Two Faisals -- one became a topper, the other a terrorist. How did this happen?
Thousands of Indians from all over the world sent messages of congratulation through newspapers, phone calls and sms, to a 28 year old doctor, Faesal Rasool Shah from Kashmir. Faesal topped the IAS exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission.
Indians everywhere exulted at young Faisal's success.
Indians get to celebrate doctors -- not terrorists.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from an ETHICAL path chosen 65 years ago?
The scene shifts earlier in the very same week, to another Faisal, to an image of a smiling young man in designer sunglasses, Fisal Shahzad. But this time the young man, a Pakistani-American from an upper middle class, privileged, influential air force family has clumsily detonated a bomb in Times Square in the US, country of his adoption.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from a less- than-ethical path chosen by a colonized nation-state 65 years ago? A path that was forged against its own people? A path of destruction, bloodshed and an embittering border where none before had existed? Is young Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American the direct descendant in a six-decade history of Brit colonialism, Brit-driven Partition, Pakistan's puppet-state collusion with US neo-imperialism?
And that other more enduring and ever inspiring Faisal from India's Kashmir, how did he survive against tragic adversity? How did he accomplish excellence?
Which Nation-state withstood neo-imperialism of the US military-Corporate-Complex and produced a topper instead of a terrorist?
-----------
more....that's what a blog is for...reflection....
Showing posts with label South Asia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Asia. Show all posts
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Debacle Decades: US and NATO in South Asia
My NYTimes #62. October 3, 2009 10:01 am Link
When US MEDIA becomes part of the US WAR Machine
The language deployed by the NYTimes reporters, as well as the language of the US war apparatus etc are EQUALLY troubling. They are similar. They became embedded in the US War Machine in West Asia in Iraq and now they are in South Asia Afghanistan and Pakistan
“Chosen” Company? That should go down really well with the Afghans, just about as well as it would be received in Gaza.
A “hostile frontier village” in Eastern Afghanistan, writes Thom Shanker. Who is the hostile entity? the people who live there or the US and US-led NATO who are droning and killing?
I could go on and on. picking examples out of both Shanker’s reporting as well as the document on the Wanat Battle.
“Winning” is now being being cosmetically configured to fool the US public. No point trying to fool the Afghans. History shows they don’t tolerate occupiers. Your firepower is nothing compared with their staying power.
In fact, many thousands of NYTimes readers over the past several months have questioned what the US military means when they use the word “win.”
McChrystal and his propagandists undoubtedly are Times readers,. They see there is tremendous US public opposition to the Army’s notion of “winning” in Afghanistan.
The Army understands that our unemployed and underemployed, our millions wihout healthcare and our tens of thousands saddled with foreclosures, think that "winning" is not warfare in South Asia but means — bring the troops home NOW.
McChrystal and his hawks are incapable of learning any new lesson in Afghanistan, despite their claims of lesson learned from Wanat. Why? Because the US military premise is mistaken.
The US does not have any role in Afghanistan except at the negotiating table and in humanitarian efforts to undo the damage already caused by US/NATO deadly use of firepower.
Http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
GOATS — for Social Justice article
— Chithra KarunaKaran
-------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03battle.html?ref=global-home
Report Cites Firefight as Lesson on Afghan War
By THOM SHANKER
Published: October 2, 2009
Wanat Battle Cited as Lesson in Afghan War
By The New York Times
My NYTimes Comment # 46. September 22, 2009 8:46 am Link
The military presence of the US and US-led NATO is a continuing mis-step by the West in the South Asia region.
The US created the Taliban who once were the Mujahideen, that the US paid and trained in their invented Cold War against the Soviets.
If history is any guide the Afghans will continue to be unassailable.
Unfortunately the US has (temporarily) gained what is has sought -- strategic depth in South Asia. The US has accomplished this mainly through a long (since the early 50's) subjugation of a weakened post-Partition Pakistan.
It will be a while before South Asia's sovereign nation-states can muster the solidarity needed to kick the US and NATO out of the region.
We South Asians are not there yet for reasons of our own long oppression under Brit colonialism.
Our own postcolonial dependency mindset, manipulated by our own homegrown political, military and feudal elites,
prevents us in South Asia from freeing South Asia from the US and Europe.
The Debacle Decades are with us at this time.
-----------
My comment to the NYTimes Public Editor
Should'nt NYTimes Readers know who "The Editors" are? (see link below)
Today's Room for Debate is written by "The Editors"
"The Editors" reads like a subterfuge for some paleo-policy with a distinct subtext, which i prefer not to name,in response to your own chosen anonymity.
Where's the transparency?
Where's the authentic Room or Debate?
Who are (the white males?) with AIPAC creds.(?) who wrote it?
