Globalizing Higher Ed in The Corporate Bailout Era of Late Capitalism.
Isn't that what this is really about?
Higher Education institutions and their ancillary entities AAUP, CAUT, whatever, do not stand outside of history or politics or the economy, instead they are proactive and reactive contributors to them and players within them.
Therefore where AAUP stands depends almost entirely on where it sits. It is obvious that AAUP is primarily interested in protecting and preserving the interests (through dues and perks) of its core constituency (US faculty operating within the tenure system, therefore NOT adjuncts). I would submit AAUP does not give a hoot for teachers or educational arrangements in the emerging or expanding economies, except as profitable sites where AAUP members' interests can be promoted, expanded and preserved.
The AAUP is an integral part of the US higher ed political economy of Globalization which is still controlled by US-dominated market fundamentalism, masquerading as the "free market."
Has the "free market" produced an entrenched inequitable 2-tier faculty system right here in the US?
Has the AAUP been able to do anything about that?
Is AAUP even motivated to do so? So what is AAUP's clout vis a vis the "branches"? What can Northwestern University whose Journalism program is "embedded' in Qatar possibly teach Qataris about a free media?
My own take is that governments of the emerging (China, India, Brasil, Turkey, South Africa) as well as the disadvantaged (Uganda, Botswana) economies of the WTO should vigorously resist inroads by the rich (albeit currently distressed ) economies, which set up the higher ed 'braches" alluded to in the above article. These expanding economies should attempt to grow their GDP through self-reliance on their own domestic resources of teachers and administrators and most important CURRICULUM, based upon their unique history and culture. However globalization makes this difficult, the national elites are corrupt and opportunistic, so the challenges are many, but not in my view insuperable.
I would hate to see the proliferation of the US Higher Ed system throughout the world.
Another world is possible.
Chithra Karunakaran Ed.D.
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scrutiny and Standards for Branch Campuses
April 9, 2009 by
scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/09/branch
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/09/branch#Comments
Inside Higher Ed copyright
==============================================================================
AAUP statement;
On Conditions of Employment at Overseas Campuses (2009)
The statement that follows is being issued jointly by the American Association of University Professors and the Canadian Association of University Teachers. It was approved for publication in April 2009 respectively by the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and CAUT’s Executive Committee. Comments should be directed to the AAUP and/or to CAUT.
U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities have been actively expanding their foreign operations in recent years. Overseas branch campuses and degree programs have proliferated, as have the overseas sale of curricular and other instructional materials and the franchising of campuses, online or distance learning, international student recruitment, and study-abroad programs.
The expansion of higher education opportunities is a welcome feature of today’s more internationally integrated world. Not surprisingly, these international initiatives are proving attractive both to private investors and to colleges and universities. Advocates of private investment now refer routinely to a multitrillion- dollar global market in educational services, and efforts to open up this lucrative market further are driving bilateral or multilateral trade agreements and negotiations. As a result, globalization has become one of the principal means of privatizing and commercializing higher education.
The leading nations in the field of international education have sought, under the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services and in the name of trade liberalization, to harmonize global standards for providing higher education services. According to the WTO’s tenets of free trade, educational services should be treated like any other commodity, and foreign providers should be afforded the same public benefits and privileges as domestic institutions of any member nation. Several international organizations in higher education have voiced their opposition to these tenets:
* the 2001 “Joint Declaration on Higher Education and the General Agreement on Grade in Services,” issued by four leading academic organizations in the United States, Canada, and Europe (the American Council on Education, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and the European University Association).
• http://www.aucc.ca/_pdf/english/statements/2001/gats_10_25_e.pdf
* the 2002 Porto Alegre Declaration, signed by the major Iberian and Latin American associations of higher education.
• http://www.gatswatch.org/educationoutofgats/PortoAlegre.doc)
* the resolutions adopted by Education International (with 394 national teacher and academic staff federations from 171 countries representing 30 million teachers, academic staff, and others who work in education) at its 2001 World Congress in Jomtiem, Thailand and at its 2004 World Congress in Porto Alegre.
• http://www.eiie.org/worldcongress2004/docs/WC03Res_Gloablisation
EmploymentConditions_e.pdf
• http://www.ei-ie.org/worldcongress2004/docs/WC04Res_HigherEduc_NewInstrument
_e.pdf
These declarations and resolutions recognize that trade liberalization risks weakening governments' commitment to and investment in public higher education. They also assert that education is not a commodity and that reliance on public mandates (exclusively so in most countries) should make it distinct from other services.
The pace of overseas expansion also threatens to affect the character of higher education in the United States and Canada. The sheer number of faculty employed in foreign operations is increasing, and most are contingent employees on temporary contracts. Because foreign programs and campuses are usually less costly, colleges and universities may make decisions favoring their development over more expensive U.S.- and Canadian-based equivalents staffed by tenure-track faculty. Continued pursuit of this path will accelerate the casualization of the academic workforce, taking its toll on the quality of instruction as well as adversely affecting faculty rights.
Moreover, as the U.S. and Canadian presence in higher education grows in countries marked by authoritarian rule, basic principles of academic freedom, collegial governance, and nondiscrimination are less likely to be observed. In a host environment where free speech is constrained, if not proscribed, faculty will censor themselves, and the cause of authentic liberal education, to the extent it can exist in such situations, will suffer.
Consequently, it is essential that all international initiatives undertaken by North American colleges and universities respect the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel, with its emphasis on academic freedom, institutional autonomy, collegial governance, nondiscrimination, and employment security. [http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13144&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html]
The treatment of nonacademic employees involved in the construction, service, and maintenance of foreign campuses is another area of concern. Colleges and universities as employers and contractors should uphold the full observance of internationally recognized standards governing the rights and working conditions of nonacademic employees who build and maintain classrooms and offices and meet other needs that keep the institutions functioning. Universities operating internationally should adopt a code of conduct governing the workplace conditions and rights of all non-academic employees, even and especially if these workers are employed directly by a local subcontractor.
Education should not be a commodity, bought and sold in the international marketplace and subject to the rules of competitive trade that govern a deregulated global economy. Participating in the movement for international education can rest on laudable educational grounds. But those grounds will be jeopardized if hard-earned standards and protections are weakened rather than exported.
In sum, the AAUP and CAUT expect every U.S. and Canadian college and university in any international initiative undertaken in partnership, or using the institution’s name, to honor the provisions in the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel. For nonacademic employees, we expect each institution and its subcontractors to adopt a code of conduct consistent with International Labor Organization (ILO) standards.
In accordance with the principles of collegial governance, U.S. and Canadian college and university administrations should provide their faculty and staff associations and the institution’s senior academic body with information about any international initiative being contemplated. If the initiative proceeds, administrations should provide detailed updates on all aspects of the project, with special emphasis on provisions to ensure academic freedom and tenure and collegial governance, including policies on approval and regular assessment of programs and curriculum, appointment and evaluation of academic staff, workload, appropriate compensation and working conditions, anti-harassment and -discrimination provisions, intellectual property, occupational health and safety, equity, and rights to appeal procedures characterized by substantive and procedural fairness.
Implementation of these obligations will require vigilance by faculty at U.S. and Canadian institutions. AAUP and CAUT traditions of academic freedom and shared governance make it clear that faculty representatives should have an integral role in drafting and reviewing plans designed to establish satellite programs and branch campuses. Plans for curriculum development and faculty hiring need explicit faculty approval. Compensation, working conditions, and grievance procedures for U.S.- and Canadian-based faculty will be subject to formal negotiation on many campuses with collective bargaining. The state of the law in host countries may necessitate bilateral negotiations in order to ensure fair working conditions for the faculty and staff at an overseas site; domestic faculty should be involved in reviewing such arrangements as an essential safeguard that these conditions are being met.
AAUP local chapters and CAUT member associations can play a key role in making certain that their institutions meet these obligations. AAUP and CAUT stand ready to assist their members and the higher education community more generally in this work.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Culture, Religion, Nation-State & the ETHICAL SELF: Denmark and the Cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad
My Published Comment on The Times of India 9 Apr 2009, 0105 hrs IST:
Denmark is a great country to visit, it has admirable social policies, Denmark has a democratic government and a democratic polity.
However Denmark lacks the basic and necessary understanding that freedom and a free press in democratic pluralist nation-states, does not include license to hurt cultural and religious sentiments.
The case of Denmark illustrates that democratic nation-states are no guarantee for the protection of cultural and religious sentiments of ALL of its citizens, Muslims among them. How are Danish Muslims expected to feel and react?
Ex-premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen lacks an ethical compass, essential for authentic leadership of democratic nation-states. Now, Rasmussen has found the job that fits right into his intolerant worldview -- heading up the US-dominated NATO which has absolutely no business conducting military operations in the South Asia region.
Rasmussen is the right man for that dirty job.
9 Apr 2009, 0105 hrs IST
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prophet Muhammad cartoon goes on sale in Denmark
8 Apr 2009, 2311 hrs IST, AP
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4376765.cms
Times of India copyright
COPENHAGEN
: A Danish press freedom group said on Wednesday it is selling copies of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that caused outrage across
the Muslim World.
Some 1,000 printed reproductions of a drawing depicting Islam's prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban are being sold for 1,400 kroner ($250) each, said Lars Hedegaard, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.
"All we are doing is starting a debate," Hedegaard said. "We are using our freedom of speech."
Hedegaard said Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the cartoon in 2005, had given the society permission to produce the copies and sell them. Each numbered copy has been signed by Westergaard, Hedegaard said.
"We have not, and are not, breaking any laws," Hedegaard said.
Westergaard has been living under police protection since an alleged plot to murder him was discovered last year.
Twelve cartoons depicting the prophet, including the one by Westergaard, were published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.
The following year, they triggered massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, with rioters torching Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries boycotted Danish products.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Throughout the crisis, then Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distanced himself from the cartoons but resisted calls to apologize for them, citing freedom of speech and saying his government could not be held responsible for the actions of Denmark's press.
On Saturday, Fogh Rasmussen was chosen to become NATO's new secretary-general, despite threats by Turkey, the alliance's only Muslim member, to veto his election.
=====================================================================================
Denmark is a great country to visit, it has admirable social policies, Denmark has a democratic government and a democratic polity.
However Denmark lacks the basic and necessary understanding that freedom and a free press in democratic pluralist nation-states, does not include license to hurt cultural and religious sentiments.
The case of Denmark illustrates that democratic nation-states are no guarantee for the protection of cultural and religious sentiments of ALL of its citizens, Muslims among them. How are Danish Muslims expected to feel and react?
Ex-premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen lacks an ethical compass, essential for authentic leadership of democratic nation-states. Now, Rasmussen has found the job that fits right into his intolerant worldview -- heading up the US-dominated NATO which has absolutely no business conducting military operations in the South Asia region.
Rasmussen is the right man for that dirty job.
9 Apr 2009, 0105 hrs IST
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prophet Muhammad cartoon goes on sale in Denmark
8 Apr 2009, 2311 hrs IST, AP
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4376765.cms
Times of India copyright
COPENHAGEN
: A Danish press freedom group said on Wednesday it is selling copies of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that caused outrage across
the Muslim World.
Some 1,000 printed reproductions of a drawing depicting Islam's prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban are being sold for 1,400 kroner ($250) each, said Lars Hedegaard, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.
"All we are doing is starting a debate," Hedegaard said. "We are using our freedom of speech."
Hedegaard said Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the cartoon in 2005, had given the society permission to produce the copies and sell them. Each numbered copy has been signed by Westergaard, Hedegaard said.
"We have not, and are not, breaking any laws," Hedegaard said.
Westergaard has been living under police protection since an alleged plot to murder him was discovered last year.
Twelve cartoons depicting the prophet, including the one by Westergaard, were published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005.
The following year, they triggered massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, with rioters torching Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries boycotted Danish products.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Throughout the crisis, then Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen distanced himself from the cartoons but resisted calls to apologize for them, citing freedom of speech and saying his government could not be held responsible for the actions of Denmark's press.
On Saturday, Fogh Rasmussen was chosen to become NATO's new secretary-general, despite threats by Turkey, the alliance's only Muslim member, to veto his election.
=====================================================================================
Are Illegal Immigrants Economic Refugees?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html
New York Times copyright
---------------------------------------------------------
My NYT comment # 213
April 9th, 2009 7:44 .
Are undocumented entrants (aka illegal aliens) economic refugees?
Should such entrants be given refugee status by the U.S. The refugee eligibility category is already an entry category in this country's immigration law.
Illegal entrants must become the responsibility of the "sending" govt. The sending governments (Mexico is one such, drugs and drug cartels are not Mexico's only exports) should be notified that their citizens have illegally entered the US.
The sending governments should be asked to reimburse the US taxpayer for the deportation costs of their citizens.
Governments of sovereign nation-states have to be held accountable for the welfare and well-being of their own citizens. That nmeans provide jobs and justice for your citizens. Do we see a flood of Danes, Swedes, Dutch becoming
boat people' desperate to reach US shores? No, because these responsible and accountable govts. take care of their citizens.
The US has a double standard (ditto foreign policy) on immigration. The US economy needs a steady stream of cheap, in many instances highly qualified and experienced labor, to prop up its allegedly homegrown economy.
US hype operates at every level, and Obama is only its latest practitioner, this time in the politically advantageous policy area of immigration. It is being framed as advantageous for Dems in upcoming congressional elections next year. The GOP hogged the immigration amnesty issue during the Reagan period.
