Pankaj Mishra writes in The Guardian, about Fareed Zakaria, the latest intellectual empty suit of the talking heads circuit, his latest book, and the vision of India as a neo-liberal capitalist success:

In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his wife, Laura, as “the prime minister of India, a democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims”.

To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a cliche deployed by Indian politicians and American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, ought to know better. In his new book, The Post-American World, he describes India as a “powerful package” and claims it has been “peaceful, stable, and prosperous” since 1997 – a decade in which India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted across large parts of the country, and Hindu nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 Muslims.

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America’s elite, has declared a “roaring capitalist success story”. Add Bollywood’s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the “most dangerous place on earth” according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language – which the NCTC is unlikely to use – India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states.

<…>

The Indian elite’s obsession with the “foreign hand” obscures the fact that the roots of some of the violence lie in the previous two decades of traumatic political and economic change, particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the related growth of ruthlessness towards those left behind by India’s expanding economy.

In 2006 a commission appointed by the government revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated and less likely to find employment than low-caste Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks to describe as the “inherent unfairness of the Indian criminal justice system”.

To take one example, the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were caught on video, in a sting carried out last year by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes.

<…>

This a “PSA” from various movie and sports personalities (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Aniston, Ellen Degeneres, Dustin Hoffman… even Sarah Silverman who otherwise has built a career out of anti-establishment behaviour, albeit with obligatory “radical” bra removal tricks and reference to herpes):

It is split into two parts. The first part has the personalities urging you to not vote, since it doesn’t matter. The second and longer part turns this around: well, if you care about [insert issue here] then may be you should vote?

This advertisement highlights the danger and possible self-defeating nature of this sort of cleverness, for unfortunately, the first part, taken seriously, makes its argument much better than the second one does. During the first part, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio exclaims “This is one of the greatest financial disasters in American history” closely followed by, I believe, the tennis player Andy Roddick asking us, “Why would you vote?”. Then come a range of voices:

Who cares? The economy is in the toilet!
Who cares about your children’s education?
Reading? Literacy?
Global warming?

Well played (if unintentionally)! Indeed we are in the midst of one of the biggest financial disasters in history. How do your representatives and candidates for PotUS act? They ignore the majority of you who were against this bailout and support it and pass it, including in it such wonderful measures as waiving federal acquisition regulations favouring minority and women owned businesses. Would your vote for McCain or Obama matter? Not really, since they both support the same action in response to the “one of the greatest financial disasters in American history”. Global warming? Both men support “clean” coal and off-shore drilling for oil. Children? McCain has battled all his congressional life against “quotas” and affirmative action, while Obama is worried about the excesses of 70s civil rights and is more interested in lecturing to black fathers.

Where the PSA shines (in the first part, that is) is in pinpointing exactly why your vote doesn’t matter: Who cares? Certainly not most of the candidates you will be permitted to choose from.

House Chairman Failed to Report $75,000 in Income – NYTimes.com

Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.

A while I ago I linked to Stanley Fish’s excellent criticism (Our Faith In Letting It All Hang Out) of those propagating the Mohammed cartoons under free speech justifications. Julian Baggini visits the issue in The Guardian via the Christ penis sculpture:

Julian Baggini: Christ reveals limits of free speech | guardian.co.uk

[...]

Doughty defenders of free speech will have no truck with such quibbling. They insist on a right to offend, wheeling out John Stuart Mill’s venerable “harm principle” to clinch the case: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” And, no, “mere offence” does not constitute harm.

There are two problems with this simple view. Saying that we have a right to offend skips over the question of whether we are right to offend. I have a right to tell random strangers that I think they’re ugly, or that they have terrible taste in clothes, but it would be wrong of me to exercise that right, and not just because of the pots and kettles principle.

But isn’t mockery good, and any belief system incapable of putting up with it deficient in some way? That’s true, but you can’t just ignore the background against which lampooning takes place. Christians, for example, are not oppressed, despite what some wannabe martyrs would have us believe. British Muslims, in contrast, are a somewhat beleaguered minority. We should think twice before mocking them because, while comedy speaking truth to power is funny, the powerful laughing at the weak is not. The difference is only subtle to those too dunderheaded to spot the obvious. Witness Alan Partridge asking a Jewish comedian who uses Jewish humour to “tell us a joke about Jews”.