--
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
===========================
----------------------------------------------------
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/fending-off-failure-in-afghanistan/#comment-157167
NYTimes copyright
September 21, 2009, 7:06 pm
Fending Off Failure in Afghanistan
By The Editors
When US MEDIA becomes part of the US WAR Machine
The language deployed by the NYTimes reporters, as well as the language of the US war apparatus etc are EQUALLY troubling. They are similar. They became embedded in the US War Machine in West Asia in Iraq and now they are in South Asia Afghanistan and Pakistan
“Chosen” Company? That should go down really well with the Afghans, just about as well as it would be received in Gaza.
A “hostile frontier village” in Eastern Afghanistan, writes Thom Shanker. Who is the hostile entity? the people who live there or the US and US-led NATO who are droning and killing?
I could go on and on. picking examples out of both Shanker’s reporting as well as the document on the Wanat Battle.
“Winning” is now being being cosmetically configured to fool the US public. No point trying to fool the Afghans. History shows they don’t tolerate occupiers. Your firepower is nothing compared with their staying power.
In fact, many thousands of NYTimes readers over the past several months have questioned what the US military means when they use the word “win.”
McChrystal and his propagandists undoubtedly are Times readers,. They see there is tremendous US public opposition to the Army’s notion of “winning” in Afghanistan.
The Army understands that our unemployed and underemployed, our millions wihout healthcare and our tens of thousands saddled with foreclosures, think that "winning" is not warfare in South Asia but means — bring the troops home NOW.
McChrystal and his hawks are incapable of learning any new lesson in Afghanistan, despite their claims of lesson learned from Wanat. Why? Because the US military premise is mistaken.
The US does not have any role in Afghanistan except at the negotiating table and in humanitarian efforts to undo the damage already caused by US/NATO deadly use of firepower.
Http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
GOATS — for Social Justice article
— Chithra KarunaKaran
-------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03battle.html?ref=global-home
Report Cites Firefight as Lesson on Afghan War
By THOM SHANKER
Published: October 2, 2009
Wanat Battle Cited as Lesson in Afghan War
By The New York Times
My NYTimes Comment # 46. September 22, 2009 8:46 am Link
The military presence of the US and US-led NATO is a continuing mis-step by the West in the South Asia region.
The US created the Taliban who once were the Mujahideen, that the US paid and trained in their invented Cold War against the Soviets.
If history is any guide the Afghans will continue to be unassailable.
Unfortunately the US has (temporarily) gained what is has sought -- strategic depth in South Asia. The US has accomplished this mainly through a long (since the early 50's) subjugation of a weakened post-Partition Pakistan.
It will be a while before South Asia's sovereign nation-states can muster the solidarity needed to kick the US and NATO out of the region.
We South Asians are not there yet for reasons of our own long oppression under Brit colonialism.
Our own postcolonial dependency mindset, manipulated by our own homegrown political, military and feudal elites,
prevents us in South Asia from freeing South Asia from the US and Europe.
The Debacle Decades are with us at this time.
-----------
My comment to the NYTimes Public Editor
Should'nt NYTimes Readers know who "The Editors" are? (see link below)
Today's Room for Debate is written by "The Editors"
"The Editors" reads like a subterfuge for some paleo-policy with a distinct subtext, which i prefer not to name,in response to your own chosen anonymity.
Where's the transparency?
Where's the authentic Room or Debate?
Who are (the white males?) with AIPAC creds.(?) who wrote it?
--
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
===========================
----------------------------------------------------
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/fending-off-failure-in-afghanistan/#comment-157167
NYTimes copyright
September 21, 2009, 7:06 pm
Fending Off Failure in Afghanistan
By The Editors
Thursday, September 17, 2009
No Star Wars in Czech Republic or Poland
My expanded NYTimes Comment #60.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:45 am
My expanded NYTimes Comment #
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:48 am
Excellent -- the Poles and the Czechs got lucky. No Star Wars planned there.
Hope the President, whom I and the majority of the US electorate voted for, will re-think any attempt to tilt at windmills in Iran. Iran has a right to go nuclear and nobody can stop them. The US govt's Iran policy has a powerful lobby-backed pro-Zionist subtext. Give Peace and the Palestinians a chance.
Now can we do the entire South Asia region a favor and get the US and US-led NATO, the hell out of there too?
If history is any guide, the Afghans, can do that on their own, with no help from anyone.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html?_r=1
White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield
By PETER BAKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
The Obama administration plans to announce a reconfigured system that won’t be based in Poland or the Czech Republic, and will be aimed at intercepting Iranian missiles.
------------------------------
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:45 am
My expanded NYTimes Comment #
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:48 am
Excellent -- the Poles and the Czechs got lucky. No Star Wars planned there.
Hope the President, whom I and the majority of the US electorate voted for, will re-think any attempt to tilt at windmills in Iran. Iran has a right to go nuclear and nobody can stop them. The US govt's Iran policy has a powerful lobby-backed pro-Zionist subtext. Give Peace and the Palestinians a chance.
Now can we do the entire South Asia region a favor and get the US and US-led NATO, the hell out of there too?
