After a longer than expected gap, a couple of race related stories gave me the impetus to resume blogging.  Both stories have received considerable publicity.  The first story and the subject of this article comes from Arizona.  This is not related to the ill-conceived crackdown on illegals (opposed as counterproductive by many Arizona police departments because it makes cooperation by illegals in fighting crime close to impossible) which is almost certain to have the side effect of racial profiling  American citizens like me with brown skin and an accent (even Arizona’s governor failed to articulate just how exactly a police officer will identify illegal immigrants).

This is a more depressing story that stems from a brouhaha over a school mural in Prescott, Arizona.  The local school commissioned a mural using existing school students as the models.  Some local school kids were chosen as models and *shudder* the school had the temerity to prominently portray Hispanic and African American kids.  This raised the ire of local councilman and self-proclaimed non-racist Steve Blair because in his opinion the school (which is significantly more diverse than the largely white town) was engaging in unnecessary statements supporting diversity and picked an African American kid for the mural due to the skin tone of the man controlling the nuclear football.  Then according to the artists there were the local bravos who drove by yelling slurs (in the presence of kids).  To make it worse, the school initially bowed to the vocal but relatively minor local pressure and tried to “lighten” the faces of the mural.

Thankfully, since then the school board’s spine has been replaced by something firmer than Jello.  Operation bleach has been called off and a cringing Arizona can move on from the latest display of racial idiocy in the state.

I bring this sad story up to highlight a couple of points:

First, is this excellent column by Roger Ebert on the subject and his very personal account of the evolution of his views on race.  Definitely worth a read.

Second, this story just goes to go how far we are from a truly race-blind society.  It is very easy to dismiss Steve Blair and his cheering section as a bunch of prejudiced folk, but the truth is that racial stereotyping is alive and well today, and not just in the war on terror.  The image of an “American” typically brings up someone who is white.  Blair and his ilk could not believe that someone naturally picked this bunch of kids without another more insidious motive.  In a rapidly browning country, the worst perpetrators of racial stereotyping are the supposed liberals in Hollywood, particularly the studio executives.  While Hollywood no longer engages in blackface and occasionally casts minority actors in lead roles, racial typecasting is prevalent.  Starting with the recent “Prince of Persia,” Hollywood’s summer offerings are creating a whitewashing controversy for casting white actors in roles originally intended for minorities and touting diversity based on the supporting cast.  The financial risk with minority leads is often touted as the reason for race based casting decisions.

So Hollywood’s fear of displaying an America that comports to reality results in typecast minority actors.  Most Asians on TV speak with accents (Indian-American actors (with the exception of Kal Penn) typically speak with exaggerated Indian or British accents) and minority actors are relegated into race stereotyped careers and personalities.  A show like Friends could spend a decade in New York city with almost no minorities.  To the best of my recollection, the most prominent minority in the (also) New York based show “How I Met Your Mother” is the occasionally appearing Indian cab driver.  Minorities often get segregated off into their own shows like the George Lopez show or the Tyler Perry shows on TBS.  More shows need to follow the mold of “Grey’s Anatomy“, “Lost” and “Heroes“.

While I am glad to see that the people of Prescott ended up doing the right thing, far more needs to be done to combat the mindsets of the Steve Blairs of the world.  This does not involve racial quotas, but rather truly race-neutral casting that relies on the maturity of the viewing public instead of perceived racial roles.  Cable news and newspaper opinion pages could probably benefit from this approach as well.

Coming up next…South Carolina and its spotlight on “acceptable” racism and bigotry.

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The Lib Dem surge I blogged about earlier in the week as brought in its wake the hysterical counteroffensive of the Tory media barons who feel victory slipping away.  It is a type of full scale media assault in the news pages rather than the editorial pages that Americans do not typically see outside of the tabloids and the non-Murdoch owned media (the Murdoch owned Sun has been up to tricks familiar to critics of its American affiliate).  The effectiveness of the broadside remains to be seen.  For one thing, the political affiliation of British newspapers is not secret which distinguishes Fleet Street from its American brethren in the last few decades.  The overreaction is spawning a backlash on the web with the twitter hash tag “nickcleggsfault” soaring in popularity with mocking tweets blaming Clegg for all of the world’s problems.

The second of the two prime ministerial debates held earlier today is unlikely to help the Tories or Labour quell the upstart Lib Dems.  While Conservative David Cameron performed better, Clegg appears to have held his own on foreign policy and is further entrenching his brand as something different.  Whether that brand can survive the inevitable back room deals that will follow the now likely hung parliament remains to be seen.

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Jon Stewart must love having Fox “News” and its laughably inappropriate slogan “Fair and Balanced” as a reliable foil.

He touched a nerve with this clip about the tea party movement acknowledging the points of various Fox contributors about the evils of sweeping generalization.  Of course this being Fox, he was able to show the same hosts making sweeping generalizations about the evil liberal elites.  That portion of the clip starts at the 5:11 mark.  It ends with Stewart telling the Fox blowhards to “Go F–k Yourselves.”