That does not mean that we should never do anything that causes Muslims offence, or that shows Islam in a bad light, of course; only that we should not do so lightly. The choice is not between an all-out offence offensive and craven silence.

The other reason absolutist claims for speech acts are misguided is that we don’t just utter words, we do things with them, as the Oxford philosopher JL Austin put it. When words belittle or mock, they can reinforce prejudice and hierarchies that have very real effects on people’s lives. Mockery of those already on the margins can shore up the very barriers that limit their life chances.

Free speech is indeed precious, but that doesn’t mean that we have to defend without qualification every moron who abuses it.

[...]

House politics strikes ones of its savviest players:

House Tables Resolution to Censure Rangel – New York Times

The House of Representatives decided on Thursday afternoon to table, by a vote of 254 to 138, a Republican resolution to censure Representative Charles B. Rangel, the powerful New York Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The resolution said Mr. Rangel “dishonored himself and brought discredit to the House,” citing a report in The New York Times on July 11 that Mr. Rangel occupied four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem building, including one that he used as a campaign office.

Rangel, to refresh your memory, is the same toad who thundered against Hugo Chavez (whose generosity fuels his constituents, unlike the lack of compassion of the leader he defends) in favour of the Imperial Presidency:

“You don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district and criticize my president,” Mr. Rangel, a Democrat, told stunned reporters on Capitol Hill.

Thanks to her bad-mouthing incisive commentary on Brangelina, Roseanne’s blog is gaining (as she notes) a lot of new audience. I am one of them. And I plan to stay!

As the five of you who read this blog know, the Hillary Clinton primary experience pissed the hell off of an old-fashioned feminist like me and my spouse. And neither of us can stand Hillary, but that is exactly not the issue, as Maureen Dowd and every other “post-feminist” or n-th wave feminist who ♥s Obama but has to find some high-minded justification for the infatuation, don’t get. Roseanne on the other hand, gets it, and that’s why I am staying. Below are two bits from her blog:

Women’s struggle for equity and dignity will not be silenced, cowed, or stopped by any man, or any woman hating females like Peggy Noonan, Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington, Oprah Winfrey, Randhi Rhoades, Nancy Pelosi, or a host of other running dog lackeys of corporate whoredom. Have a nice day!

And:

It’s all a set up to get the females to think that they are being listened to, but it’s all planned canned and fixed. Obama is the nom, and there is no getting rid of him for the dems. If he had any brains he would announce right now that a vote for him is a vote for hillary, because she is his choice for vice, or his nominee for the supreme court…some triangulation would work for him. He has a blindspot where feminism and females are concerned, and he figures that claire mccaskill (sp) is all he needs. (kind of like when people say…”i asked my maid what she thinks of immigration, and she said”…..). He just doesn’t get it that it is female boomers that have kept the dem party alive since the sixties, and that he has insulted their intelligence. He just doesn’t get it, and neither does david axelrod. I do not think any men get it at all. As it was for me in Hollywoodland, men in power are not comfortable with any woman that is not serving them coffee. They tried to fire me off of my own show, like they have done to hillary clinton. It was her show and they fired her. they got all heady over winning against her, but that was all the winning they could do. now they have to crawl back to her and ask her to win it for them. they look like weak mama’s boys, which they are…however, america loves weak mama’s boys though…john mccain is the embodiment of that…

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Dennis Perrin is unhappy with “libloggers” (liberal bloggers) whose campaign against Bayh for Obama VP he finds hypocritical:

Dennis Perrin: Opposed Until They’re Not

Gee, I don’t recall this kind of liberal concern about John Kerry in ‘04, who voted the same as Bayh, and made the same insipid excuse that he was “duped” into backing the US invasion. No matter. That was then, and today is now, and five can get you fifty if you mark the cards right. This is why I support an Obama/Bayh ticket. Not only would it help erase the liberal fiction about Obama’s “break from Old Washington,” it would force these concerned Dems to back the ticket without dissent, which they will in a heartbeat. Indeed, no matter who Obama picks, libs will proudly slap that bumpersticker on every available surface, suddenly finding the Dem ticket to be the best ever — until the next best ticket ever, and so on.

