Accidental Blogger

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  • Shaping Yesterday’s History Through Today’s Politics

    History like criminal justice, belongs to the victor.  The further back you go in time, more the scope for manipulating historical data. India has long grappled with its history of invasions, occupation and colonization. However unpalatable those events may have been, they too are part of Indian history. While the urge to remove statues of past colonizers from public places and erase their names from Indian streets and cities is understandable, establishment of historical facts ought to be grounded in serious and objective scholarship.

    India’s history is a multilayered palimpsest of thousands of years of invasions, conquests, settlements and human traffic. Virtually all races, religions and cultures of the world have mingled in India through the millennia. Written Indian history is relatively recent and except for the philosophical / religious texts of the Upanishads and the Vedas, not much of ancient Indian history is on record. Unlike the Egyptians, who left a rich and lasting journal of kings and their regimes on the walls of the pyramids, not many permanent edifices containing such information dating back thousands of years, exist in India. The history of ancient India therefore, is often a matter of some debate. Now that debate has spilled over into the middle school history curriculum in California.

    NEW DELHI – In the halls of Sacramento, a special commission is rewriting Indian history: debating whether Aryan invaders conquered the subcontinent, whether Brahman priests had more rights than untouchables, and even whether ancient Indians ate beef.

    That this seemingly arcane Indian debate has spilled over into California’s board of education is a sign of the growing political muscle of Indian immigrants and the rising American interest in Asia.

    The foes – who include established historians and Hindu nationalist revisionists – are familiar to each other in India. But America may increasingly become their new battlefield as other US states follow California in rewriting their own textbooks to bone up on Asian history.

    One of the biggest bones of contentions is whether India was settled by invading Aryans who supposedly arrived on horseback and chariots from Central Asia, and whether Hinduism originated from a religious philosophy they brought with them. Hindu-centric scholars believe that Hinduism is a homegrown religion of native born inhabitants of India. The Aryan invasion theory, according to them is yet another devious ploy by Europeans to lay claim to one of the world’s great ancient civilizations and religious philosophy.

    The hottest debate centered on when Indian civilization began, and by whom. For the past 150 years, most historical, linguistic, and archaeological research has dated India’s earliest settlements to around 2600 BC. And most established historical research contends that the cornerstone of Indian civilization – the practice of Hindu religion – was codified by people who came from outside India, specifically Aryan language speakers from the steppes of Central Asia.

    Many Hindu nationalists are upset by the notion that Hinduism could be yet another religion, like Islam and Christianity, with foreign roots. "Textbooks must mention that none of the [ancient] texts, nor any Indian tradition, has a recollection of any Aryan invasion or migration," writes S. Kalyanaraman, an engineer and prominent pro-Hindu activist, in an e-mail to this reporter. (H)istorian Meenakshi Jain, a self-described nationalist, says that history is meant to be rewritten, depending on the perspective and needs of the present time.

    "Indic civilization has been a big victim of misrepresentation and belittling of our culture," says Ms. Jain, a historian at Delhi University and author of a high school history textbook accepted by India’s previous government, led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.

    "There is no such thing as an objective history," Jain says. "So when we write a textbook, we should make students aware of the status of current research of leading scholars in the field. It should not shut out a love for motherland, a pride in your past. If you teach that your country is backward, that it has no redeeming features in our civilization, it can damage a young perspective."

    I say, with my limited scholarly knowledge of history, is it such a big deal even if the latter day Hindus originally came from somewhere else and were not "sons of the soil"?  If they continued to live in India for three thousand plus years and populated much of India with their progeny, they ARE Indians. Why is it such an affront to today’s Indian identity if the Aryans (or whoever else "civilized" ancient India) were "foreigners" thousands of years ago?  I do not know where the Hindus (Indians) came from and frankly, I don’t care very much. I am much more interested in seeing modern India get its political, social and economic acts together.  So, let the archaeologists, paleontologists and forensic anthropologists get their shovels out and start digging. Then let the chips fall where they may.

    I am hardly surprised that ultra conservative Hindus are flexing their muscles in matters of school curriculum. They are playing "follow the leader". Vocal support for Intelligent Design expressed by conservative Christian politicians including the President, has emboldened all religious revisionists. The Hindu fundamentalists too have their alternative scientific theories about the creation of the universe which they haven’t yet submitted for consideration to school boards across America. What happens when they do?  The Discovery Institute and its patrons will learn a simple lesson in physics – "increase in downward momentum is facilitated by a slippery slope".

    Note: Thanks to Sudip Bose for the tip.

  • Faith Based Social Security

    I got the following via e-mail from my friend Nancy – a keen Bush watcher. See here for more "clarification". I hope Letterman, Leno and Jon Stewart see this one soon.

    Bush Explains revamping Social Security — Verbatim Quote

    WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: ‘I don’t really understand. How is the new plan going to fix the problem?’

