Self and Nation:: The US in Iran

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/opinion/26cohen.html
Op-Ed Columnist
The Inner Life
By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 25, 2009
New York Times copyright
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My Comment #40.
February 26, 2009 8:52 am

Link


February 26th, 2009 8:32 am
Can we just as easily substitute Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rice-Rumsfeld-Powell in the quote below?

“Too arrogant to think of [them] as a threat and deliberately ignorant of [their] designs, we supported [them]. We welcomed the vehemence of [Bush's] rants against [the Axis of Evil] and were willing to overlook the fact that they were not delivered by champion[s] of freedom.”

The problem with Nafisi and her 'narrative tension" just as with Cohen's, is that they don't see their own elite neoliberal complicity with the ruling US political establishment, except conveniently long, long after the fact. And even then, they keep their blinders on.

What "inner life" is Cohen talking about? One that does not accept personal responsibility for the stance we take, which we can and must admit may be full of error?

Nafisi was supported by that great advocate of democracy, the corrupt and disgraced Wolfowitz.

And Cohen still appears to be blind to the repercussions from US govt.'s role in getting rid of the popularly elected Mossadegh (who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil), and US militarization/ satellization of Israel in the so-called Middle East.

Change from Within will become Change We Can Believe In,
when the US takes its rightful place in the world community as an equal, NOT a dominant player.

I fear for my own region -- South Asia -- where Iran (as well as Israel) is our adjoining neighbor (the US is NOT), and the manipulative, violence-driven proclivity of the US Govt. whether Brand Bush or Brand Obama. There is only a difference in degree not in kind.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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Reps, Dems and Ethical Bipartisanship,

February 23, 2009, 4:58 pm
Does Bipartisanship Matter?
By The Editors

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/does-bipartisanship-matter/?hp&apage=9#comments

New York Times copyright
--------------------------

My Comment# 206. February 24, 2009 12:44 pm Link

Ethical Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship is a valuable strategic option for President Obama as he tries to implement a cohesive response to the economic mess created by the Republicans. He must be persistently bipartisan, probably multi-partisan, like successful democracies in Europe and the Global South.

The Republicans are already focused on trying to win back the White House and Congress in 4 years. That’s is the core objective in defying bipartisan overtures by the President.
Well, Obama can play that game too. He is also intent on winning again in four years. So, keep offering bipartisanship opportunities to the Republicans, no matter how many times they say ‘No.”

Then, four years down the road Obama can prove that the majority of Republicans are ideologically against bipartisanship. They appear to be driven by ideology rather than pragmatism.

The majority of Republicans and some Democrats lack pragmatism of what constitutes policy and programs to maximize the Greater Collective Good.

That’s what ethical democracy is mostly about.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— Chithra KarunaKaran
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50th Anniversary 1959-2009: MLK in the Land of MKG

50th Anniversary 1959-2009 MLK in the Land of MKG

This year Black History Month has especial significance. The White House used to be the WHITES' House. Three hundred years of resistance and struggle have propelled a Black President into leadership of the United States. Obama is 50% white and 50% but such is the power of the "one-drop-rule" of racialized white supremacacism that he cannot possibly stand up and say "Hey I'm Black-white or White-Black." The most he can say, and he did say was self-deprecatingly "a mutt like me."

Without the blood sweat tears of those three hundred years of persistent struggle, such a historic moment might have been even further delayed. Today, during Black History Month in the United States, I am marking for special mention the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic visit to India to the several places of Gandhi's activism, assassination and cremation.

Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice is about examining and reflecting upon such ethical moments. Self-in-Society-Studies focuses on this visit and its implications and repercussions.
More to come...

Slumdogs Unite!

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/the-real-roots-of-the-slumdog-protests/#comment-20883
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21srivastava.html
Taking the Slum out of 'Slumdog'by By MATIAS ECHANOVE and RAHUL SRIVASTAVA
Published: February 21, 2009
New York Times copyright

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Comment February 21, 2009 9:44 pm Link


The "Slumdog" protests in India, which are quite limited, illustrate several points:

. Slumdog drew attention, albeit Hollywood-Bollywood style, to India's poverty. Neither our politicians nor our civil society can ignore hunger, poverty, homelessness in our country.

. It appears protesters were concerned with the word "dog" than with the word "slum."
Shouldn't they have been more concerned that millions of people live in slums, which by any other name are still places of poverty and inequality of opportunity.

.India has a vibrant and exponentially growing civil society, where protests of various types can take place without beheading or flogging.

.India’s billion plus people are likely to have the whole spectrum of diverse opinions, rather than only a few, because they have been practicing democracy, with lots of trial and error, but it's still democracy for all to see.

.The poor and the disenfranchised are especially vulnerable, more so during an election year, to:
vote-seeking criminal politicians, pseudo-nationalists, and cultural fundamentalists, (occasionally they are all rolled into one).

.Lost in translation — "dog" in English doesn’t translate favorably in a score of South Asian languages, let alone "slumdog."

.The so-called ” slum” kids in the movie are coming to the academy awards — more power to them. The rest of us will have to be content to watch it on TV.

.The vast majority of Indians don’t keep dogs as pets — ill-treatment of street dogs is rampant. Our canine friends in India need a whole lot of loving and more SPCA and PETA protection. If and when that happens every Indian will be happy to be called a dog.

.Controversy will boost Slumdog box office receipts for the movie in India and elsewhere, to stratospheric levels.

Go Oscar! And after that, Slumdogs of the World Unite!

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— Chithra KarunaKar

Racism Rides Again: Whiteness in the Age of Obama

A Nation of Cowards? by Charles M. Blow
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21blow.html
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/21/opinion/21blow.html#postComment #91
New York Times copyright
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/weekend-opinionator-a-nation-of-cowards-stimulus-wielding-chimps-and-hip-hop-republicans/
Weekend Opinionator: A Nation of Cowards, Stimulus-Wielding Chimps and Hip-Hop Republicans
By Tobin Harshaw
New York Times copyright
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A version of my post(s) on the above topic appeared earlier (see link above)
Comment #91 NYT
Racism Rides Again: Whiteness in the Age of Obama
Blow has offered new data and analysis to argue what has already long been established in 50 years of study on the subject. Racism is for real. And it is about power. New data and analysis on this topic are always welcome.