So Bill O’Reilly brings back Bernie Goldberg to ask him if this was true, even though the clips of O’Reilly’s and Hannity’s shows speak for themselves.  Goldberg surprisingly fessed up but then tried to rationalize his broad generalization and took pot shots at Stewart.  This of course is grand material for the comedian to respond with some lines breaking down Goldberg’s attacks by questioning why Stewart on Comedy Central is being held to Fox New’s misleading “fair and balanced” logo, further pointing out:

“Comedians do social commentary through comedy. That’s how it’s worked for thousands of years. I have not moved out of the comedian’s box into the news box. The news box is moving towards me.”

Fox should probably take to heart the old quote “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it” before taking on Stewart again.  It does not help that Goldberg essentially admitted the validity of Stewart’s critique before launching petulant attacks (note he never said that Frank Rich made the broad generalizations on Stewart’s show with no challenge, but merely that Rich made generalizations).  This is a few months after he caught Sean Hannity’s show splicing footage from a previous rally to build up the number of the later rally in Washington.  As the gospel choir number shows, Stewart’s role as a comedian gives him far more latitude to respond than O’Reilly’s usual bluster when Fox “News” is called out for making stuff up.

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It took one debate to send the upcoming British elections into a tailspin.  With his rivals attacking each other the young Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg emerged the surprising victor.  Now in a meteoric rise rivaling that of Barack Obama (Clegg is still in his first parliamentary term) at least one poll has the Lib Dems leading the popular vote with Clegg polling as the most popular politician since Churchill.

However, as the polls above indicate the surge in the polls will not translate into enough seats to form a government.  Britain’s first past the post system can result in the seat allocation being very different than the popular vote.  The likeliest result will be a hung parliament and a coalition government.

The biggest losers in this are the Conservatives.  Originally expected to end Labour’s 13 year hold on power they have seen their fortunes fade even before the recent Lib Dem surge.  With the Lib Dems ideologically closer to Labour a coalition with the Conservatives is unlikely.  Labour and the Lib Dems previously had a coalition in Scotland.  The result will be to extend the Conservative sojourn in the political wilderness.  This is likely to be extended even further if the Lib Dems extract as their pound of flesh the goal most dear to their hearts - proportional representation.  Whether Labour will consent to a policy directly contrary to its political interests is not certain.  Even if Labour comes third in the popular vote they could still be the single largest party.  However, if proportional representation does come the United Kingdom will join its continental cousins in experiencing coalition government politics.  Even the huge Thatcher majorities in the 1980s barely cracked 40% of the national vote.

I have always had a soft spot for the Lib Dems, and particularly their predecessor the Liberal Party.  In its heyday the party championed free trade, relatively low governmental interference, social reform, extending the franchise and personal liberty.  Under William Gladstone it was decidedly ambiguous about Empire.  But by the beginning of the 20th century the party was being squeezed by the rise of the socialist Labour party on the left and during the Boer Wars its Liberal imperialists on the right.  To head off social unrest the party enacted a number of reforms designed to protect the elderly and children but was ultimately shattered in the aftermath of the First World War.

Inherently opposed to Britain’s military-industrial complex the party under the leadership of David Lloyd George pushed the more pacifist liberals out and entered into a coalition with the Conservatives.  With the left wing of the party thrown into the arms of Labour, Lloyd George’s imperialist policies provoked a rebellion among his Conservative allies forcing him from office.  No Liberal has come close to the post of Prime Minister since the fall of Lloyd George in 1922.  A sizable portion of the right-wing rump of the Liberal Party (including one Winston Churchill) ended up with the Conservatives.  Over the next two decades the party almost ceased to exist.

The Liberals fractured in their attempt to find a middle path between Labour’s pacifist radical socialism and the Conservatives reactionary imperialist positions on the right.  The fractures were evident in the fall of the last two Gladstone governments in an attempt to grant Ireland Home Rule in the 1880s.  The project was stopped by Conservative opposition in the House of Lords, but had it passed could have spared Ireland much of its misery in the 20th century.

In the 1980s the Liberals merged with the Social Democrats – moderate Labour Party members fed up with that party’s radicalism on the left to form the Liberal Democrats.  Three things predispose me in their favor – a more middle of the road approach, a stronger commitment to civil liberties (will be interesting to see if that survives if they ever get to power) and a love for lost causes.  But they have also benefited in the current climate from not being one of the two parties in power.  There are many scenarios on what may happen.  The Lib Dem surge may not hold up under the almost certain harsher scrutiny of the next two debates – stuff like this will be used to lampoon Clegg.  But for now they have made the usual two party British election tango much more interesting. More than 75 years after Lloyd George destroyed his own party, his successors are making their best run for political power

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This chilling piece on on time anthrax attack suspect Dr. Steven J. Hatfill by David Freed is worth a read.  It is a stark reminder of the slender thread on which liberty stands when the government succumbs to fear.   The government bureaucrats, their enablers at the local level and the credulous media will walk away with few consequences, apart from any discomfort to their consciences, if they exist.  While Dr. Hatfill was not driven to suicide, Dr. Bruce Ivins (now presumed to be responsibel for the anthrax attacks) cracked quickly.  By committing suicide he gave the FBI the opportunity to close the case.  Given the myopic vision with which people honed in on the suspect the entire truth may never be told.

Dr. Hatfill was the latest victim of the police-media rush to judgment in prominent cases.  Other victims in the last 15 years include Dr. Wen Ho Lee (accused of spying for China and who received an apology from the Federal judge for government misconduct), Richard Jewell (accused in the Atlanta Olympic bombing) and Brandon Mayfield (accused of involvement in the Madrid terror attacks due to sloppy fingerprint analysis).