    PRESIDENT BUSH:

    ‘Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers.  For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table.  Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.  There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered.  And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised.

    Does that make any sense to you?  It’s kind of muddled.  Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases.  There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect.  In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

    Okay, better? I’ll keep working on it.’ (Laughter.)

    Please forward this to others — so they, too, can understand…

  • From the Horse’s (God’s?) Mouth

    I am not in favor of championing the cause of science by  invoking the divine – even for the sake of truth and rationality. But the Vatican is a religious institution, as is the Discovery Institute. So it is okay with me if they fight it out between themselves as to what "God" may or may not have intended in the evolution scheme. Just leave science out of it – which is what the Vatican appears to be saying.

    Jan. 23, 2006, 7:16PM
    ANOTHER VOICE

    Vatican supports science

    The Philadelphia Inquirer

    What if God spoke, and said: "What’s this intelligent design stuff? That ain’t science!"

    Would ID proponents keep on talking? "Well, not if you redefine science" … "There’s too many holes in the theory of evolution" … "Life is too complex for it to be the product of random mutation" … "This is academic censorship!"

    Rather than hurling down serpents, frogs and thunderbolts, the Divinity might clear the throat and politely restate:  "Sorry, one more time: Intelligent design is not science."

    This week, it wasn’t God talking, exactly — but by some lights it came pretty close. On Tuesday, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published an article, by University of Bologna evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo Facchini, which said a Pennsylvania judge was right to nix the Dover school board’s attempt to order teachers to read an ID-related statement to students.

    In agreement with Judge John E. Jones III, Facchini wrote that "intelligent design does not belong to science and there is no justification for the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside the Darwinian explanation."

    While the paper is not an official Catholic Church voicebox, anything that gets printed must pass close scrutiny to jibe with Vatican thought.

    Hilariously, the Discovery Institute, a flimsy cover for neocreationist advocates and one of the failed powerhouses behind the ID push, said that to see Facchini’s piece as Vatican thought was "to put words in the Vatican’s mouth."

    Which gets it exactly backward.

    For more than half a century, the Roman Catholic Church has embraced the science of evolution and has rejected the kind of politically "polluted" (Facchini’s word) fundamentalism that stinks up the evolution/ID wars.

    True, some are confused about where Pope Benedict XVI stands. Hasn’t he spoken of "this intelligent project that is the cosmos"? Yes — but that’s a religious statement, not a claim that ID is science.

    That’s why Facchini’s piece probably is what the Vatican wants the world to hear. Facchini suggests that God might well have employed random mutation in designing the cosmos.

    "God’s project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events," he writes. No need to fight evolution. It might be the Big Plan.

    But the fighters probably will fight on. And on.

    Give them credit. It takes courage to put words in God’s mouth.

  • War on Terrorism – More Twist Than Tango

    Opposition to the Iraq war is regularly dismissed by the Bush faithfuls as lily livered pacifism of the left. Wrong.  While some may be blanket pacifists, the vast majority of the critics saw the Iraqi adventure for what it really was – the wrong war in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.  That same majority also wishes that our resources and man power had been spent in the pursuit and defeat of real terrorists and terrorism – Al Qaida, the Taliban and their offshoots, operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    In fact Pakistan’s role as an ally may be one of the biggest smoke and mirrors game in the fight against global terrorism. Having long supported the corrupt and oppressive Pakistani military dictatorships in the hope of keeping huge and democratic India in check, (go figure !) the US finds itself unable to break the habit, even though Pakistan’s role in promoting and nurturing terrorism is not a secret to anyone in the US State Department. A.Q Khan, the ISI and the Pakistani nuclear WalMart are some of the more egregious examples. And while we try to put pieces of Iraq back together, Pakistan continues to double deal on terrorism within its borders. Now the fascistic Talibanic school of Islam is flexing muscles in another one of India’s neighboring countries – Bangladesh.  The Bangladeshi fundies have issued an edict that all women, including non-Muslims, must wear burqas in public or face death. They have also imposed curfews which forbid women from stepping out of their homes after sundown. How long before suicide bombing becomes a desired vocation? 

    Jim Hoagland, who was wrong on Iraq has it right on Pakistan.

    Pakistan an erratic dance partner in war on terror

    "DEATH to America. Oh, wait. Thank you, America. Love you, big guy. No, hold on. Where’s that Death to America banner? What have they done for us lately?

    Easy come, easy go? Not exactly. The suffering villagers (victims of the recent earthquake) expressing gratitude have not suddenly morphed into the well-fed, bearded zealots marching in Peshawar. But the volatility of public opinion in Pakistan and of the government’s reactions to U.S. help — and U.S. hurt — are revealing strategic indicators of the unsteady course of the Bush administration’s war on global terrorism.