Blow is correct to chide Holder for overstepping the perimeters of constructive dialogue, by using language that impedes it. I too object to Holder's characterization. But then I also cringed when Obama described himself as "a mutt." Both the confrontational "cowards" and self-disparaging "mutt" remarks equally speak to what I call "Systemic Whiteness."

But really, what language is appropriate to counter institutionalized racism? Or sexism or worse,genocide or invasion/occupation? Shoe throwing at a foreign tyrant is a better option than blasting a bomb under children riding a bus, for sure. But the problem is still perceived INJUSTICE of the worst sort.

I'll go ahead and offer my Theory of Systemic Whiteness which I developed after long years of living and working as an immigrant woman of color in the US, and which of course can be googled. Whiteness is the SYSTEM of unequal, un-shared, dominant POWER in US society, not merely an individual's feeling or opinion or prejudice or attitude or behavior.

I am thinking that a non-judgmental, non-prescriptive Self-in-Society curriculum of open inquiry leading to personal growth, from the earliest days of schooling (in which parents are directly involved),can present an opportunity to overturn the mindset and behavior-set of Systemic Whiteness.
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The NYTimes weekend opinionator comment (see link above)
Comment #66. February 21, 2009 6:39 pm Link

Racism Rides Again: Whiteness in the Age of Obama

The White House was the Whites’ House until just last month.

Holder pushed a button. Racism is for real. Racism is alive and well. There is no such thing as being post-racial, because race is a socially constructed category and we keep constructing it. No surprise. What we call racism is primarily about dominant unequal POWER exercised by one self-selected group using its unearned privilege over everyone else. It’s so pervasive it feels ‘natural.’

Holder overstepped the perimeters of constructive dialogue, by using language that impedes it. But Holder himself is as much a part of the Whiteness System as anyone else (including you and me) who lives in US society.

I object to Holder’s characterization. But then I also cringed when Obama described himself as “a mutt.” Both the confrontational “cowards” and self-disparaging “mutt” remarks, equally speak to what I call “Systemic Whiteness.”

But really, what language is appropriate and sufficient to dismantle Whiteness — - institutionalized bias and unearned privilege by one self-selected group over all others?

Again, what language is appropriate sufficient to counter other forms of bias similarly rooted in power — sexism or worse, genocide or invasion/occupation? Shoe throwing (the Iraq example) at a foreign tyrant (a white male who embodies and exemplifies Whiteness as power), is a better option than blasting a bomb under children riding a bus, for sure. But the problem is still lived experience of INJUSTICE of the most egregious sort. To my mind, that is what Holder is really talking about.

Holder made an overstatement about race and the nation, that is nevertheless substantially accurate. So let’s not privilege style over substance, that is a diversionary tactic employed by those who hold power and commit injustice.

Another famously incendiary statement By Any Means Necessary still contains the powerful threat of menacing violence without actual violence, and that has been a powerful deterrent originating in the activist politics of the late great pacifist, yes, pacifist and liberatory internationalist, Malcolm X.

I’ll go ahead and offer my Theory of Systemic Whiteness which I developed after long years of living and working as an immigrant woman of color in the US, and which of course can be googled. Whiteness is the SYSTEM of unequal, un-shared, dominant POWER in US society, not merely an individual’s feeling or opinion or prejudice or attitude or behavior.

Finally, I am thinking that a non-judgmental, non-prescriptive, Self-in-Society curriculum of open inquiry leading to personal growth and lived pluralism, from the earliest days of schooling (in which parents are directly involved), can present an opportunity to overturn the mindset and behavior-set of Systemic Whiteness.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— Chithra KarunaKaran

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Multipolar Iran vs. Unipolar US

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/19/opinion/19cohen.html
Reading Khamenei in Iran by Roger Cohen
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/opinion/19cohen.html
New York Times copyright
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Comment # 48.
February 19, 2009 10:34 am

Link
The Zionists on the staff of The New York Times (of which Cohen is one) are at it again! Seriously, why don't you at the NYT (even if only occasionally) 'deploy' a Global South or Scandinavian journalist to cover the so-called Middle East (Middle of what? East of where?). That area is both West Asia and North East Africa. You cannot truncate either of these huge continents by taking a chunk out of each of them and call that area the Middle East, a Brit colonial-imperial fiction, continued by the US, the prevailing neo-imperial power. Though Cohen does not specifically use the term "Middle East" it is the suspect terrain of his analyses.

Does IRAN's Right to Exist (yes I mean Iran, I am not talking about Israel) depend on Iran's relationship to Israel and the US? Iran has never threatened the US, whereas the US has deposed its popularly elected leaders (Mossadegh), propped up straw monarchs (Reza Shah Pehlavi), stoked the Iran-Iraq war, and sanctioned Iran for attempting to become a nuclear power (which Israel already is, and the US is the only user of nuclear weapons).

Finally, let me inform Cohen Iran is well on the way to strategic multipolarity like many sovereign nation-states struggling out of the colonial era, with dialogue and economic arrangements with South America, Africa and South Asia. Therefore, "only engagement with the West" as Cohen mistakenly asserts is not Iran's only or preferred option.

Iran is undoubtedly a deeply flawed sovereign nation-state with an abysmal human rights record. This human rights record is correctly a terrain for engagement by the US and all UN member states, with Iran, no less than with Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record the US conveniently winks at, while guzzling Saudi oil.
Let it also be noted that Iran is an emerging regional power despite severe geo-political provocation from the US and its satellite, Israel.
My sense is Iran will prevail, despite Cohen's "pious" prescriptions to deal with Iran's alleged "independence obsession."

My comments do not in any way mean I do not read Cohen and others on the op-ed staff of the NYT with the greatest critical interest. I thank the NYT for that opportunity, because it is most instructive.
Such discussion is the stuff of US democracy on its way to developing an ethical spine.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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SWAT the US & NATO out of South Asia

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/swat-valley-blues/#comment-95061
New York Times copyright
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Comment #20. February 18, 2009 9:35 pm


Will Afghanistan become Obama's Vietnam?

US and NATO military operations in this region have very seriously exacerbated the already longstanding regional tensions and rivalries in Afghanistan/Pakistan western border areas, of which the Swat Valley is a part.

Both the US and NATO which is in any case US-dominated, should get out now.

Q. Your US drone can spot so-called militants from the air because they are wearing T for Taliban or Q for Al Queda T shirts?
When families who already have so little, lose fathers, mothers and children to US/NATO operations there is bound to be longterm bitterness and revenge.

The US is almost certainly under-reporting civilian casualties in Swat and adjoining areas..