We already know Amnesty policy doesn't work because it contains absolutely no deterrents, and most likely encourages more illegal entry. It also sends a message to potential legal entrants that the law is stacked against them, that the US is NOT a nation of laws.
The US census is coming up. And so are some seats that will be up for re-election in the US Congress.
Canny try Mr. Teflon (for now) President.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
Obama to Push Immigration Reform Bill Despite Risks
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: April 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html
New York Times copyright
---------------------------------------------------------
My NYT comment # 213
April 9th, 2009 7:44 .
Are undocumented entrants (aka illegal aliens) economic refugees?
Should such entrants be given refugee status by the U.S. The refugee eligibility category is already an entry category in this country's immigration law.
Illegal entrants must become the responsibility of the "sending" govt. The sending governments (Mexico is one such, drugs and drug cartels are not Mexico's only exports) should be notified that their citizens have illegally entered the US.
The sending governments should be asked to reimburse the US taxpayer for the deportation costs of their citizens.
Governments of sovereign nation-states have to be held accountable for the welfare and well-being of their own citizens. That nmeans provide jobs and justice for your citizens. Do we see a flood of Danes, Swedes, Dutch becoming
boat people' desperate to reach US shores? No, because these responsible and accountable govts. take care of their citizens.
The US has a double standard (ditto foreign policy) on immigration. The US economy needs a steady stream of cheap, in many instances highly qualified and experienced labor, to prop up its allegedly homegrown economy.
US hype operates at every level, and Obama is only its latest practitioner, this time in the politically advantageous policy area of immigration. It is being framed as advantageous for Dems in upcoming congressional elections next year. The GOP hogged the immigration amnesty issue during the Reagan period.
We already know Amnesty policy doesn't work because it contains absolutely no deterrents, and most likely encourages more illegal entry. It also sends a message to potential legal entrants that the law is stacked against them, that the US is NOT a nation of laws.
The US census is coming up. And so are some seats that will be up for re-election in the US Congress.
Canny try Mr. Teflon (for now) President.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
Obama to Push Immigration Reform Bill Despite Risks
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: April 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/politics/09immig.html
Monday, April 6, 2009
Drone 'em: US Policy Missteps in South Asia
My NYT Comment #18
April 06, 2009 8:53 am
The US should halt its drone activity. Not because Baitullah Mehsud called for it but because daily and nightly drone strikes KILL civilians -- children, women and men.
We can be almost certain that the US govt. and its overreaching military routinely underreports and criminally disregards loss of Afghan and Pakistani civilian lives. Are these hapless individuals wearing T for Taliban T-shirts, that the unmanned drones can accurately target 'terrorists' from the air? I think we all know that US intelligence (yeah, right) is flawed at best and criminal at worst.
The self-proclaimed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the the Fedayeen-e-Islam are exploiting the US/NATO presence, especially the drone flybys, for their own pathological and murderous ends -- US drone killings of civilians serve as an excellent recruiting tool for the TTP and similar terror outfits.
Both Karzai and Zardari have called for an end to the drones.
On a more urgent and basic level, US state-sponsored terror and billions of US taxpayer cash-for-your-satellitized-subservience dollars flung at Pakistan's ISI-driven civilian government must cease. The US govt. should be proactive on intelligence and security of its own borders, airspace and waterways right here at home, not poke around South Asia creating terror that begets terror.
Instead, humanitarian assistance and other on-the-ground civilian services funneled through international aid agencies are a necessary alternative strategy to the failed and costly US policy of blatant interference and manipulation of weak states in the South Asia region.
South Asia can and must be free to negotiate its own geopolitics. The US presence distorts and inflames this fraught geopolitics.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
News Analysis
Time Is Short as U.S. Presses a Reluctant Pakistan by Jane Perlez
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/world/asia/06islamabad.html
==================================================================================
April 06, 2009 8:53 am
The US should halt its drone activity. Not because Baitullah Mehsud called for it but because daily and nightly drone strikes KILL civilians -- children, women and men.
We can be almost certain that the US govt. and its overreaching military routinely underreports and criminally disregards loss of Afghan and Pakistani civilian lives. Are these hapless individuals wearing T for Taliban T-shirts, that the unmanned drones can accurately target 'terrorists' from the air? I think we all know that US intelligence (yeah, right) is flawed at best and criminal at worst.
The self-proclaimed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the the Fedayeen-e-Islam are exploiting the US/NATO presence, especially the drone flybys, for their own pathological and murderous ends -- US drone killings of civilians serve as an excellent recruiting tool for the TTP and similar terror outfits.
Both Karzai and Zardari have called for an end to the drones.
On a more urgent and basic level, US state-sponsored terror and billions of US taxpayer cash-for-your-satellitized-subservience dollars flung at Pakistan's ISI-driven civilian government must cease. The US govt. should be proactive on intelligence and security of its own borders, airspace and waterways right here at home, not poke around South Asia creating terror that begets terror.
Instead, humanitarian assistance and other on-the-ground civilian services funneled through international aid agencies are a necessary alternative strategy to the failed and costly US policy of blatant interference and manipulation of weak states in the South Asia region.
South Asia can and must be free to negotiate its own geopolitics. The US presence distorts and inflames this fraught geopolitics.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
News Analysis
Time Is Short as U.S. Presses a Reluctant Pakistan by Jane Perlez
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/world/asia/06islamabad.html
==================================================================================
The Whiteness of Lawrence Summers
My comment #51
April 06, 2009 9:20 am
Link
Summers' 'versatility' and his 'success' at the hedge fund owes much to an identity available to whites in the US political economy, especially white males. I might add that it took Jews, like the Irish, a while to become "white" -- to exchange ethnicity and culture for US racialized dominant default identity.
Summers embodies how WHITENESS works. Persons of color can recognize it on a visceral level especially if we resist the US Whiteness system. We live it every day.
Summers adeptly performs Whiteness. Whiteness goes beyond white (male) skin privilege. Whiteness is a System of dominant racialized, unshared, inequitable, unearned POWER.
Summers was kicked out of Harvard because he made male chauvinist statements about the abilities of female faculty, both of which groups, at Harvard for sure, are mainly white. In fact an African male anthropologist led the charge against Summers.
What does Summers get for his sexist statements, unsupported by scientific evidence? He resigns from Harvard and gets More money, more prestige, more power!
Did Obama perform Whiteness by appointing Summers? It's a system, remember.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
Theory of Systemic Whiteness
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
--------------
A Rich Education for Summers (After Harvard)
After leaving Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers earned nearly $5.2 million advising elite math wizards and scientists at a New York hedge fund.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/business/06summers.html?_r=1
=======================================================================================
April 06, 2009 9:20 am
Link
Summers' 'versatility' and his 'success' at the hedge fund owes much to an identity available to whites in the US political economy, especially white males. I might add that it took Jews, like the Irish, a while to become "white" -- to exchange ethnicity and culture for US racialized dominant default identity.
Summers embodies how WHITENESS works. Persons of color can recognize it on a visceral level especially if we resist the US Whiteness system. We live it every day.
Summers adeptly performs Whiteness. Whiteness goes beyond white (male) skin privilege. Whiteness is a System of dominant racialized, unshared, inequitable, unearned POWER.
Summers was kicked out of Harvard because he made male chauvinist statements about the abilities of female faculty, both of which groups, at Harvard for sure, are mainly white. In fact an African male anthropologist led the charge against Summers.
What does Summers get for his sexist statements, unsupported by scientific evidence? He resigns from Harvard and gets More money, more prestige, more power!
Did Obama perform Whiteness by appointing Summers? It's a system, remember.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
Theory of Systemic Whiteness
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
--------------
A Rich Education for Summers (After Harvard)
After leaving Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers earned nearly $5.2 million advising elite math wizards and scientists at a New York hedge fund.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/business/06summers.html?_r=1
=======================================================================================
Sunday, April 5, 2009
US & NATO Impede South Asia's Intra-Regional Geopolitics
Why is this Times of India TOI report calling the Asia Society's Pickering-led group an "independent task force?" It's NOT *independent* because it promotes the dominant, exceptionalist, supremacist US foreign policy perspective in which the US places itself front and center of every regional and inter-regional strategy, so that the US can continue to manipulate the nation-states in the South Asia region, to further US global dominance, market fundamentalism and militaristic foreign policy.
India would do very well to stick steadfastly to PM Manmohan Singh's line that Pakistan needs to guarantee *extra-state* actors on its soil like the LeT and the TeTP, as well as *state* actors like the ISI, will NOT foment and deploy terrorists against the world's largest democracy.
The US and its think tanks can think till they tank! India must continue to carve her own way out of the mess created by the colonial Brits and the neo-imperial US. India and Pakistan need to persevere in order to engage directly, with pre-conditions against Pak terrorism and without 3rd party US-led NATO interference. The civil societies of both our countries have to vigorously persuade our leaders, over the short and long term. Sustainable prosperity cannot happen without this extended civil society effort. That means you and me.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------
Times of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-indispensable-regional-actor-US-report/articleshow/4363594.cms#write
---
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/US-think-tank-asks-Obama-to-acknowledge-Pak-as-N-power/articleshow/4362884.cms
--------------------------------------
Back from the Brink? A Strategy for Stabilizing Afghanistan-Pakistan
An Asia Society Task Force Report
April 2009
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/Afghanistan-PakistanTaskForce.pdf
Asia Society copyright
======================================================================================
India would do very well to stick steadfastly to PM Manmohan Singh's line that Pakistan needs to guarantee *extra-state* actors on its soil like the LeT and the TeTP, as well as *state* actors like the ISI, will NOT foment and deploy terrorists against the world's largest democracy.
The US and its think tanks can think till they tank! India must continue to carve her own way out of the mess created by the colonial Brits and the neo-imperial US. India and Pakistan need to persevere in order to engage directly, with pre-conditions against Pak terrorism and without 3rd party US-led NATO interference. The civil societies of both our countries have to vigorously persuade our leaders, over the short and long term. Sustainable prosperity cannot happen without this extended civil society effort. That means you and me.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------
Times of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-indispensable-regional-actor-US-report/articleshow/4363594.cms#write
---
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/US-think-tank-asks-Obama-to-acknowledge-Pak-as-N-power/articleshow/4362884.cms
--------------------------------------
Back from the Brink? A Strategy for Stabilizing Afghanistan-Pakistan
An Asia Society Task Force Report
April 2009
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/Afghanistan-PakistanTaskForce.pdf
Asia Society copyright
======================================================================================
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Social Justice, Ethical Democracy & the G-20
My Comment #61.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html
New York Times copyright
-------------
April 02, 2009 9:28 am
Obama, the first Black U.S. president is squandering an historic opportunity by failing to focus on socio-economic JUSTICE in the world at the G-20 summit.
I didn't expect him to, (even as I voted for him), because he performs Whiteness. He is rewarded for protecting and preserving the dominant status quo. He is the Black least threatening to the status quo. I voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils, not because I expected him to make Change I could Believe in.
The US economy and US foreign policy would both benefit if the US and other member nations of the G-20 focused on the havenots (their numbers are increasing) in the US and in the world. The member-nations representing the developing economies are still exhibiting a colonized dependent mindset.
The rich countries are already heavily "protectionist" and the so-called "free" market is loaded in favor of the rich looting economies.
Regulation, growth and development in the 21st century should be DRIVEN by the pragmatic idealism of social justice.
Sharing and being fair are important lessons learned in kindergarten.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html?s=1&pg=3
Global Leaders Meeting to Resolve Rift on Economic Plan
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 2, 2009
New York Times copyright
Updated: March 30, 2009
-----------------------------
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/group_of_20/index.html
The Group of 20, or G-20, is an international body that meets to discuss economic issues. Its members -- 19 countries with some of the world's biggest industrial and emerging economies, plus the European Union -- represent about 90 percent of the world's gross national product, 80 percent of world trade (including trade within the European Union) and two-thirds of the global population. The G-20, which represents a far broader range of the world's industrialized economies than the more Atlantic-oriented G-8, has taken on a new prominence in the current economic crisis. On April 2, 2009, its members will meet in London for a session expected to center around President Obama's push for greater economic stimulus around the globe, Europe's desire for a stronger framework of financial regulation and the desire of emerging economies, led by China, for a bigger role in economic dipomacy.
The G-20 was established as a response to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and to a "growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance," according to the G-20's public materials.
A smaller group of industrialized nations has been meeting since the 1970s (the G-7 and G-8, which convene finance ministers and heads of government, respectively). In the 1990s, given the extent of the Asian financial crisis, government leaders decided to involve a broader group of countries, including emerging market countries, to deal with the turmoil. A group of 22 countries ("G-22") and then a group of 33 countries ("G-33") met on an ad hoc basis. The G-20 was created in 1999 as a more permanent international economic body that includes representation from emerging countries. The member countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating council presidency and the European Central Bank.
The membership of the G-20 has not changed since it was established, and the organization says there are "no formal criteria for G-20 membership." With the exceptions of Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, all of the member countries fall within the list of the top 20 biggest state G.D.P.'s in the world (using the 2007 rankings from the C.I.A. World Factbook, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).
"I don't think it's a club you can join except by having a lot of economic growth," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Usually, the attendees of the annual meetings are the finance ministers and central bank governors of the member countries, plus top leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In November 2008, heads of government attended an emergency G-20 session held in Washington to deal with the crumbling of global credit.
The Washington meeting was referred to by many observers as a possible prelude to a sort of Bretton Woods II, meaning an event that marks the start of a new international financial framework. (The term Bretton Woods System refers to an international monetary system set up during a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, N.H.; it established, among other things, the I.M.F.).
