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  • Breaking the mold

    Barack Obama is the first American president to name Hindus, Muslims and non-believers in his inaugural address. (“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.")  Now he has given his first full length public interview since taking office to Al-Arabiya, the Arabic language TV network. Unlike his stubborn and belligerent predecessor, Obama  spoke directly to Muslim nations about his world views without threats and demeaning generalizations. An excerpt:

    Obama ALARABIYA-large PRESIDENT OBAMA: … And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith — and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers — regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

    And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.

    But ultimately, people are going to judge me not by my words but by my actions and my administration's actions. And I think that what you will see over the next several years is that I'm not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what's on a television station in the Arab world — but I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I'm speaking to them, as well.

  • The Magnes Zionist

    Against_war The Magnes Zionist, a blog by a pseudonymous orthodox Jewish professor is worth checking out, especially for his views on the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza. (link via Brian Leiter in Leiter Reports)

  • The Inaugural Flub

    The only glaring hiccup in Barack Obama's silky smooth campaign and transition to the presidency  occurred on Inauguration Day when Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled during the administration of the presidential oath. The incongruity of the moment was noted by citizen observers and the media. Conspiracy theorists, as well as critics of President Obama raised questions about the legitimacy of his office, absent the "constitutionally correct" oath of office. But as many experts and our own Dean have explained, a mangled oath doesn't de-legitimize the presidency. However just to be on the safe side, President Obama took a second oath  yesterday evening. Justice Roberts apparently got it right on the re-take.

    Obama Oath 1      Obama Oath 2

    Everyone, including the Chief Justice agreed after the event that it wasn't Obama but Roberts, who created the syntactic faux pas. President Obama, a man known for his grace and composure under pressure and amidst unexpected turn of events smiled sympathetically at his oath giver when it became clear that the ceremony had gone awry and the scripted words were becoming scrambled. Theories abound as to why Roberts, also a man known for his minimalistic and cool demeanor, failed to go through a routine for which both men should have been well prepared (what's wrong with a 3 X 5 index card on these occasions?). Bloggers and commentators have speculated that:

    • Roberts is so pissed off at Obama for not voting for him during the senate confirmation hearings that he deliberately and vindictively messed up Obama's solemn moment before the whole world.
    • Roberts is so pissed off at Obama for not voting for him during the senate confirmation hearings that he lost his customary cool and his sputtering was caused by passionate anger.
    • Roberts, a man of "reactionary" judicial leanings (Brian Leiter) who has sided with George Bush on increasing war time executive powers and against individual freedoms, choked up because he fears that Obama will correct the human rights and rule of law violations of the Bush-Cheney regime.
    • Roberts became distracted because his hair became unstuck by a strong wind and blew into his eyes.
    I had met with some friends on Tuesday to watch the presidential inauguration over lunch and Tequila Sunrise.  We were all taken aback by the faltering swearing-in-ceremony.  Afterwards many of us wondered why Roberts had fumbled. Our consensus was that Roberts, dreaming of the precedence set in 2000, had fully expected himself and his esteemed colleagues on the Supreme Court to once more "select" a president by the imperious judicial fiat and was therefore miffed to have to swear in a candidate actually "elected" democratically by voters.

    Tom Toles Presidential Oath  (cartoon: Tom Toles) 

  • PETA is insane. Or a physician. It’s unclear. (Joe)

    PETA has decided that Michael Vick (whom we have discussed previously on this blog here and here) is a psychopath and should not be allowed to play in the NFL after he gets out of jail.  PETA was going to shoot an anti-dogfighting PSA with Vick and support his return to the NFL, but now believes that Vick is not "mentally capable of remorse."  PETA is insisting on seeing that the "results of a brain scan and a full psychiatric evaluation" show that Vick is capable of remorse–i.e., is non-psychopathic–before supporting his return to the NFL.

    Um, I don't think you can see psychopathy on a brain scan.  Someone may want to alert the folks at PETA.

    It also seems odd to me that they care whether Michael Vick is a psychopath playing professional football.  If he does have antisocial personality disorder, it's hard to see how it's better–either for society generally or for animals that PETA might be worried about–for Vick to be broke and unable to earn a living doing the one thing he's qualified to do.  It might be a wash, or it might be better if he has something to gain–and something to lose–in life by not getting caught behaving badly in the future.  Maybe PETA just wants a better bargain: one PSA is no longer enough, or there's free publicity to be gained from the current stance, etc. 