    In its tangled relations with Pakistan, Washington rides something far more dangerous than an opinion roller coaster. President Pervez Musharraf’s military regime is the most difficult government in the world to fit into Washington’s struggle against Islamic extremist groups.

    Pakistan is essential and helpful in fighting the al-Qaida network — except when it is not. Without Musharraf’s help, the U.S. and its NATO allies cannot put down the rebellion in Afghanistan being waged by Osama bin Laden’s fanatics and the Taliban. Without Musharraf’s complicity, that rebellion could not continue at its increasingly murderous intensity. We’ve got Musharraf right where he wants us.

    Suicide bombings and attacks with roadside explosive devices directed at U.S. and NATO troops as well as Afghan authorities have spiked upward in recent months. U.S. intelligence reports to the Pakistanis on terrorist locations and movements along the frontier have received no effective response from Pakistani authorities during this damaging terrorist upsurge.

    "You can draw the Afghan-Pakistan border on a map by looking at the pattern of signal intercepts," says one U.S. official. "The bad guys chatter away in Pakistan, feeling they are safe. That area lights up like a Christmas tree. Then they go silent when they cross into Afghanistan, where they fear getting hit."

    Washington needs to hold Musharraf’s feet to the fire on al-Qaida and the Taliban, even as it tries to bolster him at home. Whatever else it did or did not accomplish, the Damadola raid surely demonstrated to the Pakistani president that he too has much to lose if the terror festival in Afghanistan continues to be run unhindered from Pakistani soil."

    Update: Here is what the Pakistani Prime Minister had to say about the recent bombing of suspected Al Qaida terrorists in the village of Damadola, Waziristan in NW Pakistani territory. With friends like these…. etc. ?

  • The Two Big O’s of Literary Patronage

    Every fledgling popular author’s dream is to make it to Oprah Winfrey’s book club roster. An endorsement by her is the sure fire guarantee that a book will land on the best sellers list. One author, Jonathan Franzen had the audacity to question Oprah’s literary sophistication and he probably lives to rue the day he offended the queen of America’s book clubs. During the recent controversy about James Frey’s partly "fictional" memoir, A Million Little Pieces, we also saw that Oprah stands by her man after she has praised his book. No wonder authors receiving her blessings adore her.

    Now we have learnt that Osama Bin Laden has entered the literary scene (he has a library in his cave?).  In his recent message to America, he recommended that US citizens read William Blum’s 2000 work, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,".

    "And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State,’ which states in its introduction: ‘If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all: " said Bin Laden.

    As for Blum,

    "Twenty-four hours after Osama bin Laden told the world that the American people should read the work of a little-known Washington historian, William Blum was still adjusting.

    Blum, who at 72 is accustomed to laboring in relative left-wing obscurity, checked his emotions and pronounced himself shocked and, well, pleased.

    "This is almost as good as being an Oprah book," he said yesterday between telephone calls from the world media and bites of a bagel. "I’m glad." Overnight, his 2000 work, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower," had become an Osama book.

    From Blum’s end of the conversations, you could tell the reporters were expecting him to express some kind of discomfort, remorse, maybe even shame. Blum refused to acknowledge feelings he did not have.

    "I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I’m not repulsed, and I’m not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique — that American interventions abroad create enemies.

    By last night, "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com’s index of the most-ordered books."  (When I checked last, it was #19 and Amazon was out of copies).

  • “Culture of Life” – only to be interrupted by war and execution

    Two days ago, 76 year old Clarence Ray Allen was put to death  in California – the second oldest death row inmate in the US to die since the death penalty was re-introduced thirty years ago. Allen’s lawyers had pleaded with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Supreme Court that executing an old and feeble man amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

    "With the help of four large correctional officers, Clarence Ray Allen shuffled from his wheelchair to a gurney inside San Quentin’s death chamber early Tuesday, a day after his 76th birthday. Though legally blind, Allen raised his head to search among execution witnesses for relatives he had invited.

    "Hoka hey, it’s a good day to die," Allen said in a nod to his Choctaw Indian heritage. "Thank you very much, I love you all. Goodbye."

    Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:38am Tuesday morning at San Quentin State Prison.There was a sickening twist to Allen’s execution however – he didn’t die after the first attempt. The barrel-chested prisoner’s " heart was strong to the end, forcing doctors to administer a second shot of potassium chloride to stop it.

    Anticipating a possible replay of his September heart attack in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.

    "At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him." [only in order to execute him later!].

    Crittendon explained that executions are scheduled for one minute after midnight because the death warrant is only valid for that day, giving authorities time to treat an inmate’s ailments, then kill the prisoner without having to seek another order. 

    Allen was nearly deaf and had diabetes. Medical records show he was indeed ailing, and prison officials did not dispute his condition. However, some observers saw a man in better condition than had been portrayed."

