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  • Winning Hearts and Minds or Punishment By Proxy?

    The image of the US abroad since the Iraq invasion has tarnished somewhat. Instead of the free, open and welcoming nation, America is now viewed as suspicious, aggressive and heavy handed – especially by Muslims and even some non-Muslims, who may look like Muslims in the eyes of the Homeland Security officials at the airports. That would include many Indians, Latinos and particularly the bearded and turbaned Sikhs. However, the official US State Department policy advocates a kinder and gentler approach than is practiced in reality.

    "The U.S. is a free and open society. We welcome citizens from around the world who genuinely want to visit, study, and do business here. We are dedicated to protecting their safety and keeping our doors open to them. … Our goal is to make the visa process not only thorough, but also respectful and efficient."

    Remember Karen Hughes – Bush’s TLC Czarina designated to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world?  Another page of the same web site states that Karen Hughes, the Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, charged with repairing the United States’ rock-bottom relations with much of the world, recommends implementation of the following strategy :

    • "Offer people … a positive vision of hope and opportunity that is rooted in America’s belief in freedom, justice, opportunity and respect for all.
    • "Isolate and marginalize the violent extremists … Undermine their efforts to portray the West as in conflict with Islam by empowering mainstream voices and demonstrating respect for Muslim cultures and contributions.
    •"Foster a sense of common interests and values between Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths throughout the world." 

    Obviously, some didn’t get the memo.  Recently, State Department officials revoked the visas of several Iranian scientists and engineers and their accompanying spouses and children. The scientist were en route to Santa Clara, Calif., for a reunion with former classmates and professors, were detained at U.S. airports in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco and deported. The irony is that these are exactly the type of people whose support we need to bring about democratic changes in the Islamic world. The intellectuals and the academics of any country are likely to be among the most progressive elements who can be instrumental in bringing about the social changes we would dearly like to see in mullah driven theocracies like Iran. However that dream keeps getting postponed by this kind of brilliant moves by our own ignorant security mullahs, surely dictated by the reckless and vindictive Bush foreign policy which is determined to embitter the very same societies whose hearts and minds we endeavor to win.   

    "As many as a dozen prominent Iranian professionals, arriving with valid U.S. visas in the Bay Area to attend an international gathering this weekend, are being detained at the San Francisco International Airport, refused entry by immigration officials and facing deportation…. Some are condemning [the deportation] as a political response to recent tensions between the United States and Iran.

    Laura Tischler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs declined to comment on the case of detained and deported Iranians, citing confidentiality. Visas, she said, "can be revoked at anytime, when there are indications of possibility of ineligibility for admission” into the United States.

    Max Panahandeh, principal at Berkeley Applied Science and Engineering, said he spent three frustrating hours at San Francisoc airport Thursday afternoon, waiting for his friend, Majid Kobravi, an electrical engineer from Tehran. Kobravi was scheduled to arrive with half dozen others who were attending the reunion. Panahandeh’s friend reached an immigration official who allowed someone from Majid’s group to speak with them briefly. Then he delivered the news: their visas had been revoked and they were detained in "jail-like conditions.”

    All those detained or deported are citizens of Iran — engineers, chemists, physicists and scientists, university professors and business owners — who received visas months ago from U.S. consulates in Tehran and Dubai. They were to attend a gathering of graduates of Sharif University of Technology, a well-known science and engineering institution founded 40 years ago in Tehran.

    After a rigorous security clearance, 120 Iranians were issued visas to attend the conference. Hojabri wrote the invitation letters that the alumni submitted to the consulates in Tehran and Dubai.

    Everything seemed in order for attendees arriving from Tehran until Monday, when Hojabri heard reports of someone being detained overnight and then deported from the Los Angeles International Airport. After that, similar reports began coming in from Chicago, then New York. On Thursday night, after learning that as many as a dozen more were being detained at San Franisco airport, officials of the organization responded. They tried to see the detainees but we refused, said Nancy Hormachea, a Bay Area immigration attorney who represents the alumni association.

    "These are intellectuals, prominent people from Iran who have a positive impression of the United States,” Hormachea said. “They’ve never ever been so humiliated and insulted.”

  • Art and The Perception of War and Peace

    Another interesting article about shrewd application of art to influence perception of reality – this time about war and peace.

    Islamic_art_1 (click to enlarge)

    LONDON, Aug. 7 — It was not a happy coincidence that the Victoria and Albert Museum’s splendidly refurbished Islamic art gallery opened here in late July, just as the Middle East was once again going up in flames. 

