At borders

At borders today, a book called "Death of Conservatism" caught my attention and due to tiny size of the book, I ended up reading it all up at the table itself ( it was under the "thought-provoking" category). I don't like to be a promoter for any book-store, but I do think that I am more likely to find my book at borders than at Barnes and Nobles. That they have better coffee (Dean&Deluca) than the latter (Starbucks) strengthens this prejudice further. About half-way through reading the book, I realized that the author is one of the editors of New York Review of Books, a fact that was affirmed by the well-researched essays of the book. The writings of McCarthy, Burnham, Schlesinger and Disraeli were recollected in the book and were used to evaluate the movement conservatism. New York Review of books is very left leaning, and sometimes it even bothers me by its extreme support for Obama. But that apart, the writings from the journal or such books, form a very informative read. This book, for example pointed out the contradictions and shallowness of last few years of conservatism - its blind support to failed policies.

One interesting perspective the book presented, and the one that I am increasingly inclined to believe in is that the current conservatism is incapable of being constructive. What it represents today through the likes of Limbaugh and Palin is the destruction of institutions that we have in the society. The way this movement proceeded in the past few years or claims to proceed further, is by vandalizing our democratic establishments and destroying our values that they themselves claim to defend. As the book pointed, a new era always marks the end of a previous one. The end of conservatism and the new "Hope" could be another chapter in American history, a history that is full of self re-invention and re-evaluation. http://www.amazon.com/Death-Conservatism-Sam-Tanenhaus/dp/1400068843

World was never flat

I get somewhat amused every time I hear people talking about world becoming flatter and people shunning the boundaries that separate them. The more I think about that, the more dubious the evidences appear. The world certainly seems to be better than at the Cold War. During those times, our media was so biased that we would hear extreme opposite coverage of the same incidents when reported by West and East blocks. The Gulf war or even the post-911 war-mongering was probably not nearly as bad as how things were during Cold war. The sentiments against each other were so deep that the most intellectual pursuits failed to overcome them. On one hand, the Eastern block had scientists commanded by the dictator of proletariat while on the other scientific communities were shying away giving Nobel prizes to intellectuals from the East. At one point, the peace Nobel prizes seemed to be a prerogative of previous US Cold War is over, but the institutional propaganda and our conscious ignorance are still a part of our lives. My last few observations have been the about the way East is covered in the West (I am clearly more likely to observe them than most of others). The fact that we get filtered information about the world in US is very well established. One thought that I wanted elaborate was how media has successfully been able to engineer into most of our minds that India is a rising power, and that to a large extent, outsourcing is responsible for it. presidents. Both of these claims are inaccurate. That India is rising as a competitor to West, is itself a myth. A country with such extreme poverty and malnutrition clearly doesn’t have enough resources and institutions to sustain its own people. Poverty is not an unfortunate side-effect of growth in India. Poverty in India is incomparably widespread and a part of life. The little progress and growth that account for 8% GDP growth rate, is largely due to foreign investments in India and is limited into Western establishments localized into metropolitan areas.

But that is not to suggest that India by itself is incapable of doing much. Of course, the investments in India are not out of charity. They are market holdings in an economy capable of clear growth. But that is not what we learn from our media.We are made to believe that most of India is coming out of poverty because of American intervention - a combination of foreign aid and monetary investment. India's growth is indeed tied to the growth of US, but the relationship is not out of charity or a cold-war era agreement. It is largely due to the way world is changing. The impact of the kind of fear built against imaginary monsters like India and China are long lasting and extremely susceptible to political manipulation. One example is how Americans are made to fear about Iran’s possession of nuclear power; the American media chose not to mention the pact between India and America, which was not liked by the most of European countries as it gave undue advantage to India despite it’s refusal to sign the test-ban treaty. People are made to fear the outsourcing (something that apparently jeopardizes American interests but is widely accepted in the corporate world) and the nuclear proliferation (in India’s case it was favored by the corporate America) at the same time, yet it is institutions in the US itself that are are responsible for these developments in the East. Media doesn't offer any transparency in those matters. It offers us contradictory yet comfortable truths that we want to believe in.

baghmati

My memories of baghmati river are that of fearful and hefty seasonal river as seen from a bridge in Bihar. In that trip to far east of india, bihar seemed a place deep into wilderness. Like in that scene of the movie Gandhi, I saw people taking their train rides on the top of the train. The pricing of tickets, the slip of schedules of those trains were too distant ideas for the people who rode those trains. Baghmati was an image of that fearful wilderness.

In that same trip, we had met an old couple, who were traveling for free in the first class compartment. The old man had a privilege, of having been a freedom fighter against the British. Later in my life, I would recall how strange it sounded to have fought against the british to be rewarded with what british had left. It sounded preposterous for once, but if you traveled with that old man, who seemed unmoved with the scorching heat or the wilderness and chaos that bothered me, you would realize how modest was a free ticket as a reward to his spirits.

His wife told me that baghmati changes its course every year and causes a lot of havoc that way. It could more formally be considered as a seasonal flood. But the woman talked about baghmati with a sense of comfort and acceptance of the floods. She might not have known science but she knew that if flooding stops the regular alluvialization of the lands would stop and we would all starve anyways. It was that acceptance of natural calamities that still amazes me.

It is unique and somewhat distinctive of the Eastern culture. This photograph just seemed to have put all of that in perspective.

hv world affairs council

I was listening to Haviland smith earlier today. By the time his talk was over, I had started building hopes for a better foreign policy. The talk didn't demonstrate his great oratory abilities nor did it have any rhetoric or ideology that he was vouching for. Haviland's was merely an introspection into the foreign policy of US in the past 8 years. He was neither like those liberals who think we should do nothing but charity in rest of the world, nor like the republicans he constantly called horribly incorrect. At one time he called the Islamic society as repressive and inherently different from the Western democracies. He was thinking of a solution along those lines.

He said something that I had been dying to listen to from someone more mature than me -that language is important. He condemned the use of words like war-against-terror or rogue-nations. Avoiding such jingoism in language would only help a foreign policy. He questioned the assertion, both of media and administration that Muslims essentially hate the West. He actually said that Arabs have hardly ever expressed much hatred for America ; them being the core of Islamic world.