    This commentary is not a debate about the death penalty. My attempt here is to shed light on the so called "Culture of Life" favored by the Bush administration and its right wing supporters.  That culture is anti-abortion, anti physician- assisted suicide for the terminally ill of sound mind, and against withdrawing life support from patients (like Terri Schiavo) who are in persistent vegetative coma. The right wing mantra is that all the above constitute taking of "innocent" lives. If on the other hand, someone qualifies as "guilty" in their eyes, the same "pro-life" folks become conspicuously blood thirsty. The deaths of "innocent" civilians during the conduct of an illegal war of choice, are characterized as "collateral damage", execution of a condemned prisoner is brushed aside as "just retribution", even if that person is mentally retarded or psychologically impaired. Please note that in their zeal for meting out justice, they see no special irony in resuscitating a person from a near fatal condition just so that they can put him to death. The perverseness is mind boggling.

    During the more "primitive" days of execution by hanging, if the rope broke, the prisoner went free. The logic was that no human hand should try to second guess "divine intervention". In the era of "humane" execution by lethal injection, the modern executioner’s manual contains no such etiquette of reprieve after a failed attempt.

  • Slinging Mud at Murtha

    Ever since Congressman Jack Murtha declared the Iraq war a failure and called for troop withdrawal, I have been waiting with bated breath for the Republican smear campaign to go into high gear. Many had predicted that Murtha, with his long career in the armed forces, as a hawk on defence and decorated war hero, was immune. I knew better.

    The super efficient slime machine of the conservative right wing follows a predictable pattern of operation. If a favorite political cause is questioned, the entire cadre gets into the business of digging dirt with the efficiency of an army of killer ants. The Republican attack dogs  don’t look for the enemy’s Achilles Heel.  They direct their attack at what is perceived to be the adversary’ biggest  strength. If it is music, they will present evidence of lip-synching. If it is scholarship, they will find proof of plagiarism. If the opponent is a decorated war hero, watch out! They will manage to taint him/ her with allegations of cowardice and spuriously obtained medals. It is amazing that this bunch of draft dodging, non-combantant, arm chair warriors, effortlessly manage to take on every military hero that dares to cross their political path. John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry and now Jack Murtha.

    E. J. Dionne Jr. says " I UNDERESTIMATED the viciousness of the right wing." 

    Last November, Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat and a decorated Marine combat veteran, came out for a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq. At the time, I wrote: "It will be difficult for Bush’s acolytes to cast Murtha, who has regularly stood up for the military policies of Republican presidents during his 31 years in Congress, as some kind of extreme partisan or hippie protester."

    No, the conservative hit squad didn’t accuse Murtha of being a hippie. But a crowd that regularly defends President Bush for serving in the Texas Air National Guard instead of going to Vietnam has continued its war on actual Vietnam veterans. An outfit called the Cybercast News Service last week questioned the circumstances surrounding the awarding of two Purple Hearts to Murtha because of wounds he suffered in the Vietnam War.

    John Kerry, as well as John McCain — who faced scurrilous attacks on his war record when he was running against Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary — could have warned Murtha, if you’re a Vietnam veteran, don’t you dare get in the way of George W. Bush.

    What’s maddening here is the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and the way it circulates — usually through Web sites or talk radio — personal vilification to abort honest political debate. Murtha’s views on withdrawing troops from Iraq are certainly the object of legitimate contention. Many in Murtha’s own party disagree with him. But Murtha’s right-wing critics can’t content themselves with going after his ideas. They have to try to discredit his service.

    Moreover, the right has demonstrated that its attitude toward military service is entirely opportunistic. In the 1992 presidential campaign, when the first President Bush confronted Bill Clinton — who, like Cheney, avoided military service entirely — conservatives could hardly speak or write a paragraph about Clinton that didn’t accuse him of being a draft dodger. In October 1992, Bush himself assailed Clinton. "A lot of being president is about respect for that office and about telling the truth and serving your country," Bush told a crowd in New Jersey. "And you are all familiar with Gov. Clinton’s various stories and what he did to evade the draft."

    But from 2000 forward, the Republicans had a problem: They confronted Democrats, first Al Gore and then John Kerry, who actually did go to Vietnam, while it was their own standard-bearers who had skipped the war. Suddenly, Vietnam service wasn’t the thing at all. When a Democrat goes to war, there must be something wrong with the way he’s done it. Gore’s service was dismissed because he worked "only" as a military journalist. You can even find Bush’s defenders back in 2000 daring to argue that flying planes over Texas was actually more dangerous than joining the Army and serving in Vietnam the way Gore did.

    The Republicans had an even bigger problem with Kerry, who did unquestionably dangerous duty patrolling rivers. Not to worry. The Swift Boat Veterans simply smeared him.

    "War’s a nasty business," Murtha said on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday. "It sears the soul." Unfortunately, politics is a nasty business, too. And there is no honor given to those who serve if they choose later to take on the powers that be.