    After all, one of the gallery’s aims is to present a largely Western audience with a different image of the Islamic world, one that dwells on its artistic sophistication rather than on the radical stereotypes often reinforced by newspaper headlines.

    Certainly it was with this in mind that Mohammed Jameel, a wealthy Saudi, paid the $9.8 million bill for reinstalling the Victoria and Albert’s Islamic collection for the first time in half a century. The display area on the museum’s main floor has now been renamed the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in memory of Mr. Jameel’s parents.

    Yet political turmoil in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond only underlines the challenge of using the past to illuminate the present. Put differently, can 400 carefully chosen objects, some dating to the 11th century, provide us with any fresh insight into what is happening in the Middle East today?

    The question is pertinent because, notably since 9/11, many museums in Europe and the United States have begun highlighting collections and exhibitions of Islamic art as a way of promoting greater understanding and bridging the cultural gap between the Judeo-Christian and Muslim worlds.

  • Should Coke/Pepsi be banned in India for pesticide content, or should groundwater itself be banned?( Sujatha)

    A hue and cry has been raised over the levels of pesticide found in Coca Cola and Pepsi sold in India, with many states jumping on the bandwagon to announce bans on soft drink sales. But is it only the soft drinks which are to blame?
    On a trip to India made in July 2004, I noticed that Kelloggs India had a special "only in India"promotion of a Spiderman toy freebie with their cereals, which my kids promptly put to good use in fake battles. Except that the toys in question had already been subject in the same month to a recall in the US, because of the danger of improper disposal of its batteries which contain mercury. Why does Kelloggs do this? Because they can. Because ultimately, brown lives and environments are worth less than those in the US. Because the Indian government couldn’t care less unless some celebrity chooses to start a hunger fast on the issue. 
    Fast forward to 2006, and those pesky environmentally-unfriendly ‘cool wrist-projector’ toys are still being dumped in India on another promotion,for the latest Superman movie this time. Curiously, Google searches don’t pull up any advertising for this new promotion. Meanwhile, questions arise about how all the previous toys had been disposed of. It was an unsettling sight/olfactory experience to drive past the burning refuse piles of Pallikaranai on the outskirts of Chennai. One wonders about the toxins released by improper disposal of these kinds of trash, the effects on the groundwater and food chains.
    Paging Arundhati Roy, Medha Patkar, Maneka Gandhi, Aamir Khan(?)…or better still all Kollywood (Chennai’s version of Hollywood/Bollywood) actors with huge and worshipful fan bases to get people to be more environmentally aware and demand accountability, not just line the pockets of the big multinational corporations by promoting their pesticide-laced (or not) products.

  • Many More Than 9 Lives – 638 To Be Exact

    Fidel Castro may be dead, ill or recuperating well from his recent intestinal surgery. We don’t know for sure. Reports out of Cuba are sketchy.  What we do know is that nearly a week ago after his operation, for the first time in more than four decades of reign, Castro transferred power to his brother, Raul.

    During his long tenure as the dictator of Cuba, the nearly 80 year old Castro has been a thorn in the side of successive US governments. Castro’s communist ideology, macho swagger and popularity in many parts of Latin America have added to the American irritation. The US triumphed over its powerful cold war arch enemy, the Soviet Russia but could not bring about a much desired regime change in the tiny and impoverished country of Cuba which lies so close to the edge of Florida. But it was not for the want of trying. The CIA and angry Cuban exiles have planned and attempted to assassinate Castro on more than one occasion – 638 times if his security chief is to be believed.

    "For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.

    Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro’s life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years. …."

    Apart from straightforward attempts of shooting by assassins, some of the plans were quite bizarre – stuff of cloak and dagger pulp fiction or B movies. Among other things that the CIA tried or planned in order to bump Castro off, were:

    • blow him up with a giant mollusk filled with explosives when Castro went scuba diving
    • infect him with debilitating skin disease by coating his diving suit with deadly fungus
    • coat his handkerchief or lace his tea with killer bacteria
    • poke him with a poison filled syringe
    • set up a former lover to feed him poison pills hidden in her jar of cream (the pills melted. Castro got a whiff of the plan and gallantly gave the woman his gun and asked her to shoot him. She couldn’t)
    • construct exploding cigars or cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin

    But none of these attempts on Castro’s life succeeded. Now it seems that the man who has lived his life as if it was a perpetual revolution, will die a mundane, uneventful death – that of an old man in a sick bed … and the old dictator may have had the last laugh, cocky to the end.