    Even putting aside my consequentialist concerns, it's not clear why we should care if the NFL is full of psychopaths (at least, psychopaths who cannot be incarcerated or civilly committed).  They need to earn livings, too, and the NFL offers the spectacle of football players playing football, not remorseful people showing remorse.  We could start caring about whether people are good people much more broadly, but caring narrowly about whether football players are good people is bizarre.  It's even more bizarre coming from an animal rights group, which is supposed to care about animal welfare, not the psychological or moral status of professional athletes.  (Note that PETA is perfectly willing to see Vick return to the NFL, not based on any of his future actions, but on the condition that he not be a sociopath.)

    On a particularly tangential tangent, can anyone tell me if there's a real difference in meaning between psychopath and sociopath?  As far as I can tell, they're interchangeable.

    And finally, I don't think it's that clear that Vick is a sociopath.  If he had done the things he did to human beings, it would be obvious.  I may be overgeneralizing here, but I think we basically measure psychopathy based on adherence to social norms and the ability to feel remorse (or empathy, or a conscience, etc.).  It follows that whether one is a monster depends deeply on those social norms.  If Andrew throws out his shoe, it's not be evidence of an antisocial personality disorder.  If Dean throws out his child, however, it likely is (unless it's evidence of psychosis–not relevant in the Vick saga).  Certain groups view animals as nearly human (PETA).  Probably the majority of Americans view dogs as companion-type animals, which are entitled to a fair amount of respect and kindness–more than other animals.  I think it quite plausible, though, that Vick's subculture does not–and the question is then whether he erred far enough from those norms by seriously mistreating dogs (i.e., whatever he should have understood dogs to be defined as [or where they are situated on the sliding scale between Andrew's shoe and Dean's child]).

  • Obama on the right path?

    Brian Leiter has mixed feelings.

  • Sea of Poppies

    (The following review contains the opinions of Ruchira Paul and Narayan Acharya.)

    Sea of poppies Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the first part of a projected trilogy may be his most straight forward narrative to date. A historian/ anthropologist by training, Ghosh has a proclivity of whipping around between distant times and places while weaving his tales.  The present in his books is almost always connected to a contextual past. The intricate and shifting backdrops often make his books unappealing to some readers who find them difficult to read.  Sea of Poppies, on the other hand, unfolds in a single time frame – early 19th century.

    Since the 1980s when I first discovered Ghosh's Circle of Reason, I have read nearly all his books and enjoyed them. Sea of Poppies was no exception. A detailed and exotic novel, it is set in the burgeoning days of the British Raj in India. The author takes us on a downriver journey into the "black waters" of the open sea on a refurbished slave ship of an era when slavery was common practice in the US and European nations were vying with each other to find their colonial foothold in Asia and Africa.  

    A historical novel, Sea of Poppies is also a love story(ies) flowering both on land and water. It is the account of thriving global trade, addictions, greed, betrayal, war, occupation and the rigid hierarchy of class, caste, race and power. Thoroughly researched, Ghosh meticulously creates the culture of 19th century India in the early grips of foreign occupation and that of seafaring adventurers, pirates and mercenaries. It is set in a time when the East India Company had discovered that among the varied natural resources across the vast expanse of India, the land and climate of the north central Gangetic plains offered one more lucrative opportunity of raising revenues for the British crown which had the additional enticing value of becoming the gateway to China. Under British supervision, the first large scale opium production in India's history began in a region across eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar where farmers were commissioned (coerced) to devote their entire tracts of agricultural land to the growing of poppies for opium. Some quantities of the opium produced in India entered the local markets and it was also utilized for medical purposes in the form of morphine, an effective pain killer and anesthetic. But a large portion of the raw opium was exported to China, the other large Asiatic nation whose wealth and resources the Brits eyed hungrily and whose rulers, fearful of the European intent in Asia, had adamantly barred entry to foreigners. The plan was to make the Chinese so addicted and dependent on opium that out of desperation, the wily mandarins would open the doors of the secretive land to the procurers of the drug. Apart from the complicated shenanigans of opium trafficking, the novel also introduces readers to another British export -  the first large scale relocation of Indian laborers to Africa, the Caribbeans and the far east as indentured servants, slaves with a new name. 

    At the heart of the epic saga lie the goings and comings of Ibis, a converted American slave ship purchased by a British businessman in Calcutta to transport human cargo for labor needed in the plantations of Mauritius. The novel's characters include a motley mix - the scruffy multinational crew of the Ibis and its nervous passengers who set sail together, some fleeing their destinies in their native land and others on a mission to find new ones on foreign shores. Ghosh has promised us a trilogy. Sea of Poppies, the first installment, ends on an uncertain note. We are not quite sure where the Ibis is headed - to the intended East African coast or off course, somewhere else. We will have to wait until the next two books to find out.