The I.M.F., which had nearly become irrelevant before the current crisis, is now expected to be a focus of the London gathering. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who once worked at the fund, has called for its financial resources to be expanded by $500 billion, effectively tripling its lending capacity to distressed countries and cementing its status as the lender of last resort for much of the world.
Japan and the European Union have each pledged $100 billion; the United States has signaled it will contribute a similar sum, though its money will take longer to arrive because of the need for Congressional approval. China, with its mammoth foreign exchange reserves, is the next obvious donor.
Yet officials of China and other developing countries have served notice that they are reluctant to make comparable pledges without getting a greater say in the operations of the fund, which is run by a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and is heavily influenced by the United States and Western Europe.
New York Times copyright
=====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html
New York Times copyright
-------------
April 02, 2009 9:28 am
Obama, the first Black U.S. president is squandering an historic opportunity by failing to focus on socio-economic JUSTICE in the world at the G-20 summit.
I didn't expect him to, (even as I voted for him), because he performs Whiteness. He is rewarded for protecting and preserving the dominant status quo. He is the Black least threatening to the status quo. I voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils, not because I expected him to make Change I could Believe in.
The US economy and US foreign policy would both benefit if the US and other member nations of the G-20 focused on the havenots (their numbers are increasing) in the US and in the world. The member-nations representing the developing economies are still exhibiting a colonized dependent mindset.
The rich countries are already heavily "protectionist" and the so-called "free" market is loaded in favor of the rich looting economies.
Regulation, growth and development in the 21st century should be DRIVEN by the pragmatic idealism of social justice.
Sharing and being fair are important lessons learned in kindergarten.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/03/world/europe/03summit.html?s=1&pg=3
Global Leaders Meeting to Resolve Rift on Economic Plan
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 2, 2009
New York Times copyright
Updated: March 30, 2009
-----------------------------
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/group_of_20/index.html
The Group of 20, or G-20, is an international body that meets to discuss economic issues. Its members -- 19 countries with some of the world's biggest industrial and emerging economies, plus the European Union -- represent about 90 percent of the world's gross national product, 80 percent of world trade (including trade within the European Union) and two-thirds of the global population. The G-20, which represents a far broader range of the world's industrialized economies than the more Atlantic-oriented G-8, has taken on a new prominence in the current economic crisis. On April 2, 2009, its members will meet in London for a session expected to center around President Obama's push for greater economic stimulus around the globe, Europe's desire for a stronger framework of financial regulation and the desire of emerging economies, led by China, for a bigger role in economic dipomacy.
The G-20 was established as a response to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and to a "growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance," according to the G-20's public materials.
A smaller group of industrialized nations has been meeting since the 1970s (the G-7 and G-8, which convene finance ministers and heads of government, respectively). In the 1990s, given the extent of the Asian financial crisis, government leaders decided to involve a broader group of countries, including emerging market countries, to deal with the turmoil. A group of 22 countries ("G-22") and then a group of 33 countries ("G-33") met on an ad hoc basis. The G-20 was created in 1999 as a more permanent international economic body that includes representation from emerging countries. The member countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating council presidency and the European Central Bank.
The membership of the G-20 has not changed since it was established, and the organization says there are "no formal criteria for G-20 membership." With the exceptions of Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, all of the member countries fall within the list of the top 20 biggest state G.D.P.'s in the world (using the 2007 rankings from the C.I.A. World Factbook, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).
"I don't think it's a club you can join except by having a lot of economic growth," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Usually, the attendees of the annual meetings are the finance ministers and central bank governors of the member countries, plus top leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In November 2008, heads of government attended an emergency G-20 session held in Washington to deal with the crumbling of global credit.
The Washington meeting was referred to by many observers as a possible prelude to a sort of Bretton Woods II, meaning an event that marks the start of a new international financial framework. (The term Bretton Woods System refers to an international monetary system set up during a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, N.H.; it established, among other things, the I.M.F.).
The I.M.F., which had nearly become irrelevant before the current crisis, is now expected to be a focus of the London gathering. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who once worked at the fund, has called for its financial resources to be expanded by $500 billion, effectively tripling its lending capacity to distressed countries and cementing its status as the lender of last resort for much of the world.
Japan and the European Union have each pledged $100 billion; the United States has signaled it will contribute a similar sum, though its money will take longer to arrive because of the need for Congressional approval. China, with its mammoth foreign exchange reserves, is the next obvious donor.
Yet officials of China and other developing countries have served notice that they are reluctant to make comparable pledges without getting a greater say in the operations of the fund, which is run by a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and is heavily influenced by the United States and Western Europe.
New York Times copyright
=====================================================================================
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Ethical Self, The Sovereign State & the Public Sphere
There are perils in the construction of the Ethical Self. Arundhati Roy is a case in point. In her careful but subjectively selective defense of various causes, she ocassionally develops a blind spot while navigating the public sphere of South Asian or other regional civil society claims validations. This gives me pause. It shows the construction of the ethical self in the public sphere of civil society is fraught with peril and is by definition, a field of ethical trial and error (see Roy article below, Times of India copyright). WE in civil society are ALL vulnerable in our self-construction as ethical actors in the public sphere of the sovereign state. That is why DEMOCRACY is ALWAYS a work in progress, a work in progress and that ethical work of participation, vigilance, and self correction is never done.
----------------
My comment in response to Arundhati Roy's analysis of the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/usrmailcomment.cms?msid=4331986&usrmail=karunakaran.chithra@gmail.com&mailon_commented=1
Is Arundhati Roy reporting from Vellupalli Prabhakaran's bunker?
Does this piece account for the entangled history of the Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims,Christians Burgers, Marxists, and other splinter groups in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon?
Did a female LTTE cadre blow up India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Chennai?
Going back in time, Was SWRD Bandarnaike, free Ceylon's first Prime Minister who converted to Buddhism from Anglican Christianity, assassinated by a Buddhist monk? Were his wife, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandarnaike and his daughter Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga and her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga also targeted by earlier affiliates of what is know known as the LTTE, in assassination attempts and killed or greviously injured? Were scores of ethnic Buddhist political leaders as well as TAMIL political moderates injured or killed in assassination attempts by the LTTE cadres over the part 50 years?
Roy is on the wrong side of history on this one. Prabhakaran and the LTTE have been sowing the killing fields in Sri Lanka for the past several DECADES, not just days. The LTTE perfected suicide bombing; ethnic cleansing of Buddhists; capture and deployment of TAMIL child soldiers; TAMIL civilians, especially women as human shields, and other crimes against humanity.The LTTE sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of Sri Lankan govt. action.
Without a doubt there is a grave humanitarian crisis in that beautiful part of our South Asia region, where social justice once prevailed, and Sri Lanka once ranked high on the UN's HDI index. But the LTTE (roughly equivalent to LeT) is responsible for these earlier crimes as well as the current escalation.I was in Colombo traveling with my young sons, days after the LTTE bombed the airport, several years ago. It looked and smelled like the bathtub where the World Trade Center Towers once stood. That's terror for you and Roy cannot justify writing about it from her safe haven in New Delhi! I also live part of the year in Chennai and the Tamil political leaders in the DMK and the PMK have milked the LTTE sob story of Govt. retaliation for all it's worth.
(I don't mean the innocent Tamil civilians who are the main sufferers from LTTE terror, and now state-sponsored terror by the Sri Lankan military).
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The-silent-horror-of-the-war-in-Sri-Lanka/articleshow/4331986.cms#write
The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka
30 Mar 2009, 0027 hrs IST, Arundhati Roy
The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the
mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.
From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ‘‘welfare villages’’ have been established to house displaced
Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ‘‘will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting’’. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph:
‘‘A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.’’
Given its stated objective of ‘‘wiping out’’ the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ‘‘terrorists’’ does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.
Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ‘‘A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.’’
Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society ‘‘freeze with fear’’. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.
There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?
In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.
It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’ — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country.
It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late.
===================================================================================
----------------
My comment in response to Arundhati Roy's analysis of the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/usrmailcomment.cms?msid=4331986&usrmail=karunakaran.chithra@gmail.com&mailon_commented=1
Is Arundhati Roy reporting from Vellupalli Prabhakaran's bunker?
Does this piece account for the entangled history of the Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims,Christians Burgers, Marxists, and other splinter groups in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon?
Did a female LTTE cadre blow up India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Chennai?
Going back in time, Was SWRD Bandarnaike, free Ceylon's first Prime Minister who converted to Buddhism from Anglican Christianity, assassinated by a Buddhist monk? Were his wife, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandarnaike and his daughter Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga and her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga also targeted by earlier affiliates of what is know known as the LTTE, in assassination attempts and killed or greviously injured? Were scores of ethnic Buddhist political leaders as well as TAMIL political moderates injured or killed in assassination attempts by the LTTE cadres over the part 50 years?
Roy is on the wrong side of history on this one. Prabhakaran and the LTTE have been sowing the killing fields in Sri Lanka for the past several DECADES, not just days. The LTTE perfected suicide bombing; ethnic cleansing of Buddhists; capture and deployment of TAMIL child soldiers; TAMIL civilians, especially women as human shields, and other crimes against humanity.The LTTE sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of Sri Lankan govt. action.
Without a doubt there is a grave humanitarian crisis in that beautiful part of our South Asia region, where social justice once prevailed, and Sri Lanka once ranked high on the UN's HDI index. But the LTTE (roughly equivalent to LeT) is responsible for these earlier crimes as well as the current escalation.I was in Colombo traveling with my young sons, days after the LTTE bombed the airport, several years ago. It looked and smelled like the bathtub where the World Trade Center Towers once stood. That's terror for you and Roy cannot justify writing about it from her safe haven in New Delhi! I also live part of the year in Chennai and the Tamil political leaders in the DMK and the PMK have milked the LTTE sob story of Govt. retaliation for all it's worth.
(I don't mean the innocent Tamil civilians who are the main sufferers from LTTE terror, and now state-sponsored terror by the Sri Lankan military).
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The-silent-horror-of-the-war-in-Sri-Lanka/articleshow/4331986.cms#write
The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka
30 Mar 2009, 0027 hrs IST, Arundhati Roy
The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the
mainstream Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.
From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ‘‘welfare villages’’ have been established to house displaced
Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ‘‘will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting’’. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph:
‘‘A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.’’
Given its stated objective of ‘‘wiping out’’ the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ‘‘terrorists’’ does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.
Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ‘‘A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.’’
Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society ‘‘freeze with fear’’. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.
There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?
In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.
It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’ — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country.
It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late.
===================================================================================
Lula Blue Eyes & The Whiteness System
March 29th, 2009 9:41 am Comment #273.
March 29, 2009 12:34 pm
In referencing blue eyes, President Lula of Brasil was referencing the Global North, the colonizers, the imperialists, the neo-imperialists, the slave owners, the genociders.
It's not racist, it's not about being against the color blue for eyes, the sky, whatever.
We feel, we have experienced what some fail to see out of those particular peepers.
Lula could have eschewed the rhetorical biomarker and just come straight to the point about unequal power and inequitable distribution of resources, about the origins of poverty, hunger, disease in the Global South. But would such a bland statement catch the eye of the NYT?
Perhaps I missed it in Dowd's column but I also recall that famous TV jousting on Blue Eyes vs. Brown eyes, between Mike Wallace (who brought it up again and again) and the late Shah of Iran. The Shah was making exactly the same point as Lula is. Go Brasil! Go Iran!
As for Obama's brown eyes in the Whites' House, that Change is not one we can (yet) believe in, judging by his planned blue-eyed Cheneyesque escalation of the deadly drone and convoy US/NATO trespass in Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Perhaps, if my child was killed by a US unmanned drone, while I was working in my fields, I would end up as a "militant". The Blue-eyed, green-eyed, you-name-it-eyed "militants" all lumped together in the demonizing mainstream US media as "Taliban" in the Khyber are making the same point as Lula.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Op-Ed Columnist
Blue Eyed Greed?
Article
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 28, 2009
WASHINGTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/opinion/29dowd.html
NYTimes copyright
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYlvyZwHHU&feature=related
Shah of Iran, Mike Wallace
YouTube copyright
----------
See my Theory of Systemic Whiteness"
on this blog or Google it!
===================================================================================
March 29, 2009 12:34 pm
In referencing blue eyes, President Lula of Brasil was referencing the Global North, the colonizers, the imperialists, the neo-imperialists, the slave owners, the genociders.
It's not racist, it's not about being against the color blue for eyes, the sky, whatever.
We feel, we have experienced what some fail to see out of those particular peepers.
Lula could have eschewed the rhetorical biomarker and just come straight to the point about unequal power and inequitable distribution of resources, about the origins of poverty, hunger, disease in the Global South. But would such a bland statement catch the eye of the NYT?
Perhaps I missed it in Dowd's column but I also recall that famous TV jousting on Blue Eyes vs. Brown eyes, between Mike Wallace (who brought it up again and again) and the late Shah of Iran. The Shah was making exactly the same point as Lula is. Go Brasil! Go Iran!
As for Obama's brown eyes in the Whites' House, that Change is not one we can (yet) believe in, judging by his planned blue-eyed Cheneyesque escalation of the deadly drone and convoy US/NATO trespass in Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Perhaps, if my child was killed by a US unmanned drone, while I was working in my fields, I would end up as a "militant". The Blue-eyed, green-eyed, you-name-it-eyed "militants" all lumped together in the demonizing mainstream US media as "Taliban" in the Khyber are making the same point as Lula.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Op-Ed Columnist
Blue Eyed Greed?