    "Meanwhile, jokes about Castro’s apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That’s the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".

  • The Mood of The Beholder

    Following two previous posts about art perception (The Eye of The Beholder and The Brain of the Beholder) and my own virtual art exhibitions, this story seems to be a logical progression in the sequence – with a twist. While the previous two posts dealt with the personal perceptions of art by the viewer, this story is about art perceiving the viewer.  How about interactive art to reflect your mood?  Interesting. But do we really want other people in a public place to gauge our mental state?  (via 3 Quarks Daily)

    "British boffins have built a digital picture frame that adapts its image to suit the mood of the viewer. Dubbed ’empathic art’, the interactive image responds visually to eight distinct facial expressions.

    Created by a team from the UK’s University of Bath computer science department with the help of workers from the Boston University – Massachusetts not Lincolnshire – the rig pairs an LCD panel with a webcam trained on the viewer’s face. Software extrapolates the viewer’s expression, and matches it against a series of facial patterns to yield two scores: pleasure and arousal.

    the university of bath's empathic artwork

    The figures give a feel for the viewer’s emotional state and are used to apply digital image processing routines – think Photoshop filters – to the image on display in real time. The image updates at a rate of 4fps.

    When the viewer is angry, the colours are dark and appear to have been applied to the canvas with more violent brush strokes, said Dr John Collomosse of Bath’s Computer Science faculty. But if they appear happy, the artwork adapts so that the colours are vibrant and more subtly applied.

    “This results in a digital canvas that smoothly varies its colours and style, and provides a novel interactive artistic experience," he claimed."

    I wonder how accurate the mood reader is when faced with different racial features, complexions and culturally influenced expressions of happiness and anger.

  • Inspired Imagery (Virtual Exhibition #3)

    It is the end of the week and I am quite exhausted by discussions of death, destruction and discord. So it is a good time once again to take a break and figuratively dust off some of my old art work (that is because I have not painted anything new) and share them with readers.

    The last two times I put up some of my original paintings (Virtual Exhibition # 1) and some faithful copies (Virtual Exhibition # 2). Today I have picked two paintings which are somewhere in between. These paintings are based on photographs I found in magazines. But they were painted from memory – I did not have the originals before me when I executed the paintings. As the originals were photographs and mine are paint and brush versions of the same and because I added and subtracted quite a bit from the original compositions, the end products are not really copies. However, since I borrowed the basic idea, I hesitate to call them true originals.

    (As usual, please click on the pictures for a larger image.)

    Rp_water_carriersOne bleak February in Nebraska, I was struggling with a painting that was going nowhere. Both the weather and the creative mind block were cause for some frustratration. I wanted to put the work aside and start something fresh but couldn’t come up with a good idea. Then during a trip to the local library while browsing through an issue of National Geographic, I fell upon an article on Rajasthan, the colorful desert state in central India. Rajasthan is not far from Delhi and the photographs in the article made me painfully nostalgic for the hot, arid summers of northern India in the surrounding gloom of a midwestern winter. I could not check out the magazine. I made a quick sketch of the picture on a piece of paper and later transferred the image on canvas. What transpired was a very satisfying piece of art work that progressed with speed and enthusiasm. I finished the painting in high gloss varnish which lent it a luminous overtone. It is framed in antique gold frame and hangs in a room that gets the afternoon sun – resulting in an attractive glow. It always pleases me to look at this painting because I remember how happily I worked on it.

    Rp_mist

    As evident from my previous paintings, I like to use bright, bold colors. From time to time I would toy with the idea of making something muted using shades of black, grey or brown – like a charcoal drawing or an ancient sepia tinted photo. But I never got around to it until I came across a photo (painting?) in a science journal (I don’t remember which one). There was a picture of a man and a boy in identical, old fashioned top hats and long coats standing by what looked like a canal. The entire picture was in varying shades of brown. I found in it the perfect template for my two toned ambition. Again, I made a rough sketch of the figures and started the painting with much anticipation. But much to my surprise and dismay, even though I felt I was doing a pretty decent rendition of the original, nothing looked right. The hatted and coated man and boy, who looked quaint in the photo, looked comical on my canvas. While the original was "dark and moody," mine looked "dark and muddy".  Rather than abandon it, I decided to change a few things while giving up the hope of a strictly two toned painting. I modernized the man’s clothing and gave him an umbrella, suggesting rain. The little boy was changed to a little girl in a bright yellow slicker to contrast with the dark clad man. I drew a lamp post on the side to introduce some more yellow and that allowed me to add it also to the sky. And lo and behold, the painting gained a focus and acquired a mood .. and still retained the look of an old photograph!