And then there is the ongoing blot of Guantanamo, where it was asserted recently that even George Bush and Dick Cheney knew that many of the prisoners were innocent (the dubious capture methods were widely reported by the non mainstream news media), but were willing inflict the collateral damage to catch a few hardcore terrorists.  With the innocents now likely radicalized that has been advanced by some Fox “News” contributors as an argument to keep them locked up.

One of my biggest disappointments with Barack Obama has been his rather retrograde record on civil liberties.  While he said a lot of the right things on torture and closing Guantanamo (which is still open), his administration has brushed the Bush administration’s torture record under the carpet (the cynic in me thinks because they are probably doing it themselves more discreetly), dismissed privacy concerns in tracking cellphones, and asserting a right to assassinate American citizens.  The last one is an invitation to a slippery slope of the type of police “encounters” and extra judical killings that occur in India, Pakistan and other parts of the world.  Given the sheer incompetence in many prominent cases, it seems like a dangerous road to cross.

I noted previously the power wielded by prosecutors and law enforcement and the risk of abuse.  I understand that the line between liberty and security is a fine one.  But the harassment meted out to Dr. Hatfill to buttress a weak case is truly disturbing.

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Poland is in shock today as a plane carrying its President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, the chief of the general staff of the Polish Army, the heads of all of Poland’s armed forces, the president of Poland’s national bank, and number of other members of the government crashed in Russia killing everyone on board.  Kaczynski was on his way to an event commemorating the Katyn massacre of World War II where the Soviet Union executed over 20,000 Polish POWs (including many senior officers).  Russia has never apologized for the massacre (Stalin conveniently blamed the Nazis) and the issue has hung heavy over Polish-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War.  But progress has been made and Kaczynski was on his way to a joint commemoration of the event with the Russians.  Needless to say, the symbolism of a large portion of Poland’s elite being struck down yet again near Katyn is hard to miss.

The impact on Polish politics is unclear.  Kaczynski was trailing in his attempt for re-election after a prickly tenure that generated tension with his European Union colleagues and Russia.  During his term Poland had the unusual experience of rule by identical twins (his brother Jaroslaw was Prime Minister from 2006-2007).

This is not the first time a head of state has been killed in a plane crash, but I am having a hard time recalling one which took out such a large portion of a country’s government and leaders of the armed forces.  While the world mourns with Poland, their governments should review their disaster contingency plans to limit the impact and paralyzing effect of such tragedies to their nations.

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European Islamophobia masquerading as womens lib has made its way to Canada.  With the blessings of Canada’s prime minister Quebec is all set to prohibit Muslim women wearing face veils from public sector jobs or access to public services.  See link.  I tend to agree with the author.  This is an embrace of feminist thought that allows women to make choices so long as the self proclaimed guardians of women’s liberty approve of it.

As I noted a couple of months ago in this blog and as the author in the article above notes, this is conceptually not different from the Saudis and the Taliban forcing the veil. Obviously the right to veil yourself should not be absolute.  There are certain situations like security checkpoints where it is essential to have an unveiled face.  Also this should be a free choice and not a coerced one.

Canada has not yet got to the ridiculous French notion of banning head scarves in schools, but it will be a matter of time before someone raises it.

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Mohammed Al-Madadi is an idiot.  Its bad enough he could not swear off his nicotine addition for a two hour flight between Washington and Denver.  But it appears that the Qatari diplomat made things  worse on being caught by joking that he was trying to light his shoes.  See here and here.  Given the history of shoe bombing it is not clear why he felt this would be funny on a plane.  Qatar is a close ally and presumably Al-Madadi will soon be summoned home for a tongue lashing if not worse.  If the summons do not appear Washington should expedite his departure.  Meanwhile he can count himself lucky that diplomatic immunity shields him from consequences here.  And on the 14 hour flight home, please wear a nicotine patch.

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A few weeks ago Sean Penn whined that people called the elected Hugo Chavez a dictator and went on to say that “[t]here should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”  See link.  Evidently Hugo Chavez agrees.  Escalating his attack on private media (most of Venezuela’s private TV stations have been shut down on his watch), Chavez arrested the owner of the only remaining critical TV channel for remarks “offensive” to the President.  See link.

Guess what Mr. Penn, that is dictatorial conduct.  Far too many people equate democracy with elections.  If Sean Penn evidently thinks so on the left so do many on the right (unless of course the Democrats use their mandate from the last election to pass health care, which is rank tyranny).  When Afghanistan and Iraq went to the polls many Republicans eager to claim political victory hailed the establishment of democracy.  Yet casting the democratic franchise is just a small part of creating a democratic state.  Far more important is creating democratic institutions that respect the rule of law, leaders who understand that approval at the ballot box does not free them from any constitutional limitations and most important the willingness of leaders to accept repudiation by the voters who put them in office.

Chavez fails on many of these counts.  He has packed the Venezuelan Supreme Court with cronies making that institution a rubber stamp.   He has used the institutions of the state to muzzle dissent, notably by his attacks on the press.  More recently when the public rejected his power grab by public referendum he was forced to accept the result by threat of a military coup.  These are the dictatorial tendencies, albeit one who cloaks himself in populist tendencies.  People forget that Chavez’s first attempt to seize power in the 1990s was by an attempted coup before he turned to the polls.