  • Wisdom Prevails

    The US Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s assisted suicide Law known as the Oregon Death With Dignity Act. The decision was 6-3 in favor of the law. The three dissenting Justices were Scalia, Thomas and Roberts (we can guess how Alito would have voted if he was on the bench).  The law came into effect after Oregon voters approved it twice in statewide referendums.  Conservatives reacted angrily to the ruling as it struck down one of  Bush administration’s signature policies regarding what President Bush calls the "culture of life." The Supreme Court’s decision removes the last legal cloud hanging over Oregon’s Death With Dignity Law.  I wonder how much influence the Terri Schiavo case had on the six Justices who voted yes.

    Please read  Joe at Unreal City who commends the wisdom of the decision and makes some common sense arguments in its favor.

  • Wishful Thinking and AARP

    Make what you will of this story. My good friend, Sondra sent me an e-mail this morning containing the following snippet. It is quite funny, I thought.

    "It is amazing how time gets away from us and it is something you cannot turn back.  Or at least I thought you could not turn it back until the other day I looked at a little clock that AARP sent me several years ago.  I noticed something was strange about it and that the time was not correct.  I changed the battery and looked at it and it still looked strange.  The second hand was going backwards and the time was actually turning back instead of forward.  I tapped it around a little and it changed back, but now I wish I would have just left it – made a good conversation piece."

  • Men For All Seasons

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
    Mohandas Gandhi

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his idol Mahatma Gandhi, both long dead, remain relevant today for the simple reason that their warnings have not been fully heeded by subsequent world leaders. Today is the federally observed birthday of Dr. King in the US and in two weeks (January 30th), India will observe another anniversary of Gandhi’s death. Both the US and India will honor the two leaders  by paying tribute to their far seeing visions and then we will go back to business as usual. Annual lip service to two men whose messages about war, peace, violence, racism and imperialism should serve as our moral compass through the year and the ages – not just as mindless ceremonial sound bites by politicians.

    From the editorial pages of Houston Chronicle:

    A man without borders

    Although he rose to national prominence fighting racial segregation in the South, many of the issues roiling the United States 38 years after his assassination would be very familiar to Martin Luther King Jr.

    Before his death, the Baptist minister had denounced America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, a daring stance that fueled the growing opposition to the carnage in Southeast Asia. He was bitterly criticized in the media and by government officials for venturing beyond the sphere of civil rights, as if that were the only area in which he was entitled to an opinion.

    With the country now split by the bloody, open-ended struggle in Iraq and by the mistaken justification for going to war, it’s not hard to predict where King would stand on the matter.

    Americans debate the revelation that their government is conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans inside the United States. King had plenty of experience on that score. He was relentlessly wiretapped and trailed by the FBI. Then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that King was a communist sympathizer.

    Just as he stood with refuse workers in Memphis in the last days before an assassin’s bullet struck him down, King would championed the dispossessed evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, potent symbols of a race-based economic underclass that persists as a legacy of slavery and discrimination. The New Orleans nightmare that Katrina exposed indicates that the vision King enunciated in his "I Have a Dream" speech is not yet realized.

    Like his role model for nonviolent protest, Mohandas K. Gandhi, King grew to be a world figure by embracing universal humanitarian concerns that surmounted ethnicity and religion. As he once said, "Evil is not driven out, but crowded out … through the expulsive power of something good."

    That’s why the celebration of his life today cannot be limited to a single community or issue. African-Americans are justly proud that he rose from their ranks, but his life is significant to all Americans.

    For a fuller account of  Dr. MLK’s speech on the Vietnam war, please see Deja Vu All Over Again: King on Vietnam at Leiter Reports.

  • Anthropomorphism and Empathy

    For animal lovers, the joy of living with a companion animal is tempered by the knowledge that our pets most likely will die before us. We also know when we bring animals into our lives that some day we ourselves may be the instrument of their death – when disease, old age or some other consideration will compel us to euthanize them. Knowing this does not make the decision of putting a pet to sleep any easier … ever.

    While most pets are euthanized because of disease or debilitation, dogs sometimes are put to sleep because they become a danger to us even when they are young and healthy.  There was a moving essay in Newsweek a week ago by Jonathan Cooperman who had to put his beloved Doberman, Jack to sleep because Jack had become a threat to the safety of his family. Dogs of aggressive breeds like Doberman, Rottweiler and to some extent German Shepherds, sometimes imperceptively cross the line between frisky, exuberant and playful, to dangerous. The pet owner is often slow to recognize the transformation because the dog can remain docile and obedient to one human in the household whom it regards as the alpha animal. Cooperman’s dog was one such tragic case. Jack, whom Cooperman called "My Boy" had to be euthanized at the age of four, in the prime of his healthy life when it became clear that he had become a potential threat to his human companions.