Let the various local fractious factions sort out their differences (which go back centuries), without the self-proclaimed superpower futilely flexing its muscle in the region.

The flow of money, weapons and equipment into the region from various sources including the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran needs to be monitored and stanched. The UN has not done any weapons monitoring and it should.

The worrying question is — who will proactively ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Taliban now dangerously poised within striking distance of Islamabad? Again, the UN must be proactive rather than merely reactive to US demands based on its narrow interests, in the Security Council.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— Chithra KarunaKaran

Islam in India: The Secular Democratic Project of Lived Pluralism

Comment #108.
February 18, 2009 11:45 am
a version of my post below appeared on:
Islam in India: The Secular Democratic Project of Lived Pluralism
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/18/opinion/18friedman.html
New York Times copyright
February 18th, 2009 8:37 am
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Friedman's piece is both courageous and timely. These are words that must be pondered upon as much by the US State Department as by every South Asian.

People like the 17th century scholar-soldier Dara Shukoh, murdered son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, the freedom fighter Maulana Azad (Gandhi called him "my conscience keeper") and contemporary outspoken writer Salman Rushdie, who stood up to fatwa, all come out of this proud tradition of thousands of years of LIVED secular pluralism. We people of diverse faiths as well as agnostics and atheists, have lived together, grown tolerant of each other in our lush (rather than harsh) natural environment and in the process, discovered treasures in each others' culture.
In India Democracy is not some borrowed western concept. It has emerged out of a lived experience of discursive mingling of Greek, Hindu,Buddhist and absolutely YES, Islamic ideas, not to speak of Sikh, Christian, Judaic, Zoroastrian, Dalit and indigenous tribal ideas.

The Ayodhya mosque demolition and the post-Godhra pogroms are blots on India's secular plural national conscience and character. Still, a billion plus Indians have maintained restraint in the face of such provocations incited by criminal politicians who have yet to be brought to justice. We cannot rest until they are.


However religious tolerance and secular pluralism are not the same thing as developing uncompromisingly intolerant attitudes and policy about hunger, homelessness and inequality of opportunity. Indians badly need to develop that sort of intolerance.

The Indian secular democratic project of lived pluralism which translates as SOCIAL JUSTICE, has miles to go.

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

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No Way no How not Here by Thomas Friedman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/opinion/18friedman.html?_r=1&hp
New York Times copyright
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The Self in the City: The Case for New York and Mumbai

February 17, 2009 7:20 am
Comment #135
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/17/opinion/17brooks.html?s=1&pg=6

Perhaps Americans need to dream more expansively, and live their dreams, the older they grow. Perhaps that's the lesson to learn from the Pew study (see link below).

I lived for two years in Amsterdam in the 70's (while researching the double diaspora of the Surinam Indians) on my way to a doctorate at Columbia.

However I opted to live in New York (which to my mind is in a dead heat with Mumbai), over smaller, more cohesive, less diverse, less inclusive Amsterdam, because New York is MORE in every sense of the word -- NYC is a global city with ethical capacity, like Mumbai.

In New York I can use, reuse and yet again reuse my blue or orange Fairway bags and then climb into the M4 bus to reach my door in Washington Heights. I can take the F to Second Avenue to a birthday party in the East Village for an Amazon macaw born in a Manhattan apartment in the middle of winter, called Peacenik, whose picture on my fridge, with his doting parents I can share with my older son who is a vice-president at ING, as well as an avid birder.
The owners belong to a group called Parrots for Peace and their avian charges grow up to say things like "Peace will Prevail." to their human interlocutors.

The metaglobal, ocassionally quirky collective consciousness of a porous city, that New York and Mumbai amplify, makes it unnecessary for me to "retire" (what a dead-end word) to the city. I'm already here and I have never consumed anything from Starbucks or McDonalds.
The global city like New York, Mumbai and some others, makes ethical choices ever more critical and possible.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

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I Dream of Denver BY David Brooks
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/opinion/17brooks.html
New York Times copyright
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http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1111/starbucks-versus-mcdonalds-choices-demographics
http://pewsocialtrends.org/
Pew Research Center copyright

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2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return

2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return

We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.

We know no people without a land to call home.

We know no people who do not share a land with others.

We know no people who have prospered by rejecting the land of their ancestors.

We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the option to live their lives in a land of their ancestors' birth, as well as have the option to live elsewhere.

No one is exempt from Hope. No one is exempt from Hope, whether bowed or defiant in Despair.

Hope lives in the human heart, that "thing with feathers."

Is a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?


During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, victims of ethnic cleansing, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples, ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.

This has to be a Refugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.

No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for the right to return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society, people like you and me, to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed.

It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.

Can we collectively plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

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http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/THOU-77K58G?OpenDocument

Self in Society: Ethical Possibility As Lived Practice

Not Self and Society but Self in Society.

The non-duality (advaita) of Self and Universe of the Upanishad (800 BCE) meets neuroscience with Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis."(1994).

What an engagement across eons of awareness. I am conceptually locating that momentous engagement in the study of the PSYCHOSOCIAL, which sits at the crossroads intersection of sociology, psychology, quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience but which cannot be collapsed or subsumed within any of them.

First and foremost as an ordinary and reflective person, then and only secondarily as a postcolonial sociologist who teaches foundational theories in Psychology, I am fortunate to have developed for myself, in spaces of academic institutional resistance, and in digital spaces such as this blog, the opportunity to conceptually bring the individual "I" and situate that i within the collective "We", an examined union of the natural and the social-cultural.

There is no lived distance between Self & Society. Such a constructed divide lacks temporal possibility because in real time there is no Self without Society. There is no Society without Selves. It is Society that makes Self human. Though we arrive, at infancy, in Society equipped to be human, to BECOME human, we need Society. Those very few selves who were unfortunate enough to be placed outside of the human social context failed to become human.

Though we are free to mentally manipulate the two, Self and Society, as distinct conceptual categories, in order to further our thought about Self and Society, Self in Society, each necessarily constitutes the other. That symbolic manipulation is a necessary intellectual scientific endeavor in order to contemplate, affirm and establish the interweaving and inseparability of Self & Society, Society & Self.

It has become my life's work and such work is not dependent on the US academy which pays me meagerly but sufficiently for my own frugality, but continually attempts to limit the ethical intellectual scope of what I may do. Therefore most of my work must be unpaid and conducted outside of the US academy. Neither the US academy nor its macro-context, the US nation-state nor its surrogate institutions, define who I am or who I am becoming as Self in Society.