What’s also funny about all this is how liberals overlook Wesley Clark’s early support for the Iraq war, whatever his tactical differences were before the invasion, and his open belief that Saddam sat upon stockpiles of WMD. (I won’t linger on Clark’s killing of a couple thousand Serbians, as many libs support that type of bloodshed.) Then there’s the Clinton/Gore support for the Iraq Liberation Act, which Clinton signed in 1998. Somehow, that doesn’t tarnish their reputations as it has Bayh’s. Oh, and did you know that Bayh worked closely with Joe Lieberman? Yes, the very Lieberman who liberals overwhelmingly desired as their Vice President in 2000, and who, if libs had their way, would be second-in-command this very moment.

Though he raises valid points (especially the unanimous approval of the attack on Yugoslavia by the Clinton administation), I think Dennis is making a caricature of the position and reasoning of liberals. I am not in agreement with the reasoning and tactics of the liberal/progressive spectrum, ranging from the centrist variety to those leaning a tad bit to the left (this latter group are the targets of Dennis’ post). My disagreement however stems from my belief that a just society can only be achieved from and via first principles, solidarity and social action. On these counts, I find liberals and the “netroots” wanting, but not so on the grounds of consistency that Dennis finds fault with.

Dennis is angered by the opposition to Bayh on grounds that should, when applied fairly, also disqualify Wesley Clark, John Kerry or Joe Lieberman. Dennis suggests that all three of these men find great and unquestioning support among liberals and “libloggers”. However, this does not seem to be the case at all. For instance, in a race where all three of these men were candidates for the Demoratic nomination, the emerging Internet based liberal sites favoured Howard Dean. Similarly, in the 2008 primaries, a significant bit of liberal opinion tilted towards John Edwards, redeemingly enough, for his emphasis on class issues.

Here for example, is Matt Stoller of OpenLeft on Wesley Clark for VP:

Clark also emphasizes Obama’s strengths. He is popular among grassroots progressives, he was against the war in Iraq from the get-go, and he is an outsider to politics. He also demonstrated terrific political judgment in being willing to work against Lieberman in 2006, unlike, say, Tim Kaine, who endorsed Lieberman for President in 2004.

The point of difference here seems to be a factual one (Dennis believes in “Clark’s early support for the Iraq war” while Stoller thinks Clark “was against the war in Iraq from the get-go”). It is also doubtful that there was an overwhelming desire among libreals for Lieberman as VP in 2000, as Dennis suggests. Rather, given the acceptance among liberals of the Democratic party as the only way to achieve any goals, support for the parties candidates is an act of wilful optimism among them.

And that is the crux of the issue. Despite their occasional incoherent mumblings about Noam Chomsky (Stoller calls him the “intellectual elite” who has “brilliantly marginalized” himself — this about the only man who has in the past 30+ years been publishing accessible and often best-selling political analyses without which any shred of political consciousness among the non-right-wing public would arguably be non-existant), the coherent position of liberals and progressives is a gradualist one that attempts to balance long-term goals against potential short-term significant losses. This issue is often posed in the form of questions regarding immediate and critical junctures, such as the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court.

I have intentionally ignored, thus far, the much larger issue of ideological and foundational differences between liberals/progressives and the left. These are significant and contribute to the different choices, tactics and claims employed by each group (insofar as we can even suggest that a “left” exists). Nonetheless, such differences, even if they turn out to be resolved in favour of the “left” and against the “liberals”, do not support the contention that the liberals are acting hypocritically. Similar to the factual difference regarding Clark’s position on Iraq, these would constitute theoretical differences that would validate one or the other position — in which case the invalidated one would merely be wrong, not hypocritical.

IMHO, Dennis is right to take to task the liberal blogistan for its lack of serious thought to such events as the attacks on Yugoslavia (or Afghanistan, for that matter) — but not so because it exposes them as inconsistent — but because it demonstrates the self-imposed limits of their critical analysis. It would also help if Dennis were to differentiate between liberals of different stripes, from the Madeleine Albrights, and the Berubes and Siva Vaidyanathans (the academic elite, as Stoller might say), to the many flavours of liberal bloggers, commentators and readers. They are not all the same, even if they find some common ground on a Facebook group.

Reviewing a collection of China themed books in the NYRofB, Orville Schell unintentionally offers an insight:

China: Humiliation & the Olympics – The New York Review of Books

So, partly in shock, and partly in disappointment, China responded to the demonstrations against its Olympic torch with incensed outrage, rejecting any suggestion that its own actions could have contributed to, much less have ameliorated, Tibetan demands.