If history is any guide, the Afghans, can do that on their own, with no help from anyone.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html?_r=1
White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield
By PETER BAKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
The Obama administration plans to announce a reconfigured system that won’t be based in Poland or the Czech Republic, and will be aimed at intercepting Iranian missiles.
------------------------------
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Boneheaded RNC Sets Up Obama to Fail in Diplomacy in South Asia
Comment #133.
New York Times
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
September 3rd, 2009
12:27 pm
The strategy of the faux patriots among the self-ascribed national security hawks in the Republican Party, is to ensure Obama fails in his diplomatic efforts in the South Asia region.
By ratcheting up their calls for increasing militarization, rather than diplomacy, in Afghanistan, the Republican National Committee and leading Republican members in the US Congress, hope to set up and ambush Obama , divide the Democrats, deflect the Congress from urgent and attainable domestic policy goals of universal healthcare and jobs, and instead, hand the U.S.President a spectacular failure, the size of Vietnam.
That's the RNC/GOP's only hope of turning Obama into a one-term President at the polls in 2012.
If Obama goes with the ethically and politically bankrupt RNC/GOP, drones on in protracted and deadly fashion in Afghanistan, then Obama fully deserves to be a one-term Prez.
I would then regret I voted for him. I hope not to have that regret.
Comment # 32
New York Times
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
September 3rd, 2009
0:45 am
The strategy of the faux patriots among the self-ascribed national security hawks in the Republican Party, is to ensure Obama fails in his diplomatic efforts in the South Asia region.
By ratcheting up their calls for increasing militarization, rather than diplomacy, in Afghanistan, the Republican National Committee and leading Republican members in the US Congress, hope to set up and ambush Obama , divide the Democrats, deflect the Congress from urgent and attainable domestic policy goals of universal healthcare and jobs, and instead, hand the U.S.President a spectacular failure, the size of Vietnam.
That's the RNC/GOP's only hope of turning Obama into a one-term President at the polls in 2012.
If Obama goes with the ethically and politically bankrupt RNC/GOP, drones on in protracted and deadly fashion in Afghanistan, then Obama fully deserves to be a one-term Prez.
I would then regret I voted for him. I hope not to have that regret.
It's not all about US interests all the time, everywhere.
No nation-state has done more damage to the South Asia region for the past 55 years, than the US.
Time to get out, USA, especially if the bone-headed, ethically bankrupt RNC insists you stay.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
G.O.P. May Be Vital to Obama on Afghan War
By HELENE COOPER
Congressional Democrats are reporting disenchantment among constituents with a long Afghanistan conflict.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/asia/03policy.html?hp
New York Times
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
September 3rd, 2009
12:27 pm
The strategy of the faux patriots among the self-ascribed national security hawks in the Republican Party, is to ensure Obama fails in his diplomatic efforts in the South Asia region.
By ratcheting up their calls for increasing militarization, rather than diplomacy, in Afghanistan, the Republican National Committee and leading Republican members in the US Congress, hope to set up and ambush Obama , divide the Democrats, deflect the Congress from urgent and attainable domestic policy goals of universal healthcare and jobs, and instead, hand the U.S.President a spectacular failure, the size of Vietnam.
That's the RNC/GOP's only hope of turning Obama into a one-term President at the polls in 2012.
If Obama goes with the ethically and politically bankrupt RNC/GOP, drones on in protracted and deadly fashion in Afghanistan, then Obama fully deserves to be a one-term Prez.
I would then regret I voted for him. I hope not to have that regret.
Comment # 32
New York Times
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
September 3rd, 2009
0:45 am
The strategy of the faux patriots among the self-ascribed national security hawks in the Republican Party, is to ensure Obama fails in his diplomatic efforts in the South Asia region.
By ratcheting up their calls for increasing militarization, rather than diplomacy, in Afghanistan, the Republican National Committee and leading Republican members in the US Congress, hope to set up and ambush Obama , divide the Democrats, deflect the Congress from urgent and attainable domestic policy goals of universal healthcare and jobs, and instead, hand the U.S.President a spectacular failure, the size of Vietnam.
That's the RNC/GOP's only hope of turning Obama into a one-term President at the polls in 2012.
If Obama goes with the ethically and politically bankrupt RNC/GOP, drones on in protracted and deadly fashion in Afghanistan, then Obama fully deserves to be a one-term Prez.
I would then regret I voted for him. I hope not to have that regret.
It's not all about US interests all the time, everywhere.
No nation-state has done more damage to the South Asia region for the past 55 years, than the US.
Time to get out, USA, especially if the bone-headed, ethically bankrupt RNC insists you stay.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
G.O.P. May Be Vital to Obama on Afghan War
By HELENE COOPER
Congressional Democrats are reporting disenchantment among constituents with a long Afghanistan conflict.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/asia/03policy.html?hp
Sunday, August 30, 2009
US Destabilizes South Asia w/ Weapons & Presence
NYTimes Comment #56.