    "Sometimes there are no words—just a look. Upon my command, my Doberman, Jack, sat obediently in the vet’s examining room. Four years old and in his prime, with 115 pounds of strapping muscle, he was at once impressive and intimidating. He sat between the vet and me, wagging his tail.

    When I gave him the instruction "paw," he offered that big foot to the vet, who placed a tourniquet on his leg. The medicine was drawn into the syringe and pushed into Jack’s vein. Two seconds elapsed, and it was during this extraordinarily brief space of time that Jack gave me that look, one I’d never seen before. I couldn’t turn away. Then all that bulk went lifeless, and he was gone.

    There were no words. There was no quote that I could take home and put in a diary. There was just that look.

    Earlier that morning, Jack had jumped onto the bed (something he was not allowed to do) and attacked my wife, Tracy. He’d given no warning. Even as an experienced Doberman owner, I was amazed by his lightning speed as he bit Tracy three times. I rushed her, shaken and bloody, to the hospital, and it was later that day that Jack and I ended up at the vet’s office.

    …..We forge special bonds with our pets, and my relationship with Jack was no exception. I called him "my boy," having raised him since he was a pup. When I first got Jack, I owned a sports car, and his idea of going for a ride was jumping into the trunk, then crawling Army style half-way through the dropped-down back seat, so that his hindquarters remained in the trunk as we drove around town. My decision to buy a Jeep as my next vehicle was pretty much influenced by imagining Jack as a passenger. He deserved to be transported in style.

    Just before Jack and I went to the vet’s, I took him for a long walk and one of our car rides. We played Frisbee and I let him chase squirrels in the park. I wanted his last moments to be normal—and fun. Two hours later he was gone.

    So what was Jack trying to convey with that unforgettable look he gave me in the last seconds of his life? Hard to say. Like most pets, he had an assortment of expressions and sounds that spoke loud and clear to me: a quick bark meant he had to go out; pushing his bowl across the floor meant "feed me"; wide paws and a low stance meant "play with me," and my favorite—jumping six feet in the air while banging all four paws against the sliding glass door—meant "I want to come in."

    But that last look was something altogether different, and like most people who have been left with a hole in their lives, I find myself filling in the words that were never said. I’d like to believe Jack was saying, "It’s OK. I had a good time."

    All of us who have gone through the heart wrenching experience of putting a beloved animal to sleep, have wished that we could have fathomed what went through the mind of our pet at the moment before the lethal injection was administered – to know whether they understood.  I know that this will be dismissed by many as unnecessary sentimentality of projecting "human" feelings on to animals. But the very essence of our empathy is to be able to humanize an event and a relationship. How else do we bond with our animals?

  • Petroleum and Prevarication

    It is a little more than a thousand days and nights since the beginning of the Iraqi invasion. During this period our own Scheherezade, George W. Bush has spun nearly as many fantastic tales about why we invaded and occupied Iraq. It began with mushroom clouds, WMD, roving chemical weapons labs, centrifuges, aluminum tubes and not so veiled references to 9/11. These concrete and fearsome reasons morphed into vague and noble sounding slogans of liberty, democracy and human rights when the weapons inspectors came back empty handed. For the next three years, we will hear more Arabian Nights Tales from our story teller in chief – very few of them will be accurate. Some time in late 2003 while driving in my neighborhood, I spotted a shiny truck festooned with flags and patriotic messages. Among the many bumper stickers was one that read, "Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas". That Texan at least, was telling the truth about Iraq.

    Today, in Leiter Reports is an account of a speech given by the head of Iraqi Oil Workers Union of Basra. Among other things, he had this to say:

    " They [Iraqi Oil workers] have stood against occupation forces and confronted them, preventing them from getting to the oil installations, and have stood likewise against foreign companies. Oil workers were the first to stand against these companies by holding out against the monopolist firms that were brought in by America two months after the beginning of the occupation. These firms came under the protection of American tanks; however, our Union’s first action was to expel KBR [Halliburton] from our oil sites.

    As you know, brothers and sisters, Iraqi oil reserves are considered the world’s second largest and that is why the war was launched against the land of the two rivers….We know, and everyone here knows, real American intentions. … and its interests lie in exerting control over Iraqi oil and putting this wealth at its disposal.  [Military] occupation being but the first step to be followed by economic occupation."

    Skeptics here and the rest of the world think so too.  As the mid-term elections of 2006 draw near, George Bush is adopting a new technique of narrating his fairy tales – no hard questions after the story session. Earlier this week, during a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he said that while he  welcomes an honest debate on the Iraq war, mention of annoying words such as "oil" is forbidden during the discourse.

    "President Bush issued a stark warning to Democrats on Tuesday about how to conduct the debate on Iraq as midterm elections approach, declaring that Americans know the difference between "honest critics" and those "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people."