  • A Voice of Conscience

    Ever since the creation of the state of Israel, sections of the Jewish, Muslim and conservative Christian communities have taken bitterly partisan views of the now sixty year old Israel – Arab / Islamic conflict in the middle east. The rest of the world wants to see a just and equitable solution to the problem with an end to hostility and bloodshed.  It is particularly difficult for members of the Jewish and Islamic communities to speak out loudly for fairness and compassion on this matter for fear of angering their respective co-religionists. The religious and nationalist propaganda on both sides cloud all debates. Emotions are raw and mutual suspicion rampant, making dialogue impossible. That is why the following extraordinary heartfelt plea from Warren Goldstein, chairman of the Department of History at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, comes as a breath of fresh air amidst the madness (the article is so sincere and well written that I am copying it in its entirety). Now, we would love to hear a similar call for sanity and humane clarity from the Islamic community. George Bush and his despicably divisive and belligerent administration can also learn a thing or two about decency from Mr. Goldstein.

    Bravo, Professor Goldstein! A few more courageous voices of reason from all sides may some day break the endless vicious cycle.

    Not in my name: Israel’s bombs test limits of loyalty
    Jews, non-Jews must reject reckless killing of civilians

    By WARREN GOLDSTEIN

    HOW to begin — with Hezbollah rockets raining bits of death onto Haifa? Or with Israeli helicopters firing missiles into the minivan stuffed with Lebanese civilians following Israeli army instructions to evacuate their homes? Or with Palestinian suicide bombers pulling their switches at bus stops? Or with Israeli tanks occupying Ramallah, laying siege to Yasser Arafat? Or with Lebanese Phalangists massacring Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Chatila, or with 1973, or 1967, or 1956, or 1948 … ?

    Because any "beginning" must be arbitrary, we might as well begin here and now. I am a Jew, and I am an American.

    The order does not matter. I am in anguish over both identities right now. What matters is that in my name, my country has been supporting — with armaments and its remaining diplomatic clout — the reckless killing of civilians whose only crime is to live in a country that cannot control its own fate. How supporting? By not exercising its immense influence over Israeli policy and weaponry.

    What matters is that the country that considers itself a Jewish homeland has effectively declared Lebanon a free-fire zone and believes that if its military drops enough bombs on apartment buildings in Beirut (Hezbollah "strongholds") and empties enough southern Lebanese cities, it will destroy Hezbollah as a political and fighting force. The mass graves in Tyre are now burned into Lebanese consciousness, along with Sabra and Shatila.

    What matters is that when I go to the Web site of Reform Judaism, I see a propaganda effort on behalf of the Israeli bombs.

    "What can I and my congregation do now to help the people of Israel?" asks a headline.

    The answer? "Now is the time to stand with Israel in solidarity."

    I could, the Web site suggests, "post a ‘We Stand With Israel’ lawn sign and proudly fly an Israeli flag at your congregation." After all, "Israel is a home for every Reform Jew."

    This is moral and religious nonsense.

    And it is silencing Jews who know better, because the Israel propaganda machine works most effectively through Jewish organizations, where any hint that the lives of Lebanese children matter as much as the lives of Jewish children is treated as (1) a refusal to recognize the demands of realpolitik, (2) slippery-slope "moral equivalency" reasoning, or (3) treason.

    Judaism has been reduced to political cheerleading, an international equivalent of what the American religious right has done to Christianity. Too many American Jews are putting their religion on the shelf while they take up the impoverished language of "strategy" and "tactics."

    The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah does not distinguish between Israeli and Lebanese children.

    Let me be clear. No nation ought to have to live alongside well-armed, terrorist political entities committed to its destruction. I shed no tears for Hezbollah militants, whose murderous raid clearly invited the Israeli response and whose lack of respect for civilian lives knows no national or religious boundaries.

    Nor do I shed tears for Hamas, the latest example of Palestinians’ propensity for self-destructive choices. Some form of Israeli military response is completely understandable and justifiable.