It is not hard to see why so much of the American left approved of Chavez when he came to power.  Venezuela has been cursed with oil wealth that has rarely flowed to the improvement of its impoverished masses.  Venezuela’s long democratic tradition was gradually turning into oligarchy.  To his credit Chavez shook Venezuela’s moribund institutions out of their stupor.  But that does not excuse the blinders of a portion of the left to what Chavez has become, his embrace of authoritarian regimes across Latin America and the world, his support of the Columbian terrorist movement FARC and his destruction of Venezuela’s democratic institutions.  Like many of his authoritarian peers he considers himself indispensable to his country as seen from his comments about remaining in office for the next couple of decades.  In the meantime his economic mismanagement is wrecking Venezuela’s economy, his government has failed to stem a growing crime wave and many of Venezuela’s best and brightest are voting with their feet.

A thorough repudiation of Venezuela’s caudillo at the ballot box and his replacement by a more competent steward of Venezuela’s fortunes (whether from left or right) is long overdue.

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Left for dead after the upset victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, health care reform came roaring back tonight. After a week of arm twisting and persuasion, Speaker Nancy Pelosi locked up the votes to pass the original Senate bill.  The bill now goes to the President for his signature after which the fixes to the Senate Bill will go to the Senate for passage thru the reconciliation process.  See link.  In an interesting twist the Republicans no votes to the fixes in the Senate bill will essentially be yes votes towards keeping Ben Nelson’s infamous “cornhusker kickback” in place.  A competent political party would use it to highlight the Republican transformation into the Party of No, but this is the Democrats we are talking about.

One heartening thing in the last week is the emergence of the Democratic spine.  In the aftermath of the Brown victory many Democrats were ready to fold.  To me it made no sense.  The yes votes on the previous bill were already on record in the Senate and the House and the Democrats were going to get pilloried for it.  The Democrats are not likely to get as big a majority in the near future.  Failure to pass health care reform after coming so close guaranteed a dispirited base that would not turn out in November.  Now Barack Obama and the Democrats can go into the elections by pointing to the legislative accomplishment of our generation that even with its many flaws makes the United States the last industrialized country in the world to provide universal health care access.

The Republicans will run on a platform on repeal.  Don’t hold your breath on them ever actually passing a bill repealing a ban on insurance companies canceling policies for sick people,  denying health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or subsidies for the poor to obtain health insurance.  In their honester and off the record moments the Republicans will admit that as well.  As in Massachusetts this bill will grow in popularity.  Maybe if the Republicans break from their thrall of right wing talk radio they will work with the Democrats to get meaningful cost control provisions and tort reform into the bill.

The saddest part of this debate was the Republican encouragement (place of honor goes to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann) of the heated rhetoric from the right that this bill epitomized creeping fascism.  They went all in on the policy articulated by Jim DeMint of South Carolina that stopping health care reform would break the Obama presidency.  All of this on a bill very similar to Romney care in Massachusetts and similar to the bill proposed by Bob Dole in 1994 made any compromise impossible.  There were legitimate and principled reasons to oppose the bill, but they were drowned out in the cacophony right wing talk radio and Fox News (with Republican encouragement) helped create. Read the rest of this entry »

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• Sean Penn rising to the defense of Venezuelan demagogue and increasingly authoritarian Hugo Chavez with this gem:

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

Evidently being elected excuses authoritarianism and locking up vocal critics.

• Glenn Beck once again displaying his special brand of ignorance that had got Christians on the left and the right pissed off at him:

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

He followed this up by comparing the basis of most Christian churches in ministering to the needs of their flock to Nazism and Communism:

“Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That’s what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: ‘social justice.’ They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy.”

Must be news to the Catholic Church that principles that are central to its mission are akin to the Nazism and communism.  Beck was presumably targeting his usual liberal targets but used his typical broad brush strokes to incorporate any Church activities aimed at aiding the poor.  It is interesting to note that social justice was the rallying cry of the liberal churches who opposed slavery and segregation.  Of course in the alternate reality of Glenn Beck, progressives used to be called “tyrants,” or “slave-owners — people who encouraged you to become dependent on them.”   See link.

• Baseball player Torii Hunter lashing out his frustrations at the declining percentage of African American players in baseball with this:

“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American. They’re not us. They’re impostors. Even people I know come up and say, ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’”

“As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us. It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’ … I’m telling you, it’s sad.”

See link. Setting aside the lack of awareness of the racial ancestry of of the “impostors” this is hardly the way to generate a discussion on how to encourage baseball (which has not held up well to competition from basketball and football) in the African American community or to address concerns that players in Latin American communities countries are being exploited.  After doubling down on his comments initially, Hunter has since decided to zip it using the old “taken out of context” routine.

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Toyota’s beleaguered executives must already be wishing that 2010 is a distant memory.  The last couple of months have seen the Toyota brand name get battered and the increasingly confident (some would say over confident) industry leader discover that its management structure is now the subject of discussions in business schools – on how not to run a disaster response.  A brand name painstakingly built up over the last few decades is being shredded as Toyota executives struggle to assuage the concerns of Congress and panicky customers that they have solved the mystery of why some cars unexpectedly kept accelerating.

But the unfortunate timing of events today bring to mind the classic Kevin Bacon performance from Animal House.