    "There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate, and it’s even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas," he said.In some of his most combative language yet directed at his critics, Mr. Bush said Americans should insist on a debate "that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries." (From NYT)

    Extreme greed is difficult to overcome or abandon. The Iraqi union leader also said:

    "America does not want to withdraw at this time, because it did not complete its operation; it has not yet accomplished the second phase of the occupation, the economic occupation of Iraq. That is why the U.S. administration is currently putting forward its economic plans which include privatization of the oil and manufacturing sectors, and the production sharing agreement [PSA] project."

    Until the PSA goes into action, the surrogates of Bush – Cheney Inc., Halliburton (and KBR) are kept away from the Iraqi oil fields. But they can still find ways to maximize profits in other lucrative reconstruction projects. Rather than pay high wages to US citizens or moderate ones to Iraqis, they prefer employing workers from poorer nations in south Asia and Africa to whom they pay a pittance. Many are brought into Iraq illegally by unscrupulous labor contractors with the false lure of jobs elsewhere in the middle east, such as Jordan, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.  Read about their non-fairy tale experiences here and here.

  • Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice – Not Necessarily

    This story has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, although it is not breaking news in India.  In the last two decades or so, the ancient practice of female infanticide in rural India has more or less been supplanted by selective abortion of female fetuses. Technology – ultrasound and other sex selection tests have made it possible for parents to "choose" the gender of the child they wish to give birth to.  Other Asian countries like China, South Korea, Pakistan and Nepal show a similar bias says the United Nations Population Fund.  In most of the world, female to male ratio in the general population is greater than one (believed to be mother nature’s way).  In many parts of Asia however, the ratio is less than one because of the bias against female babies – the imbalance being most noticeable in India and China. In India the ratio is decreasing with passing years.

    Indian females born as a percentage of males born.

    1981; 96.2%

    1991; 94.5%

    2001; 92.7%

    Here are some further facts and a glimpse into a cultural mindset that makes possible these "unnatural" numbers. And it is not just the rural poor who are responsible.

    "…. if the first-born was a girl, the number of girls born subsequently fell off precipitously. Among second children, only 759 girls were born for every 1,000 boys, and among third children, there were 719 girls for every 1,000 boys.

    Although anti-girl bias is usually associated with the rural poor, the study shows it is far more widespread among more well-to-do urban dwellers.

    Households where the mother had a better education — and presumably an income that would allow her family to afford testing — were significantly less likely to give birth to a second daughter if their first child was a girl.

    The study did not find differences among religious groups.

    India’s patriarchal society emphasizes the need for male heirs, and a son is considered an extra pair of hands to earn income for the family. Girls are viewed as economic and social burdens because they will eventually marry and leave home, taking a large dowry with them. An Indian maxim states: "Grooming a girl is like watering a neighbour’s garden."

    There are further thoughts and analysis of this matter by Progressive Indian-American Woman who argues that it is not abortion rights but gender bias which is the central issue here.

  • What Is Wrong With This Picture?

    Einstein lookalike under a bike stunt (IoP)

    Where are all the sexy scientists?  Or the scientists who love poetry, ride motorcyles, paint, play music, are social activists?  And those who are loving fathers and mothers? Could it be that there are no scientists who fit the bill?  Or is it that they exist but we just don’t associate these "human" qualities and pastimes with the pursuit of science?

    Although we routinely enjoy the mundane and the spectacular fruits of scientifc research in our daily lives, most people do not give much thought to what scientists DO or what they are as persons. The common image of a scientist in an average person’s mind is an archaic one – that of the mad professor with wild hair, bewildered expression and ill fitting clothes covered by a lab coat. In the realm of mass imagination, the scientist as an individual, evokes the visions of a somewhat sinister, withered alchemist at worst, or the benignly batty "Absent Minded Professor" at best.

    While most people acknowledge that their lives are better as a result of scientific progress, there are widespread suspicions about scientists themselves. This may be explained by the fact that in the mind of the general public, the word "science" conjures up images of nuclear explosions, dangerous drugs and genetically  manipulated food or cloned animals. Professor Christopher Frayling, head of the Royal College of Art in England is conducting a "scientific" experiment about scientists. Here is the gist of his observations and some arcane facts about the mysterious world of scientific research. ((If you have a few minutes, please read the whole article)

    "He’s (Frayling) been going into primary schools and asking the pupils to draw a picture of a scientist.

    Examining the sketches afterwards, he is surprised to discover that the children consistently draw images from a bygone age long before they were born: with wild hair, lab coat, staring eyes, coke-bottle glasses, a withered hand; in some cases they’ve even written the word "MAD" with an arrow pointing at the scientist.

    Sir Christopher has replicated this study several times and concludes that, "in the tests I’vea done about 80 to 90% are mad scientists with one of more aspects of the iconography of the 1960s alive and well".