[...]

Instead, at this penultimate moment, as Xu Guoqi, author of the timely new book Olympic Dreams: China And Sports, 1895–2008, has noted, “Through their coverage and handling of the Beijing torch relay, the West seemed to remind the Chinese they were still not equal and they were still not good enough.”

The real problem China faces in its exclusion from the club is that they are not bad enough — they are vulgar and amateur oppressors! So it is the lack of sophistication, rhetorical and philosophical preparation, that permits and compels European nations, with the blood of Africa and Asia on their hands, our own USA, with an ongoing illegal action in Iraq that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, to lecture China on its deplorable human rights.

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St. Louis Journal – Anger and Dismay at the Sale of a City Treasure – NYTimes.com

InBev has pledged not to shut down any of Anheuser-Busch’s 12 breweries in the United States. But many here still feel here as if a treasure is endangered.

As Opal Henderson, a 78-year-old auto salvage yard owner, put it, “Why can’t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have?”

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The Democrats finally have their “Mission Accomplished” moment and boy is it good to get all that guilt off your back! In a piece that is embarrassing for not just the lack of content but also the adolescent gushing, Andrew Rosenthal writes in the New York Times:

Michelle, Maria, Caroline and Oprah on the Hustings in California – New York Times

[...]

Ms. Winfrey — finally — spoke to the most emotionally fraught aspect of this contest. “Now look at this campaign: the two front-runners are a black man and a woman,” she said. “What that says to me is we have won the struggle and we have the right to compete.”

Instead of seeing a painful choice, voters, Ms. Winfrey urged, should see a moment when they “are free from the constraints of gender and race.”

After watching the candidates struggle with the issue, painfully and awkwardly, in the past month, it was a relief to hear someone finally frame it in a way that celebrated what the Democratic Party has achieved — and then move beyond it.

[...]

And that ladies and germs, is the promise of Obama (and Hillary too, if you believe Oprah). His candidacy assuages the soft leftist’s guilt about the disparities and discrimination that surround us, offering him the opportunity to cast one small vote for himself but achieve a giant leap for humankind. Vote for Obama and you can keep your SUV and iPod and save the environment too! Vote for Obama and you can move beyond all pain and awkwardness! Free of the constraints of gender and race! This is a competition between unbounded hope and inescapable history. Is it a matter of surprise that older people, women, and those with lesser formal education, choose Clinton over Obama (though they may prefer neither)?

Note that that is the explicit core of the Obama campaign which started out frugally short on detail and gained steam while staying light on substance. As Obama and his wife point out, his campaign is not about him (a messianic Christ-like figure who thunders about “his God”) but about “you”. And if by voting for him and electing him, you have not managed to move beyond the constraints of gender and race, it cannot be your class (which we eliminated from consideration via John Edwards) or the environment you are thrown into, but as Reagan would say, perhaps its your lack of responsibility? (Obama identifies the success of Reagan with dissatisfaction with large government growth and excesses, without accountability).

If there is any further doubt that Obama’s rhetorical dictionary is an approximate facsimile of the Republican one (he has consciously but barely stopped short of calling himself the “uniter”), you can consult Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who points out repeatedly that not only is Obama’s healthcare plan to the right of Hillary, but that his tactic of criticising Hillary’s plan echoes that of conservative and insurance industry operatives in 1992.

Recently, there have been a spate of pro-Obama editorials and opinions on the online pages of the New York Times. One among the many was poignant — it quoted the words of a younger feminist parting ways with her feminist mother on the issue of Obama vs Clinton. The young feminist offered that “her [Clinton's and by extension her mother's] issues are not my issues”. In keeping with Oprah’s proclamation, I guess she felt that she was free from the constraints of gender. But her characterisation is inaccurate. Her mother’s issues will always be her issues (at least so long as she considers herself a feminist), especially if she is unaware of that!

As Gloria Steinem writes writes in the same rag, under the apt title “Women Are Never Front-Runners“:

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

(I would ignore the part about Clinton’s “progressive policies”)

Some very intelligent people whose opinions I respect greatly are supporting Obama today. I do not believe that they are misled by the baseless hope that Obama represents. I do not even think that they are weary of struggle and want for once to taste some victory (even at some cost). Nonetheless, I think they are on the wrong track.

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