Thursday, July 31, 2008

Expectations from a war

Consider this a sequel to the last post.

Over the past few days, Candidate Obama has been heavily emphasizing his message of "Afghanistan war good, Iraq war bad". While I agree with the logic behind his argument, I flatly reject it - after at least 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan caused as direct or indirect consequence of American invasions, America has lost the moral authority to seek redress and justice for 9/11.

Harking back to American Conservative, Leon Hadar writes:
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to pay the costs of juggling imperial imposition and democracy promotion. And contrary to the expectations that many opponents of the neocons have invested in the "antiwar" Democratic presidential candidate, these costs will only rise if President Obama decides to simultaneously play Queen Victoria and Woodrow Wilson. He seems inclined to do just that.
Yes, he seems inclined to do just that and everyone seems too willing to play along.

In one poignant sequence in Lions for Lambs, the hawkish Senator Jasper Irving hits "liberal" journalist Janine Roth where it hurts most by pointing out, truthfully for once, that when the US invaded Iraq, it was the now-righteous media which played cheerleader to the charade. It looks like they are falling for it all over again.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Legacy of a war

Ted Galen Carpenter muses about the much abused-legacy of the Second World War in the American Conservative.
..for more than six decades, American officials and pundits have portrayed an array of tin-pot dictators as the reincarnation of Hitler: Kim Il-Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein. The notion that decrepit, third-rate powers such as North Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, and Venezuela could ever compare to Nazi Germany—which had the world's second-largest economy and a modern, extremely capable military—would be humorous if U.S. leaders did not base policy on that fallacy.
An interesting read.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

On names and sports

Names are like coils of DNA. Any new new name that I hear or read, of persons or places, is like a juicy book waiting to be read. Where does the name come from? What is the history of the name people who carry the name? English being a non-phonetic language, the way they are spelled adds another interesting angle to names.

In India, it is sometimes considered rude to inquire into last names, especially of strangers, because of the caste connection and the connotations that go with it. But here people seem to take pleasure in being grilled about their names (maybe they like the attention). Normally, the first step is to establish the geographic connection which is mostly pretty straightforward (how can you go wrong with a Bauer or a McGee?). The more interesting part is the family history. I find it funny that most people I have spoken to think they know a lot less about their genealogical history than they actually do. With some encouragement and hints on my part, a fortune of information comes tumbling out.

Some colleagues who have discovered my knack for decoding surnames, especially Indian ones, occasionally bring me some Indian surname they recently came across and listen (sometimes in disbelief) as I guess the person's ancestral profession, history, geography, and cultural background. For names not originating in western India, I normally only go as far as the mother tongue, but imagine the joy when a name like Gokhale or Prajapati or Jhala comes my way.

The love for name-histories extends to an unlikely arena - sports. Professional sport teams have names that often have a grounding in their some interesting circumstance of their founding or geographic location. For some reason I am not aware of, teams belonging to the NFL (football) seems to have names with richer histories and stories than teams from other leagues like NBA (basketball) and MLB (baseball). Here are some gems:

Ravens (Baltimore): After Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem, The Raven. Poe was from Baltimore.

49ers (San Francisco): After the gold rush that turned San Francisco in a span of months from a pueblo to a city. The gold rush started in 1849.

Steelers (Pittsburg): After the city's connection with the steel industry.

NBA teams with some history and stories in their names are few and far between. One of them is:

76ers (Philadelphia): After the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.

Some university sports teams too call themselves by interesting names:

Cornhuskers (University of Nebraska): After Nebraska's prolific production of corn.

Volunteers (University of Tennessee): After the state nickname, in turn named after the volunteer soldiers from the state who showed up in record numbers during the war of 1812.

Sooners (University of Oklahoma): Again, named after the state nickname, in turn named after illegal settlers who secretly crept into the borders of the territory to claim land rights before it was officially settled by whites in 1889 (thus violating the 'sooner' clause of the Indian Appropriations Act).

And so on. Imagine my disappointment when team names for the IPL and ICL were announced. My hometown team is called Ahmedabad Rockets. WTF. I secretly hope they called it that because the city is the home of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Monday, July 14, 2008

The profits are theirs to keep...

...but losses are socialized. Who on God's green earth wouldn't want to switch places with Freddie and Fannie?

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Do it Dunkirk-style

Last week, I rubbed a war-happy Republican friend the wrong way by casting John McCain along the lines of the famous verse from Lord of the Rings:

One man to rule them all, One man to find them,
One man to bring them all and in forever war bind them.