Article
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 28, 2009
WASHINGTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/opinion/29dowd.html
NYTimes copyright
---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYlvyZwHHU&feature=related
Shah of Iran, Mike Wallace
YouTube copyright
----------
See my Theory of Systemic Whiteness"
on this blog or Google it!
===================================================================================
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Constructing the Ethical Self in Civil Society
Story Comments
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/05/news/local
Chithra Karunakaran wrote on Mar 28, 2009 2:32 PM:
" Lori Phanachone is one courageous education reformer. We could use her as Education Secretary.
I'm wondering if she had to change her Laotian name to something 'easy' that her monolingual, language-deprived white American teachers could pronounce. I was once asked by a Black school superintendent who was trying to get a date with me, if he could "call me Chichi or something simple like that." Yeah right.
As an immigrant woman of color who for 11 years has taught crosscultural psychology courses to diverse students at a public univ. in New York, the ELDA makes no sense in Lori's case. She could have easily been allowed to sign a waiver because of her scholarly accomplishments and her GPA.
However, common sense and fair assessments are in short supply in the profitmaking testing industry and in the education bureaucracy.
Lori, Don't let anyone tell you who you are and what you can be. That assistant principal is a cynical bigoted bureaucrat who should be dismissed for his double whammy racist putdown of Rosa Parks and you!
(You can Google my Theory of Systemic Whiteness). "
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------
Souix City Journal copyrighted article below:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/05/news/local/754d93a7a005ccb3862575700009cc99.txt?
Student rejects 'demeaning' test, is suspended
High achiever faces possible expulsion
By Russ Oechslin, Journal correspondent | Posted: Thursday, March 05, 2009
STORM LAKE, Iowa -- Lori Phanachone is a member of the National Honor Society, has a 3.9 grade point average and ranks seventh in the senior class of about 119 at Storm Lake High School.
But school officials have told her she is considered to be illiterate based on her refusal to satisfactorily complete the English Language Development Assessment, a test she says is demeaning and racist.
On Wednesday, Phanachone finished serving three days of in-school suspension for what school administrators say is insubordination. She faces another three days for continuing her silent protest with a second refusal to take the test. According to a written statement presented to her Wednesday, Phanachone said, she could be suspended again and then expelled for a fourth refusal.
"Mr. Ruleaux (assistant principal Beau Ruleaux) told me I was 'no Rosa Parks' -- that I should give up because I would not succeed in my protest," Phanachone said.
Senior Kristi Davis is one of several students who believe Phanachone is being treated unfairly and that her punishment is too harsh.
Davis called Phanachone "a really smart, very talented person. She has a passion for everything she does."
"Lori has never gotten into trouble or done anything bad," Davis said. "She's always been successful at anything she has done. But she sees this test as incredibly racist.
"Many minority kids don't want to take it. But Lori is the first to actually do something about it."
Scholarships threatened
The school district's curriculum coordinator, Lori Porsche, said taking the test is mandatory because Phanachone indicated on her school registration that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Her parents are Laotian and still speak little English.
Phanachone, who was born in California and lived in upstate New York before moving to Storm Lake with her family in 2006, said she has never been enrolled in any English Language Learning or English as a Second Language program.
"Someone told me I should have put English as my first language when I registered for school," Phanachone said. "But I refused. I will not deny who I am. And I will not disrespect my culture or my mother."
Until she was ordered to serve in-school suspension last week, Phanachone said, she had A's in speech, accounting, chemistry and English composition. Her poorest grade, a B-plus, was in pre-calculus. But she said she fears what might happen to her grades as a result of her suspensions and time out of the classroom.
Porsche declined to discuss Phanachone's academic record but did not dispute her achievement claims, which fellow students confirmed.
Phanachone said school administrators have told her her college scholarships -- $86,000 at Buena Vista University and more at Iowa State University, if that is her choice -- would disappear. "That's a lot of money. I worked for that. Nothing has been handed to me. I earned it."
"But I want to fight this because this is what I believe," she added. "It's wrong, not just for me but for all minority students. The test is demeaning."
Disagreement over test
Phanachone took the English Language Development Assessment test as a sophomore and admits she probably did poorly on the junior-year retake to check her progress because she marked the same answer for each of the multiple-choice questions in protest. "I filled in all C's because I wanted them to look at something beyond the test."
When she turned in the exam several hours ahead of the other students last year, she was forced to wait in solitary confinement for more than three hours before being excused.
The 155-question test takes four hours to complete.
"I waited all the next week to see if they were going to punish me, and they didn't. I don't think they knew what to do with me because they never had anyone refuse to take the test," she said.
However, she was told to take the test again this year. Porsche said the test is given without regard to a student's GPA or class rank.
"We have chosen to say that if you do not have a proficient score on this test that we need to reassess to make sure you are proficient in English," Porsche said.
Administrators in other Iowa school districts, and in the area education agencies that provide the tests, disagree over whether the test is mandatory as Porsche maintains.
Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency-8 Title III consultant Kathy Brenny, who has an office in Storm Lake, explained that students are identified as English language learners or English as a Second Language students when they enroll. But she said, "If they are proficient, then we don't have to give the test."
Tom Green of the Northwest Area Education Agency in Sioux City said there is federal policy in place to determine who takes the test. Phanachone's case "is an interesting question," he said and suggested, "A kid with a 3.9 GPA shouldn't be in an (English language learners) program."
In Davenport, where 300 to 400 of the public school system's 15,000 students are enrolled in English as a Second Language programs, Dawn Anderson-Rascher, director of assessment equity and record services, said that based on what she understood of the situation, Phanachone wouldn't meet the criteria for taking the test.
Support from classmates
Katie Shevel, who said she has a 4.0 grade point average, said the school would have been justified in imposing "maybe a detention or Saturday school. But to take away everything that she's ever worked for, when this test isn't in the high school curriculum -- to be threatening her with not being able to graduate -- it seems like too much."
"I think it is ridiculous for the administration to punish her the way they have," added Stephanie Emery, who shares classes with Phanachone.
"She has every right to protest taking the test, because in Storm Lake race isn't an issue. And that test singles out race. ... The only reason she didn't write English down as her first language was that she is proud of her heritage."
At this point, Phanachone said she is confused and stressed.
Because the Storm Lake Board of Education has called a special meeting on another matter for 7:30 a.m. today, Phanachone said she expects to be there, with legal representation, just in case her situation is brought up.
Some students plan to support her by staging a daylong protest outside the school Friday. But several of Phanachone's friends have tried to downplay the idea because Phanachone wants her protest to be more restrained.
"We want to be very mature about this," Davis said.
At a glance
The issue: Lori Phanachone, an honor student at Storm Lake High School, has had to serve in-school suspension and been threatened with expulsion and loss of college scholarships for refusing to take an English proficiency test.
What's happened so far: Phanachone has served three days of in-school suspension and is beginning a second round.
What's next: Phanachone and an attorney plan to appear at a school board meeting this morning in case her situation comes up. Some students want to stage an all-day protest Friday, but Phanachone and her friends want to make a more restrained statement.
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/05/news/local
Chithra Karunakaran wrote on Mar 28, 2009 2:32 PM:
" Lori Phanachone is one courageous education reformer. We could use her as Education Secretary.
I'm wondering if she had to change her Laotian name to something 'easy' that her monolingual, language-deprived white American teachers could pronounce. I was once asked by a Black school superintendent who was trying to get a date with me, if he could "call me Chichi or something simple like that." Yeah right.
As an immigrant woman of color who for 11 years has taught crosscultural psychology courses to diverse students at a public univ. in New York, the ELDA makes no sense in Lori's case. She could have easily been allowed to sign a waiver because of her scholarly accomplishments and her GPA.
However, common sense and fair assessments are in short supply in the profitmaking testing industry and in the education bureaucracy.
Lori, Don't let anyone tell you who you are and what you can be. That assistant principal is a cynical bigoted bureaucrat who should be dismissed for his double whammy racist putdown of Rosa Parks and you!
(You can Google my Theory of Systemic Whiteness). "
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------
Souix City Journal copyrighted article below:
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2009/03/05/news/local/754d93a7a005ccb3862575700009cc99.txt?
Student rejects 'demeaning' test, is suspended
High achiever faces possible expulsion
By Russ Oechslin, Journal correspondent | Posted: Thursday, March 05, 2009
STORM LAKE, Iowa -- Lori Phanachone is a member of the National Honor Society, has a 3.9 grade point average and ranks seventh in the senior class of about 119 at Storm Lake High School.
But school officials have told her she is considered to be illiterate based on her refusal to satisfactorily complete the English Language Development Assessment, a test she says is demeaning and racist.
On Wednesday, Phanachone finished serving three days of in-school suspension for what school administrators say is insubordination. She faces another three days for continuing her silent protest with a second refusal to take the test. According to a written statement presented to her Wednesday, Phanachone said, she could be suspended again and then expelled for a fourth refusal.
"Mr. Ruleaux (assistant principal Beau Ruleaux) told me I was 'no Rosa Parks' -- that I should give up because I would not succeed in my protest," Phanachone said.
Senior Kristi Davis is one of several students who believe Phanachone is being treated unfairly and that her punishment is too harsh.
Davis called Phanachone "a really smart, very talented person. She has a passion for everything she does."
"Lori has never gotten into trouble or done anything bad," Davis said. "She's always been successful at anything she has done. But she sees this test as incredibly racist.
"Many minority kids don't want to take it. But Lori is the first to actually do something about it."
Scholarships threatened
The school district's curriculum coordinator, Lori Porsche, said taking the test is mandatory because Phanachone indicated on her school registration that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Her parents are Laotian and still speak little English.
Phanachone, who was born in California and lived in upstate New York before moving to Storm Lake with her family in 2006, said she has never been enrolled in any English Language Learning or English as a Second Language program.
"Someone told me I should have put English as my first language when I registered for school," Phanachone said. "But I refused. I will not deny who I am. And I will not disrespect my culture or my mother."
Until she was ordered to serve in-school suspension last week, Phanachone said, she had A's in speech, accounting, chemistry and English composition. Her poorest grade, a B-plus, was in pre-calculus. But she said she fears what might happen to her grades as a result of her suspensions and time out of the classroom.
Porsche declined to discuss Phanachone's academic record but did not dispute her achievement claims, which fellow students confirmed.
Phanachone said school administrators have told her her college scholarships -- $86,000 at Buena Vista University and more at Iowa State University, if that is her choice -- would disappear. "That's a lot of money. I worked for that. Nothing has been handed to me. I earned it."
"But I want to fight this because this is what I believe," she added. "It's wrong, not just for me but for all minority students. The test is demeaning."
Disagreement over test
Phanachone took the English Language Development Assessment test as a sophomore and admits she probably did poorly on the junior-year retake to check her progress because she marked the same answer for each of the multiple-choice questions in protest. "I filled in all C's because I wanted them to look at something beyond the test."
When she turned in the exam several hours ahead of the other students last year, she was forced to wait in solitary confinement for more than three hours before being excused.
The 155-question test takes four hours to complete.
"I waited all the next week to see if they were going to punish me, and they didn't. I don't think they knew what to do with me because they never had anyone refuse to take the test," she said.
However, she was told to take the test again this year. Porsche said the test is given without regard to a student's GPA or class rank.
"We have chosen to say that if you do not have a proficient score on this test that we need to reassess to make sure you are proficient in English," Porsche said.
Administrators in other Iowa school districts, and in the area education agencies that provide the tests, disagree over whether the test is mandatory as Porsche maintains.
Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency-8 Title III consultant Kathy Brenny, who has an office in Storm Lake, explained that students are identified as English language learners or English as a Second Language students when they enroll. But she said, "If they are proficient, then we don't have to give the test."
Tom Green of the Northwest Area Education Agency in Sioux City said there is federal policy in place to determine who takes the test. Phanachone's case "is an interesting question," he said and suggested, "A kid with a 3.9 GPA shouldn't be in an (English language learners) program."
In Davenport, where 300 to 400 of the public school system's 15,000 students are enrolled in English as a Second Language programs, Dawn Anderson-Rascher, director of assessment equity and record services, said that based on what she understood of the situation, Phanachone wouldn't meet the criteria for taking the test.
Support from classmates
Katie Shevel, who said she has a 4.0 grade point average, said the school would have been justified in imposing "maybe a detention or Saturday school. But to take away everything that she's ever worked for, when this test isn't in the high school curriculum -- to be threatening her with not being able to graduate -- it seems like too much."
"I think it is ridiculous for the administration to punish her the way they have," added Stephanie Emery, who shares classes with Phanachone.
"She has every right to protest taking the test, because in Storm Lake race isn't an issue. And that test singles out race. ... The only reason she didn't write English down as her first language was that she is proud of her heritage."
At this point, Phanachone said she is confused and stressed.
Because the Storm Lake Board of Education has called a special meeting on another matter for 7:30 a.m. today, Phanachone said she expects to be there, with legal representation, just in case her situation is brought up.
Some students plan to support her by staging a daylong protest outside the school Friday. But several of Phanachone's friends have tried to downplay the idea because Phanachone wants her protest to be more restrained.
"We want to be very mature about this," Davis said.
At a glance
The issue: Lori Phanachone, an honor student at Storm Lake High School, has had to serve in-school suspension and been threatened with expulsion and loss of college scholarships for refusing to take an English proficiency test.
