Dividing Iraq

Galbraith's latest attempt at justifying Iraq's partition. He may very well be right, and if so, it is quite breathtaking to think about what this really means. We invaded a country based on lies, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and the displacement of millions of others. Now, we are going to destroy it by carving it up into three separate countries. Just think about it....and then realize why the rest of the world hates us so much.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Make Walls, Not War But over the long term, the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union are better analogies to Iraq than Bosnia. Democracy destroyed those states because, as in Iraq, there was never a shared national identity, and a substantial part of the population did not want to be part of the country. So we should stop arguing over whether we want “partition” or “federalism” and start thinking about how we can mitigate the consequences of Iraq’s unavoidable breakup. Referendums will need to be held, as required by Iraq’s Constitution, to determine the final borders of the three regions. There has to be a deal on sharing oil money that satisfies Shiites and Kurds but also guarantees the Sunnis a revenue stream, at least until the untapped oil resources of Sunni areas are developed. And of course a formula must be found to share or divide Baghdad. By PETER W. GALBRAITH Op-Ed Contributor

The case against victimless crimes

The Florida Supreme Court just upheld the child pornography convictions of a 16-year old and a 17-year old for having taken nude pictures of themselves and e-mailed them to their own e-mail accounts. The rationale appears to be that the pictures could have been sold to a third-party. Let's run with that idea- so, if you are 16 or 17, and you decide to snap photos of yourself nude and then sell them on the internet, you should be criminally liable??? What possible societal good could come of that? If our instincts about criminal responsibility are right, we don't think that people under 18 are as able to make correct choices as adults. If so, how does it make any sense to specifically impose criminal liability on under-age persons, and only under-age persons, for committing an offense that allegedly only harms themselves? This case shows the absurdity of victimless crime, and the unintended consequences of criminalizing such conduct.

Fox's Darjeeling stupidity

What the hell does it mean for a short to be "too challenging" to audiences? They thought that people who see Wes Anderson movies aren't smart enough to handle a short film?

clipped from www.nytimes.com ‘Darjeeling’ to Be Paired With a Short “The Darjeeling Limited,” Wes Anderson’s fifth feature film, opened to mixed reviews in about 200 theaters on Sept. 29, but for its wider release to almost 800 theaters, next Friday, moviegoers will first see a short film — one that got rave reviews — and, the hope is, “The Darjeeling Limited” will get a bump in ticket sales. Nancy Utley, a chief operating officer of Fox Searchlight, said that her company did not even know about the short until “The Darjeeling Limited” was completed. Even though Fox was aware of the critical acclaim, the company decided not to release it along with the feature. She said Fox decided to remain “flexible” on what to do. “We thought it would be too challenging to moviegoers to be exposed to the short in theaters right at the beginning of the run,” she said. “We wanted to make sure ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ got established first as a movie.”

Colbert

Fascinating analysis of Colbert's appearance on Meet the Press.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The Gospel According to Mr. Colbert “I’m doing it, Tim, because I think that our country is facing unprecedented challenges in the future,” Mr. Colbert said. “I think the junctures that we face are both critical and unforeseen, and the real challenge is how we will respond to these junctures, be they critical, or God help us, unforeseen.” ut the message I draw from Mr. Colbert is not that members of the media-political complex need to laugh at themselves, but that they need to take a hard look. The incipient generation of news consumers has made it clear that it does not want to see a bunch of guys with really nice neckware standing on the White House lawn talking about what they did not learn in the press room behind them and then flick at “sources” who suggest that “one thing is clear.” One thing is, in fact, clear, from the plummeting numbers for network news: the jig is up.

Religion in China

Two recent articles, and op-ed (NYT) and a feature piece (WP) explore the complicated attitude toward religion in China. In the op-ed, Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian-born political philosopher, argues that the Chinese approach to religion may in fact be very much in tune with contemporary Western instincts. China treats religion as culture, and is perfectly content to tolerate it so long as it doesn't pose a political threat to the regime. Zizek accurately points out that the Dalai Lama is a threat to the Chinese because he combines secular and religious authority in the same person. Then Zizek challenges us to think about out own attitudes towards religion. We dismiss Fundies as crazies precisely because they take their own religion's dictates and attempt to follow them literally, and shove it down the rest of our throats for good measure. In fact, precisely the same thing is going on in the Muslim world- their Fundies are doing the very thing that Dobson et al. want to do here, except they are doing it in politically unstable societies where violent social change is no longer a thing of the past. If that diagnosis is accurate, then the Chinese model seems alot more appealing. The WP story talks about an increasing trend of immigration to China to "chase the Chinese dream." The Chinese, it turns out, have taken a quite permissive attitude toward Islam, and allow Muslims to practice fairly freely, but under the state's watchful eyes. Most Muslims seem to be ok with this, and are immigrating in ever larger numbers. It is noteworthy that Turkey, the only real success story in teh Islamic world, has taken a very similar approach toward religion, outlawing sectarian mosques and appointing state-salaried imams to lead prayers.

Is the Chinese model the way to contain religious extremism in politically immature societies? My libertarian instincts very much tell me otherwise, and I would never want to live in China for the simple reason that freedom is too precious to me. But it is certainly food for thought.

O Jerusalem!

I just got an email through Haaretz asking me to preserve Jerusalem as "Jewish for ourselves." I was also asked, however, to "develop [Jerusalem] as a...pluralistic city." I am confused- how does that work? How do you do both of these things at the same time?