The day starts with Toyota conducting a demonstration intended to “prove” that software glitches are not responsible for some cars randomly accelerating.  See link.  Fair enough.  There are even some who think the hysteria is being blown way out of proportion.  See link.  Unfortunately, on the very same day a rogue Prius took off and reached speeds of 94 mph where a sticky gas pedal and not the mat obstruction for which there was a Prius recall appears to have been the problem.  See link.  Luckily the driver of the vehicle was not injured.

We still don’t know what caused the Prius to take off today, but this reinforces the urgency for Toyota to get this problem behind it as soon as possible.  This is not the only blog or news article to note the awful timing of the episode for Toyota.

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The Christian Science Monitor has reported that Pakistan  arrested half of the Afghan Taliban leadership in recent days.  See link.  Speculation abounds about the timing of the crackdown and whether it was related to Pakistan seeking a more direct role in the Afghan peace negotiations.  To me the speed at which the Taliban leadership is being rounded up raises the question why this was not possible in the past eight years or even in the last couple of years when Pakistan itself became the target of the fundamentalist terror it midwifed.  Pakistan’s future actions will show just how serious it is in tackling the threat, or whether this is merely the latest gambit in the new Great Game (see previous blog post).

Also, unclear is the extent the lack of leadership affects the Taliban’s military operations.  It should make it harder to coordinate joint attacks, but there are enough lower level commanders with guns and experience to continue fighting.  Similar decapitations of the leadership among the Pakistani branch of the Taliban appear to have lead to militants training their guns at each other as they jockey for power.  Whether and to what extent the pattern repeats itself here remains to be seen.

For now, this should be a boost to the American surge.  But good news in Aghanistan seems to be accompanied by bad.  As usual it comes from the man supposed to provide the good governance essential for a lasting peace.  In recent days Hamid Karzai has tried to pack Afghanistan’s impartial election commission with his cronies, deepened his ties to the corrupt warlords and once again pandered to the fundamentalist fringe by weakening constitutional protections for female representation in parliament. See here, here and here.  Some things never change.

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The casting of Gerard Depardieu to play Alexandre Dumas in a biopic about the famous author has stirred up a hornet’s nest in France.  See link.  Many fans of the possibly greatest author of historical fiction may not know that Dumas whose grandmother was Haitian of Afro-Carribean ancestry dealt with racial taunts all his life.

Alexandre Dumas, photo by Nadar (from Wikipedia)

To play the role, the blond fair-skinned Depardieu had to wear blackface and a curly wig.  Needless to say this has kicked up a racism row.  It looks like the producers tried to raise the likely viewership by latching on to the Depardieu’s popularity.  I am not in principle opposed to actors portraying a different race, recently satirized by Robert Downey, Jr.’s brilliant performance in Tropic Thunder, but it is a sore subject among minority actors in Hollywood (and evidently in France) for good reason.

If roles were subject to race-blind casting this would not be an issue.  But ethnic actors find themselves pigeonholed into stereotypical roles with few opportunities for a major role.  So when a prominent part like this in their ethnicity goes to someone who has to perform in blackface, it is not hard to see why they get upset.  For an alleged bastion of liberalism, Hollywood has aways been retrograde and craven on race.  Race was evidently a major factor in the casting of the leads in Hitch (African American superstar with a Latina actress). See link.  Minorities often disappeared on major TV shows.  The sitcom Friends somehow spent a decade in New York City with lily white racial surroundings.  ”ER” set in downtown Chicago had a near total absence of any Asians.  Indian American characters on TV speak with the exaggerated accent of Apu on the Simpsons (voiced by Hank Azaria) though many of them are born and raised in the United States.

Now I don’t think TV shows need to match the exact racial percentages that exist in American society, but I do wish that the TV execs would break out of their own ethnic prejudices and put some faith in the American public.  At a time when we have a President of mixed race, interracial or race-blind casting should not be taboo.  Based on recent shows, Hollywood seems to be improving.  But more needs to be done so that  a cross-racial casting like the one above can one day pass with little comment, other than those evaluating the caliber of the performance.

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The maxim above is one that the American devotees of torture often forget.  This article by Glenn Greenwald is worth reading because it captures right wing hypocrisy on torture and prisoner conditions when Americans or co-religionists are involved.  Greenwald’s column was triggered by recent hand-wringing from usual torture supporters at the plight of the American Baptists arrested in Haiti for smuggling children out of Haiti.  It also gave him the opportunity to revisit this article from 2006 where Michelle Malkin fretted about the quality of legal protections awarded to alleged (Christian) terrorists in Indonesia.

This double standard was of course predictable.  The uniformed military many former officers (including then Secretary of State Colin Powell and Arizona Senator John McCain) and many JAG officers (including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a former JAG officer) opposed the Bush administration’s eagerness to torture (somehow magically transformed by calling it enhanced interrogation) for exactly such reasons.  Once America tortures it does not have much standing to grouse about similar treatment to its own citizens and soldiers.  When America uses fear to toss away the rule of law and the right to a fair trial it is much harder to claim such rights for its citizens, let alone sermonize about the denial of rights to others.