    That is why we need an international police force to patrol southern Lebanon, disarm Hezbollah and keep Israel in its borders.

    Israel’s far greater military power and its ability to inflict far greater harm — no jiggering the numbers can hide the fact that Lebanese civilians are dying at roughly 10 times the rate of Israelis — bring greater responsibility, no matter what the other guys do.

    No religious or political tradition worthy of the name justifies burning children to death in the hope of taking out a rocket launcher. Doing everything possible to avoid killing civilians (using antipersonnel bombs fails the test) is not only the right thing to do, but makes long-term strategic sense, because fewer surviving children will grow up swearing vengeance.

    Nor should the fact that the Israeli public seems unusually united in favor of the current offensive silence those of us who want the killing to stop now.

    Most Americans supported the hopeless, pointless and reckless war in Vietnam — which killed far more civilians than soldiers of any kind — until its last years, but the war’s critics were right from the beginning.

    In that spirit, I hope Jews and non-Jews alike will reject the pall over debate about Israel and speak their minds, breaking through their fear of being labeled "self-hating" or "anti-Semitic" by so-called "friends of Israel."

    Israel needs friends who support its security and tell the truth, not sycophants putting out lawn signs.

    I wish Jewish congregations would direct as much energy as they have lately expended on the killing fields in Darfur toward the far easier task of getting their own government to make real peace in the Middle East by ceasing blanket support for the Israeli government and military.

    In the meantime, what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls a "new Middle East" is being baptized in the blood of civilians. Not on my watch."

  • “The Way To A Man’s Heart …

    … Is through his stomach."  Apparently this age old adage may have more to it than just a gastronomical angle.  Men, it seems are attracted to women of differeng body shapes depending on how hungry they are.  Satiated men with full stomachs find slender women appealing. Hungry men on the other hand, are attracted to the more zaftig types. So says a study in The British Journal of Psychology.  I tend to not take such socio-psychology /biology too seriously. But such studies shine the light on interesting evolutionary aspects of our sexual aesthetics and culture which can also sometimes be quite amusing.

    I have no quarrel with the conclusions derived at by the researchers. But they raised a pair of perplexing questions in my mind. First, do men look at women and think of morsels of food? If so, that is mildly disturbing but not wholly surprising. Secondly, most women meet their future mates during the younger, leaner years – presumably after the men have had a satisfying lunch. With child birth and advancing years, many women gain weight. In order to keep their men interested, should they see to it that their partners remain slightly hungry in middle age? On the other hand, why bother?

    "How full a man’s stomach is can dictate the type of woman he will fancy, UK research suggests.

    A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated. The hungry men also paid much less attention to a woman’s body shape and regarded less curvy figures as more attractive.

    The study appears in The British Journal of Psychology.

    Food lust

    Although it is not clear exactly how hunger exerts an influence on attraction, past research suggests social, cultural and psychological factors are involved. In some societies where food is a limited resource, such as the South Pacific, higher body weights are revered. In others where food is abundant, such as the West, lower female body weights are preferred.

    Evolutionary psychologists believe this is a survival preference. What you are looking for in a mate is the best chance of healthy offspring and in an environment where food is scarce, a heavier woman is deemed a safer bet for this.

    What can be regarded as a normal and acceptable body size is also influenced by what we see, including advertising, and can change. For example, migrants from rural to urban societies show an increasing idealisation of thinner figures.

    Dr Viren Swami from University College London and Dr Martin Tovée from Newcastle University believe there are biological factors at work too.

    Dr Tovée explained: "Your cognitive state, your drives and your interests are dependent on your underlying physiology, your blood sugar levels and your hormone levels and these depend upon hunger."

    They recruited male university students as they entered or exited a campus dining hall during dinner time. They asked the men to rate how hungry they were on a scale of one to seven. Using these responses, the researchers selected 30 hungry and 31 satiated men to take part in the study.

    The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.

    The hungry men rated more of the heavier women as attractive than the men who were full up."

  • Yardstick of Peace and Proportionality

    Exhausted after years of devastation due to civil war, invasion by Israel and interference by Syria, the once prosperous and modern nation of Lebanon was laboriously building itself back. Just over a year ago, Lebanon was in the midst of what was being happily called the Cedar Revolution – a gradual democratic change driven by the natural desire of Lebanese citizens to take control of their country out of the hands of the Syrian military. No ham-fisted foreign power was involved in foisting democracy on the Lebanese people as is the case in Iraq. Yet, in little more than a year later, the fresh scent of cedar is overpowered by the the stench of war. 