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
August 30th, 2009
11:22 am
------
US DESTABILIZES PAKISTAN and ALL of SOUTH ASIA with WEAPONS and PRESENCE. That's the real story behind the NYT article.
Your latest article,(see link below) about Pakistan modifying weapons supplied to it, BY the US, comes as absolutely no surprise.
But the point is, should Pakistan be blamed? No. Successive US govts. have played a dangerous role in South Asia, particularly by subjugating Pakistan for over 55 years, to selfish US interests, beginning with the John Foster Dulles era of the US. State Dept. Pakistan became a pawn in the US machinations against the former USSR, in the Cold War which the US invented against the Soviets. Now the US is the world's largest Centrally Planned Economy(CPE), how ironic.
The US's South Asia policy under Obama is no exception. That policy is controlled, not by the White House, but by a long established State Department/Pentagon/ CIA policy of US dominance and control and consequent disaster, through the double deployment of weapons and capital, by the US, over certain regions at certain points in time.
For 55 plus years, South Asia has been an area in which the US has meddled. Now, with its diminished stature in the so-called Middle East, the US is trying, and to a large measure has succeeded, in accomplishing strategic depth in South Asia.
The US is both an ally and a partner of hapless, dependent and bankrupt Pakistan. A weak still largely feudal but dangerously US-weaponized Pakistan is no match in this equation.
Instead of helping Pakistan's ordinary people to accomplish SOCIAL JUSTICE through food security, education, healthcare, industrial and trade relations, the US has brutally attacked ordinary Pakistanis' aspirations for a better life, by weaponizing and destroying Pakistan's already fragile sovereignty.
It suits Pakistan's feudal/military leaders to depict India as the enemy. But ordinary Pakistan know that Indians and Pakistanis are sisters and brothers whose oppressor is the US, and before them, the Brits, not to mention our own national elites in our respective countries.
Such is the aftermath of the colonial -- and now neo-imperial conundrum we South Asians face at the present time.
Only India and Pakistan can resolve their disagreements. The determined and largely successful effort of the US to become a geopolitical player MUST fail, if South Asia's sovereign nation-states are to succeed, on behalf of their own diverse and long suffering peoples. The US has got to go.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------
NYTimes copyright
U.S. Says Pakistan Made Changes to Missiles Sold for Defense
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
The U.S. has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/world/asia/30missile.html?_r=1
=====================================================================================
EthicalDemocracy
Chennai, Tamil Nadu India
August 30th, 2009
11:22 am
------
US DESTABILIZES PAKISTAN and ALL of SOUTH ASIA with WEAPONS and PRESENCE. That's the real story behind the NYT article.
Your latest article,(see link below) about Pakistan modifying weapons supplied to it, BY the US, comes as absolutely no surprise.
But the point is, should Pakistan be blamed? No. Successive US govts. have played a dangerous role in South Asia, particularly by subjugating Pakistan for over 55 years, to selfish US interests, beginning with the John Foster Dulles era of the US. State Dept. Pakistan became a pawn in the US machinations against the former USSR, in the Cold War which the US invented against the Soviets. Now the US is the world's largest Centrally Planned Economy(CPE), how ironic.
The US's South Asia policy under Obama is no exception. That policy is controlled, not by the White House, but by a long established State Department/Pentagon/ CIA policy of US dominance and control and consequent disaster, through the double deployment of weapons and capital, by the US, over certain regions at certain points in time.
For 55 plus years, South Asia has been an area in which the US has meddled. Now, with its diminished stature in the so-called Middle East, the US is trying, and to a large measure has succeeded, in accomplishing strategic depth in South Asia.
The US is both an ally and a partner of hapless, dependent and bankrupt Pakistan. A weak still largely feudal but dangerously US-weaponized Pakistan is no match in this equation.
Instead of helping Pakistan's ordinary people to accomplish SOCIAL JUSTICE through food security, education, healthcare, industrial and trade relations, the US has brutally attacked ordinary Pakistanis' aspirations for a better life, by weaponizing and destroying Pakistan's already fragile sovereignty.
It suits Pakistan's feudal/military leaders to depict India as the enemy. But ordinary Pakistan know that Indians and Pakistanis are sisters and brothers whose oppressor is the US, and before them, the Brits, not to mention our own national elites in our respective countries.
Such is the aftermath of the colonial -- and now neo-imperial conundrum we South Asians face at the present time.
Only India and Pakistan can resolve their disagreements. The determined and largely successful effort of the US to become a geopolitical player MUST fail, if South Asia's sovereign nation-states are to succeed, on behalf of their own diverse and long suffering peoples. The US has got to go.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------
NYTimes copyright
U.S. Says Pakistan Made Changes to Missiles Sold for Defense
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
The U.S. has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/world/asia/30missile.html?_r=1
=====================================================================================
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
HyperMilitarism vs. Social Justice
1. July 30, 2009 2:24 am Link
NYTimes
Hypermilitarism vs. Social Justice
More than anything else, this news analysis (See link below) tells us how profoundly affected contemporary South Asian nation-states are, by the centuries-long divide and rule legacy of British colonialism and imperialism.