In my own lived practice, I accept full responsibility for my thoughts and actions. Therefore, I cannot ascribe my thoughts and actions (which I concurrently experience or perform in real time), to others OR to magical forces (religion vs. ethics) or fictitious circumstances or fabricated representations, outside of myself.

I am responsible for my thoughts and actions, I am fully accountable for my own thoughts and actions, which may be shaped and influenced by the above, but I still am responsible.

It is my responsibility to myself, my family, my ancestors, my universal civil society to develop my intrinsic motivation and limit the influence of extrinsic motivation in the ethical pursuit of my own lived possibility.

Others are not responsible or accountable for what I myself think and do. I must importantly accept the responsibility that my thoughts and actions may influence and impact others, sometimes to their detriment, therefore I have an ethical responsibility to anticipate how I may affect these selves, these others who are also equally human and have the same ethical potential as I. This is the goal of the Self in joining with other selves in the pursuit of establishing the Greater Collective Good, an indispensable constituting force of Society.

By the same token I cannot accept responsibility for the thoughts and actions of others, including the thoughts and actions of individuals, financial institutions or governments. These I feel absolutely free to examine, challenge and oppose or support, according to my evolving understanding of my own ethical possibility as a moment-by-moment, daily, seasonal and lifelong lived practice.

It is fortuitous for me to have an opportunity for reflection on Self in Society, on this anniversary of Gandhi's assassination.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Self & Society: Ethical Possibility as Lived Practice
01/30/09 Gandhi was assassinated on Jan 30, 1948

Centrally Planned Economies -- The US?

.

February 11, 2009 7:23 am
Dowd is stuck with a mistaken metaphor -- it looks like the "savior based economy" is losing out to ethical populist outrage, not messianic posturing.

Obama is being mindful of the mandate given to him by millions of voters (PEOPLE) who sent him to Washington. Despite a few false starts he's now got his eye on the ball. It's up to us ethical populists to train Geithner (who should not have got the job) to also get it right, like the President who appointed him.

Now that the the Unites States has a Centrally Planned Economy (CPE), something that was widely disparaged in the Cold War era, we will all have the opportunity to see how a pragmatic variation of US-style Marxist-type Socialism works!

Of course the underlying point is that the US has ALWAYS been a CPE. How? Because the market fundamentalism of the US Federal Reserve and the IMF type is centrally planned. The free market economy is a carefully planned and articulated HYPE, bought by the mainstream media and the electorate.

Marx had the notion that the individual is important in any society, but the Soviets didn't get that part about the importance of the individual, consequently they really messed up.

"Change we can believe in" is proletarian populism.

What goes around comes around. Now both Wall Street and Main Street not to mention The White House and Congress are all clamoring for glasnost and perestroika.
How aptly ironic.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
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Comment #272, NYT published 02/12/09
A version of the above, submitted in response to another NYTimes article(see credit below).
Kristof says that the US public has a "horror of nationalization." I want to unpack that statement.

Is the US a Centrally Planned Economy(CPE)? Yes it is. And Yes, it ALWAYS has been. How? Because the market fundamentalism of the US Federal Reserve and the IMF type is centrally planned and implemented globally.
The US concept of the so-called "free market economy" coupled with its militaristic geopolitical strategy, is a carefully planned and articulated HYPE, a brand if you will, (no conspiracy theory needed here), bought by the mainstream media and sold to the US electorate. Voters like you and me who are now lashing back, with ethical populist outrage, at free market excesses like over the top executive compensation,

Marx, a flawed economist always had the notion that the individual is important in any society, but the Soviets didn't get that part about the importance of the individual, consequently they really messed up.

"Change we can believe in" is now proletarian populism. That way Kristof can avoid using the new "N" word.

What goes around comes around. Both Wall Street and Main Street, not to mention The White House and Congress, are all clamoring for glasnost and perestroika.
How aptly ironic.

Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/opinion/11dowd.html
Trillion Dollar Baby BY Maureen Dowd
New York Times copyright
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/opinion/12kristof.html
Escaping the Bust Bowl by Nicholas Kristof
New York Times copyright
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Intolerant India vs. Incredible India: Homegrown Civilian Terror & the Threat to Ethical Democracy

Is the current BJP-led Karnataka Govt. leading the great state of Karnataka down the treacherous path of violent cultural fundamentalism? Is the BJP at least complicit with the forces of civilian vigilantism as it flexes its communal muscle in governing the state?

Why pretend that communal vigilantism and terrorizing of civilians (by the Sri Ram Sene and others inspired by their hatred-driven example), is a foreign invention? Did we in India really need the Taliban to inspire us or is the work of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its extremist political party spinoffs like the Bajrang Dal, now bearing toxic fruit? Are we forgetting that Godse, a member of the RSS assassinated Gandhi? Was that a homegrown heinous crime or was it somehow foreign and alien to us? Did homegrown violent, criminal cultural fundamentalism result in the Gujarat pogroms?

Why pretend that civilian terror, terror against innocent individuals, unleashed in the Mangalore pub molestation and the assault on two persons because they were conversing with one another, one Hindu one Muslim, on a Kasaragod bus, is a Taliban style operation? No it's not. It's totally Indian, homegrown, civilian, communal terror and our own civil society must vigorously oppose it. The people who were the victims have to stand up in public, speak in their own voices and fight back. NGOs involved in social justice initiatives must help them. Ordinary citizens of the families and communities have to speak up. The people of Mangalore and Kasaragod have to speak up for social justice, not sweep social injustice under the rug. The students of St. Aloysius College spoke up against the ordeal suffered by their friend and fellow student on that Karasagod, Kerala bus. Good for them. They showed their courage when others were silent.

In speaking up and speaking out for a free and democratic civil society,in which we have responsibilies and rights, we have to be careful to develop our own language of anti-oppressive resistance. Therefore I would not use words like Talibanization, Islamist Jihadism, Hindutva or Saffronization. Such language evokes the symbols of oppressive civilian and partisan politics, whether in Kasaragod or Kashmir, and empowers the oppressors to defend and implement their oppressive strategies, whether in Mumbai or Mangalore.

Instead of borrowing the language of our homegrown oppressors we need to speak up, speak out and act against hate and terror crimes, anti-civilian violence, violation of civil rights, all of which are punishable under Indian law.