    A survival tale of desperation and adventure, Sea of Poppies is also very much about language. In fact, the author seems to have deliberately set about to create a primer for his readers in Maithili / Bhojpuri (lilting dialects of north central India) and the arcane domestic English of the Indian subcontinent which was to become the common parlance of the British ruling class. The linguistic calisthenics of the dialogues, rather than the dense story line, may prove to be the main stumbling block for many readers. While the foreign tongue of the native characters is dutifully clarified in standard English, Ghosh liberally puts words from Lascar lingo and Hobson-Jobson  without the benefit of translation in the mouths of characters who actually converse in English. Those fluent in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali, will be able to decipher the antiquated mongrel English of those speakers. Others may lose patience after a few tries.

    My copy of Sea of Poppies, signed by the author, is published by Viking, a branch of Penguin India. My brother-in-law presented it to me on my last birthday. It comes without a glossary. The US edition evidently does contain one for the convenience of American readers. Rather, it contains a  Chrestomathy.  More about that from Narayan Acharya:

    (more…)

  • MUMMY, The Blogger

    As per Andrew's request to create a Mummy Obamaicon, I played around a bit with one of my recent photographs and got a satisfactory result. This may be the closest I will ever come to posting my  picture on the blog. The image is good enough that those who know me can probably see the resemblance to my live self. To those who have never seen me in real life or in a photo, it is just a blur.

    Ruchira Obamaicon 2  

  • Tough Love for the Sex Industry (Andrew)

    As long as we are enduring our final spasms of Bush anti-nostalgia this weekend, I thought I’d share a short video I made with some friends (including my lovely co-blogger and spouse Anna), back in early 2001.  You may recall that after the tainted 2000 election, Al Gore seemed to disappear from public life for a while — and many of us wondered how exactly he was occupying his time…

  • Pictures of Venice, London (Joe)

    The Globe has some great pictures of Venice under water and a night-time London from the sky.

    Venice

    London

    Check them all out!

  • The Change of Address We’ve Been Waiting For (Andrew)

    Original_image
    Just trying to come to terms with the fact that tonight is George Bush's farewell speech — and I've found that I'm just as angry as the day the Supreme Court Republicans appointed the man.  What a horrible, horrible eight years.  I'm just exhausted with his relentless ideological posturing and stupefying incompetence — please go away and don't come back.

    In the meantime, you can do as I did and have some fun with his portrait, or one of your own, at the Obama icon making tool put together by the clever folks at Paste magazine — an earnest, insightful magazine about indie rock and pop culture run by thirty-somethings: http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/

    If you're wondering why I'm using the trendy term "fail," I'm just pretending it's still eight years ago when I was a a hip 20-something who didn't need to find cool things to say by furtively trolling the newsmagazines.

  • Carnival of the Liberals # 82: The New Year Edition

    CotL Welcome to CotL # 82. Accidental Blogger is pleased to host the very first Carnival of the Liberals of 2009. At this time, this year, liberals are in a mental flux. The curtain is about to come down on the eight nightmarish years of Bush-Cheney –  surely a time to rejoice. A new guard is poised to take over but the fate of liberalism under the coming administration is uncertain.Therefore it's premature to celebrate too exuberantly. The economy has gone Humpty Dumpty, wars are raging and people are nervous. After a bruising Democratic primary and a nasty general election campaign, I am not surprised that the minutiae of domestic politics are not on the minds of many bloggers. They are probably exhausted and are in a "wait and see" mode. The majority of the posts featured here dwell on broad liberal issues, mostly independent of who is in power. A couple of bloggers have a bit of fun with fantasy and one presents us with a slice of political history.

    Paul was only a blogger! Allen at The Whited Sepulchre is irritated that conservatives adamantly cling to a notion of marriage as defined by a now defunct society and ancient men who didn't think too highly of marriage. 

    Here's the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 7, verse 1: "Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry."

    Paul goes on to write about how marriage is no better than a necessary evil, and how he has chosen to remain celibate. In verse 6, he says "I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that."

    Is her bite worse than her bark? Angry Max at Pterodactyl Puke reviews a book that has not yet been written – It Was Nice to be Out of Alaska by Sarah Palin.

    You might think the Barracuda’s memoir is filled with a mix of cute little folk-isms and divisive rednecky slogans, but you’d be wrong. On the whole it’s a scathing indictment on our political system and a biting critique of our national character.

    The limits of naturalism: Science Blogger Greg Laden argues that when it comes to our ethics and morals, nature does not dictate what should be.  It may only tell us what can reasonably be.