The cooked-up borders devised and imposed by the Brits still haunt us today. Millions of innocents died during “partition”. The sores fester, the scars remain. This dehumanizing colonial legacy still affects every action by our indigenous neo-colonial elites, most of whom have inherited the mindset of those who colluded with, and profited from, the British Divide and Rule strategy.
The challenge for our leaders today is to give up the colonial dependency mindset of hypermilitarism as illustrated by your report on the new female recruits to India's BSF. Our colonial dependency mindset has been compounded by the neo-imperial projects of the US and US-led NATO in our region.
However, our leaders have no incentive to reverse direction and change course. There are limitless profits and political capital to be made, from hypermilitarism. Our leaders can only be held accountable by We the People. Our democracies are fragile and flawed but our civil society is still our best hope against the colonial ideology that continues to favor militaristic solutions to social justice problems.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------
NYTimes Copyright
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/women-deployed-to-indias-wall-of-death/#comment-341587
NYTimes
Hypermilitarism vs. Social Justice
More than anything else, this news analysis (See link below) tells us how profoundly affected contemporary South Asian nation-states are, by the centuries-long divide and rule legacy of British colonialism and imperialism.
The cooked-up borders devised and imposed by the Brits still haunt us today. Millions of innocents died during “partition”. The sores fester, the scars remain. This dehumanizing colonial legacy still affects every action by our indigenous neo-colonial elites, most of whom have inherited the mindset of those who colluded with, and profited from, the British Divide and Rule strategy.
The challenge for our leaders today is to give up the colonial dependency mindset of hypermilitarism as illustrated by your report on the new female recruits to India's BSF. Our colonial dependency mindset has been compounded by the neo-imperial projects of the US and US-led NATO in our region.
However, our leaders have no incentive to reverse direction and change course. There are limitless profits and political capital to be made, from hypermilitarism. Our leaders can only be held accountable by We the People. Our democracies are fragile and flawed but our civil society is still our best hope against the colonial ideology that continues to favor militaristic solutions to social justice problems.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------
NYTimes Copyright
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/women-deployed-to-indias-wall-of-death/#comment-341587
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Corporate Greed and the Challenge for Ethical Democracy
January 28th, 2009 4:14 am
Maureen I relish your inimitable wordsmithing.
And the anger you express is what many of us probably feel, not righteous Old Testament wrath as you claim at the beginning of your article, but secular, justifiable, socially responsible anger, given the appalling factual evidence of serial corporate greed accompanied by a total lack of remorse for the sufferings of the polity. Psychiatric evaluation, jail time and extended community service seem in order.
US exceptionalist overreach in practically every area of civil society both at home and overseas, at the same time as pulling off an historic election, are object lessons for all of us, about the limits of unregulated democracy, especially for evolving democracies trying to develop responsible corporate institutions in South Asia and other parts of the world. Unfortunately our homegrown elites (the Satyam India case) in the Global South are just as mendacious and rapacious as Madoff, Thain and crew.
For We the People, Democracy's work is never done.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 27, 2009
Maureen Dowd
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)
The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.
The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.
Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.
“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”
Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”
New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.
“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.
Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.
Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”
Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.
Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.
Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?
“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”
Did it have a desk and a phone?
How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?
Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.
=====================================================================================
Maureen I relish your inimitable wordsmithing.
And the anger you express is what many of us probably feel, not righteous Old Testament wrath as you claim at the beginning of your article, but secular, justifiable, socially responsible anger, given the appalling factual evidence of serial corporate greed accompanied by a total lack of remorse for the sufferings of the polity. Psychiatric evaluation, jail time and extended community service seem in order.
US exceptionalist overreach in practically every area of civil society both at home and overseas, at the same time as pulling off an historic election, are object lessons for all of us, about the limits of unregulated democracy, especially for evolving democracies trying to develop responsible corporate institutions in South Asia and other parts of the world. Unfortunately our homegrown elites (the Satyam India case) in the Global South are just as mendacious and rapacious as Madoff, Thain and crew.
For We the People, Democracy's work is never done.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 27, 2009
Maureen Dowd
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)
The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.
The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.
Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.
“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”
Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”
New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.
“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.
Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.
Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”
Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.
Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.
Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?
“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”
Did it have a desk and a phone?
How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?
Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.
=====================================================================================
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Dynastic Politics & the Challenge to Ethical Democracy
In Tamil Nadu Nadu and at the Center dynastic politics is especially tenacious, with Karunanidhi asserting family ties over state governance (sons Azhagiri, Stalin) as well as at the national level(daughter Kanimozhi as member of parliament). At the centre, the Congress is attempting to bring Rahul Gandhi into line as the next prime miniserial candidate.