What's happened so far: Phanachone has served three days of in-school suspension and is beginning a second round.
What's next: Phanachone and an attorney plan to appear at a school board meeting this morning in case her situation comes up. Some students want to stage an all-day protest Friday, but Phanachone and her friends want to make a more restrained statement.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
US Sponsors Pakistan's Terror industry in South Asia
My comment which I made to the NYTimes Public editor as well as directly to the co-writers of this NYT article (in the absence of opportunity to make comments on the Times' pages):
The reporters (article below) Mazzetti and Schmitt completely fail to link US military and financial support for Pakistan's ISI, which is specifically mentioned in the article.
The reporters link the ISI to the Taliban, but not the US to the ISI.
How does the NYT expect the concerned but overburdened US public to make the link ( with the available evidence which the article already cites) if NYT's reporters don't?
If the US govt both directly and indirectly finances terror groups, then it must be acknowledged that the US runs a terror industry.
The US government's terror industry arms and finances the ISI which in turn arms and finances competing factions of the Pak-Afghan Taliban. This must also logically mean that the US is a state sponsor of terror.
NYT's reporting on South Asia needs to demonstrate greater acuity.
And who finances Pakistan's terror industry that operates throughout much of South Asia? The United States.
The Times writers fail to make the link between US financing, tactical support and training of the so-called "S Wing" of the Pak ISI, and the current terror operations of the ISI in Afghanistan.
Where is India in all of this? It is India's responsibility to its own citizens, to publicly hold the US accountable for its longstanding backing, finnacing, armed support of Pakistan's terror industry.
But successive Indian govts. will continue to fail to do so. Why? Because India is afraid of the 60-year cosy US-Pak relationship,and it is afraid to challenge the current US-led NATO geopolitical dominance over the South Asia region.
Therefore India is culpable. India lacks ethical responsibility to its citizens and it lacks ethical purpose in the South Asia region. A sovereign nation-state founded on ethical purpose now demonstrates a lack of it.
A Democracy without ethical purpose is a danger to itself.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------
Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/asia/26tribal.html?hp
New York Times copyright
--------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/asia/27taliban.html?hp
Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx
By CARLOTTA GALL 5:14 PM ET
NYTimes copyright
-------------------
Obama to Set Benchmarks in Fight Against Militants
By PETER BAKER and THOM SHANKER
Published: March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/washington/27prexy.html?hp
NYTimes copyright
===================================================================================
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/Pakistan_set_to_reap_35_billion_windfall_from_terrorism/articleshow/4318277.cms
Times of India copyright
Pakistan set to reap $35 billion windfall from terrorism
26 Mar 2009, 1340 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN
WASHINGTON: Terrorism pays. That may well be the message the United States and its allies send out to the world this week as they line up
billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan despite the country’s military and intelligence agencies being implicated by American officials in acts and practice of terrorism.
Ignoring confirmation about the Pakistan’s continued support and use of terrorism obtained through electronic surveillance and informants, and even brazen affirmation by Pakistani officialdom itself, the Obama administration is set to lavish a bonanza that might eventually add up to more than $ 30-$ 35 billion over the next decade.
About half the windfall will come from the US and the other half from its allies such as Japan, EU, and Gulf countries.
Washington is set to announce its largesse of around $ 15 billion of US tax-payer money in course of its new Af-Pak policy to be unveiled Friday, followed by a conference in Tokyo on April 17 of the so-called ''Friends of Pakistan'' where Islamabad is pitching for $ 10 billion.
This is in addition to the $ 7.6 billion pledged by the IMF and various donors, all at the instance of the United States, which believes Pakistan will disintegrate, with disastrous consequences all around, if it is not rescued with massive amounts of aid.
Congressional staff and sources associated with drawing up the aid package say there will be stringent conditions and tough oversight attached to the assistance, but critics of the policy regard the assurances as credulous. The Indian government has not opposed the package. ''If they (the United States) have not learned from the past, there is little we can do,'' one official said on background, referring to the Reagan era bonanza when untrammeled support for Pakistan’s military emboldened the country to adopt terrorism as a state policy.
That policy is still very much in place, going by a stunning page one New York Times account on Thursday in which Pakistani officials admit first-hand knowledge of ties between the ISI and extremists and even justify. They tell the paper that the contacts are less threatening than the American officials depict and are part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan for the day when American forces would withdraw and leave what they fear could be a power vacuum to be filled by India.
''In intelligence, you have to be in contact with your enemy or you are running blind,'' the paper quotes a senior Pakistani military officer as describing Islamabad’s strategy of backing the terrorists. But evidently, Pakistan's activity constitutes more than just contact with the enemy.
The NYT account, striking for the candid detail revealed by unnamed US and Pakistani officials, said Pakistan’s support to the Taliban and other militant outfits is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of the ISI. The report says the ISI also shared intelligence with Lashkar-e-Taiba accused in the Mumbai attacks and ''provided protection for it.'' It did say when this cooperation and protection took place.
But other new details reveal that the ISI is aiding a broader array of militant outfits with more diverse types of support than was previously known, even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI’s playing a double game had ended, the paper reported. One such outfit is the Haqqani network, which by American accounts bombed the Indian Embassy in Kabul with help from the ISI.
The attack killed 54 people, including an Indian diplomat and a military commander. Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI Director-General, subsequently described the Haqqani network as Pakistan’s ''strategic asset.''
But according to the NYT, the ISI’s S wing not only helps such networks with fuel and ammunition to fight American troops in Afghanistan, but also replenishes its ranks with recruits from madrassas in Pakistan. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections, it said.
None of this appears to have made a whit of a difference in the planned US largesse for Pakistan. If anything, US officials and analysts argue it is all the more reason to rush aid to Pakistan so that its democracy and social sector can be strengthened and it can be walked away from the abyss. ''If there is a better way to do this, we are all ears,'' a senior Congressional aide involved in the process, said. While some analysts say that Pakistan extracts aid by pointing a gun to its own head, key figures in the Washington establishment don't want to take the chance that Pakistan ends up falling into the abyss.
US officials, who typically make strenuous effort to shield the Pakistani leadership from charges of fomenting terrorism, maintain that mid-level ISI operatives cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses. They say it is unlikely that top officials in Islamabad are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts. But Pakistani officials themselves appear to scoff at American credulity in the NYT report, saying it is part of their long term strategy to keep their options open when the U.S withdraws from Afghanistan.
That expectation got a boost this week when US President Barack Obama spoke of an ''exit strategy'' in Afghanistan. Although Obama did not specifically refer to any troop withdrawals (on the contrary, he has just directed induction of 17,000 more troops), the fact that Washington is even contemplating an exit strategy seems to justify Pakistan’s outlook of keeping its Taliban and terrorism powder dry.
--------------------------
The reporters (article below) Mazzetti and Schmitt completely fail to link US military and financial support for Pakistan's ISI, which is specifically mentioned in the article.
The reporters link the ISI to the Taliban, but not the US to the ISI.
How does the NYT expect the concerned but overburdened US public to make the link ( with the available evidence which the article already cites) if NYT's reporters don't?
If the US govt both directly and indirectly finances terror groups, then it must be acknowledged that the US runs a terror industry.
The US government's terror industry arms and finances the ISI which in turn arms and finances competing factions of the Pak-Afghan Taliban. This must also logically mean that the US is a state sponsor of terror.
NYT's reporting on South Asia needs to demonstrate greater acuity.
And who finances Pakistan's terror industry that operates throughout much of South Asia? The United States.
The Times writers fail to make the link between US financing, tactical support and training of the so-called "S Wing" of the Pak ISI, and the current terror operations of the ISI in Afghanistan.
Where is India in all of this? It is India's responsibility to its own citizens, to publicly hold the US accountable for its longstanding backing, finnacing, armed support of Pakistan's terror industry.
But successive Indian govts. will continue to fail to do so. Why? Because India is afraid of the 60-year cosy US-Pak relationship,and it is afraid to challenge the current US-led NATO geopolitical dominance over the South Asia region.
Therefore India is culpable. India lacks ethical responsibility to its citizens and it lacks ethical purpose in the South Asia region. A sovereign nation-state founded on ethical purpose now demonstrates a lack of it.
A Democracy without ethical purpose is a danger to itself.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------
Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/asia/26tribal.html?hp
New York Times copyright
--------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/asia/27taliban.html?hp
Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx
By CARLOTTA GALL 5:14 PM ET
NYTimes copyright
-------------------
Obama to Set Benchmarks in Fight Against Militants
By PETER BAKER and THOM SHANKER
Published: March 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/washington/27prexy.html?hp
NYTimes copyright
===================================================================================
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/Pakistan_set_to_reap_35_billion_windfall_from_terrorism/articleshow/4318277.cms
Times of India copyright
Pakistan set to reap $35 billion windfall from terrorism
26 Mar 2009, 1340 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN
WASHINGTON: Terrorism pays. That may well be the message the United States and its allies send out to the world this week as they line up
billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan despite the country’s military and intelligence agencies being implicated by American officials in acts and practice of terrorism.
Ignoring confirmation about the Pakistan’s continued support and use of terrorism obtained through electronic surveillance and informants, and even brazen affirmation by Pakistani officialdom itself, the Obama administration is set to lavish a bonanza that might eventually add up to more than $ 30-$ 35 billion over the next decade.
About half the windfall will come from the US and the other half from its allies such as Japan, EU, and Gulf countries.
Washington is set to announce its largesse of around $ 15 billion of US tax-payer money in course of its new Af-Pak policy to be unveiled Friday, followed by a conference in Tokyo on April 17 of the so-called ''Friends of Pakistan'' where Islamabad is pitching for $ 10 billion.
This is in addition to the $ 7.6 billion pledged by the IMF and various donors, all at the instance of the United States, which believes Pakistan will disintegrate, with disastrous consequences all around, if it is not rescued with massive amounts of aid.
Congressional staff and sources associated with drawing up the aid package say there will be stringent conditions and tough oversight attached to the assistance, but critics of the policy regard the assurances as credulous. The Indian government has not opposed the package. ''If they (the United States) have not learned from the past, there is little we can do,'' one official said on background, referring to the Reagan era bonanza when untrammeled support for Pakistan’s military emboldened the country to adopt terrorism as a state policy.
That policy is still very much in place, going by a stunning page one New York Times account on Thursday in which Pakistani officials admit first-hand knowledge of ties between the ISI and extremists and even justify. They tell the paper that the contacts are less threatening than the American officials depict and are part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan for the day when American forces would withdraw and leave what they fear could be a power vacuum to be filled by India.
''In intelligence, you have to be in contact with your enemy or you are running blind,'' the paper quotes a senior Pakistani military officer as describing Islamabad’s strategy of backing the terrorists. But evidently, Pakistan's activity constitutes more than just contact with the enemy.
The NYT account, striking for the candid detail revealed by unnamed US and Pakistani officials, said Pakistan’s support to the Taliban and other militant outfits is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of the ISI. The report says the ISI also shared intelligence with Lashkar-e-Taiba accused in the Mumbai attacks and ''provided protection for it.'' It did say when this cooperation and protection took place.
But other new details reveal that the ISI is aiding a broader array of militant outfits with more diverse types of support than was previously known, even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI’s playing a double game had ended, the paper reported. One such outfit is the Haqqani network, which by American accounts bombed the Indian Embassy in Kabul with help from the ISI.
The attack killed 54 people, including an Indian diplomat and a military commander. Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI Director-General, subsequently described the Haqqani network as Pakistan’s ''strategic asset.''
But according to the NYT, the ISI’s S wing not only helps such networks with fuel and ammunition to fight American troops in Afghanistan, but also replenishes its ranks with recruits from madrassas in Pakistan. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections, it said.
None of this appears to have made a whit of a difference in the planned US largesse for Pakistan. If anything, US officials and analysts argue it is all the more reason to rush aid to Pakistan so that its democracy and social sector can be strengthened and it can be walked away from the abyss. ''If there is a better way to do this, we are all ears,'' a senior Congressional aide involved in the process, said. While some analysts say that Pakistan extracts aid by pointing a gun to its own head, key figures in the Washington establishment don't want to take the chance that Pakistan ends up falling into the abyss.
US officials, who typically make strenuous effort to shield the Pakistani leadership from charges of fomenting terrorism, maintain that mid-level ISI operatives cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses. They say it is unlikely that top officials in Islamabad are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts. But Pakistani officials themselves appear to scoff at American credulity in the NYT report, saying it is part of their long term strategy to keep their options open when the U.S withdraws from Afghanistan.
That expectation got a boost this week when US President Barack Obama spoke of an ''exit strategy'' in Afghanistan. Although Obama did not specifically refer to any troop withdrawals (on the contrary, he has just directed induction of 17,000 more troops), the fact that Washington is even contemplating an exit strategy seems to justify Pakistan’s outlook of keeping its Taliban and terrorism powder dry.
--------------------------
Friday, March 20, 2009
Brand Obama: New, Improved, but Really the Same?
My Comment #53.
March 20, 2009 9:30 am
New and Improved but really the Same?
Brand Obama is peddling the same State Department/CIA ideology that has trumped US foreign policy for the past 60 years. Different style, same substance.
Pepsi vs. Coke.
Is the Obama on the White House-generated Nowroz video, the same Obama who promised AIPAC to do whatever it takes to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Since the US and Israel are both nuclear powers what would motivate Iran NOT to become one?