    Some of the best and most level headed analyses of the recent Israeli invasion / destruction of Lebanon have appeared on Leiter Reports, written by Thomas Nadelhoffer here, here and here.  Among other things, Professor Nadelhoffer asked the following two questions.

    • Was Israel’s response to Hezbollah proportional to the provocation?
    • During war, are some civilian lives more valuable than others?

    In response to the first question, Nadelhoffer writes:

    "Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni had the following response to this line of criticism: “Proportionality is not compared to the event, but to the threat, and the threat is bigger and wider than the captured soldiers.”  If one fleshes out the principle of proportionality in this way, is there anything that the principle could not justify?  Traditionally, the "harm suffered" part of the principle of proportionality was backward and not forward looking–i.e., in order to see whether a military response x was proportional, one had to look to the past to see how serious the original harm y had been.  For instance, if five soldiers of country A were killed by B and A responded by killing a 1000  civilians from B, this would obviously run afoul of the principle of proportionality.  Of course, figuring out precisely when the principle has been violated is an admittedly tricky affair."

    Indeed it is a tricky affair.  Most of us perceive our own pain to be greater than that of others.  Retaliation often does not follow the brutal but simple proportional rule of an eye for an eye but rather the disproportionate an eye, nose, ear AND head for an eye. It is futile to argue about proportionality with some one who sees a bigger existential threat contained within a lesser, temporal one.  Given the general attitude of Arab and Muslim nations towards Israel (Israel must be pushed into the sea), it is not surprising that Israel is paranoid. But how many Arabs must Israel kill, occupy or push out of their homes before it feels safe within its own borders?  A hundred, a thousand, a million … or all of them?  If the shock and awe of overwhelming force, collective punishment and pre-emptive action were effective tools in securing peace, Israel would have been blissfully peaceful by now and Iraq would have been an island of tranquility.

    In the second question, Nadelhoffer links to an extraordinarily disturbing article by Alan Dershowitz  which ends on this note:

    "Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others."

    To which Nadelhoffer asks the following astute question:

    "The suggestion that the civilians in Lebanon who ‘voluntarily’ stayed behind despite well-publicized Israeli warnings for them to flee thereby become complicit with terrorism is particularly problematic given that Israel specifically targeted the kinds of civilian infrastructure that would have made it possible for them to leave (e.g., airports, bridges, highways, etc.).  This reminds me of the people who blamed the citizens in New Orleans who did not make it out in time for their dire situation.  In both cases, a myriad of personal and economic factors which could explain why citizens might understandably stay behind are entirely ignored in order to legitimate not caring about their plight. 

    But setting that aside for present purposes, does it seem to anyone else that Derschowitz is essentially saying that the death of Israeli citizens is more tragic than the death of their Lebanese counterparts?  After all, don’t Israeli citizens have the ability to flee as well?  The only way Dershowitz can justify placing the onus entirely on the shoulders of the citizens of Lebanon is if he assumes from the start that Israel is entirely in the right.  At least for many people, that is an open question–a question that Dershowitz begs as usual."

    But who decides the relative worth of lives, the reality and the morality of one’s actions?  In the words of George Orwell: (Notes on Nationalism; Indifference to Reality)

    "All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage ­ torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians ­ which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side … The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

    I believe Israel has committed and continues to commit a colossal blunder with its latest actions in Lebanon, cynically aided and abetted by the US. (In this case the Democrats are just as culpable as the warmongers on the right) An even bigger blunder for Israel may be to believe that it has a friend in the White House.  George Bush and his henchmen (and at least one henchwoman) are probably using Israel as a proxy for prolonging their own failed war on global terrorism. Yesterday Bush made the same fraudulent claims of a link between Hezbollah’s attack on Israel and 9/11 that he and Cheney had used to tie Iraq to the event. So we are going to see the sequel to the horror movie that we have been watching since 2003 with probably the same messy ending.

    Like Professor Nadelhoffer and other horrified citizens of the world, I too have some urgent questions.  What if the US and Israel hadn’t broken apart Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon?  What if America and Israel had decided to end their toxic symbiotic relationship driven by neo-con ideology and partnered with Europe, Asia and the rest of world in seeking global peace?  What if they had decided to "talk" to their enemies instead of within their echo chambers?  What if they, even now, recognize that the axis of evil is narrow but the axes of hatred, distrust and despair cast a much wider net?  We do not know. We can only wonder.