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Answering Challenges to Processes of Ethical Democracy
This comment was posted on Bill Moyers' Journal comments page today, in response to my post there on Ethical vs. Strategic interests in making and maintaining democracy and the importance of aligning them, as vital to expanding Ethical Democracy civil society processes within and across nation-states.
Stanley Wrzyszczynski (see below) has speciously elected to mis-characterize my core ETHICAL point, namely that the SOVEREIGN nation-states, even failed or failing states, of the South Asia region have the right to conduct relationships among themselves, without the self-serving interference of a hegemonic capital-driven aggressive and invading superpower. Therefore, my point about ETHICAL geopolitical interests vs. the above-described US geopolitical stance is NOT, as SW disparagingly notes, "nationalistic" (what's wrong with that anyway?), but I am arguing on ethical grounds, for an intra-regional, neighborly approach among South Asia nations. Neighbors have mutually overlapping interests. India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbors. Iran and Russia are neighbors are also neighbors. The US is not.
SW, What would you advocate? U.S.-directed Pan-Zionism for our South Asia region? That prescription has disastrous consequences in West Asia (to us), Middle East to you!
And also as usual, we need to be guided by the enlightened and progressive US how to treat women in our countries, as your additional gratuitous comment seems to imply. This is absurd paternalism.
[Please note I don't reply to posts to my post on any site in which I participate. Instead I post my replies to your comments right here on my own Blog].
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------
FROM: Stanley Wrzyszczynski
Chitra KarunaKaran,
What you say cannot be disputed. In the absence of US imperialism, do you believe other mega rich nation states will not intervene (such as China, Russia, the EU, etc.)? Alas, you elide certain aspects that are “strategically” left unmentioned; internal factional violence runs concurrent with imperial hegemony (Shi ite /Sunni, Hindu/Moslem, Kurds/nearly everyone else, etc.). This is not unusual within the context. The disappearance of imperial hegemony will not eliminate these, for this animosity pre- exists any imperial presence. What you ascribe to imperial hegemony may have more to do with the wonderfully clichéd “globalization.” The interdependence and inter-effecting of all areas of the world with each other through electronic technologies and immediate communications (for transfer of goods and services) may be masked by what you ascribe as imperial hegemony. Most agree that the imperial hegemony of the US, like the British before, is on the wane. Yet the rise of immediate access to goods, information, cultural influences, climate change, education, armaments, etc. due to “globalization” continues and increases. This underlying reason for the vehement animosity may be displaced by what you describe as imperial hegemony. After all, keeping women barefoot and pregnant is a lot easier to do if they are not privileged to know what other women in the world can be or do. Much of the restlessness is on account of access to what previously was denied. Cell phones originally were designed for easy and readily available communication, not as triggering mechanisms for roadside bombs. The nationalistic solution to the strife, that you advocate, is a bit outdated and inadequate, some would say even reactionary.
Posted by: stanley wrzyszczynski | December 7, 2008 10:15 AM
Stanley Wrzyszczynski (see below) has speciously elected to mis-characterize my core ETHICAL point, namely that the SOVEREIGN nation-states, even failed or failing states, of the South Asia region have the right to conduct relationships among themselves, without the self-serving interference of a hegemonic capital-driven aggressive and invading superpower. Therefore, my point about ETHICAL geopolitical interests vs. the above-described US geopolitical stance is NOT, as SW disparagingly notes, "nationalistic" (what's wrong with that anyway?), but I am arguing on ethical grounds, for an intra-regional, neighborly approach among South Asia nations. Neighbors have mutually overlapping interests. India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbors. Iran and Russia are neighbors are also neighbors. The US is not.
SW, What would you advocate? U.S.-directed Pan-Zionism for our South Asia region? That prescription has disastrous consequences in West Asia (to us), Middle East to you!
And also as usual, we need to be guided by the enlightened and progressive US how to treat women in our countries, as your additional gratuitous comment seems to imply. This is absurd paternalism.
[Please note I don't reply to posts to my post on any site in which I participate. Instead I post my replies to your comments right here on my own Blog].
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------
FROM: Stanley Wrzyszczynski
Chitra KarunaKaran,
What you say cannot be disputed. In the absence of US imperialism, do you believe other mega rich nation states will not intervene (such as China, Russia, the EU, etc.)? Alas, you elide certain aspects that are “strategically” left unmentioned; internal factional violence runs concurrent with imperial hegemony (Shi ite /Sunni, Hindu/Moslem, Kurds/nearly everyone else, etc.). This is not unusual within the context. The disappearance of imperial hegemony will not eliminate these, for this animosity pre- exists any imperial presence. What you ascribe to imperial hegemony may have more to do with the wonderfully clichéd “globalization.” The interdependence and inter-effecting of all areas of the world with each other through electronic technologies and immediate communications (for transfer of goods and services) may be masked by what you ascribe as imperial hegemony. Most agree that the imperial hegemony of the US, like the British before, is on the wane. Yet the rise of immediate access to goods, information, cultural influences, climate change, education, armaments, etc. due to “globalization” continues and increases. This underlying reason for the vehement animosity may be displaced by what you describe as imperial hegemony. After all, keeping women barefoot and pregnant is a lot easier to do if they are not privileged to know what other women in the world can be or do. Much of the restlessness is on account of access to what previously was denied. Cell phones originally were designed for easy and readily available communication, not as triggering mechanisms for roadside bombs. The nationalistic solution to the strife, that you advocate, is a bit outdated and inadequate, some would say even reactionary.