What the torture loving elements of the right also fail to appreciate is that when America eschews torture, it can actually enhance security.  While Republicans have been up in arms lately that the Obama administration did not torture the underpants bomber, they ignore the point raised by Fareed Zakaria in his recent column.  See link.  The underpants bomber and the five American Muslims arrested in Pakistan when they went for jihad training were turned in by their parents.  Zakaria is right to observe that this would not happen if the parents felt that he would be tortured, and while the example of Chechen parents not turning their kids in to Putin’s thugs is a bit extreme it is on point.

So basically the American security hawks want the right to torture or deny trial to terrorist suspects (my guess is that given how the right reacted to the FBI raid at Ruby Ridge in the 1990s we are talking about Muslim suspects here) in the interest of national security, but such deviations from the rule of law are not permitted elsewhere (particularly against Christian suspects).  It is hypocrisy at its rankest.

One of my complaints about the American legal response to 9/11 was the failure to evaluate how other countries handled similar (and often far more severe and pervasive) terrorism threats and the failure to set up mechanisms to limit the inevitable abuse of power from draconian anti-terror statutes.  It was also unfortunately not the first time in American history fear became a mechanism to subvert the rule of law and American values.

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It has become a predictable pattern ever since Pervez Musharraf as chief of the Pakistani army instigated the the Kargil War.  Barely a week after the announcement that India and Pakistan would resume the talks that were put on hold after the Mumbai attacks, comes a bomb attack.  See link.  This time the target is the city of Pune.  As in Mumbai, the target of the attacks was a location where foreigners congregated.  Even though the perpetrators have not been identified, the site of the attack was surveyed by David Headley, the Chicago man of Pakistani origin who is being investigated for his connection with Mumbai attacks.  See link.

The attacks promptly brought calls to suspend talks with Pakistan, which the Indian government has said will continue.  Personally, I see the talks as a charade played out for public (particularly Western) consumption.  President Zardari’s government simply does not have the power to make the compromises necessary for a lasting peace treaty and does not control the Pakistani security establishment.  Islamabad still tries to distinguish the jihadi movement in Afghanistan from the proxies launched against India.  India is never going to accede to a demand to sever Kashmir from the Union of India, at best the Kashmiris on the Indian side of the LOC can look forward to a type of enhanced autonomy (which should probably be extended to the other states of India).  If Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the height of his power did not have the ability to recognize the LOC as the international border with India (when he signed the Simla Accord), his widely despised son in law (Asif Zardari) who genuinely seems to want peace with India will not be able to do so either.

So the impasse will continue.  A few months from now Pakistan will complain the Indians are not serious about negotiations.  India will respond that the jihadi network still flourishes in Pakistan.  A terrorist strike that tests India’s patience will occur.  Pakistan will make some token arrests and bans to deflect attention.  One difference from the Musharraf years is that Pakistan stands alone and bereft of world sympathy as a result of its role in midwifing global terrorism.  As the Indian economy grows stronger and as Pakistan crumbles the balance of power is inexorably tilting in New Delhi’s favor.

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Newsweek has ruffled some feathers in Switzerland with a provocatively titled article “The Death of Switzerland.”  While this probably sounds like music to the ears of mercurial Libiyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi who tried to introduce a resolution in the United Nations last year calling for the dissolution of country, it has naturally drawn some pushback from the locals that Newsweek is being a a tad melodramatic.  See link.

They may have a point.  Even in their alpine refuge the Swiss are hardly immune to the worries and fears that have spread across an aging continent.  With no tradition of taking in immigrants, Europeans have struggled to integrate the more conservative and religious (and often Muslim) newcomers.  Even the increasing separation of Switzerland’s communities is hardly original in today’s Europe.  See link.

If, as the Newsweek article suggests, English is rapidly becoming the common tongue of the Swiss, it is yet another example of how the former language of imperial rule is today the glue that holds diverse countries (like India) together.

Malaise is easy to find across the Western world nowadays.  One thing the Swiss have in their favor is 800 years of experience in keeping an unwieldy confederation together and adapting to changed circumstances.  It is too early to count Switzerland out.  Rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

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Many observers have noted that one of the unintended side effects of weakening European nation states in the cause of European integration has been to give the long suppressed sub nationalities their opportunity to claim greater autonomy.  For example the Catalans and the Basques in Spain, some Scots (and increasingly many English) in the United Kingdom do not see the advantage of being a constituent part of the national unit when they could instead get the protection of the super-national European Union.

This has been most evident in Belgium.  Created in 1830 after a Catholic and often French speaking region revolted  against the Dutch dominated United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the country has always been divided among the French speaking Wallonia in the south and the Dutch speaking Flanders in the north.  Last year there were serious concerns that the country that houses the headquarters of the EU would dissolve. (For analysis of possible scenarios of dissolution see here, for the experiences of a bemused American tourist making sense of the situation in Brussels see here).  An artificial country that some joke is united only by its soccer team and monarchy in a region that has almost never been united, Belgium may have outlived its purpose.

The secessionist trend started by Woodrow Wilson’s famous calls for self determination 90 years ago is not one I look on with much favor.  I can understand it in national units that suppress regional languages and cultures (like France) or where the majority community oppresses the minority and exploits the resources in the minority region (Pakistan in Baluchistan; Sudan with its southern half), but in many of these European countries such a situation does not exist.