I don't think Iran and Iranians will buy Obama's line, but Iran will pragmatically play along, because, really, nothing's changed. Iran has its own rapidly shifting internal and regional priorities and challenges and the US has intervened in both, for more than a half-century. Eisenhower warned about the "military industrial complex" developing during his time in the White House. Iran's leaders and their civil society are heeding that warning.
Iran is a proud and ancient world culture, a regional power, a sovereign nation-state that the US has endlessly meddled with, and Iran, like it or not, is shortly to become a full-fledged nuclear power, for both defensive and civil society uses. Suck it up.
The US has to stop playing sanction-wielding Global Cop in every region of the world, and instead the US must focus on trying to shore up its own toppling economic structure, that has had disastrous repercussions on other sovereign-state economies.
The US also needs to come to the table in a spirit of cooperation and join with other nations in combating hunger, homelessness, disease, become a partner in social and economic and political justice.
That would be Change that the rest of us can Believe in.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
Recommended
----------------------------
In a Video Appeal to Iran, Obama Offers a ‘New Day’
Invoking art, history and “common humanity,” President Obama appealed for a shift away from decades of confrontation.
By ALAN COWELL
Published: March 20, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.whitehouse.gov/Nowruz/
White House public media
================================================================================
March 20, 2009 9:30 am
New and Improved but really the Same?
Brand Obama is peddling the same State Department/CIA ideology that has trumped US foreign policy for the past 60 years. Different style, same substance.
Pepsi vs. Coke.
Is the Obama on the White House-generated Nowroz video, the same Obama who promised AIPAC to do whatever it takes to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Since the US and Israel are both nuclear powers what would motivate Iran NOT to become one?
I don't think Iran and Iranians will buy Obama's line, but Iran will pragmatically play along, because, really, nothing's changed. Iran has its own rapidly shifting internal and regional priorities and challenges and the US has intervened in both, for more than a half-century. Eisenhower warned about the "military industrial complex" developing during his time in the White House. Iran's leaders and their civil society are heeding that warning.
Iran is a proud and ancient world culture, a regional power, a sovereign nation-state that the US has endlessly meddled with, and Iran, like it or not, is shortly to become a full-fledged nuclear power, for both defensive and civil society uses. Suck it up.
The US has to stop playing sanction-wielding Global Cop in every region of the world, and instead the US must focus on trying to shore up its own toppling economic structure, that has had disastrous repercussions on other sovereign-state economies.
The US also needs to come to the table in a spirit of cooperation and join with other nations in combating hunger, homelessness, disease, become a partner in social and economic and political justice.
That would be Change that the rest of us can Believe in.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
Recommended
----------------------------
In a Video Appeal to Iran, Obama Offers a ‘New Day’
Invoking art, history and “common humanity,” President Obama appealed for a shift away from decades of confrontation.
By ALAN COWELL
Published: March 20, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.whitehouse.gov/Nowruz/
White House public media
================================================================================
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A Democratic Moment in Pakistan?
March 15th, 2009 1:27 pm
A Democratic Moment in Pakistan?
The street demonstrations of the "long march" to Islamabad and the clashes in several towns and cities are a shining moment for Pakistanis in their perilous journey towards democracy.
This is especially a moment when no third country should interfere in the process.
The US is already unwisely injecting itself into this process. But ordinary Pakistanis, their lawyers and their political leaders are showing again that they can handle their own affairs.
The Pakistanis deserve praise for their civic participation.
It is hoped that these civil society efforts will bring back an independent judiciary and reinstate the judges removed by Musharraf.
I fervently hope that ordinary Pakistanis will try civil disobedience and non-violence as effective strategies, lessons we learned and practiced across the border in India early on in our own making of an unprecedented democracy (oh yes, still flawed but an admirable and astonishing work in progress).
US and NATO out of South Asia, ASAP.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
--------------------------------------------------------------
Mass Demonstration Defies Pakistani Government
Police officers clashed with protesters in Lahore on Sunday as government efforts to suppress a demonstration collapsed.
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: March 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/world/asia/16pstan.html?hp
New York Times Copyright
-------------
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Break-in-Pak-ranks-Sharif-heads-for-capital/articleshow/4268109.cms
Times of India copyright
----------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031500096_Comments.html
Pakistan Security Forces, Protesters Clash Amid Growing Unrest
By Pamela Constable
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031500096.html?hpid=topnews
Washington Post copyright
=================================================================================
A Democratic Moment in Pakistan?
The street demonstrations of the "long march" to Islamabad and the clashes in several towns and cities are a shining moment for Pakistanis in their perilous journey towards democracy.
This is especially a moment when no third country should interfere in the process.
The US is already unwisely injecting itself into this process. But ordinary Pakistanis, their lawyers and their political leaders are showing again that they can handle their own affairs.
The Pakistanis deserve praise for their civic participation.
It is hoped that these civil society efforts will bring back an independent judiciary and reinstate the judges removed by Musharraf.
I fervently hope that ordinary Pakistanis will try civil disobedience and non-violence as effective strategies, lessons we learned and practiced across the border in India early on in our own making of an unprecedented democracy (oh yes, still flawed but an admirable and astonishing work in progress).
US and NATO out of South Asia, ASAP.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
--------------------------------------------------------------
Mass Demonstration Defies Pakistani Government
Police officers clashed with protesters in Lahore on Sunday as government efforts to suppress a demonstration collapsed.
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: March 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/world/asia/16pstan.html?hp
New York Times Copyright
-------------
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Break-in-Pak-ranks-Sharif-heads-for-capital/articleshow/4268109.cms
Times of India copyright
----------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031500096_Comments.html
Pakistan Security Forces, Protesters Clash Amid Growing Unrest
By Pamela Constable
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031500096.html?hpid=topnews
Washington Post copyright
=================================================================================
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
My comment #13.
March 13, 2009 8:10 am
Link
March 13th, 2009 0:40 am
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
Sorry bureaucrats and politicians, you can't eat democracy and the right to vote. People need food.
The video that accompanies the article (below) is horrifying. It provided images of the most egregious cases of malnutrition, images I have never seen in all my years traveling all over India. They certainly exist.
Child and women's malnutrition especially are rampant in the poorest, most economically disadvantaged parts of India, but also where GROWTH trumps DEVELOPMENT.
While the article provided information on increased malnutrition in growth-driven Gujarat and Maharashtra it would have been useful to contrast this with data from say, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where more equitable socio-economic conditions have prioritized development over growth and likely lessened malnutrition.
Absolute hunger among is prevalent among infants, toddlers and young children in India, but there is a pronounced pattern of child and women's malnutrition in those parts of India where patriarchy is the incontestable norm; women don't have land rights; women's educational attainment is low; public health and other social services are negligible.
What is unsupportable is the India government's criminal policy of stockpiling foodgrains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in rodent-infested warehouses, when clearly the most urgent priority must be given to distribute a variety of food staples rapidly and efficiently to people in areas where it is most needed.
As the article and video make clear, malnutrition is entirely preventable and is costly for education, health, employment and other sectors of the Indian economy.
While the government clearly must do much more, this is a problem that requires vigorous and widespread civil society consciousness-raising and participation to grapple with this shameful inequity that cruelly denies our children (as well as their mothers) a most basic need.
Democracy is a mockery without it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 34 Readers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists
Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 12, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/13/world
/asia/13malnutrition.html#postComment
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/13/world/asia/20090313-malnutrition-audioss/index.html
New York Times copyright
Additional sources:
UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/index.php
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
http://www.ifpri.org/
World Health Organization (WHO)
http://www.who.int/countries/ind/en/
all sources are copyrighted by the related organizations
===================================================================================
March 13, 2009 8:10 am
Link
March 13th, 2009 0:40 am
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
Sorry bureaucrats and politicians, you can't eat democracy and the right to vote. People need food.
The video that accompanies the article (below) is horrifying. It provided images of the most egregious cases of malnutrition, images I have never seen in all my years traveling all over India. They certainly exist.
Child and women's malnutrition especially are rampant in the poorest, most economically disadvantaged parts of India, but also where GROWTH trumps DEVELOPMENT.
While the article provided information on increased malnutrition in growth-driven Gujarat and Maharashtra it would have been useful to contrast this with data from say, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where more equitable socio-economic conditions have prioritized development over growth and likely lessened malnutrition.
Absolute hunger among is prevalent among infants, toddlers and young children in India, but there is a pronounced pattern of child and women's malnutrition in those parts of India where patriarchy is the incontestable norm; women don't have land rights; women's educational attainment is low; public health and other social services are negligible.
What is unsupportable is the India government's criminal policy of stockpiling foodgrains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in rodent-infested warehouses, when clearly the most urgent priority must be given to distribute a variety of food staples rapidly and efficiently to people in areas where it is most needed.
As the article and video make clear, malnutrition is entirely preventable and is costly for education, health, employment and other sectors of the Indian economy.
While the government clearly must do much more, this is a problem that requires vigorous and widespread civil society consciousness-raising and participation to grapple with this shameful inequity that cruelly denies our children (as well as their mothers) a most basic need.
Democracy is a mockery without it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 34 Readers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists
Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 12, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/13/world
/asia/13malnutrition.html#postComment
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/13/world/asia/20090313-malnutrition-audioss/index.html
New York Times copyright
Additional sources:
UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/index.php
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
http://www.ifpri.org/
World Health Organization (WHO)
http://www.who.int/countries/ind/en/
all sources are copyrighted by the related organizations
===================================================================================
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- Again
Dalai Lama Harshly Condemns China Over Tibet
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html?hp
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html
New York Times copyright
------------------------------
My comment #46
March 10th, 2009 9:15 am
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- again
This is a 50 year dilemma, originating in and fueled by imperial British "buffer state" Tibet policy.
The memory of the mis-named 'uprising' definitely calls for a celebration, something the Chinese government will not tolerate.
How can China possibly permit a celebration that calls attention to its own oppression?! The Beijing Govt. is on the wrong side of history.
The Dalai Lama has never asked for outright liberation and nation-state sovereignty for Tibet. The Dalai Lama has reasonably and rightly maintained that Tibetans can be part of China, while the Chinese for their part need to respect both in letter and spirit, religious, cultural freedom and economic freedoms of Tibetans.
Instead the Chinese have operated with a heavy hand, centralizing instead of devolving local power into the hands of Tibetans. China has an almost unbroken history of centralized government, the Beijing govt. simply doesn't know any better at this stage in their own development.
Note that Dharmsala is in India. The Dalai Lama and his thousands of followers have lived in India since 1959 when the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama fled to India and were given peaceful refuge here.
Dharmsala is no Darfur.
I grew up in India seeing and hearing about the Dalai Lama who was a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru, (a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement), and other Indian political leaders. Tibetans over the years have been born in India in the half century that their "country" has been under occupation. They have lived and worked throughout India as well as sought refuge and economic opportunity throughout the world. However, Tibetans are entitled to their own historic homeland, which of course they can and must peacefully share with others, local ethnic Chinese especially who have also lived there historically.
The Dalai Lama has never pressed for Tibetan independence from China while residing in India, because to press for Tibetan independence would jeopardize India's rightful stand on sovereignty over Kashmir. Indian secularism and democracy are being tested in Kashmir, no less than the less visible quandary of Tibetan refugee rights to enjoy freedom while in their long unfair exile. In any event, Tibet and Kashmir are not comparable, they each follow a distinct colonial and post-colonial trajectory.
If only China can be quietly yet urgently persuaded to allow 1) full cultural religious freedoms of Tibetans, 2) unconditional right of Tibetans to return if they please to their ancient, peaceful homeland, 3) to develop their own unique notion of being a 'people.' in the world.
Idealistic pragmatism can be the ethical choice in Tibet. The loss of the ancient ways in Tibet (while Tibetans themselves, not Beijing, decide how they want to shape their own lives in a modern Tibet), would be a loss for us all.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends toward Tibet and the Tibetan people.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 28 Readers
===================================================================================
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html?hp
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html
New York Times copyright
------------------------------
My comment #46
March 10th, 2009 9:15 am
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- again
This is a 50 year dilemma, originating in and fueled by imperial British "buffer state" Tibet policy.
The memory of the mis-named 'uprising' definitely calls for a celebration, something the Chinese government will not tolerate.
How can China possibly permit a celebration that calls attention to its own oppression?! The Beijing Govt. is on the wrong side of history.
The Dalai Lama has never asked for outright liberation and nation-state sovereignty for Tibet. The Dalai Lama has reasonably and rightly maintained that Tibetans can be part of China, while the Chinese for their part need to respect both in letter and spirit, religious, cultural freedom and economic freedoms of Tibetans.
Instead the Chinese have operated with a heavy hand, centralizing instead of devolving local power into the hands of Tibetans. China has an almost unbroken history of centralized government, the Beijing govt. simply doesn't know any better at this stage in their own development.
Note that Dharmsala is in India. The Dalai Lama and his thousands of followers have lived in India since 1959 when the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama fled to India and were given peaceful refuge here.
Dharmsala is no Darfur.
I grew up in India seeing and hearing about the Dalai Lama who was a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru, (a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement), and other Indian political leaders. Tibetans over the years have been born in India in the half century that their "country" has been under occupation. They have lived and worked throughout India as well as sought refuge and economic opportunity throughout the world. However, Tibetans are entitled to their own historic homeland, which of course they can and must peacefully share with others, local ethnic Chinese especially who have also lived there historically.