    The stereotype of the unhinged and dangerous scientist isn’t only held by school children. He believes that this is part of a "funny sort of schizophrenia in the public understanding of science".

    On one hand there is a desire to believe in scientific progress, particularly in the field of medicine, and an admiration of everything that science has made possible; on the other a suspicion that the scientists themselves are "Mad, bad and dangerous to know".

    This anxiety stems, perhaps, from a sense that science affects people in ways they can’t control. And yet they may take comfort from the fact that it’s a two-way street. Public support or public hostility towards a given area of science does in fact filter through to the daily lives of scientists. The idea of scientific "fashion"- what’s considered cutting-edge at any given moment, plays a major role in the granting of research funding, which is the life blood of science"

    What is interesting about this article is that such a concrete personality profile persists in the public mind regarding practitioners of what is essentially an intellectual pursuit that is not partial to any particular physical (or psychological) attributes. There are many jobs that are physical in nature and favor a certain kind of physique or personality.  When we hear "NBA player", "NFL linebacker", "ballerina", "super model", "gymnast", or even "soldier", we visualize a person of a certain height, bulk, muscle tone or physical proportions and the reality in such cases generally lives up to the expectation. But we also attribute imaginary physical and personality traits to other non-physical professions and groups even when real life specimens often belie that image. Scientists are not the only group targeted for faulty stereotyping.  We describe people as "presidential", "senatorial", "professorial" "motherly" or "All American".  So, what do presidents, senators, professors and moms look like?  And for that matter, which phenotype describes a true blue American?

  • Bush Bombshell or Business As Usual?

    Why should this surprise us? The imperial presidency of George W. Bush operates on the premise that the president is above the law – both domestic and international. We have seen numerous instances of this arrogance. The following story broke a couple of months ago. It is back in the news because legal proceedings surrounding this stunning revelation begins in London tomorrow.  Here is what Christopher Hitchens (an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war) writes in Slate. Read the last paragraph and decide if Bush was "joking". Fortunately for once, G.W.B.’s propensity for pre-emptively punishing those who "annoy" him was reigned in by cooler heads.

    The Bush Bombshell
    Did the president propose to take out Al Jazeera?
    By Christopher Hitchens

    Tomorrow morning, in a court in London, two men will appear to face charges under Britain’s Official Secrets Act….(The first man) is accused of unlawfully handing a confidential memorandum to the second man, Leo O’Connor, a researcher for a former Labor member of Parliament, Tony Clarke

    The memorandum is actually a five-page transcript stamped "Top Secret." It describes a meeting at the White House on April 16, 2004, between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. At that meeting, which took place while desperately hard fighting was in progress in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, Bush mooted the idea of taking out the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. The network’s correspondents inside the city had been transmitting lurid footage of extreme violence. The exchange apparently puts Blair in a good light, in that he dissuaded the president from any such course of action and was assisted in this by Colin Powell, who was then secretary of state.

    So, this is ostensibly about something that never actually happened. But what if it had? The state of Qatar, which though a Wahabbi kingdom has a free press and allows women to run and to vote in elections, has not been the host of just Al Jazeera since the network’s predecessor was kicked out of Saudi Arabia. It has also been the host of United States Central Command, and of many American civilians. Bombing or blowing up the Al Jazeera office would involve hitting the downtown section of Doha, the capital city of a friendly power. It’s difficult to think of any policy that would have been more calamitous. (But perhaps it was proposed to do it "surgically"?)

    What reason do we have to believe that this appalling proposal was actually made? First, the British government has prosecuted the two men accused of handling the memo for leaking "making a damaging disclosure of a document relating to international relations." Blair’s attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has further threatened an injunction on the Daily Mirror, which published the original story in November under the bylines of Kevin Maguire and Andy Lines, if it tries to disclose any more details of the document.

    A second reason for believing in the authenticity of the memo is that an unnamed spokesman for Blair was quoted in the original story as saying that Bush’s remark was "humorous, not serious." This is as much as to concede that some such conversation did in fact take place. It is of course not always possible to tell when the president is joking, but another who saw the transcript claimed that he was "deadly serious, as was Blair." (This by the way is a rebuke to those who routinely taunt the prime minister as "Bush’s poodle.")

    It is high time that this question was ventilated by people other than British editors and journalists who labor under the repressive conditions of the Official Secrets Act. Al Jazeera is not describable, perhaps, as a strictly objective station, but it is the main source of news in the Arab world because it is not the property of any state or party, and it has given live and unedited coverage of things like the elections in Iraq. In 2001, its office in Afghanistan was destroyed by "smart" bombs. In 2003, its correspondent in Baghdad was killed in an American missile strike. If it becomes widely believed that it has been or is being targeted, the consequences in the region will be rather more than Karen Hughes’ "public diplomacy" can handle.