There are several conflicting media reports about both the Mangalore pub molestation of women as well as the Kasaragod bus detention and assault. However, regardless of the details which are yet to be clarified by the victims, police and political authorities, there is no doubt that innocent civilians were physically abused, abducted, illegally detained by anti-social, anti-secular elements. The victims' civil liberties were violated and they have a right to legal redress, which can and should include jail time for the perpetrators and cash compensation payable to the victims. Hit the hate-and- divide oppressors in the wallet, where it really hurts.

These instances of Indian homegrown civilian terror and the destructive antidemocratic, anti-secular strategy of cultural supremacist fundamentalism has its roots, not in Afghanistan, but right here at home in the divisive anti-democracy and anti human rights tactics of the RSS, BJP, VHP, BD and others playing the hate-and divide game. Religion and so-called "cultural values" are deployed as WEAPONS to terrorize civilians, ordinary folks like you and me.

Terror against civilians has its supremacist roots in patriachalism, casteism, communalism, vigilantism and it is a direct assault on the fragile construction of ethical democracy first articulated in the Gandhian liberatory era that produced the unprecedented postcolonial democracy of the sovereign Indian nation-state. With all our cultural and societal flaws, through oppression, invasion, occupation and exploitation, our diverse peoples in India have somehow hewed to the ideal of Satyameva Jayate. The Indian sovereign nation-state's central ideal of Satyameva Jayate must confront and expose the falsehood of cultural fundamentalism.

How do we in India construct the Self in Society? What is the psychosocial? That is a project for the pursuit of ethical democracy in India.


Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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Ethical Populism vs. Corporate Serial Criminality

February 8th, 2009 10:48 am
Comment #612

Populist ETHICAL rage is the best thing that could have happened to America.

Corporate serial criminality has sickened the majority of ordinary earn-your-livelihood americans (yes, lower case a, please) like me.

We are now focused on the universal human right to the pursuit of happiness through fairness, equality, social and economic justice.

ETHICAL POPULISM, in contrast to the rah-rah military adventurism and market unregulation of the 8 years-too-long W regime, will hopefully play a major role in keeping this new President ethical and accountable.

Obama doesn't have the expertise or the experience, he's been a team player all his life, to do it all by himself. Democracy is NOT a one-man show. Obama fumbled, he "screwed up" and the american people expressed their outrage at the unpalatable prospect of business as usual.

ETHICAL POPULISM. I celebrate its tentative return.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
-------------------
Slumdogs Unite! By Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html?s=1&pg=25
New York Times copyright
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Heim: Sociopath, Nazi War Criminal & the Challenge for Ethical Democracy

February 5th, 2009 4:38 am
Heim -- A consummate criminal, a genocider, a sociopath and psychopath who, most regrettably, was not brought to justice. Heim died peacefully in Cairo in 1992, a citizen of Egypt, but apparently his hiding place was only revealed recently.

This whole sequence of a life lived becomes a topic of concern in my empirical investigation of Self in Society in my "Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice" Blog.


It's ironic that the article mentions Heim planned to appeal to Kurt Waldheim -- yet another Nazi silent accomplice (see link below) who was honored with UN service and went unpunished.

Did Heim become less of a criminal because he became a Muslim? Yet another instance of religion being deployed for criminal, pathological uses, by individuals and the state.

Egypt aided and abetted this criminal by offering him political sanctuary and citizenship under an assumed,in this case, changed, name. So the Egyptian nation-state bears criminal responsibility and should pay reparation to the families of his victims. Unfortunately that may not happen until we make progress as ethical societies. That day may yet come. Heim's numerous victims who were rendered speechless in death, cry out for justice.
Justice is deathless. Ethical democracy to secure justice takes time and sincere, sustained effort.
The Arc of Justice........

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
------
Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/world/africa/05nazi.html?pagewanted=1&hp
New York Times copyright
-----
by Jonathan Kandell,IHT article June 14, 2007 obit on Waldheim
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/14/europe/waldheim.php
International Herald Tribune copyright

==============================================================================

Change We Can Believe In? Or More of the Same?

Dowd is performing a public service, (long abandoned by the U.S. mainstream media during the W regime), by relentlessly holding Obama accountable from Day I. Can he walk the talk? "Change we can believe in" is rapidly but yet predictably, turning into disbelief, as Obama defended then feebly disavowed Daschle. The more they promise change .......

No doubt about it, ordinary folks and responsiblyindependent- minded, progressive columnists will have to shoulder the 4-year long responsibility of holding this new President (who doesn't have one ounce of prior executive experience and only meager legislative experience)to his lofty but eminently doable campaign promises.

Yes We can. Yes he must!

I voted Brand Obama over Brand McCain, with a healthy dose of skepticism, fully appreciating that civil society activism, not the elected leader alone, is key to the arduous but rewarding construction of ethical democracy.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
-------
Comment #68, February 04, 2008 8:04 a.m.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/opinion/04dowd.html
New York Times copyright
==================================================================================

US & NATO Out Of South Asia

Tuesday, February 3, 2009
US and NATO out of South Asia
Lesson for Obama and the US:
Perhaps Obama will learn something new, (though that is unlikely), from this latest event in which so-called "militants" have allegedly severed the supply link for US-NATO forces by blowing up a bridge in the Swat Valley adjoining the Khyber Pass terrain (see Yahoo news copyrighted article, scroll below my post).

The US and NATO have NO role in South Asia. Zero, nyet, zilch, nada.

US-NATO forces have killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent Afghan and Pakistani civilians and falsely claimed they have killed "insurgents" or "militants."

Q. Your unmanned U.S. drone can spot an "insurgent" or "militant" from the air because they are wearing T for Taliban or Q for Qaeda T-shirts?

One does not have to be a supporter of the Taliban or Al Qaeda or a so-called "Jihadist" to fairly state that the US forces and NATO forces are in fact the major insurgents and militants in South Asia.

India, Pakistan and other nation-states have a choice. The regional politics of South Asia can be played out, with much trial and error, but mostly with open hearts and minds, by the primary stakeholders -- civil societies of sovereign nation-states of the geopolitical region of South Asia and through their one-state, one vote membership in the General Assembly (not the US-dominated limited-membership Security Council) of the United Nations. Or we can stupidly choose to have self-interested non-regional nation-states dictating and controlling our geopolitics. That's the choice facing South Asia.