The Dalai Lama has never pressed for Tibetan independence from China while residing in India, because to press for Tibetan independence would jeopardize India's rightful stand on sovereignty over Kashmir. Indian secularism and democracy are being tested in Kashmir, no less than the less visible quandary of Tibetan refugee rights to enjoy freedom while in their long unfair exile. In any event, Tibet and Kashmir are not comparable, they each follow a distinct colonial and post-colonial trajectory.
If only China can be quietly yet urgently persuaded to allow 1) full cultural religious freedoms of Tibetans, 2) unconditional right of Tibetans to return if they please to their ancient, peaceful homeland, 3) to develop their own unique notion of being a 'people.' in the world.
Idealistic pragmatism can be the ethical choice in Tibet. The loss of the ancient ways in Tibet (while Tibetans themselves, not Beijing, decide how they want to shape their own lives in a modern Tibet), would be a loss for us all.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends toward Tibet and the Tibetan people.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 28 Readers
===================================================================================
Thursday, March 5, 2009
A New Ethical World Economy with an OLD World Bank and IMF?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/opinion/05thu1.html
NYTimes Editorial
The Crisis at Home and Abroad
Published: March 4, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Comment #79.
March 05, 2009 11:55 am
Link
Capital-focused/capital intensive development, as emphasized by both The World Bank and the IMF, has definite longterm drawbacks. Both these entities have produced debtor nation-states. This is particularly so in the so-called 'developing' world (these areas, now liberated sovereign nation-states were deliberately UNDERDEVELOPED and exploited in the recent colonial and now ongoing neo-imperial period).
The capital mainly flows from external elites to internal elites, following a failed trickle down ideology.
As we have seen, growth and development are not the same thing. The world's interlocked economies cannot support unfettered market-driven GROWTH and endless consumption, but they can collectively support equitable DEVELOPMENT, driven by polices and practices of social justice, conservation, resource-sharing and other pro-poor, pro-people initiatives, demilitarization included.
This alternate innovative approach is not idly utopian -- social justice delivers economic benefits. So far, the US, the World Bank and the IMF, and the internal elites of developing civil socities have failed to make that crucial connection.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
NYTimes Editorial
The Crisis at Home and Abroad
Published: March 4, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Comment #79.
March 05, 2009 11:55 am
Link
Capital-focused/capital intensive development, as emphasized by both The World Bank and the IMF, has definite longterm drawbacks. Both these entities have produced debtor nation-states. This is particularly so in the so-called 'developing' world (these areas, now liberated sovereign nation-states were deliberately UNDERDEVELOPED and exploited in the recent colonial and now ongoing neo-imperial period).
The capital mainly flows from external elites to internal elites, following a failed trickle down ideology.
As we have seen, growth and development are not the same thing. The world's interlocked economies cannot support unfettered market-driven GROWTH and endless consumption, but they can collectively support equitable DEVELOPMENT, driven by polices and practices of social justice, conservation, resource-sharing and other pro-poor, pro-people initiatives, demilitarization included.
This alternate innovative approach is not idly utopian -- social justice delivers economic benefits. So far, the US, the World Bank and the IMF, and the internal elites of developing civil socities have failed to make that crucial connection.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A United State of Palestine for All the People?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/washington/05diplo.html
Clinton Meets West Bank Palestinian Leaders
By MARK LANDLER
Published: March 4, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------
My comment #3.
March 04, 2009 8:15 am
Link
March 4th, 2009 6:31 am
Loved that pic of Clinton and Peres. It will speak to people everywhere. Can Hamas top that?
Secretary Clinton spoke candidly but she tried to drive a wedge (classic neo-imperial divide and rule strategy) between other states in the region and Palestinians, by claiming “They feel that Iran tries to undermine their regimes,”.
The US cannot be a honest broker because it has satellized Israel to advance the US's own interests in the region. Unethical failed strategy, that has failed for 60 years.
There are human, humane concerns that urgently need to be addressed:
We know no people without a land of their ancestors. So Jews cannot be denied a historic homeland.
But at the same time, We know no people who do not SHARE land, try and live with each other, share each others' culture, though in this case both Palestinian and Israeli political leaders (and their US handlers?) may unfortunately have narrowly defined, personally ambitious, self-serving goals that go against the Greater Collective Good of Israelis and Palestinians. However ordinary folks there, like you and me, have the capacity to get along.
Therefore the United State of Palestine (it has a nice ring!) can and must become a reality during our lifetime.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends towards a United State of Palestine, with Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims and numerous other religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities sharing a modern multiethnic, multireligious, sovereign democratic nation-state.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Clinton Meets West Bank Palestinian Leaders
By MARK LANDLER
Published: March 4, 2009
New York Times copyright
------------------
My comment #3.
March 04, 2009 8:15 am
Link
March 4th, 2009 6:31 am
Loved that pic of Clinton and Peres. It will speak to people everywhere. Can Hamas top that?
Secretary Clinton spoke candidly but she tried to drive a wedge (classic neo-imperial divide and rule strategy) between other states in the region and Palestinians, by claiming “They feel that Iran tries to undermine their regimes,”.
The US cannot be a honest broker because it has satellized Israel to advance the US's own interests in the region. Unethical failed strategy, that has failed for 60 years.
There are human, humane concerns that urgently need to be addressed:
We know no people without a land of their ancestors. So Jews cannot be denied a historic homeland.
But at the same time, We know no people who do not SHARE land, try and live with each other, share each others' culture, though in this case both Palestinian and Israeli political leaders (and their US handlers?) may unfortunately have narrowly defined, personally ambitious, self-serving goals that go against the Greater Collective Good of Israelis and Palestinians. However ordinary folks there, like you and me, have the capacity to get along.
Therefore the United State of Palestine (it has a nice ring!) can and must become a reality during our lifetime.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends towards a United State of Palestine, with Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims and numerous other religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities sharing a modern multiethnic, multireligious, sovereign democratic nation-state.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Obama's New Cold War
Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter
By PETER BAKER
Published: March 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/washington/03prexy.html?hp
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/03/washington/03prexy.html#postComment
New York Times copyright
----------------------
The core problem with US foreign policy for the past 60 years is its exceptionalist, triumphalist,supremacist, dictatorial and interfering posture, matched by a 60-year accumulation of actions of unparalleled state-sponsored violence marked by invasion, occupation, militarization, nuclearization, destabilization, satellization.
That foreign policy posture and actions in the West Asia and Central Asia regions has a counterproductive Israel subtext, as well as affirms that the US continues to maintain its confrontational Cold War stance in a post-Cold War, multipolar era of sovereign-state intra andinter-regional alliances that do not necessarily include the US, or Russia for that matter.
Obama's "secret" (what happened to transparency?) reportedly hand-delivered letter to Russia's President Medvedev, three weeks ago, attempts to dictate and micromanage geopolitics in West Asia and Central Asia, which the last time I looked is not where the US is located. The sovereign nation-state stakeholders in these regions have every right to safeguard their perceived local interests without the US menacing nation-states that are located there.
Q. Why shouldn't Russia help Iran nuclearize? Iran and Russia are strategic neighbors, the US is not. Did the US nuclearize Israel?
Q. Why shouldn't Iran develop nuclear power for both military and civilian purposes? The US, Israel and Russia are all nuclear. The last two are regional neighbors, the US is not.
In the adjoining South Asia region, Pakistan and India are nuclear. What would motivate Iran NOT to nuclearize and Russia NOT to help Iran do so?
Obama's shopworn Star Wars bargaining chip of a National Missile Defense Shield (NMD) suspension wont wash with Iran, especially since the US helped Israel develop its Arrow missile system which has been successfully tested repeatedly by the US and Israel acting in combination. Is it possible, therefore, both Iran and Russia might feel their respective national security interests are threatened by such unilateral and unprovoked militarization in their backyard?
Obama's foreign policy in Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia is likely to be no different than that of his white male predecessors.
Superpower foreign policy ideology trumps race.
At the same time, supremacist ideology in U.S. foreign policy has its roots in white male dominance (developed and enforced during three centuries of slavery and genocide of indigenous people in the US, by white males), in which all 'others' are racialized and rendered inferior. Obama is embedded in that Whiteness system and rewarded by it.
Change We Can Believe In? A new and ethical direction for US foreign policy where strategic interests are sincerely attempted to be aligned with ethical concerns ?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
See Theory of Systemic Whiteness and related articles
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
By PETER BAKER
Published: March 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/washington/03prexy.html?hp
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/03/washington/03prexy.html#postComment
New York Times copyright
----------------------
The core problem with US foreign policy for the past 60 years is its exceptionalist, triumphalist,supremacist, dictatorial and interfering posture, matched by a 60-year accumulation of actions of unparalleled state-sponsored violence marked by invasion, occupation, militarization, nuclearization, destabilization, satellization.
That foreign policy posture and actions in the West Asia and Central Asia regions has a counterproductive Israel subtext, as well as affirms that the US continues to maintain its confrontational Cold War stance in a post-Cold War, multipolar era of sovereign-state intra andinter-regional alliances that do not necessarily include the US, or Russia for that matter.
Obama's "secret" (what happened to transparency?) reportedly hand-delivered letter to Russia's President Medvedev, three weeks ago, attempts to dictate and micromanage geopolitics in West Asia and Central Asia, which the last time I looked is not where the US is located. The sovereign nation-state stakeholders in these regions have every right to safeguard their perceived local interests without the US menacing nation-states that are located there.
Q. Why shouldn't Russia help Iran nuclearize? Iran and Russia are strategic neighbors, the US is not. Did the US nuclearize Israel?
Q. Why shouldn't Iran develop nuclear power for both military and civilian purposes? The US, Israel and Russia are all nuclear. The last two are regional neighbors, the US is not.
In the adjoining South Asia region, Pakistan and India are nuclear. What would motivate Iran NOT to nuclearize and Russia NOT to help Iran do so?
Obama's shopworn Star Wars bargaining chip of a National Missile Defense Shield (NMD) suspension wont wash with Iran, especially since the US helped Israel develop its Arrow missile system which has been successfully tested repeatedly by the US and Israel acting in combination. Is it possible, therefore, both Iran and Russia might feel their respective national security interests are threatened by such unilateral and unprovoked militarization in their backyard?
Obama's foreign policy in Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia is likely to be no different than that of his white male predecessors.
Superpower foreign policy ideology trumps race.
At the same time, supremacist ideology in U.S. foreign policy has its roots in white male dominance (developed and enforced during three centuries of slavery and genocide of indigenous people in the US, by white males), in which all 'others' are racialized and rendered inferior. Obama is embedded in that Whiteness system and rewarded by it.
Change We Can Believe In? A new and ethical direction for US foreign policy where strategic interests are sincerely attempted to be aligned with ethical concerns ?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
See Theory of Systemic Whiteness and related articles
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Human Rights Abuse Report 2008: The Fox-Chicken Coop Analogy
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/index.htm
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/02/27/us-state-dept-issues-report-on-world-human-rights-abuses/4224/#comment-2802
#1
===========================================================================
03/01/2009 :: 04:02:36 PM
Chithra KarunaKaran Says:
Which nation-state has bloodstained hands? A few. Is the US among them?
As a state sponsor of terror, example starting with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the invasion and occupation of VietNam; invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq; the toppling of Mossadegh in Iran; a 60-year track record of destabilizing elected governments and freedom movements in various parts of the world, what gives the US the right to monitor human rights in sovereign nation-states? The US should absolutely monitor its own egregious actions in violation of human rights and accept the condemnation of nonpartisan non-governmental groups like Amnesty and HRW.
The vitally important work of developing (rather than merely monitoring) human rights world-wide, is best carried out by a *combination* of intergovernmental orgs. like the UN, and NGOs like Amnesty and HRW.
The development of Ethical Democracy requires a far more equitable reordering of geopolitical power and civil society priorities.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
see US and NATO out of South Asia
see Theory of Systemic Whiteness and related articles.
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/02/27/us-state-dept-issues-report-on-world-human-rights-abuses/4224/#comment-2802
#1
===========================================================================
03/01/2009 :: 04:02:36 PM
Chithra KarunaKaran Says:
Which nation-state has bloodstained hands? A few. Is the US among them?
As a state sponsor of terror, example starting with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the invasion and occupation of VietNam; invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq; the toppling of Mossadegh in Iran; a 60-year track record of destabilizing elected governments and freedom movements in various parts of the world, what gives the US the right to monitor human rights in sovereign nation-states? The US should absolutely monitor its own egregious actions in violation of human rights and accept the condemnation of nonpartisan non-governmental groups like Amnesty and HRW.
The vitally important work of developing (rather than merely monitoring) human rights world-wide, is best carried out by a *combination* of intergovernmental orgs. like the UN, and NGOs like Amnesty and HRW.
The development of Ethical Democracy requires a far more equitable reordering of geopolitical power and civil society priorities.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
see US and NATO out of South Asia
see Theory of Systemic Whiteness and related articles.
The Ethical Self In The Environment: Global Warming, Climate Change and the Nation-State
Obama’s Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 28, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/01/science/earth/01treaty.html
New York Times copyright
=========================
My comment #83.
March 01, 2009 11:39 am
Link NY Times
March 1st, 2009 11:31 am
The article states:
"But Kyoto was shaped largely by climate scientists and environment ministers, not the higher-level officials now laying the groundwork."
What is blatantly absent from this equation is the lack of any articulation of social justice objectives, and the lack of grassroots involvement of ordinary folks, in other words civil societies of sovereign nation-states.