Posted by: stanley wrzyszczynski | December 7, 2008 10:15 AM
Monday, December 1, 2008
South Asia's Stability vs. U.S. Hegemony: What India Can Do
India must continue to 1) talk with Pakistan, 2) initiate confidence-building measures with Pakistan 3) increase people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
This is not because our heart bleeds FOR Pakistan, (our anger and frustration against the U-S-trained and funded ISI are justified), but because the above 3-point defensive strategy would be strategically the most effective policy to further India's stability and prosperity in the region and elsewhere.
At the same time India must increase its vigilance and security a thousandfold. An "If You See Something Say Something" defensive strategy that directly involves We The People. This is the most urgent priority. Security at home and confidence-building across the border must go hand in hand.
Let the India Govt. DECOUPLE the recent terror act from its admirably resolute policy to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan.
Q. Which is the country that continues to destabilize South Asia? The USA.
The US will continue to exploit its "special" relationship Pakistan, which dates back to the creation of SEATO in the Dulles era of the U.S. State Department. Pakistan, being vulnerable to terror within its own borders (masterminded by the Soviet-era, US-trained ISI & Taliban) and because Pakistan is now bankrupt as well, a weakened Pakistan will play to the spin of the U.S. The Pakistan Govt. has fewer policy options and the Pak govt. is allegedly controlled by "rogue elements" within the ISI.
The flagrant U.S. abuse of Democracy in South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and West Asia (I never call it the Middle East) during the Bush-Cheney regime is hard evidence that the U.S. is neither a proponent nor emissary of Democracy and cannot be trusted or collaborated with by the world's largest and most vibrant democracy.
It is up to India to deploy, display and demonstrate its superior foreign policy expertise and thereby outmaneuver the neo-imperial US in our own geopolitical region.
India's foreign policy expertise was honed by long and consistently ethical post-colonial Global South membership experience dating back to the Non Aligned Movement (an historic coalition of formerly oppressed revolutionary liberatory nation-states of Africa and Asia, disparaged by who else? Condoleezza Rice last year in New Delhi).
Let's take 3 and continue to be free.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
This is not because our heart bleeds FOR Pakistan, (our anger and frustration against the U-S-trained and funded ISI are justified), but because the above 3-point defensive strategy would be strategically the most effective policy to further India's stability and prosperity in the region and elsewhere.
At the same time India must increase its vigilance and security a thousandfold. An "If You See Something Say Something" defensive strategy that directly involves We The People. This is the most urgent priority. Security at home and confidence-building across the border must go hand in hand.
Let the India Govt. DECOUPLE the recent terror act from its admirably resolute policy to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan.
Q. Which is the country that continues to destabilize South Asia? The USA.
The US will continue to exploit its "special" relationship Pakistan, which dates back to the creation of SEATO in the Dulles era of the U.S. State Department. Pakistan, being vulnerable to terror within its own borders (masterminded by the Soviet-era, US-trained ISI & Taliban) and because Pakistan is now bankrupt as well, a weakened Pakistan will play to the spin of the U.S. The Pakistan Govt. has fewer policy options and the Pak govt. is allegedly controlled by "rogue elements" within the ISI.
The flagrant U.S. abuse of Democracy in South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and West Asia (I never call it the Middle East) during the Bush-Cheney regime is hard evidence that the U.S. is neither a proponent nor emissary of Democracy and cannot be trusted or collaborated with by the world's largest and most vibrant democracy.
It is up to India to deploy, display and demonstrate its superior foreign policy expertise and thereby outmaneuver the neo-imperial US in our own geopolitical region.
India's foreign policy expertise was honed by long and consistently ethical post-colonial Global South membership experience dating back to the Non Aligned Movement (an historic coalition of formerly oppressed revolutionary liberatory nation-states of Africa and Asia, disparaged by who else? Condoleezza Rice last year in New Delhi).
Let's take 3 and continue to be free.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
=====================================================================================
Sunday, November 23, 2008
U.S. Exceptionalism & the American Terrorism Industry
Comment #
162. November 23, 2008 1:12 pm Link
Mr. Kristof:
How about the most important foreign policy strategy for the US? Stop meddling in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.
This non-interference is what most sovereign nation-states in the world are practising in their own foreign policy relationships. And even on those occasions when they don't, it is NOT for the U.S. to play SuperCop.
Who elected the U.S., Who appointed the U.S., to perform this extra-legal, extra-state function?
Most sovereign states are attempting multi-polar alliances but the US continues to be uni-polar, dominant and supremacist. How 20th century!