Lesson for Pakistan: A vibrant Civil Society in Pakistan is Pakistan's only hope and it will do much to stabilize South Asia. Sixty years of growing state-sponsored terror on Pakistan soil has now backfired on Pakistan. When Pakistan's new leaders claim "we are victims of terror" they are right but not entirely factually accurate. That claim should be restated thus: "We, Pakistan, are victims of terror because the terror we grew on our soil for 60 years, with US help, and exported to Kashmir and Afghanistan has now turned back to bite us." As for Pakistan's leaders saying India should not engage in the "blame game", the question is: Is India NAMING Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror (with US complicity and financing)? Yes, it is.That is naming, not blaming. If the cap fits, Pakistan, wear it.


Lesson for India: That proposed Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline ain't never gonna work. It will be continually sabotaged, just like that bridge that was blow up today in the Swat Valley. The main reason the pipeline will not work is because the US does not want the pipeline, and will not allow the proposed pipeline to succeed. US policy in South Asia and West Asia is driven by anti-Russia, anti-Iran, anti-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-Zionist expansionist militaristic and capitalistic market fundamentalism strategy to secure and privatize oil and natural gas resources throughout the world. The US is competing with both Iran and Russia for geopolitical influence and control over natural resources, in the South Asia and West Asia (inaccurately called The Middle East) regions.

So India, in terms of the proposed pipeline learn this lesson: Ditch it before you Pay for it. In fact Ditch it before you Build it. Maybe India can think about the pipeline again in five years, that is IF Afghanistan does not fall to the Taliban and Pakistan does not have a military coup, before then.


What India can do now (and it is a lot), is: Improve internal domestic and border and coastal surveillance to protect the people of India, their civil society and their cherished democratic and cultural institutions, by involving civil society , that means PEOPLE, civilians, citizens, residents, Bharat vasis,(not just the army, police and myopic foreign policy bureaucrats) in vigilance, surveillance and protection.

India, In terms of energy policy, Gain energy independence through funding and public-private partnering for green energy R&D in solar and wind sourcing. Exxon Mobil does not own the sun (yet), so India, use it. Go solar, go green, not nuclear.

As for national security, "If you see something say something" is a commonsense, proactive, preventive, pre-emptive, more cost-effective natural security strategy by every quantitative and qualitative measure, than rappeling commandos onto the roofs of hotels and religious and cultural centers in crowded urban areas, AFTER the state-sponsored terrorists have landed.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

========================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/world/asia/15pstan.html?_r=1&hp
New York Times copyright
-----------
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090203/wl_nm/us_pakistan_afghan
Yahoo news copyright

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Suspected militants blew up a bridge in northwestern Pakistan's Khyber Pass on Tuesday, cutting the main route for supplies bound for Western forces in Afghanistan, Pakistani government officials said.

Separately, security forces killed at least 35 Taliban insurgents and wounded many others in an attack Monday night in the Swat Valley, northeast of the Kyber Pass, a military spokesman said.

Militants in northwestern Pakistan stepped up attacks on the road through the Khyber Pass, a crucial route into land-locked Afghanistan, last year in an attempt to deprive international forces fighting the Taliban of supplies trucked in from Pakistan.

The 30-meter (100-foot) iron bridge, 23 km (15 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, was blown up after midnight and administration officials said all traffic along the route was suspended.

"Militants blew up the bridge and it's going to take some time to fix it," said government official Rahat Gul. He declined to estimate how long it might take.

Guards are usually posted on heights above bridges on the road but it was not clear why they had been unable to stop the attack.

Militant attacks over recent months have disrupted supplies but the route had only been briefly closed twice since September.

The U.S. military and NATO's Afghan force have played down the impact of the attacks but nevertheless have been looking for alternative routes.

A NATO force spokesman in Kabul said he had no information about Tuesday's attack.

There are two routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan, one through the Khyber Pass to the border town of Torkham and on to Kabul. The other runs through Pakistan to the border town of Chaman and on to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

The U.S. Defense Department says the U.S. military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops.

HEAVY FIGHTING IN SWAT

Pakistani customs officials say about 300 trucks with Western force supplies travel through Torkham every day, compared with about 100 through the Chaman crossing.

With the U.S. military set to send thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan in coming months, perhaps nearly doubling the number to about 60,000, the need for reliable supply routes will become that much more vital.

The chief of the U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, said last month agreements had been reached for new routes into northern Afghanistan through Central Asian states and Russia. He did not give details.

In the Swat Valley, security forces pounded militants with artillery as they gathered to launch an attack, killing at least 35 of them, an officer in the military's information department said.

"We opened fire with artillery and mortars on credible information that a group of militants had gathered and was planning an attack in the dark," the officer said.

There was no independent verification of the casualty estimate.

The scenic Swat valley, only 130 km (80 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad, and not on the Afghan border, was until recently one of Pakistan's prime tourist destinations.

Now the valley is on the front line of the country's struggle against Islamist militancy and has become a test of the government's resolve to check the spread of the Taliban.

(Reporting by Ibrahim Shinwari and Junaid Khan; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jerry Norton)

US: Sponsor of Terror & De-stabilizer of Sovereign Nation-States

February 2nd, 2009 5:44 am

My Comment #44 to an article in the NYTimes (see link below, NYTimes copyright)

Roger Cohen and the New York Times should consider themselves fortunate to be allowed to report from Iran.

First, there is no "other Iran" as Cohen asserts. WYSIWYG.

Cohen whitewashes the UK-US role in destabilizing the Iranian govt. and the balance of power in Iranian domestic politics, when they jointly deposed the brilliant nationalist and popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosadegh in a 1953 coup. That blatant interference in the liberation politics of a post-colonial nation-state ( to overturn Mosadegh's policy of nationalization of Iran's petroleum resources),has triggered the consequent and subsequent political trajectory of Iran in international politics.
Iran has the right to act in its own national and regional interests. Iran was a founding member of the Group of 15 in the Non Aligned Movement of newly liberated nation-states, a group whose principles of peaceful co-existence were articulated by India's Jawaharlal Nehru and which group was arrogantly disparaged as late as last year in New Delhi (how diplomatic) by your erstwhile Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice.
Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons to protect herself against the only user of nuclear weapons, as well as to develop nuclear energy for peaceful civilian uses.
Iran is a sovereign nation-state with a proud and ancient civilization and a force in the growing multipolarity of world politics.

