liberally minded communists in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Havel's plays were banned as hard-liners installed by Moscow snuffed out every whiff of rebellion. But he continued to write, producing a series of underground essays that stand with the work of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov as the most incisive and eloquent analyses of what communism did to society and the individual.

One of his best-known essays, "The Power and the Powerless" written in 1978, borrowed slyly from the immortal opening line of the mid-19th century Communist Manifesto, writing: "A specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called 'dissent.'"

In the essay, he dissected what he called the "dictatorship of ritual" – the ossified Soviet bloc system under Leonid Brezhnev – and imagined what happens when an ordinary greengrocer stops displaying communist slogans and begins "living in truth," rediscovering "his suppressed identity and dignity."

Havel knew that suppression firsthand.

Born Oct. 5, 1936, in Prague, the child of a wealthy family which lost extensive property to communist nationalization in 1948, Havel was denied a formal education, eventually earning a degree at night school and starting out in theater as a stagehand.
His political activism began in earnest in January 1977, when he co-authored the human rights manifesto Charter 77, and the cause drew widening attention in the West.

Havel was detained countless times and spent four years in communist jails. His letters from prison to his wife became one of his best-known works. "Letters to Olga" blended deep philosophy with a stream of stern advice to the spouse he saw as his mentor and best friend, and who tolerated his reputed philandering and other foibles.

The events of August 1988 – the 20th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion – first suggested that Havel and his friends might one day replace the faceless apparatchiks who jailed them.

Thousands of mostly young people marched through central Prague, yelling Havel's name and that of the playwright's hero, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the philosopher who was Czechoslovakia's first president after it was founded in 1918.

Havel's arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May.

That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students.

It was the signal that Havel and his country had awaited. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets.

In three heady weeks, communist rule was broken. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones arrived just as the Soviet army was leaving. Posters in Prague proclaimed: "The tanks are rolling out – the Stones are rolling in."

On Dec. 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia's president by the country's still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year's address: "Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine."

Although he continued to be regarded a moral voice as he decried the shortcomings of his society under democracy, he eventually bent to the dictates of convention and power. His watchwords – "what the heart thinks, the tongue speaks" – had to be modified for day-to-day politics.

In July 1992, it became clear that the Czechoslovak federation was heading for a split. Considering it a personal failure, Havel resigned as president. But he remained popular and was elected president of the new Czech Republic uncontested.
He was small, but his presence and wit could fill a room. Even late in life, he retained a certain impishness and boyish grin, shifting easily from philosophy to jokes or plain old Prague gossip.

In December 1996, just 11 months after his first wife, Olga Havlova, died of cancer, he lost a third of his right lung during surgery to remove a 15-millimeter (half-inch) malignant tumor.

He gave up smoking and married Dagmar Veskrnova, a dashing actress almost 20 years his junior.

Holding a post of immense prestige but little power, Havel's attempts to reconcile rival politicians were considered by many as unconstitutional intrusions, and his pleas for political leaders to build a "civic society" based on respect, tolerance and individual responsibility went largely unanswered.

Media criticism, once unthinkable, became unrelenting. Serious newspapers questioned his political visions; tabloids focused mainly on his private life and his flashy second wife.

Havel left office in 2003, 10 years after Czechoslovakia broke up and just months before both nations joined the European Union. He was credited with laying the groundwork that brought his Czech Republic into the 27-nation bloc in 2004, and was president when it joined NATO in 1999.

Even out of office, the diminutive Havel remained a world figure. He was part of the "new Europe" – in the coinage of then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – of ex-communist countries that stood up for the U.S. when the democracies of "old Europe" opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Havel was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and collected dozens of other accolades worldwide for his efforts as a global ambassador of conscience, defended the downtrodden from Darfur to Myanmar.

"He was among the hand full of true democratic champions, an artist more than a politician, but an ambassador of the human conscience above all," said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "Amid the turbulence of modern Europe, his voice was the most consistent and compelling – endlessly searching for the best in himself and in each of us."

"I never imagined that I would have had the privilege of being his friend," she said.

In an October 2008 interview with The Associated Press, Havel rebuked Russia for invading Georgia two months earlier, and warned EU leaders against appeasing Moscow.