These civil societies vastly differ in their energy use and their contribution to greenhouse gases. For example in India, a huge mainly rural agricultural economy, what most contributes to the 'brown cloud' over much of the subcontinent is a result of smoke from household fires and burning in fields in preparation for the next cycle of planting, by subsistence landless cultivators. That is the pattern for most of the Global South, where the majority of the world's population resides.
That's a little different than emissions from gas guzzling SUVs on US highways or the cost of producing and disposing of countless varieties of mainly useless products in consumption-driven economies in Europe and North America.
Growth and development are not the same thing, as we are all finding out.
Will the people of Europe and particularly the US, consume less and conserve more? Will that happen during an extended period of dismal economic forecasts?
To effect a dramatic change at the grass roots level, civil societies have to be given the opportunity to be directly involved in change, change we can believe in that results in social justice through equitable sharing of natural resources, not lectured to by the "trickle down" approach of government agencies and Nobel-Prize winning intergovernmental panels like the UN's IPCC or individual climate crusaders like Gore, or even a greener presidency under Obama.
Where are the people?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 28, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/01/science/earth/01treaty.html
New York Times copyright
=========================
My comment #83.
March 01, 2009 11:39 am
Link NY Times
March 1st, 2009 11:31 am
The article states:
"But Kyoto was shaped largely by climate scientists and environment ministers, not the higher-level officials now laying the groundwork."
What is blatantly absent from this equation is the lack of any articulation of social justice objectives, and the lack of grassroots involvement of ordinary folks, in other words civil societies of sovereign nation-states.
These civil societies vastly differ in their energy use and their contribution to greenhouse gases. For example in India, a huge mainly rural agricultural economy, what most contributes to the 'brown cloud' over much of the subcontinent is a result of smoke from household fires and burning in fields in preparation for the next cycle of planting, by subsistence landless cultivators. That is the pattern for most of the Global South, where the majority of the world's population resides.
That's a little different than emissions from gas guzzling SUVs on US highways or the cost of producing and disposing of countless varieties of mainly useless products in consumption-driven economies in Europe and North America.
Growth and development are not the same thing, as we are all finding out.
Will the people of Europe and particularly the US, consume less and conserve more? Will that happen during an extended period of dismal economic forecasts?
To effect a dramatic change at the grass roots level, civil societies have to be given the opportunity to be directly involved in change, change we can believe in that results in social justice through equitable sharing of natural resources, not lectured to by the "trickle down" approach of government agencies and Nobel-Prize winning intergovernmental panels like the UN's IPCC or individual climate crusaders like Gore, or even a greener presidency under Obama.
Where are the people?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Science, Religion & the Making of the Ethical Self in the Nation
A version of My NYT Comment #32
February 28, 2009 9:24 am Link
The flawed 2008 Pew survey(NYT article link below ) referred to in this article should have collected and presented data on the educational level of the respondents in this survey.
Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in the U.S. almost certainly attain higher levels of education, are well to do, make the connection between education and economic attainment, consequently they are less likely to subscribe to ideas, religious or otherwise, about magical personas, like angels and demons (referred to in the Pew survey questionnaire), operating in the world. Contrast that with the responses of Jehovah’s Witnesses, probably the least educated and not surprisingly poorest among all surveyed.
A piece of essential reading would be the late great Stephen Jay Gould’s article on religion and science as “non-overlapping magisteria.”
As a child I learned an important distinction from my famous geologist father. One can certainly be simultaneously religious and scientific. In fact it is important to combine exploration of the natural and social world, while still retaining a sense of awe about the still unexplained mysteries of our universe. Religion insists on Faith and Belief, in contrast, Science relies on Evidence and Proof. Religion and Science DON’T overlap, therefore don’t confuse the two. They are not equivalent because they cannot be compared. Don’t apply the rules of one to the other. At the same time, Don’t denigrate the one or the other.
Critical thinking, scientific reasoning and logical development of ideas are the core skills taught in colleges. These skills are essential for developing a knowledgeable participatory citizenry and a competent workforce. Both are essential for the working of democracy in the modern pluralist nation-state.
Such skills are essential for growing an ethical democracy, a project tentative at best in the US,India and many other democratic spaces, that was severely impeded by that magical thinking team of Cheney-Bush and their “Axis of Evil ” pseudo-Christian doctrine.
The dynamic construction of the striving-to-be Ethical Self acting with striving-to-be ethical others, in the modern pluralist nation-state, is central to the ongoing necessarily flawed project of Democracy.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
—-----------------------------
New York Times copyright
February 28, 2009, 12:01 am
Bobby Jindal, the Exorcist
By Charles M. Blow
http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/bobby-jindal-the-exorcist-pro-or-con/
---------------------------------------
WSJ copyright
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html
Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence
Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.
[GOD_cov2] Nippon Television Network
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do
But Darwin may have done religion—and God—a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.
But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.
But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.
View Full Image
GOD_jump2
WSJ Illustration
GOD_jump2
GOD_jump2
Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.
Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.
In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.
There can never be a definitive version of a myth, because it refers to the more imponderable aspects of life. To remain effective, it must respond to contemporary circumstance. In the 16th century, when Jews were being expelled from one region of Europe after another, the mystic Isaac Luria constructed an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the Genesis story. But instead of being reviled for contradicting the Bible, it inspired a mass-movement among Jews, because it was such a telling description of the arbitrary world they now lived in; backed up with special rituals, it also helped them face up to their pain and discover a source of strength.
Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?
Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the "God beyond God." The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.
But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God.
—Ms. Armstrong is the author of numerous books on theology and religious affairs. The latest, "The Case for God," will be published by Knopf later this month.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do
Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.
Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists' hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.
[GOD_cov1] Bettmann/CORBIS
Charles Darwin
What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics. Nothing does (if anything did, physicists would just have to formulate new laws—it's happened often enough in the history of science). But although life never violates the laws of physics, it pushes them into unexpected avenues that stagger the imagination. If we didn't know about life we wouldn't believe it was possible—except, of course, that there'd then be nobody around to do the disbelieving!
The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirlpool-shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles. It is an interesting, fascinating and, in many ways, deeply mysterious universe. But now, enter life. Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.
Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe.
View Full Image
GOD_jump1
WSJ Illustration
GOD_jump1
GOD_jump1
What if the greatest show on earth is not the greatest show in the universe? What if there are life forms on other planets that have evolved so far beyond our level of intelligence and creativity that we should regard them as gods, were we ever so fortunate (or unfortunate?) as to meet them? Would they indeed be gods? Wouldn't we be tempted to fall on our knees and worship them, as a medieval peasant might if suddenly confronted with such miracles as a Boeing 747, a mobile telephone or Google Earth? But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.
To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other "cranes" (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to "skyhooks") that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.
Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.
Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."
Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.
—Mr. Dawkins is the author of "The Selfish Gene," "The Ancestor's Tale," "The God Delusion." His latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will be published by Free Press on Sept. 22.
February 28, 2009 9:24 am Link
The flawed 2008 Pew survey(NYT article link below ) referred to in this article should have collected and presented data on the educational level of the respondents in this survey.
Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in the U.S. almost certainly attain higher levels of education, are well to do, make the connection between education and economic attainment, consequently they are less likely to subscribe to ideas, religious or otherwise, about magical personas, like angels and demons (referred to in the Pew survey questionnaire), operating in the world. Contrast that with the responses of Jehovah’s Witnesses, probably the least educated and not surprisingly poorest among all surveyed.
A piece of essential reading would be the late great Stephen Jay Gould’s article on religion and science as “non-overlapping magisteria.”
As a child I learned an important distinction from my famous geologist father. One can certainly be simultaneously religious and scientific. In fact it is important to combine exploration of the natural and social world, while still retaining a sense of awe about the still unexplained mysteries of our universe. Religion insists on Faith and Belief, in contrast, Science relies on Evidence and Proof. Religion and Science DON’T overlap, therefore don’t confuse the two. They are not equivalent because they cannot be compared. Don’t apply the rules of one to the other. At the same time, Don’t denigrate the one or the other.
Critical thinking, scientific reasoning and logical development of ideas are the core skills taught in colleges. These skills are essential for developing a knowledgeable participatory citizenry and a competent workforce. Both are essential for the working of democracy in the modern pluralist nation-state.
Such skills are essential for growing an ethical democracy, a project tentative at best in the US,India and many other democratic spaces, that was severely impeded by that magical thinking team of Cheney-Bush and their “Axis of Evil ” pseudo-Christian doctrine.
The dynamic construction of the striving-to-be Ethical Self acting with striving-to-be ethical others, in the modern pluralist nation-state, is central to the ongoing necessarily flawed project of Democracy.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
—-----------------------------
New York Times copyright
February 28, 2009, 12:01 am
Bobby Jindal, the Exorcist
By Charles M. Blow
http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/bobby-jindal-the-exorcist-pro-or-con/
---------------------------------------
WSJ copyright
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html
Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence
Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.
[GOD_cov2] Nippon Television Network
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do
But Darwin may have done religion—and God—a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.
But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.
But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.
View Full Image
GOD_jump2
WSJ Illustration
GOD_jump2
GOD_jump2
Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.
Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.
In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.
There can never be a definitive version of a myth, because it refers to the more imponderable aspects of life. To remain effective, it must respond to contemporary circumstance. In the 16th century, when Jews were being expelled from one region of Europe after another, the mystic Isaac Luria constructed an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the Genesis story. But instead of being reviled for contradicting the Bible, it inspired a mass-movement among Jews, because it was such a telling description of the arbitrary world they now lived in; backed up with special rituals, it also helped them face up to their pain and discover a source of strength.
Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?
Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the "God beyond God." The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.
But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God.
—Ms. Armstrong is the author of numerous books on theology and religious affairs. The latest, "The Case for God," will be published by Knopf later this month.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do
Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.
Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists' hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.
[GOD_cov1] Bettmann/CORBIS
Charles Darwin
What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics. Nothing does (if anything did, physicists would just have to formulate new laws—it's happened often enough in the history of science). But although life never violates the laws of physics, it pushes them into unexpected avenues that stagger the imagination. If we didn't know about life we wouldn't believe it was possible—except, of course, that there'd then be nobody around to do the disbelieving!
The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirlpool-shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles. It is an interesting, fascinating and, in many ways, deeply mysterious universe. But now, enter life. Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.
Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe.
View Full Image
GOD_jump1
WSJ Illustration
GOD_jump1
GOD_jump1
What if the greatest show on earth is not the greatest show in the universe? What if there are life forms on other planets that have evolved so far beyond our level of intelligence and creativity that we should regard them as gods, were we ever so fortunate (or unfortunate?) as to meet them? Would they indeed be gods? Wouldn't we be tempted to fall on our knees and worship them, as a medieval peasant might if suddenly confronted with such miracles as a Boeing 747, a mobile telephone or Google Earth? But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.
To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other "cranes" (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to "skyhooks") that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.
Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.
Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."
Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.
—Mr. Dawkins is the author of "The Selfish Gene," "The Ancestor's Tale," "The God Delusion." His latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will be published by Free Press on Sept. 22.
Friday, February 27, 2009
An Ethical Lag: Obama on Troop Withdrawal
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/washington/28troops.html?hp
Obama Plans to End Combat Mission in Iraq by August 2010
By PETER BAKER
Published: February 27, 2009
New York Times copyright
--------------------
My comment #20.
February 27, 2009 8:57 am
Link NY Times
February 27th, 2009 8:49 am
Obama is promising on domestic policy and lousy on foreign policy. He is following the Bush-Cheney line with minor variations, in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and West Asia (aka 'the Middle East'). This is a Coke vs. Pepsi foreign policy.
Obama is intimidated by the Republicans, the generals and the State Dept.
Obama is way too wishy washy on the troop withdrawal.
50,000 US troops still in Iraq after 2010?
Guess this commander in chief wants his moment in the Iraqi sun, by visiting Baghdad's green zone under cover of night, with a zillion security personnel guarding him and not one Iraqi widow or orphan in sight.
Does he also want a couple shoes thrown at him?
The US should never have invaded and occupied Iraq and they have never been welcome there.
Obama claims he opposed the invasion and war. So why the delay?
Yes, yes I understand that is how politics, rather than statesmanship works.
In contrast, Ethical Democracy is a work in progress and it is demonstrated through an intentional accumulation of concrete ethical acts of policy and practice by the people and by their leaders. Is the US anyway near there yet?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
Obama Plans to End Combat Mission in Iraq by August 2010
By PETER BAKER
Published: February 27, 2009
New York Times copyright
--------------------
My comment #20.
February 27, 2009 8:57 am
Link NY Times
February 27th, 2009 8:49 am
Obama is promising on domestic policy and lousy on foreign policy. He is following the Bush-Cheney line with minor variations, in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and West Asia (aka 'the Middle East'). This is a Coke vs. Pepsi foreign policy.
Obama is intimidated by the Republicans, the generals and the State Dept.
Obama is way too wishy washy on the troop withdrawal.
50,000 US troops still in Iraq after 2010?
Guess this commander in chief wants his moment in the Iraqi sun, by visiting Baghdad's green zone under cover of night, with a zillion security personnel guarding him and not one Iraqi widow or orphan in sight.
Does he also want a couple shoes thrown at him?
The US should never have invaded and occupied Iraq and they have never been welcome there.
Obama claims he opposed the invasion and war. So why the delay?
Yes, yes I understand that is how politics, rather than statesmanship works.
In contrast, Ethical Democracy is a work in progress and it is demonstrated through an intentional accumulation of concrete ethical acts of policy and practice by the people and by their leaders. Is the US anyway near there yet?
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
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