Let the US learn from its own egregious unforced errors of policy and political judgment in Iran or be condemned to repeat them, at heavy cost to the US.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India


see link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/opinion/02cohen.html
New York Times copyright

Science & Ethical Democracy

A recent article on Science (see link below) prompted some thoughts I have about Science & Ethical Democracy. I would like to tentatively assert that Ethical Democracy is the proper context for the pursuit of multiple truths, both scientific and religious.

Religion and Science are and always have been central preoccupations of Self, Society, Technology, Progress and Civilization, no matter whether such society is arbitrarily defined as "primitive" or "modern", "simple" or "complex".

Religion has its origin in the feeling of AWE in the presence of Nature. Science has its Origin in activities of INQUIRY about Nature.

Science demands EVIDENCE and PROOF. Religion on the other hand depends on FAITH and BELIEF.
Without EVIDENCE and PROOF there is no SCIENCE.
Without FAITH and BELIEF there is no RELIGION.

That admirable multidimensional scientist and probably religious believer, the late great Stephen Jay Gould observed that science and religion are "non-overlapping magisteria." How aptly grand his choice of words to describe humynkind's two overriding preoccupations.

Contrary to the assertion in the article linked below, Science is NOT engaged in the pursuit of TRUTH, whatever that may be. Instead Science is engaged in the examination of EVIDENCE and evolving (not fixed) conclusions (PROOF) based upon that specific evidence. Similarly, RELIGION is also not engaged in the search for TRUTH, whatever that may be. Those who consider themselves religious or spiritual or who subscribe to the belief of a Supreme Agency, are not interested in TRUTH but on keeping FAITH and maintaining BELIEF that such Supreme Agency exists.

But by placing TRUTH outside of the purview of both Science and Religion, I have given myself the task of trying to identify TRUTH in its location in lived practices of the SELF in SOCIETY.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------

New York Times article
by Dennis Oberbye
Elevating Science Elevating Democracy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html?emc=eta1

----
Stephen Jay Gould on Science and Religion
Nonoverlapping Magisteria
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html
=====================================================================================

Self & Society: Ethical Possibility As Lived Practice

First and foremost as an ordinary and reflective person, then and only secondarily as a postcolonial sociologist who teaches foundational theories in Psychology, I am fortunate to have developed for myself, in spaces of academic institutional resistance, the opportunity to conceptually bring the individual "I" and situate that i within the collective "We", an examined union of the natural and the social-cultural.

There is no lived distance between Self & Society. Such a constructed divide lacks temporal possibility because in real time there is no Self without Society. It is Society that makes Self human. Those very few selves who were unfortunate enough to be placed outside of the human social context failed to become human as we know it. Though we are free to mentally manipulate the two, Self and Society, as distinct conceptual categories, in order to further our thought about Self and Society, each necessarily constitutes the other. That symbolic manipulation is a necessary intellectual scientific endeavor in order to contemplate, affirm and establish the interweaving and inseparability of Self & Society, Society & Self.

It has become my life's work and is not dependent on the US academy which pays me meagerly but sufficiently for my own frugality, but continually limits the ethical scope of what I may do. Therefore most of my work must be unpaid and conducted outside of the US academy. Neither the US academy nor its macro-context, the US nation-state, define who I am or who I am becoming.

In my own lived practice, I accept full responsibility for my thoughts and actions. Therefore, I cannot ascribe my thoughts and actions (which I concurrently experience or perform in real time), to others OR to magical forces or fictitious circumstances or fabricated representations outside of myself.

I am responsible for my thoughts and actions, I am fully accountable for my own thoughts and actions.

It is my responsibility to myself, my family, my ancestors, my universal civil society to develop my intrinsic motivation and limit the influence of extrinsic motivation in the ethical pursuit of my own lived possibility.

Others are not responsible or accountable for what I myself think and do. I must accept the responsibility that my thoughts and actions may influence and impact others, sometimes to their detriment, therefore I have an ethical responsibility to anticipate how I may affect these selves, these others who are also equally human and have the same ethical potential as I. This is the goal of the Self in joining with other selves in the pursuit of establishing the Greater Collective Good, an indispensable constituting force of Society.

By the same token I cannot accept responsibility for the thoughts and actions of others, including the thoughts and actions of individuals, financial institutions or governments. These I feel absolutely free to examine, challenge and oppose or support, according to my evolving understanding of my own ethical possibility as a moment-by-moment, daily, seasonal and lifelong lived practice.

It is fortuitous for me to have an opportunity for reflection on Self & Society, on the anniversary of Gandhi's assassination this day in January 1950.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Self & Society: Ethical Possibility as Lived Practice
01/30/09 Gandhi was assassinated on Jan 30, 1950
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2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return

2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.

During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples,ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.

This has to be a Regugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.

No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugeee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed. It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.

We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the opportunity to live lives in a land of their ancestors' birth. No one is exempt from hope. Is such a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?

Can we plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.


Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
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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
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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.
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Bring History Home, Teach Public Higher Ed 101

Comment
Bring History Home Teach Public Higher Ed 101

This article about the importance of teaching history at community colleges offers me the opportunity to reiterate the importance of teaching the History of Public Higher Ed at these and the senior colleges.

I teach at a community college in the CUNY City University of New York system and I have long argued without any success that every entering freshman, during what CUNY calls the FYI Freshman Year Initiative, be offered the opportunity (not mandated) to take Public Higher Ed 101.

My students know nothing of the entrenched two-tier system of educational inequality, one private and elite, the other public and inadequately financed, that thrives in the US. Yet, our students are victims of this structural inequity. Our faculties, especially tenured faculty who are mainly compliant, neoliberal and non-progressive, and our post-plantation admins. accept and even promote this inequity.

Q. How better to garner and generate support for Public Higher Ed than to teach and encourage critical thinking so that beneficiaries of public higher ed can engage in strategic action on issues confronting Public Higher Ed?

Public Higher Education institutions and critical, evidentiary knowledge of their history and contemporary political location, are essential for fostering civil society and ethical democracy in the U.S.

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
===========================================================================

I was asked for a clarification of what I meant by Public Higher Ed 101, so I provided it in this comment that I posted at the same URL link noted (below):

Hi DFS,
Scott Jaschnik's article details *methods* for the teaching of history at cc's.