"We should not turn a blind eye ... It's a big test for the West," he said.

Havel also said he saw the global and European economic crisis as a warning not to abandon basic human values in the scramble to prosper.

"It's a warning against the idea that we understand the world, that we know how everything works," he told the AP in his office in Prague. The cramped work space was packed with his books, plays and rock memorabilia.

Havel himself acknowledged that his handling of domestic issues never matched his flair for foreign affairs. But when the Czech Republic joined NATO and the EU his dreams came true.

"I can't stop rejoicing that I live in this time and can participate in it," Havel exulted.

Early in 2008, Havel returned to his first love: the stage. He published a new play, "Leaving," about the struggles of a leader on his way out of office, and the work gained critical acclaim.

Theater, he told the AP, was once again his major interest.

"My return to the stage was not easy," he said. "It's not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back."

Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer (Norman Costa)



BBC News UK 16 December 2011 Last updated at 01:21 ET

Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer (Norman Costa)

"Vanity Fair's editor said those who read him felt they knew him.

"British author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died, aged 62, according to Vanity Fair magazine.

"He died from pneumonia, a complication of the oesophageal cancer he was suffering from, at a Texas hospital.

"Vanity Fair said there would "never be another like Christopher".

"He is survived by his wife, Carol Blue, and their daughter, Antonia, and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia.

"Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter described the writer as someone "of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar".

""Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

"Mr Hitchens was born in Portsmouth in 1949 and graduated from Oxford in 1970.

"He began his career as a journalist in Britain in the 1970s and later moved to New York, becoming contributing editor to Vanity Fair in November 1992.

"He was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010, and had documented his declining health in his Vanity Fair column.

"In an August 2010 essay for the magazine he wrote: "I love the imagery of struggle.

""I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

"Prolific writer

"He wrote for numerous publications including The Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Express, the London Evening Standard, Newsday and The Atlantic.

"He was the author of 17 books, including The Trial of Henry Kissinger, God is not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, and a memoir, Hitch-22.

"Arguably, a collection of his essays, was released this year.

""Prospect of death makes me sober, objective."

"Radicalised by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies and was kicked out of the Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War.

"He became a correspondent for International Socialism magazine.

"In later life he moved away from the left. Following the September 11 attacks he argued with Noam Chomsky and others who suggested that US foreign policy had helped cause the tragedy.

"He supported the Iraq War and backed George W Bush for re-election in 2004."

 

Malappuram from Kerala to Karachi to Kerala

Here is yet another little known segment of India's 20th - 21st century colonial and post colonial history. The emigration of a tiny Indian community from Kerala that began more than two decades before the India-Pakistan divide has now acquired a new trajectory due to the recent political developments in the Indian subcontinent

The tiny Malayali community in Karachi has shrunk over the years. Those who remain wait in vain for a passage to India 

The nondescript apartment looks like an average home in Karachi. It’s the bar of Chandrika herbal soap in the bathroom and the Mathrubhoomi calendar on the wall, ubiquitous to Malayali homes, that betrays the lineage of its occupants. The flat’s octogenarian owner, BM Kutty, came to Karachi from Kerala in search of greener pastures in 1949, a time when Karachi was just a train ride away from Mumbai. Since then, the political activist has spent six decades of his life as a Pakistani national.

Kutty is part of the shrinking community of Malayalis settled in Karachi. Unlike some Muslims of north India who migrated to Pakistan during Partition, the migration of Malayali Muslims had a different context. The first exodus from Kerala to Karachi took place in 1921, the year of the Mappila Revolt, when landless Malabar Muslims (Mappilas) of Malappuram district in north Kerala launched an armed rebellion against the British and upper-caste Hindus. The uprising was brutally crushed after the British proclaimed martial law, and the Karachi chapter of Mappilas was born.

“Many Mappilas fled to Mumbai or Karachi. Here, they started from scratch with nothing but a kettle and cups, delivering tea to offices. Soon, they were running paan shops and hotels,” says Kutty. Today, most Malayalis in Karachi are small-time owners of shops and restaurants. One can find an odd Malabari restaurant in the city, the masala dosa on the menus of many non-Malabari restaurants, and Malabar betel leaves from Kerala in Karachi’s paan stalls. But few of the city’s Mappilas speak Malayalam. At schools run by the Malabar Muslim Jamaat, established in 1920, a handful of students can speak Malayalam, but second-generation Malayalis are more fluent in Urdu than in their native tongue.