What often exists is rank selfishness.  In Belgium a once dominant community is now the economic underclass taking more than its fair share of state resources.  In Italy some in the more prosperous North would rather get rid of the far poorer South (if that was where Italy would end up, they might as well have left poor Francis II on his throne).  It is a sentiment sometimes expressed in the United States where residents of certain states are convinced they are subsidizing everybody else (some with more justification than others).   It is also evident in India as noted by the recent brouhaha in Maharashtra.  See link.

It is a short sighted approach that ignores the inevitable swings of history.  Belgium where poorer Flanders is now economically dominant is a fine example of this.  A cacophony of small states will eventually bring with it far more intransigent battles over national resources (notably water and in the case of England and Scotland oil reserves), inherited debt and other conflicts and a much harder job to divide aid at the European level.  They would be better off working towards a common national purpose while retaining their regional culture (that includes you too Quebec).

But then I do not speak from the perspective of a paranoid or threatened minority.

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Following up on my previous posts here and here, is this Newsweek article on the practical difficulty of buying off the Taliban.  See link.  A failure to buy off the “good-Taliban” renders a large chunk of the Obama administration’s Afghan pacification strategy meaningless.  Ron Moreau’s article highlights how the choice before the Pashtun peasantry resembles Morton’s fork.

There is no love lost for the brutal Taliban, but still a sneaking admiration for the true believers who have not taken the easy way out.  But the weak and venal Karzai regime along with its equally brutal warlords offer likelihood of protection.

When the Americans leave it is very likely things fall apart.  As noted in previous blogs, the Taliban resurgence has been immeasurably aided by the inability or the unwillingness of Pakistan to crack down on their former clients.   Pakistan’s crumbling state has also been unable and unwilling to seal off the porous Afghan border.  So the Taliban can strike, retreat to its Pakistani refuge and strike again. Even without the active backing of Pakistani intelligence services, this strategic advantage allows them to survive the immense disparity of manpower that exists on the ground.

Assuming Pakistan has cut off the cash and weapons flow to its former proxies, will that continue once America leaves?  There is little love lost between Karzai and his Tajik and Uzbek allies and Pakistan.  The temptation to rehash the early 1990s could prove irresistible to a Pakistani regime that still tries to distinguish between the domestic Taliban it is bombing and the Afghan Taliban it harbors, however unwillingly.

For a long time I supported the Afghan surge and still believe the diversion of American attention to Iraq cost the world a chance in a generation to guide an exhausted Afghanistan to an uneasy peace.  But as the Afghan conflict starts morphing into a tribal civil war of the sort that has plagued it since the creation of the country by Ahmad Shah Abdali, the desirability of American boots on the ground in the middle of the crossfire will continue to drop.

I hold out a tiny sliver of hope that the Afghan regime will prove my pessimism wrong, but the sliver is tiny and keeps shrinking.

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In the last decade its become fashionable in certain quarters to lob the charge of anti-semitism at any criticism directed at Israel.  For example see link discussing a similar charge against General Wesley Clark.  But the blogging world was stunned this week by the broadside launched by The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier against erstwhile pal Andrew Sullivan.  See link.  Worth reading is this long piece by Glenn Greenwald about TNR’s reckless hurling of anti-semitism charges which has limited its impact (something similar seems to be happening with Nazi and Hitler comparisons lately) particularly when Wieseltier’s boss Marty Peretz delights in racist innuendo against Arabs and Muslims.  Sullivan has himself responded to the screed.  See here, here and here.  Greenwald has also linked to some of the other blogs demolishing Wieseltier’s rants, some of which for convenience are re-linked here, here, and here.  Also see this by Daniel Luban on how the outrage seems generated by the changing rules on how Israel is to be criticized.  Given the material linked above, I will avoid the repetitive task of going through Wieseltier’s tedious post myself.

The anti-semitism card is not targeted just against gentiles.  Associates of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netenyahu were allegedly convinced last year that Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and other Jews in the Obama administration were “self-hating” Jews for failing to give Israel a blank check.  See link.

Needless to say, this is a very unhealthy manner to conduct a debate.  It is also the fastest way to build resentment among Israel’s well wishers who do not always toe the party line while making it much harder to corral the true anti-Semites.  TNR and their allies would be well served by brushing up on their Aesop’s, particularly the part on The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

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Had previously posted about the mystery of Nigeria’s missing president.  See link.  That mystery continues since President Umaru Yar’Adua has still not given a video interview. But for now the limbo in Africa’s giant has been alleviated with parliament elevating Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to acting President.  See link.  Political tensions still run high and Muslim power brokers are unhappy that President Yar’Adua’s illness caused them to lose power before their turn was up.  In someways the Presidential system of government chosen by Nigeria is ill suited for the delicate sharing of power that its competing ethnicities and religions need.  The theoretical stability of tenure also relies heavily on the wisdom of the man of top.  It is not clear whether a man chosen (in a fashion similar to American practice) to balance a Presidential ticket will be up to the job of balancing the various tensions in the country.

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Iran has now come out and repeated India’s position on Afghanistan vis a vis the good Taliban.  See link.  Iran’s motivations are pretty clear since there never has been any love lost between Iran and the Taliban, the former considering the Taliban as backward fanatics and the latter considering the Iranians as schismatic heretics.  Given Washington’s inclination to disregard anything Iran says, this will not prevent the Karzai government from seeking a rapprochement with elements of the Taliban.  But any increase in Taliban influence in Kabul raises the chance of Iranian meddling and counter-meddling from Pakistan.  The vicious cycle continues.