I am raising the core curriculum question of CONTENT. Why not teach the trajectory and political location of Public Higher Ed insititions? I know that at my uni. the historic development of CUNY would be an absorbing topic of study for cc and senior college students because it is tied up with civil rights activism and legislation, women's studies, Black Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Asian American Studies, etc. Our students are attending these institutions, yet they know very little about the history and socio-political location of instit. that they benefit from and most important, have the oppty to improve upon. Why does the US have a 2-tier education system in the first place? Perhaps the premise of educational inequality has its roots in the assignment of unequal humanness, most fully elaborated in the system of slavery and racism, not to mention genocide of indigenous peoples,all part of US history.

That type of critical engagement in history would be authentic preparation for lifelong citizenship in a democracy, for community college students. In fact our students are ready to study critical history, but the faculty are not quite as ready to engage in teaching it.
I am asserting that the inclusive public progressive system of higher ed is the cornerstone of a civilisational ethical democracy. The US needs practice in this area.
History does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum and does not consist merely of an assortment of teaching tools.

Note:I am not saying that ANYONE engaged in this discussion or mentioned in the article is implying that!

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
======================================================================================

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/27/history

A Vision for History at Community Colleges

By Scott Jaschik

SEATTLE — History as a discipline is most popular as an undergraduate field of study at liberal arts colleges or research universities — institutions that attract well-prepared students. Professors at community colleges in the Seattle area are trying to find ways to attract more students, in part by accepting that many of those they want to educate view the field as boring, thinking of it as “just memorizing names and dates.”
To reach the students, these professors are working on a two-pronged strategy. First, they are preparing exercises that link students’ lives to the study of history. Second, they are focusing on basic information literacy and research skills, which their students tend to lack. The combination appears to be working, even as these professors teach not to the idealized seminar room of the stereotypical history scholar, but in classes of 35 students or more — many of whom have full-time jobs.

The professors described their approaches here at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Brian Casserly of North Seattle Community College uses assignments in a U.S. survey history course to teach the basics of conducting research and writing a research paper — something most students don’t know how to do.

“We have this image of students as being savvy about finding information,” he said. “But I find a very shallow understanding of how to evaluate information,” with students aware of little except Google and Wikipedia. To get beyond that, he uses as a central assignment a paper in which students must link an important event in American history to the life of one of their family members.

An example he offers in the assignment shows how a student’s grandparent might link to topics appropriate for a history paper in several ways. This grandparent might have attended college on the GI Bill (which could then be the key event) or settled in the suburbs (suggesting a report on the rise of Levittowns).

As they are working on the larger paper, students receive lessons and homework designed to teach research skills. For example, to wean them off Google as a sole research source, they have a library tour and orientation, and then the assignment of finding an article on civil rights in a scholarly journal in the library and producing short pieces of writing that demonstrate the ability to appropriately paraphrase an argument and cite sources. Similarly, students are given a topic on which they must prepare an annotated bibliography.

Because many students will interview a parent or grandparent for the larger assignment, they have class sessions on how to do an oral history interview, including the process of obtaining permission from the subject.

The various small assignments are all designed to teach skills that are foreign to the students and that would normally discourage them from studying history or viewing it as anything by memorizing, Casserly said. But his experience is that, if guided, the students do in fact learn these skills. “It’s about using a systematic process,” he said. When the students turn in the final papers, “the research skills have improved dramatically” and they are actually finding the process interesting, he said. (This session stood out among others at the AAC&U meeting in that the professors brought students along, and they vouched for the techniques being talked about, indicating that they never previously found history relevant, but how these assignments helped them understood how the Vietnam War might have affected their parents, or exactly what President Obama’s election was so historically significant and meaningful to African Americans who were alive in the civil rights era.)

The fact that some new community college students don’t have a sense of the Vietnam War or the civil rights movement reflects a reality — poor knowledge of history — that the professor here said must be addressed head-on, in part with diagnostic tests. While new community college students are routinely given placement tests in mathematics and writing, these professors argued for their use in history, to help identify early on what students know and where their gaps are.

There are many gaps, but Maureen Nutting, a professor of history at North Seattle, said that professors can adjust if they know what they need to cover. For a course on American history, for example, she asks students at the beginning of the course to define and provide context for terms such as “Reconstruction” and “Jacksonian democracy.” One of her colleagues, Scott Rausch, asks students in a world history course similar questions and produced this analysis of correct and incorrect answers, along with the teaching implications. He knows going in that he’ll have a majority of students who know what a caste system is, but that the odds aren’t in favor of any student understanding polis or Pax Romana.

“Our courses aren’t easy,” said Nutting, but they start without being over student’s heads.

Amy Kinsel, professor of history at Shoreline Community College, said she has had success teaching immigration history. About a quarter of students are immigrants, and many others have close family members who immigrated to the United States. Students are wondering, “Where do I fit in?” and immigration history — which she teaches from colonial times to the present — provides answers. The major research paper for the course is on the immigrant group of the student’s choice and Kinsel noted that students do not necessarily pick their own.

The paper must cover issues of race, ethnicity, class, religion, and national identity — as well as assimilation, acculturation, group identity, political power or lack thereof, work or economic roles, gender roles, educational experiences, and interactions with other groups.

Tim McMannon, professor of history at Highline Community College, said that he tries to combine critical thinking and research skills with “an emphasis on the content” in his courses.

One of the assignments he typically gives is a book review, in which students must critique a monograph about history. “So many of my students don’t read books,” he said. As a result, he said that students start of complaining about the assignment, especially when he rejects books that aren’t real monographs. But he shares examples of book reviews, and that helps the students gain confidence.

At the same time, he said it was important not to only assign books. He typically assigns students to review a museum exhibit. “For many of them, they are unexposed, or they were in third grade when they last went and didn’t learn anything.” The review must include both description and judgments on such matters as the scholarly value of the presentation. (To frame the assignment, he usually specifies that it be an exhibit that pertains in some way to the history of the Pacific Northwest.)

Students need “literacy with material culture,” he said.

One thing all the professors stressed was the importance of using every possible tool to teach. McMannon said that on the multiple choice tests he gives, he doesn’t want students to end the process after receiving their grades. So he offers “second choice points” for students who can identify the page in the various books where they should have learned the answer to whatever question they missed.
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2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return

2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.

During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples,ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.

This has to be a Peoples' Movement.

No government can hope to succeed, nor does any government have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of civil society to help them focus an entire year on The Right to return of ALL refugeee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed. It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilisational possibility.

We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the opportunity to live lives in a land of their ancestors' birth. No one is exempt from hope. Is such a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?

Can we plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.


Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return

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