 The full story here.

 

Step lively, you wretches ...

Without additional commentary on the nature of the GOP presidential candidates, here is just one "idea" proposed by the current front runner Newt Gingrich whom some are calling the Newtron Bomb.

It's a fact, because he has told us so, that Republican primary candidate Newt Gingrich is first and foremost a historian, so it's no surprise when he buttresses his views with historical precedents. But in his recent plans for lifting poor children out of poverty, we were alarmed that he chose to follow the Dickensian model of child labor practices.

A few weeks ago, at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, he talked about his "extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America."

Calling child labor laws "truly stupid," he said that people who became successful in one generation "all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age." He proposed that schools in poor neighborhoods "get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school."

Where does one begin? Child labor laws exist to protect children from just such crackpot ideas. But then he went even further in a campaign speech in Iowa last week: "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash' unless it's illegal."

We could splutter all day at the offensiveness of these assertions, but our time is better spent in thanking Charles Blow, (link here) the visual Op-Ed columnist of the New York Times, who last Saturday used his gift for information graphics to present a column that succinctly demolished Gingrich's careless, cruel stereotypes, showing them to have no factual basis.

Blow presented an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, which showed that three-quarters of poor adults ages 18 to 64 work - half of them full-time. Most poor children live in a household with at least one employed parent, and among children in extreme poverty, nearly one in three lives with at least one working parent.

And as for the most egregious, irresponsible claim - that poor children have no habit of performing tasks for money "unless it's illegal" - Blow wrote that Gingrich "vastly overreaches by suggesting that a lack of money universally correlates to a lack of morals."

Poverty is indeed a factor in crime increase, but Blow's data show that even though the number of Americans living in poverty has grown recently, the crime rate has dropped overall, specifically among juveniles.

But, given his historical leanings, we can at least be thankful that Gingrich has never been accused of modesty, so odds are that we'll be spared a revival of that famous "Modest Proposal," put forward by Jonathan Swift in 1729, "For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country."

(cartoon: Pat Oliphant)

More on the same from Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post.

 

Pakistan: The dream of a new beginning..

My article in "The Hindu": http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2644338.ece

Notes from Gaza

A recently launched blog  about life in Gaza by Radhika Sainath. Radhika's blog was brought to my attention by my daughter who is a friend and erstwhile colleague of the author.

Neither Corruption Nor The Appearance of Corruption (Norman Costa)

Neither Corruption Nor The Appearance Of Corruption (Norman Costa)

“We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” --US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in "Citizens United.

Super-Soft Money: How Justice Kennedy paved the way for “SuperPACS” and the return of soft money.

By Richard L. Hasen

Soft money is coming back to national politics, and in a big way. And we can blame it all on a single sentence in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in 2010’s controversial Citizens United decision—a sentence that was unnecessary to resolve the case.

In this election cycle, “superPACs” will likely replace political parties as a conduit for large, often secret contributions, allowing an end run around the $2,500 individual contribution limit and the bar on corporate and labor contributions to federal candidates.* To understand how we got into this predicament, we need to go back briefly to the 1970s. In the wake of Watergate and other money-in-politics scandals, Congress imposed tough new campaign finance restrictions. Not only did the law limit contributions to federal candidates to $1,000 per person (an amount it eventually raised to $2,000 and indexed to inflation), it also limited independent spending—that is, no one person or group could spend more than that amount—to $1,000. In a Solomonic 1976 decision, the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo split the baby, upholding the contribution limits but striking down the independent spending limit as a violation of the First Amendment protections of free speech and association.

Read more HERE:

 

U.S. condemns Iranian pastor's conviction and possible execution (Norman Costa)

U.S. condemns Iranian pastor's conviction and possible execution (Norman Costa)

This is another reason why the U.S. should abolish capital punishment. We have little moral force when we protest the possible execution of a citizen of another country.

"By Dan Merica, CNN

"Washington (CNN) – The White House Thursday condemned the conviction of an Iranian pastor, who may be executed in Tehran for refusing to recant his religious beliefs and convert from Christianity to Islam."

Read more HERE: