Two handy URLs for anyone planning on being in town during the RNC. (I’m still not sure whether I will be or not…):
this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit.
So says Alex de Waal in a recent London Review of Books article which is the single most illuminating thing I’ve read on the crisis in Darfur. He resolutely avoids falling into the standard clichés:
It is hard to find a news account of the present war in Darfur that does not characterise it as one of ‘Arabs’ against ‘Africans’. Such a description would have been incomprehensible twenty years ago, when Darfurian conceptions of ethnicity and citizenship were still cast in the mould inherited from the Sultanate of Dar Fur and the string of comparable Sudanic states that stretched westwards to the Atlantic.
He argues that the history of Darfur is one of neglect and geography. First the region suffered from famine:
A succession of local conflicts erupted in Darfur in the wake of the drought and famine of 1984-85. On the whole, the pastoral groups were pitted against the farmers in what had become a bitter struggle for diminishing resources. The government couldn’t intervene effectively, so people armed themselves.
Then it also suffered from neighboring wars:
Another geographical misfortune is that Darfur borders Chad and Libya. In the 1980s, Colonel Gaddafi dreamed of an ‘Arab belt’ across Sahelian Africa. … Gaddafi’s formula for war was expansive: he collected discontented Sahelian Arabs and Tuaregs, armed them, and formed them into an Islamic Legion that served as the spearhead of his offensives. … The Libyans were defeated by a nimble Chadian force at Ouadi Doum in 1988, and Gaddafi abandoned his irredentist dreams. He began dismantling the Islamic Legion, but its members, armed, trained and - most significant of all - possessed of a virulent Arab supremacism, did not vanish. The legacy of the Islamic Legion lives on in Darfur: Janjawiid leaders are among those said to have been trained in Libya.
These leaders were natural allies of a weak government faced with a rebellion in a remote region:
Faced with a revolt that outran the capacity of the country’s tired and overstretched army, this small group knew exactly what to do. Several times during the war in the South they had mounted counter-insurgency on the cheap - famine and scorched earth their weapons of choice.
It is a dense article, but it is worth reading a few times if you want to understand the history of the region in terms that don’t reduce it to essentialist notions of religion or ethnicity.
The fact that George W Bush borrowed money from BCCI in 1987 but John Kerry launched the investigation in 1988 that eventually brought them down really says about all you need to know about the character of the two men.
This is exactly what caught my eye when I first looked into Kerry’s record back in February - but now there is a new article by David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin in the Washington Monthly which lays the case out very clearly. As the Republicans continue to make Kerry out to be a flip-flopping lame duck it is important to remember that he was behind one of the most important anti-corruption investigations of the past thirty years, and did so against the interests of some pretty big players in his own party. As the authors say,
legislation is only one facet of a senator’s record. As the BCCI investigation shows, Kerry developed a very different record of accomplishment–one often as vital, if not more so, than passage of bills.
And, as David Corn pointed out in March, Kerry’s legislative record isn’t all that bad either.
A million thanks to Carthik!!! This blog is now running on WordPress instead of MovableType, but Carthik has helped do it in such a way that all the old links should still work.
You hopefully won’t notice too many difference around here. The only big change (from the reader’s perspective) should be the comments. You will no longer need a “TypeKey” account to post comments! I have filtering in place, so if your comment doesn’t appear right away don’t worry, it just means it was sent to me for “verification” before posting.
Another nice change is that there are now RSS feeds for each category, (look on the right), as well as links beneath each post telling you which categories it is listed in. And there are also RSS feeds for the comments on each individual post, if you want to be notified of replies to any comments you leave on a particular subject.
Switching to WP should, in time, allow me to add even more new features to the blog, but I’m just going to see how things go for a while. If you notice anything strange, let me know!
UPDATE: I highly recommend that anyone looking for help with coding/web design/etc. give BlogBarter.com a try!
UPDATE: It is also possible to do the move yourself, since Carthik has written out clear directions on how to do it, and the folks at the WordPress Support Forums are a very helpful bunch.
Yes, there is a little gulag in New York City. It is located in Queens and its name is the Wackenhut Detention Center. And everybody should know about the more than 200 human beings languishing behind its walls.
Especially since they are now on a hunger strike.
(via BoingBoing)
UPDATE: A bunch more Wackenhut stories have been added to the BoingBoing post.
I’ve been holding off writing a post about Benjamin Lee Whorf thinking that I would wait until I had time to do the topic justice; but the announcement (more here) of a new article in Science has caused a flurry of posts around the internet, and I felt that it was an opportune time to make a simple point: Whorf never said that language determines thought.
It would be interesting to examine why people feel the need to recast Whorf’s argument in such essentialist terms. I think it is for one of two reasons: (a) Some people like to argue that culture doesn’t matter, and Whorf seems like a suitable straw man for an equally essentialist argument. Or, (b) they want to make an essentialist argument about culture (how words are untranslatable, or why some cultures are superior to others, etc.) and they think that Whorf will give justification to their argument.
What most people never do is actually readwhat Whorf wrote. It is abundantly clear that the unnamed author of this Science Daily press release (published by Columbia University Teachers College) did not read Whorf. They start the article with the following statement:
During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought. But are there concepts in one culture that people of another culture simply cannot understand because their language has no words for it?
Lets put aside for now the derisive remark that Whorf was an “amateur,” and ask if this accurately reflects his theory. We can learn a lot by looking at how this statement differs from that attributed to Dr. Peter Gordon, the author of the article which prompted this press release:
“Whorf says that language divides the world into different categories,” Gordon said. “Whether one language chooses to distinguish one thing versus another affects how an individual perceives reality.”
Now, I haven’t read Dr. Gordon’s paper, but this much closer to Whorf’s actual position than that of the press release author. The press release version of Whorf’s theory states that language “determines” thought, while Dr. Gordon’s version simply states that linguistic “categories“"affect” our “perception” of reality. Morover, he does not say that concepts are “untranslatable".
I suppose it isn’t as exciting a theory when put this way, it sounds almost … obvious. After all, if linguistic categories didn’t have any affect at all on our perceptions, then language wouldn’t matter at all. But Gordon’s version is still a little off. Whorf wasn’t really talking about our “perception of reality.” Whorf’s point was that some cultural differences in behavior where linked to conceptual differences arising from linguistic analogies. That is to say, it wasn’t so much that we are locked into thinking about the world a certain way because of our language, but we have a tendency to do so - and this tendency has an effect on our cultural behavior.
In order to make his point clear, Whorf drew examples from his experience working as “a fire prevention engineer (inspector) for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company.” He discussed how
the cue to a certain line of behavior is often given by the analogies of the linguistic formula in which the situation is spoken of, and by which to some degree it is analyzed, classified, and allotted its place in) that world which is “to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.” And we always assume that the linguistic, analysis made by our group reflects reality better than it does.
He gives the example of workers smoking by “empty gasoline drums” (emphasis added):
There was a lot of attention paid to the fact that Republicans in Florida were pushing voters to cast absentee ballots. But it seems that this is a much more widespread phenomenon, and that both parties are urging supporters to lock in their vote in a number of states where it is legal to vote early by absentee ballot. From Nathan Newman (emphasis added):
At least a dozen battleground states allow voters to cast ballots early, including Florida, West Virginia, Nevada, Arizona and Iowa.
Both liberal and conservative groups are already mobilizing to get those ballots turned in as early as possible as part of their GOTV operations. Estimates are that up to one third of ballots will already have been cast by November 2.
The original Wall Street Journal article points out that this could create a number of problems, including the potential to pressure people into public voting:
each step in the process – an individual voter’s request for an absentee ballot, the elections official’s mailing of the ballot and the voter’s return of that ballot – becomes a matter of public record. During the early voting period, campaigns can communicate specifically with voters who have received ballots but haven’t yet voted. “ACT is going to know exactly what’s happening” with its target universe, says Mr. Link, the Iowa director.
While the WSJ focuses on liberal groups such as ACT, I think this really is a cause for concern no matter which side you are on. Not to mention the way in which early election results will affect the November vote.
First, a little background:
A cheese steak sandwich is not really a steak at all – it is a sandwich made with chipped steak, steak that has been frozen and sliced really thin) and cooked on a grill top. Locals think in terms of steak sandwiches with or without cheese. Without cheese, the sandwich is referred to as a steak. With cheese, it is a cheese steak or cheesesteak. Cheeze Whiz is the topping of choice for serious steak connoisseurs. However, you can also use provolone cheese.
The cheese steak was supposedly invented by Pat Olivieri in the 1930s, although cheese wasn’t added till twenty years later.
The important point here is the cheese. As you see, the proper choices are “Cheez Whiz” or provolone. Here is a picture of the Cheez Wiz being added to a Cheese Steak. (To think that I actually used to eat that stuff…) That’s why Kerry caused a scandal when he (a product of summers in the Alps, I suppose) ordered his with Swiss Cheese! So, naturally, the Bush folks used this to their advantage, and ran an add where Bush says:
You know, this is my 32nd visit to your state since I’ve been president. A lot of people wonder why I’m coming so much. It ought to be obvious to you; I like my cheese steak Wiz with.
(Note: I’m not sure about this transcript. Is this supposed to be Philladelphia-ism? Maybe the Philly-based LanguageLog folks can help out?)
Well, Atrios informs us that Kathleen E. Carey of The [Delaware County, Pa.] Daily Times did some reporting on this and found out that Bush wasn’t being completely honest:
She reported that Bush actually “prefers his steak absent of the usual Cheez Whiz and provolone, accompanied only by cheese of the American variety,” information that she obtained from her own Deep Throat, one Caeser Barnabei, the owner of the well-known cheesesteak shop, Jim’s Place. Barnabei, who has fed the Bush camp on previous swings through Pennsylvania and provided “70 to 80 hoagies” for the Bush campaign yesterday, confided to Carey that “the Jim’s Special is altered to whet the ‘W’ appetite.”
OK, it isn’t in the same league as the Swift Boat story, but I think Kerry shouldn’t just sit there and let Bush get away with this!
Everything you ever wanted to know about Halliburton, and more. Like this juicy tidbit:
Halliburton announced yesterday that the Army would withhold 15 percent of future payments because of suspicious bills. A few hours later, the Army announced it would not withhold those payments, but would instead give Halliburton more time to explain why it billed taxpayers for work that was apparently never undertaken or completed. The Army’s decision is the third time it has extended the deadline for Halliburton to justify undocumented expenses, including $1.8 billion of $4.5 billion that Halliburton charged U.S. taxpayers for work in Iraq and Kuwait, which the Defense Contract Audit Agency recently reported the company has yet to substantiate.
More on (the lack of) accountability in the U.S. military.
I love WordPress. Not just because it is Open Source, but because it is written in the PHP coding language. (I like PHP because it is easy to modify, and changes are reflected instantly on your web site, unlike MovableType which I am using now.) I used WordPress to setup Shashwati’s web site and blog; but I’ve been hesitant to switch Keywords because I don’t want to break all the links to existing entries or to have to require my readers to change bookmarks. Luckily, via a site called BlogBarter.com, I’ve managed to work out a deal with one of the WordPress developers who is going to help me make the switch without (knock on wood), breaking any of the existing links!
If all goes well the switch should happen transparently on Saturday night. But if you stop getting e-mail updates, RSS feeds, or something else goes wrong, please be patient, as I expect to iron out any remaining problems on Sunday and Monday.
(I’m working on a Wiki article about how I setup Shashwati’s website using WordPress. It still isn’t done, but you can bookmark it here.)
I’ve just finished reading Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire. Written in 1959 in Urdu, and translated into English by the author, this sprawling history of India is one of the classics of Indian literature. It has unfortunately gone fairly unnoticed in the United States, and I am not surprised. One feels that the translation should have been done by someone other than the author, and indeed one review reports that a single chapter of the book was far superior in another translation. Still, there are so many delights hidden in this book, that I urge everyone to make the effort. If nothing else, it presents a history of India that reveals how interwoven Hindu and Muslim culture have been throughout the ages.
The fact that the book was written in Urdu is itself now worth remarking upon, since after the partition Urdu became the official language of Pakistan, and its use in India declined. In fact, Hindi and Urdu used to be much closer to each other than they are now, with Hindi slowly getting more Sanskritized and Urdu adopting more Persian and Arabic influences. It is not uncommon to see these two languages referred to as “essentially one language with two scripts,” although I’m not sure how accurate that is. It is even more confusing in that these terms often seem to refer to the standard, written, varieties of the languages, while the vernacular (of both languages) is often referred to as Hindustani. (Although most seem to reserve the term Hindustani for the vernacular that used to be spoken in the North of India, implying that it differs from contemporary vernacular Hindi and Urdu.) In many ways, this linguistic change is very much what the novel is about. As one character, the Communist son of a Hindu landowner who migrates to Pakistan after land reforms destroy his family’s wealth, writes in a letter:
In the demand for Pakistan, Urdu was most thoughtlessly declared to be language of a “separate Muslim nation", so now it is also paying the price for the creation of the “homeland". In India it has almost become a non-language. The word ‘Urdu’ is no associated with Pakistan and creates an emotional and psychological block for most Hindus. Therefore it continues to be the language of films and film songs but is called Hindi. By abolishing Urdu in schools they have also impoverished their own culture.
The novel covers thousands of years of history, with the same characters reappearing in different incarnations. There are four time periods covered: Ancient India (Fourth Century B.C.), The Mughal Empire (16th Century), Colonial India (19th Century - before and after the 1857 rebellion), and “contemporary” India (1940s, before and after partition). The last period takes up nearly half the book, which is unfortunate because it was my least favorite. Mostly because the self-indulgent upper class kids of this era are the least interesting of her characters. But I’m being too negative. The author’s acute insight and wit permeate even the least effective chapters, making it a pleasure to read.
Here is a fascinating terror alert timeline showing what else was happening whenever the department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert level.
Didn’t Tom Ridge ever read the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf!” when he was a kid?
I’m finally reading Mamdani’s book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (discussed previously here and here), and I was struck by his history of the term “fundamentalism,” taken largely from Karen Armstrong’s work:
The term “fundamentalism” was invented in 1920 by the Rev. Curtis Lee Laws and was immediately taken up as an honorific by his Baptist and Presbyterian colleagues who swore to do “battle royal for the fundamentals of the faith.” Karen Armstrong has located this phenomenon in a rapidly growing set of American debates over the validity of biblical literalism then being taken up by the increasingly powerful and entrenched conservative Republicans who supported it.
It is such an interesting discussion that, rather than summarize it, I scanned the entire section (just six pages) and OCR’d it so that I could share it here. The full text is below. (If you spot any typos, please point them out in the comments or by e-mail and I’ll try to clean it up. I’ve inserted page numbers where the breaks occur in the original text.)
Here are some links to interviews with Karen Armstrong. Here and here.
(more…)
Mariel Zagunis won the first gold medal for the United States in modern fencing history!
In her final match, Zagunis commanded the bout against Xue Tan of China from the beginning, running an 8-2 streak by the first break. Zagunis fenced with tenacity and imagination, scoring for instance with point-in-line at 5-2.
After the break Tan rallied, changing her game and taking the score back up to 10-6 to the chants of the large contingent from China. But Zagunis was not to be denied and gritted out the next few touches to finally win 15-9.
I’m sorry I missed it…
(Thanks to Derek for letting me know!)
A poem I composed from today’s SPAM “subject” lines:
rhodolite demonstrable codfish
Re: Everything went giddy with
Are you a loser?
buddy,deal with your problems!daunt
Hey
you have been approved.philosopher bubbles over 711
PLease look at this
PILLS PILLS PILLS!!!!that the storm was
Surplus Machinery
do you wish you were 20 again?Разошлем вашу рекламу по Сети.
Ekvator Harita Tanıtım
情人節快到了~~帶走吧!!哈哈!!i’m srory i told eevyrobdy your sceret
the food of the gods!
rhodolite demonstrable codfish
In his book Stupid White Men, Michael Moore included an open letter to Palestinian President Arafat:
I have the key to your success. I know how you can unilaterally end the killing on both sides – and, as a bonus, wind up with a Palestinian state!
I know, you’re thinking, “Hey, who is this guy?” And you’re right.
But hear me out. I want to propose something so revolutionary that it will flip out every Israeli right-winger and send every Israeli peacenik running to your side.
My proposal is not a new idea. It involves no armies, no money, and no UN resolutions. It’s dirt cheap. It has been tried many times, in many countries – AND IT HAS NEVER FAILED. It demands no hatred, and requires no weapons. In fact, it is all about no weapons.