    Update:  More thoughts on this matter here and here. 

  • The Lebanese Smoke Screen

    While most of the world watches helplessly, the war in Lebanon and Gaza rages on and Condoleeza Rice shuttles back and forth uselessly between the mideast and the White House with the pretense of diplomacy supposedly aimed at bringing about a cease-fire between Israel, Hamas and the Hezbollah. (Cool as a cucumber, Rice described the conflict in Lebanon as “birthpangs of a new Middle East” and some are now calling her the Midwife from Hell) We and the rest of the world believe that one phone call from the US could stop the war although Bush would have us believe that Syria is calling the shots here. (And we refuse to talk to Syria.) One doesn’t have to be a cynic to suspect that at least part of the reason why Israel is being encouraged in its prolonged and relentless attack on Lebanon is to keep the eyes of the world averted from Bush’s failed war in Iraq. While the news media are focused on Israel and Lebanon, we hear little about the deadly conflict that continues unabated in Baghdad and its vicinity. In the run-up to the 2006 elections, it is politically prudent for the Bush White House to distract us with someone else’s war.

    Americans were beginning to clamour for a swift end to the Iraq war and troop withdrawals. Now we aren’t hearing much of that any more although nothing has improved in Iraq. Instead, troop levels in Iraq have quietly gone up with more increases to follow. Iraq is no less dangerous and ungovernable today than it was a few months ago. But Bush does not mention Baghdad much any more while we watch Beirut, Haifa and the Gaza strip with growing trepidation. How’s that for a sleight of hand?

    US in quiet U-turn on Iraq troop numbers

    "’The US administration has quietly reversed its goal from whittling down troop numbers in Iraq before the mid-term congressional elections in November.

    A Pentagon spokesman on Friday confirmed that US troop levels in Iraq rose to 132,000 during the past week – the highest since late May – from 127,000 at the start of the week. The spokesman said troop numbers often fluctuated and “there might be temporary spikes during periods of troop rotation”.

    However, analysts said an increase in troop numbers was more likely than a reduction because the number of sectarian killings in Iraq had almost doubled since the start of the year. The rise will prompt fears that the US is becoming increasingly bogged down in an unwinnable conflict.

    On Thursday, the Pentagon said it would extend for up to 120 days the 3,700-strong deployment of the 172nd Stryker brigade in Iraq, among other rotations. There were 3,169 Iraqis killed in June, compared with 1,778 in January.

    The rise in US troop levels comes as the world’s attention is on Lebanon but also coincides with a reported upsurge in anti-US sentiment in Baghdad’s Shia neighbourhoods following the launch of the US-backed Israeli campaign against Hizbollah.

    This week Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi prime minister, agreed to a joint US-Iraq military operation to regain control of Baghdad.

    George W. Bush, US president, also faces growing difficulties with Iraq’s new government, which is making anti-US noises to shore up its credibility with Iraqis. Mr Maliki is under domestic pressure to demand that trials of US soldiers take place in Iraq. The US says this is not possible.

    However, US officials deny that the new campaign to stabilise Baghdad undermines Mr Bush’s promise that “as the Iraqis stand up we will stand down” – a phrase he has almost stopped using. In a departure from Mr Bush’s normally upbeat language, he this week said the violence in Baghdad was “terrible”.

  • When Life imitates Literature (Sujatha)

    Curious news about Naveed Haq, the suspect in the Seattle Jewish Center shootings- he was a convert to Christianity, by this account.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I finished reading the parable-like novel "God’s Little Soldier" by Kiran Nagarkar (in my opinion, one of the brightest stars in today’s Indian-English literary firmament) in which he describes an Indian protagonist named Zia of a very similar middle-class highly educated background, initiated to the strict Islamic tradition by his aunt. He becomes a Muslim terrorist, followed by a strange conversion to Christianity and eventually becomes a Christian terrorist as well. His final dabbling in Hinduism doesn’t quite reach a terroristic mode, but karma strikes and just desserts are served to him.  How odd it feels when life imitates art (or literature)!
    ( Nagarkar’s book which was available till about a month ago on amazon.com is nowhere to be found on it now, though it is still widely available in India)

    Another must read: the transcript of Bill Moyers interviewing author Margaret Atwood on PBS, where she talks about extremist religious influences on contemporary society, viewed in the light of her eerily prescient classic "The Handmaid’s Tale.
    The same link above lists the transcript of Martin Amis’ interview with Moyers, further down the page and discusses his post-9/11 attempt to delve into the mind of Atta published in the New Yorker magazine (for which I couldn’t locate a link). According to Bob Woodward, we do have these writings found by the FBI in Atta’s luggage to cast light on the Muslim terrorist mindset.