    Naturalism is a potential source of guidance for our behavior, morals, ethics, and other more mundane decisions such as how to build an airplane and what to eat for breakfast.1 When it comes to airplanes, you'd better be a servant to the rules of nature or the airplane will go splat. When it comes to breakfast, it has been shown that knowing about our evolutionary history can be a more efficacious guide to good nutrition than the research employed by the FDA, but you can live without this approach. Naturalism works when it comes to behavior too, but there are consequences. You probably would not like the consequences.

    Florida – where the nightmare began in 2000: Joshua Lee at Politically Orange delves into the history of Florida's politics. The post is Part I of a twenty part series. I expect Josh has posts for the next nineteen CotL editions lined up already!

    Besides knowing the structure of the Florida political system (discussed earlier here), knowing it’s history is equally as important.  Without learning from the mistakes of the past, we can never move forward and learn from them, so without further ado, my series on the history of Florida politics from 1920 to today.  This guide should be easily understandable to anyone with a basic understanding of United States history.

    Obama, the crypto-Muslim: Zeno at Halfway There gives us a taste of Conservapedia where shameless partisanship always triumphs over intellectual honesty.

    The well-known liberal bias of reality seriously irks conservatives. They have responded by declaring that they make their own reality, but that didn't pan out too well. They have worked to build an alternative universe where Fox News is the voice of truth and the GOP is God's Own Party. Conservapedia is part of that alternative universe, the conservative counterpart to Wikipedia.

    Finding common ground: Greta Christina advises atheists to seek alliances with progressive non-atheists to further the atheist cause. 

    How can atheists be good allies? I think it behooves the atheist movement to make alliances with other groups that we have affinities with: groups that aren't atheist- specific and that are made up of both believers and non-believers, but that have goals we support… and in some cases, progressive ecumenical religious groups who recognize the validity of atheism.

    Ann Coulter – as ubiquitous (and equally useless) as a bad penny: Doctor Biobrain is convinced that television news is not really news but a clever ruse aimed at addling our brains.

    If you watch television news, I hate you.  Now, I suppose if you only watch it for ironic value, I won't hold it against you; though I would recommend that you seek professional help (and I say that as someone who has literally spent hours reading the ramblings at RedState…and enjoyed it).  But television news is really just the pits when it comes to covering actual reality and anyone who supports it is the enemy.

    When the big boys meet: Steve fantasizes, comic book style, what may have really happened when all five living presidents met recently in the Oval Office. 

    “No, Mr. Obama — I Expect You to Die!”

    Yesterday at the White House the three living former presidents of the United States answered an invitation to tea, along with the president-elect, from the outgoing President George W. Bush. The guests arrived individually and were directed to the Oval Office to await their host. Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton each came alone, and each made the same joke as they were escorted down the corridor. All three turned to the page accompanying them and quipped, “You’d think I would know the way!”

     

    Editor's Note: Steve's post above got me wondering how this meeting yesterday at the White House may have unfolded.

     

    The Carnival post has been put together by the joint efforts and opinions of all six authors of Accidental Blogger. My thanks to them for pitching in and to Leo Lincourt, the organizer of  CotL, for trusting me with the duties of hosting the Carnival.

  • The Giant (double) Sweep

    Here is an instance of art inadvertently augmenting life, captured in a photograph. The picture shows snow being cleared in front of the Denver Museum of Art after yesterday's heavy winter storm. The art work behind appears to be lending a hand.

    Denver Snow Storm  

  • “The ultimate exit interview”

    Yesterday I had the opportunity to catch George W. Bush's final press conference on C-Span. Bush was at his amiable best, displaying the full gamut of predictable emotions we have come to expect from him.  Alternately loopy, jokey, nostalgic and defensive, he reflected on his about-to-expire presidency and upcoming retirement. He expressed confidence that history will show him up in a kinder glow than the harsh glare of the klieg lights of the present has done. All said and done, it was a fun interview – a bit comical and mostly clueless to the end.  (the full transcript here)

    Here are some nuggets:

    On his record: "I think it's a good, strong record. You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature."

    On whether America's image has suffered under his leadership: "I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light. It may be damaged amongst some of the elite. But people still understand America stands for freedom."

    On the disgrace at Abu Ghraib: "I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were — things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way."

    On his cocky and premature declaration of victory in Iraq: "Clearly, putting `Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message."

    With Gaza up in flames, on his administration's peace efforts in the mideast: "It's been a long time since they've had peace in the Middle East. The challenge, of course, has been to lay out the conditions so that a peaceful state can emerge. … Will this ever happen? I think it will. And I know we've advanced the process."