But it seems like my anti-war friends were having a bad week too. In a major softening of stance quite approaching a flip-flop, Barrack Obama "refined" his position on withdrawal from Iraq and offered that he is willing to consider going slow on his promised 16-month timeframe for military withdrawal. Ostensibly, Obama wants to make sure that the troops are safe and wants plenty of inputs from commanders on the ground before withdrawing.

Those following congressional debates on war funding in the past year will remember that whenever Democrats have tried to to tighten Congress' fists with regard to the war, Republicans have eagerly piled on to them, accusing them of endangering the safety of troops by holding back money for equipment and supplies. I have always found it to be a seriously flawed argument - keep funding the war because our troops are there; thus, the troops' presence in Iraq itself becomes the raison d'etre for their continued presence there. That Obama should also choose to pick up the safety of troops line is tragic.

Andrew Sullivan writes in The Times that by moving to center ground on many issues, "slowly and subtly, Obama is wiping out every reason to vote for McCain". Actually, for voters who think like me, Obama's slow and subtle movements (say, on war and public funding) are wiping out every reason to vote for Obama himself.

In a related development this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki indicated that he would like to see a timetable for withdrawal before signing any agreement regarding the status of US forces after the UN mandate ends at the end of this year. There are many theories about why Maliki said what he did, the most prevalent being that it is just good old political noise to please the electorate. Whatever the reason might be, it certainly takes a good bit of resolve and balls to come out like this. I mean, imagine yourself in Maliki's shoes - you are running a fractionalized and violent state with little sovereign leverage of its own, your power and existence is totally based on the backing of some outsiders, these outsiders are ready to turn a blind eye to corruption and cronyism in your ranks as long as you toe their general line, and finally, your personal wealth and patronage is now unimaginably immense and secure thanks to the outsiders. Why would you want a timetable?

Friday, July 04, 2008

A lyrical dispute

When John McCain's nomination to the Republican ticket started becoming apparent, you should have known that there was more Soulja Boy coming on this blog. Lately, I have been following a spat between Soulja Boy (the real one, a 17-year old Atlanta hip-hop sensation) and Ice-T (a"caked-out" L.A. rapper). Ice-T accuses Soulja Boy of "single-handedly killing hip-hop" with his nonsensical lyrics in a genre where lyrics mean everything.

Below is Ice-T's counter-response to Soulja Boy's response to Ice-T's original comment. I am sure there is more traffic to be expected between the two.



From a sociological perspective, I find the YouTube exchange fascinating, for it symbolizes the ingenuity with which black Americans find self-expression in a culture where the mainstream media makes little attempt to address black tastes and concerns. Since this may not be self-evident to many- (a) Advertising-driven media like newspapers, magazines, and TV, mainly cater to the tastes and sensibilities of that group of the population that does most of the buying, (b) In the US, the aforementioned economic group happens to have a disproportionately small number of blacks, and (c) Black tastes in the arts are emphatically different than mainstream (read white) tastes.

If hip-hop had had the same status in the cultural life of urban whites as it does for blacks, this debate would probably have found a far more formal forum than this. No, you will certainly not find criticism or defense of Soulja Boy in most mainstream newspapers or magazines. Let alone commentary on a divide as fundamental as this (lyric-based hip-hop versus non-lyrical hip-hop, or simply "good hip-hop versus wack hip-hop" as Ice-T puts it), most publications rarely even carry well-informed reviews of hip-hop titles. I bet the best-known pop music critics for nationwide media outlets still swear by U2, or worse, The Beatles. How can you write well, or write at all, about something you have little regard for?

As Eminem puts it in The Real Slim Shady:

You think I give a damn about a Grammy?
Half of you critics can't even stomach me, let alone stand me

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Credibility?

It is not everyday that I laugh out loud reading the news. But I did just that while reading the various news reports in the Indian media about the fictitious Nazi officer Johann Bach, a hoax created by the Pen Pricks.

What was more amusing than the hoax itself was the embellishments that the venerable mediapeople added to the story.

The Telegraph had a slick diagram showing the supposed movements of Bach (see below), calling it the "Odyssey" (Clicking the link doesnt lead to a valid page? Hmmm).













(Re picture above: If the Yemen passage was "unconfirmed", does it mean that everything else was confirmed?)

The Indian Express "airlifted"the guy to Berlin after his arrest ("airlifted" is one of the pet words of the newsmedia, a category of words that deserves a post of its own).

The Deccan Herald added ignorance to its own stupidity by calling out Bach in its headline as a "top Nazi colonel" (anyone slightly familiar with military institutions would wonder - how can one be a top colonel?).

As the Pen Pricks put it:

No confirming facts
No editorial rigor
No editorial tact
Just point a gun, jerk the trigger
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