Priceless

The picture of Jindal with the fine voters of Louisiana is a fantastic testament to the greatness of America.

clipped from www.nytimes.com An Improbable Favorite Emerges in Cajun Country FRANKLINTON, La., Oct. 17 — An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate for Louisiana’s next governor in Saturday’s primary election. It would be an unlikely choice for a state that usually picks its leaders from deep in the rural hinterlands and has not had a nonwhite chief executive since Reconstruction.

Selective Genocide

Oh, Abe Foxman, your moral credibility increases by the moment.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.” Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.

Schools give the pill to 11-year olds

If there were ever a slippery slope....

clipped from www.cnn.com Maine middle school to offer birth control PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11. "This isn't encouraging kids to have sex. This is about the kids who are engaging in sexually activity," Richard Veilleux said.

Pakistan, Failed Democracy? (Part I)

I have been thinking alot lately about the problems of democratically elected governments that don't turn out to be particularly "good" governments. Today, as the media is profiling Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan after a decade-long exile, I find myself quite torn about this situation. There are undeniable facts: Musharraf has improved Pakistan overall during his regime- the economy has grown, the stockmarket has skyrocketed, and it seems like even ordinary Pakistanis are doing somewhat better than previously (not that that is saying much given the extraordinary poverty in the country). Indeed, even freedom of speech has flourished during his years in power, which is in part why he has found himself on the defensive in the past year or so, with media outlets getting quite aggressive and holding his feet to the fire on issues such as judicial independence and his own seemingly endless hold on power. The opposition parties have capitalized on this, becoming increasingly vocal and wrapping themselves in the mantle of democracy.

And yet, if anyone can remember back to the 1990's, when Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif more or less took turns ruling Pakistan, it was an absolute disaster.

• Human rights were a disaster. People were arrested on the whim of the government, frequently under the guise of “corruption” charges. Religious minorities’ rights were trampled on to appease the clerics. Rape was rampant, and seldom prosecuted.
• The economy was an absolute mess, public services deteriorated to the point where people simply gave up on having basic things like power.
• Above all, the so-called “democracy” was in fact nothing more than a façade; in reality, landlords, clerics and other powerbrokers effectively controlled the votes of the largely illiterate masses through a variety of means, some of them quite underhanded, even outright illegal.

It is this last point that deserves a great deal of emphasis. Pakistan is a feudal, yes, feudal society. I don’t mean that in some metaphorical, “oh they are so backward” kind of way, I mean it literally. The majority of the country’s land is owned by a small number of families, who then treat the people who farm their land as serfs. This system has both benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, it means that the serfs are able to count on the landlord helping them out in times of need, e.g. helping with a daughter’s dowry or settling a dispute with a neighbor. The flipside, however, is that the serf has to vow complete loyalty to his landlord, and must do as he says on a number of fronts, including voting in elections. For a lot of poor people, this is not a bad deal: they get a modicum of security in an otherwise very uncertain existence, and in exchange they give up something that is hardly worth anything to someone who does not already enjoy the basic comforts of life.

This, then, is one important aspect of Pakistan’s political life. It is worth mentioning that Benazir Bhutto belongs to the landowning class, and while Nawaz Sharif was an industrialist, he did not do anything to alter this feudal system either.

With all this background, I want to move on to asking a basic question. In this sort of society, one that I would call a failed democracy, what should be done?

Next, I will try to explore this question in more detail.

Sarko is single...

I recall the NYT exclaiming the virtues of the more low-key French way of treating first spouses.....considering that Sego split with her other half, and now this, might a re-thinking be in order?

clipped from www.nytimes.com Shortly after a presidential spokesman, David Martinon, told a hastily called news conference that he had absolutely no comment about his boss’s marriage, the Élysée palace dropped the bombshell that Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, “announce their separation by mutual consent.” The palace later clarified that the duo had divorced. That makes Mr. Sarkozy not only the first divorcé to have been elected as France’s president, but also the first to separate from his spouse while in office. On Thursday Mr. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old French leader, faced setbacks on two different domestic fronts: a wave of strikes that swept through France and an official announcement that his 11-year marriage had come to an end.

Insane!

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Black people 'less intelligent' scientist claims One of the world’s most respected scientists is embroiled in an extraordinary row after claiming that black people are less intelligent than white people. James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has provoked outrage with his comments, made ahead of his arrival in Britain today. More fierce criticism of the eminent scientist is expected as he embarks on a number of engagements to promote a new book ‘Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science’. Among his first commitments is a speech to a London audience at the Science Museum on Friday. The event is sold out. Dr Watson, who runs one of America’s leading scientific research institutions, made the controversial remarks in an interview in The Sunday Times.

TLS article on torture

clipped from entertainment.timesonline.co.uk Texts for torturers From Stanford to Abu Ghraib – what turns ordinary people into oppressors? Martha Nussbaum Philip Zimbardo THE LUCIFER EFFECT How good people turn evil 288pp. Rider and Co. £18.99. 9781844135776 In August 1971, the Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his team of investigators selected twenty-four young men to participate in their study of the psychology of imprisonment. The men, only a few of whom were students, had answered an ad placed in both the student newspaper and the local town daily that offered subjects fifteen dollars per day for two weeks to participate in a study of “prison life”. The successful applicants were randomly assigned to the roles of prisoner and guard, fifty-fifty. Prisoners were to stay in the prison for the entire two weeks; guards served in eight-hour shifts, three groups per day. Thus began the now famous Stanford Prison Experiment.

Re-starting the blog...

Here is an interesting series of articles from Ali Eteraz, a Muslim-American lawyer, about Islamic Reform . I will try to blog about this later today, but I think this is some of the most significant and fresh stuff I have seen lately with respect to the Islam and Democracy debate.