It’s called mass non-violent civil disobedience. It worked for Martin Luther King Jr. – his non-violent movement brought an abrupt end to legal segregation in America. It worked for Gandhi – he and his fellow Indians brought the British Empire to it’s knees without firing a shot. It worked for Nelson Mandela – he and the African National Congress brought about an end to Apartheid with no violent revolution.
If it worked for them, trust me, it can work for you.
Well, even if Arafat didn’t listen, it seems like Gandhi did. Arun Gandhi that is. Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson is all set to “to kick off an unarmed Palestinian movement against Israeli occupation which is being launched by a group of social and political activists in Ramallah.” Good luck to them!
(via Sepia Mutiny)
UPDATE: Meanwhile:
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has authorised the construction of 1,000 settler homes in the West Bank.
UPDATE: Al-Muhajabah’s latest post on Palestinian non-violence links to a number of older posts on the subject as well (at the bottom.)
(via Dove’s Eye View, an excellent blog I just recently bookmarked.)
Talk to US addresses a critical problem: US policies impact the whole world, but non-Americans have few ways to communicate directly with mainstream America. The international voices Americans do hear often represent only the extremes – not ordinary people from around the world.
Talk to US is changing this by gathering and distributing 30 second video messages from people around the world.
Be sure to check out their gallery of “top rated” clips, and if you live outside the US consider contributing a clip!
(via Ethan Zukerman)
Sudan: The Passion of the Present is “an independent, non-partisan, all-volunteer community initiative to stop the genocide in Sudan.”
This link via Ethan Zuckerman, who has some interesting thoughts about why bloggers aren’t writing more about Darfur, even though there is pretty decent media coverage:
The truth is, the media’s done an excellent job in the last two months of reporting the story, as I noted a few weeks back. But while the blogosphere has picked up the story, they haven’t massively amplified it - Blogpulse shows about 0.03% of blog entries mentioning Darfur and 0.07% mentioning Sudan. While this number has risen substantially in the last couple of months (from a near-whisper), it still is an order of magnitude smaller than the number of blog entries (roughly 0.9%) mentioning Iraq.
He suggests that the story won’t resonate with people until there are more pictures in the media, and suggests helping raise $45,000 to send a TV crew to the refugee camps.
Personally, I’m fairly amazed that only 0.9% of blog entries mention Iraq. I mean, isn’t there a war there or something?
UPDATE: This site has a wealth of information on Sudan.
That’s Chinese for “Barbie Doll".
There are a bunch of museums that feature Barbie dolls: There is the Hawaii Loves Barbie Doll Museum, with about 5,000 Barbies. The J&M Barbie Museum in the Netherlands has about half as many. The Strong Museum in Rochester, New York just got 1,500 Barbie dolls earlier this year. But nothing can top the Barbie Hall of Fame’s 14,000 dolls.
Compared to these numbers, the paltry 400 Barbie dolls at the new Doll Museum in Taipei may not sound like much, but its location is what’s interesting. You see, from 1967 to 1987, Mattel Ltd. formed a joint venture with Taiwanese company Huahsia Plastic, and Barbie dolls were made at Taishan’s Mattel factory.
The factory employed over 2,000 people making every single part of the Barbie dolls, from the molded plastic and polyvinyl chloride bodies right down to the final packaging. There were other, smaller factories in nearby towns and in other counties; in its heyday, Mattel employed more than 8,000 people in Taiwan. Former employees, some of whom were asked for their input by museum planners, are still nostalgic when talking about the halcyon days of working at Mattel’s flagship Barbie factory.
It seems that theft of Barbie body parts was rampant:
Employees and the security guards eventually hired by management engaged in a game of cat and mouse when it came to smuggled dolls. People would take Barbie’s arms, for example, or legs home hidden in their undergarments and, after a few days and enough smuggled body parts, a full doll could be assembled at home. Others secreted entire dolls in their bellbottom trousers–this was the 1970s, after all. It was thought of less as theft than as a simple matter of expediency.
Naturally, employees caught stealing were summarily fired, but those who did not even try were considered strange. Today, former employees look back at the experience with a nostalgic chuckle.
The dolls in the museum are dressed up as Taiwanese Aborigine women, as well as in the various uniforms Mattel employees wore during the two decades the factory was located in Taishan.
Here is a site with a bunch of links (in Chinese) related to 芭比娃娃.