    On the election of Barack Obama: "President-elect Obama's election does speak volumes about how far this country has come."

    On the burdens of the presidency: "I believe the phrase 'burdens of the office' is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, `Why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?' It's just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity? And I don't believe that President-electObama will be full of self-pity."

    On how he will handle retirement: "I'm a Type A personality. I just can't envision myself, you know, the big straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach. I wake up in Crawford on Tuesday morning — I mean, Wednesday morning, and I suspect I'll make Laura coffee and, you know, go get it for her."

    Ah, but these are just George Bush's own mellow words. The picture tells a different story.

    Bush Legacy

  • American War Crimes (Joe)

    Charles Fried has a somewhat bizarre NYT op-ed about the change in administrations and the Abu Ghraib atrocities.  It's strange in that Fried starts off by conceding that high-level government officials authorized "torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" of detainees.  That is, officials such as those named explicitly by Fried — Alberto Gonzalez, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld — committed war crimes.  (To the extent these actions were taken against U.S. citizens, they may not be war crimes but they are violations of U.S. domestic law — and more to the point, it's still torture, or at least cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.)

    Next, Fried concludes that U.S. actors should not face criminal prosecutions.  He writes, "It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history."  Note that he does not argue, as Jack Balkin does, that truth commissions should take the place of criminal prosecutions.  That is a fairly well-established and defensible position, although the U.S. is situated differently enough than, say, South Africa was that it is still problematic.  The possibility of truth commissions aside, for Fried prosecution which would be absurd, as far as I can tell, simply because the U.S. legal system is itself absurd, at least in the criminal law context where the defendants are important or publicly notable persons. 

    His answer to the problem of treating important people differently is perhaps the most peculiar part of the op-ed.  (He seems to include lower-level officers, perhaps even all military personnel, in this category, although this is not entirely clear.)  Fried argues:

    But should the high and mighty get off when ordinary people committing the same crimes would go to prison? The answer is that they are not the same crimes. Administration officials were not thieves lining their own pockets. Theirs were political crimes committed by persons whose jobs were to exercise the powers of government on our behalf. And the same is even truer of the lower-level officers who followed their orders.

    And what about Nuremberg and the trial of the Japanese war criminals? Were those a mistake, too? Not at all. Those were crimes against whole populations in wars of aggression. An analogous point holds for the criminal leaders of Rwanda, Serbia and Sudan.

    If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking. It is not just a difference of scale, but our leaders were defending their country and people — albeit with an insufficient sense of moral restraint — against a terrifying threat by ruthless attackers with no sense of moral restraint at all.

    There are two things going on here.  First, war crimes should not be punished because they are ostensibly committed in service of one's country.  This despite the fact that, as Fried previously acknowledged, torture is not justified simply because it is committed to protect one's country from attack.  Yeah.  Good luck defending both propositions at the same time.

    Second is the notion that war crimes are qualitatively different than crimes against humanity, and that only the former can justifiably be punished.  This point isn't made explicitly — he in fact does not use the term crimes against humanity, and does not expressly refer to the Abu Ghraib atrocities as war crimes, although that is clearly what he means by reference to torture and cruel/inhumane/degrading treatment.  But rather than attempt to defend the contention that war crimes are less bad than crimes against humanity to merit only a verdict by history (and I would love to see him attempt to do so, especially using that language, which is clearly indicated here), he simply makes a Hitler comparison and asserts that the point isn't even worth discussing.

    It is surely true that the Vice President is not der Führer, and the suggestion that no one who disagrees with Fried can see the difference between the two is insult and obfuscation, not a serious point.  What's left is apparently "not just a difference of scale" which somehow manages to look like precisely that: just a difference in scale.  The differences are (1) that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao waged wars of aggression and (2) the amount of moral restraint.  The first is at least debatable — if the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was not a war of aggression in the sense that the Second World War was, the distinction is, to my mind, one of quantity ("scale") rather than quality.  The second is, by Fried's own terms, a mere difference of scale — high-ranking officials in the Bush Administration did not exercise enough moral restraint, but they did exercise more than Hitler and Stalin.

    I'm not sure if action should be taken against the Bush Administration war criminals, or if so what form it should take; moreover, I think it highly unlikely that anything will happen.  But I am sure that if this is what we can expect to hear moving forward — torture apologism that emptily denounces torture — then I can do without hearing it, let alone reading it in what is ostensibly this country's best newspaper.  (To be fair, the Times also published an op-ed by Dahlia Lithwick arguing that the rule of law requires inquiry and prosecution.  Interesting that the Harvard law professor comes out looking like a hack, while the editor of an online magazine does not.)