Mr. Kristof, I don't think it is for YOU or anyone in the U.S. to prescribe the following:
"Third, we should push much harder for a peace deal in Kashmir — including far more pressure on India — because Kashmir grievances empower Pakistani militants."
The relations between India and Pakistan are the ongoing concern of these two sovereign nation-states. It is a complex dynamic socio-historical relationship. Both Pakistanis and Indians continue to face the grave challenges of hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, homelessness, disease.
Both ordinary Pakistanis and ordinary Indians are threatened by daily acts of terrorism in their streets, shopping areas and places of work; We don't need the US, with its laughable "intelligence" capabilities to hunt "insurgents." while actually killing innocent civilians.
In fact I am an admirer of the ordinary people of Pakistan and have deep friendships with a few of them. Like people everywhere in the world, especially if they can escape being meddled with by dominant self-serving superpowers or their own homegrown unscrupulous political elites, ordinary Pakistanis want peace, education, shelter, health, prosperity. They have suffered under uncaring political leadership and the machinations of the US in the South Asia region, all the way back to the Dulles era.
I really don't expect Kristof to understand this core point, because the strategic ideology of U.S. EXCEPTIONALISM ('we are the best, we are the greatest, we are the biggest, we can do whatever we want, wherever we want') pervades his thinking, no less than it pervades the thinking of the DoD or the Congress or the White House or the Department of State. Generations of Americans have been fed the hype of American individualism which since the Cold War era has morphed into US exceptionalism.
The U.S. presently runs a terrorism industry -- invading and occupying sovereign nation-states, hunting "terrorists" and "insurgents" increasing its undercover presence in parts of the world through "secret orders". Even the numerous books that detail US activities in Iraq and Afghanistan; the embedded anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists of the Human Terrain System (HTS) of the U.S. Army; the wounded veterans, the amputees and their resulting rehab with remarkable advances in engineering of prosthetic limbs etc etc, the PTSD sufferers and their innovative clinical interventions -- all these are spinoffs of the U.S. terrorism industry.
I respect Kristof's personal courage and writing. But Kristof just doesn't get it and it doesn't surprise me.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
Link to Nicholas Kristof's article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23kristof.html
===================================================================================
162. November 23, 2008 1:12 pm Link
Mr. Kristof:
How about the most important foreign policy strategy for the US? Stop meddling in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.
This non-interference is what most sovereign nation-states in the world are practising in their own foreign policy relationships. And even on those occasions when they don't, it is NOT for the U.S. to play SuperCop.
Who elected the U.S., Who appointed the U.S., to perform this extra-legal, extra-state function?
Most sovereign states are attempting multi-polar alliances but the US continues to be uni-polar, dominant and supremacist. How 20th century!
Mr. Kristof, I don't think it is for YOU or anyone in the U.S. to prescribe the following:
"Third, we should push much harder for a peace deal in Kashmir — including far more pressure on India — because Kashmir grievances empower Pakistani militants."
The relations between India and Pakistan are the ongoing concern of these two sovereign nation-states. It is a complex dynamic socio-historical relationship. Both Pakistanis and Indians continue to face the grave challenges of hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, homelessness, disease.
Both ordinary Pakistanis and ordinary Indians are threatened by daily acts of terrorism in their streets, shopping areas and places of work; We don't need the US, with its laughable "intelligence" capabilities to hunt "insurgents." while actually killing innocent civilians.
In fact I am an admirer of the ordinary people of Pakistan and have deep friendships with a few of them. Like people everywhere in the world, especially if they can escape being meddled with by dominant self-serving superpowers or their own homegrown unscrupulous political elites, ordinary Pakistanis want peace, education, shelter, health, prosperity. They have suffered under uncaring political leadership and the machinations of the US in the South Asia region, all the way back to the Dulles era.
I really don't expect Kristof to understand this core point, because the strategic ideology of U.S. EXCEPTIONALISM ('we are the best, we are the greatest, we are the biggest, we can do whatever we want, wherever we want') pervades his thinking, no less than it pervades the thinking of the DoD or the Congress or the White House or the Department of State. Generations of Americans have been fed the hype of American individualism which since the Cold War era has morphed into US exceptionalism.
The U.S. presently runs a terrorism industry -- invading and occupying sovereign nation-states, hunting "terrorists" and "insurgents" increasing its undercover presence in parts of the world through "secret orders". Even the numerous books that detail US activities in Iraq and Afghanistan; the embedded anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists of the Human Terrain System (HTS) of the U.S. Army; the wounded veterans, the amputees and their resulting rehab with remarkable advances in engineering of prosthetic limbs etc etc, the PTSD sufferers and their innovative clinical interventions -- all these are spinoffs of the U.S. terrorism industry.
I respect Kristof's personal courage and writing. But Kristof just doesn't get it and it doesn't surprise me.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
Link to Nicholas Kristof's article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23kristof.html
===================================================================================
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