  • Sanity Prevails

    The second criminal trial of Andrea Yates is over and the jury has spoken – this time with compassion and rationality.  I had written about Yates earlier this year when her re-trial began. You can find the gist of this tragic and grisly event here. (Sorry, the Houston Chronicle links to that post have all disappeared.)

    Andrea Yates should never have gone to jail in the first place.  She is a very sick woman who is in need of medical care not incarceration. The case against her was not about whether she methodically killed her five small children but why.  Yates never denied the killings but she also gave bizarre reasons for doing so. In fact if her illness had been taken seriously by those around her, especially her husband (now ex-husband) Rusty Yates and she had been afforded proper and timely psychiatric care, this heartbreaking event may have never come to pass. During the second trial, the jury saw and believed that Yates was in a highly disturbed state of mind when she killed her children and found her not guilty due to reasons of insanity. After five years, justice has indeed been served.  Hopefully, this tragedy and the verdict will shed much needed light on the urgency of medical care for the mentally ill.

    "A Harris County jury has found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity during her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her children in the family’s bathtub in 2001.

    The verdict upholding Yates’ insanity defense comes after the jury deliberated more than 12 hours over three days. The decision also underscores the emotional debate on mental illness within the criminal justice system since Yates’ first trial in 2002.

    "It’s a shame it took us this long to get the right verdict,” said Wendell Odom, one of Yates’ attorneys.

    Yates appeared shocked and sat staring wide-eyed with her lips slightly parted as State District Judge Belinda Hill asked each juror individually shortly after noon today whether they agreed with the verdict.

    The acquittal in Yates’ second capital murder trial followed nearly a month’s worth of exhaustive testimony, capped by four hours of emotional closing arguments Monday, during which Yates broke down in tears and her former husband, Russell Yates, abruptly left the courtroom.

    The jury’s verdict means Yates, 42, will be sent to a state mental hospital for treatment, rather than be sentenced to life in prison. Yates and attorneys will return to Judge Belinda Hill’s courtroom at 10 a.m. Thursday for a hearing, formalizing the details of Yates’ hospitalization. She will go to a maximum security hospital initially.

    "I just want to get her back home to Rusk,” said George Parnham, Yates’  lead attorney, in reference to the hospital where Yates had been  receiving care before the start of her second trial.

    The children’s father said outside the courtroom the jury had reached the right conclusion.

    "The jury looked past what happened and looked at why it happened,” Rusty Yates told reporters outside the courthouse. "Prosecutors had the truth of the first day and stopped there. Yes, she was psychotic. That’s the whole truth.”

    Yates, a former nurse and housewife with a history of psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts, called police and led them to the bodies of her five children  Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and 6-month-old Mary  after drowning them in a bathtub at her Clear Lake home on June 20, 2001.

    Defense attorneys had urged jurors to find that Yates’ mental illness led to the children’s deaths. Experts testifying for the defense said Yates drowned her children in an act of love to save their souls from eternal damnation.

    Prosecutors did not dispute that Yates was mentally ill, but argued that her condition did not keep her from knowing right from wrong."

  • All Eggs In One Leaky Basket

    Since the start of the bellicose reign of cocky Prince George, we have seen the world become a deadlier place. Although George Bush and his cohorts keep reassuring us that they are making it safer for us, the news reports from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon don’t inspire confidence. How many more axes of evil have been added to the original three?  And how many of those are of our own making?  Had the war on terrorism been spearheaded by people with a modicum of decency and intelligence instead of foul mouthed hotheads, some of whom also entertain Biblical fantasies, we might have had hope and patience. The clueless bunch which sees ever widening belligerence as a means to world peace, promises us the delicious omelette of security at the end of their egg smashing rampage. And we find ourselves walking wearily on eggshells amidst the stinking gooey mass of destabilized and dangerous enemy nations. Tom_toles_1

    (cartoon by Tom Toles of the Washington Post – click for enlargement)

    Note:  I just came back from a short vacation.  Hope to start blogging in earnest soon. In the meanwhile, this wrap up of recent events is all I have for now.