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The LA Times has an article about the emerging showdown between the next round of the confrontation between the Iranian regime and the opposition on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11), the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution.  See link.  In recent days the regime has tried to decapitate the opposition with executions, arrests and attempts to suggest that opposition Presidential candidates Mousavi and Karroubi had conceded defeat.  But as previously noted the strength (and weakness) of the Iranian protests is the absence of a leader whose removal will demoralize the protesters.  While the regime has not hesitated to use batons and occasionally bullets to disperse the crowds, it has not yet brought (or has been unable to bring) tanks on the streets to decisively crush the opposition like the Syrians did at Hama and the Chinese did at Tiananmen.  Till then the world can draw inspiration from the dogged protesters in the street and hope that the men with the guns will have a change of heart.

Meanwhile neocons are still equally dogged in their determination to bomb Iran, however pointless and self-defeating the attack will be.  See link to the latest by Daniel Pipes. Also see link.  One of the lines of attack seems to be to keep referring to the Iranian regime as “apocalyptic” even though since its inception the Iranian regime has been ruthlessly pragmatic in its primary goal – survival.  A regime allegedly rooted in Islam has even given itself the right to suspend Sharia law in the interests of the state (a marked difference from the Saudis and the Taliban).  Even North Korea, whose actions are significantly more irrational and unpredictable, has demonstrated that nuclear weapons are primarily being used as a deterrent.  There seems little evidence (other than verbal broadsides) that the Iranian regime with its lust for power and keen eye for survival would not do the same.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the latest Juan Cole column about the scaremongering and hyperbole that American policy makers (Hillary Clinton) and neo-con pundits keep coming up with to inflate the military threat from militarily weak third world countries.  When Barack Obama pointed out this fact in the 2008 eight presidential campaign, that Iran is hardly the existential threat that the Soviet Union was he was pilloried for it.  Here is one blogger who is glad that the occupant of the White House has the ability to keep things in perspective.

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A recent Foreign Policy article highlights a danger to stability in Afghanistan not often discussed – the toxic relationship between India and Pakistan.  See link.  This dates back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.  Afghanistan (even under the Pakistani created and supported Taliban) never accepted the Durand Line drawn by the British as the border between the two countries.  This line divides the Pashtun people between the two countries.  As a result every government in Kabul (other than the Taliban) has had a frosty relationship with Pakistan and a warm one with India.  Paranoid about facing hostile states on both flanks, Pakistan has always sought to install a more pliant regime in Kabul.

Durand Line border between Afghanistan and Pakistan (in red). The blue area represents the predominant Pashtun and Baloch area.

It is one of the reasons why Pakistan has proved so unwilling to dump its Taliban clients and has eagerly pushed the idea of a reconciliation with the “Good Taliban.”  India having faced a tide of Pakistani sponsored Islamic terrorism in the past decades sees this as a distinction without a difference.

India has been one of the major aid contributors to rebuilding Afghanistan.  This has, as usual, stirred paranoia about Indian intentions in Pakistan with wilder theories speculating that India intends to install military bases in the region once the Americans leave.  In 2008, these fears appear to have prompted an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul allegedly sponsored by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.  See link.

Given its ethnic divisions, Afghanistan is always likely to be a weak state subject to meddling by its neighbors.  The Indo-Pakistani tussle is yet another destabilizing influence that imperils any attempt to pacify Afghanistan.  And then there is Iranian meddling in the western part of the country.  The world community should prepare contingency plans if (or maybe when) things fall apart after the United States departs the region.

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Previous posts in this blog (see link) had noted the challenges facing Sri Lanka in the aftermath of its total military victory against the LTTE.  Sri Lanka’s President and the Amy Chief tried to hog the credit for the victory and both giant egos faced off in the recent Presidential election, which President Rajapaksa won handily.  In what seems like a harbinger of the policy facing the defeated Tamils, President Rajapaksa seems unwilling to rest on the laurels of victory at the ballot box.  He has now proceeded to arrest General Fonseka, confirming the fears of the opposition.  See link.   Generals who grow too big for their boots while in uniform are a concern for any democracy.  But arresting the loser of an election a week later is an authoritarian move that does not bode well for Sri Lankan democracy.

Many Tamils are still stuck in refugee camps.  The minority areas had ironically voted for General Fonseka feeling he was more likely to seek a solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide.  With the firm backing of Sinhalese nationalists President Rajapaksa may not see the need for compromise or to implement the Sri Lankan constitution’s mandate to devolve power to the provinces.  See link.  It is hard to see how a state with two distinct ethnicities at loggerheads who are also conveniently segregated can survive without such a compromise.  The failure to compromise (and the attempt to deny citizenship to the Tamil minority) helped spark the civil war in the first place.

The LTTE’s assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 cost it Indian sympathy.  But the LTTE is now gone and sympathy for Sri Lanka’s Tamils runs deep in the next door Indian state of Tamil Nadu.  Any recurrence of civil war would put domestic pressure on India to intervene to protect the Tamils ( a situation neither New Delhi or Colombo want to arise).  Sri Lanka could use a dose of enlightened leadership that uses the period of war exhaustion to forge a lasting settlement.  I am not sure that President Rajapaksa’s thin-skinned government is up to the challenge.

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