"I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression"

The Nobel Peace Prize recipient:

The award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo follows an occasional precedent of recognizing human rights campaigners who are either imprisoned or subjected to state restrictions or harassment.
In announcing the prestigious award, Norwegian Nobel Committee President Thorbjoern Jagland cited Liu for his "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." Liu is currently serving an 11-year jail sentence in China for inciting subversion of state power.

China is pissed :

The Beijing government summoned the Norwegian ambassador in protest. It called Mr Liu a "criminal", said the award violated Nobel principles and could damage relations with Norway. ...
Foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said: "Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who violated Chinese law. It's a complete violation of the principles of the prize and an insult to the peace prize itself for the Nobel committee to award the prize to such a person."

Here is an excerpt from Liu's statement from December 2009: (ht)

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, my sweetheart, that I'm confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.
Given your love, my sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; where, different values, ideas, beliefs, political views... both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; where, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; where, all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent; I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.
Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.
I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints. Thank you!

Powerful statement.

I learnt from Mario Vargas Llosa's letters ...

On Sunday, eagerly anticipating the news about the Nobel Prize announcements, I wrote that in literature I am rooting for Mario Vargas Llosa .... need I say I am excited this morning :)

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced.
Vargas Llosa was chosen "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individuals resistance, revolt, and defeat," the academy said.

One year, I used one of his books for a class.  Yes, I did.  But, it wasn't a fiction work of Llosa's ... it was his Letters to a young novelist ... now, I wasn't teaching any fiction-writing class; it was one of the ways in which I attempted to convey to students how to do research, how to write, how to think through ... That was the only time I used this book by Llosa because it was quickly clear to me--much to my disappointment--that not one student cared about it ...

Photo of the day: the Hungarian toxic sludge

A few months ago, I met a visiting Hungarian environmental attorney, who might have a lot to say about this straight-out-of-Hollywood environmental news.

The caption for the photo here:
"Hungary declared a state of emergency after toxic mud spilled from a reservoir, dumping deadly chemicals on several towns. Here, a dog is covered with the toxic mud."

More here

Where is this place?

I wish the friendly news folks had labeled the neighboring countries :)
And I was too lazy to find a better map!
Slovakia is to the north, Austria on the NW ...

Cartoon of the day: Afghanistan and journalism

One cartoon worth a 20-page essay

The trauma of war, and killing

Last night I watched on PBS animated short films of Storycorps recordings.  Even before the following one ended, I felt the tear drop fall.

Joseph Robertson was an infantryman in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. The stark black and white images in this short haunt the viewer, just as Robertson is haunted by his memories from that battle.

Germans in the Woods from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Where the deer and the antelope play ...

How could I not enjoy the drive to campus on the crisp autumn morning that it was a few hours ago, when I spotted about a hundred feet away from the highway four deer seeming to wonder at the crazy humans rushing to work and wasting the glorious day.

I did what I almost always do on such occasions.

I pressed the hazard lights on, pulled over to the side, and for a few minutes sat there watching them, while they watched me.  There was no traffic in either direction, and it was just me, the deer, the trees, blue sky, white clouds, and a cool breeze.

It was, for those couple of minutes, heaven on earth.

And then I drove on ... duty calls ...

I wonder if they will wait for me tomorrow ...

Good and bad news for USC Trojans :)

Good news:

A 13-year trademark battle ends as the high court lets stand a ruling that the 'SC' logo belongs to the University of Southern California, not the University of South Carolina.

Bad news:

32-31 defeat that knocked the Trojans out of the AP top 25, the first time since 2001 that they've been unranked during the regular season.

Best news:

USC football sucks.  

Why is this good news?  As I noted earlier, the last time Trojan football tanked, the academic reputation went up, and kept going up.  I am all for USC to keep climbing up the academic ladder :)

"I am not a witch" .... "I am you"

I think I was less worried that Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft, than her telling us "I am you" ... if she is me, and I am her, nooooooooooooooooo .... :)  ht

For the heck of it, here is the notorious "I am not a crook" ... witch, crook, all the same to me :)

The land of overlapping multiple narratives. Not the US!

In the New York Times, Pankaj Mishra notes this about India:

India not only lives, as the cliché goes, in several centuries at once; it is also a land of multiple narratives, which continuously and often painfully overlap.

If I needed a photo to convey this point, here it is from The Hindu, where the caption reads:
"Super Star Rajinikanth’s fans ceremonially bathe the Enthiran banner with milk in Gandhiji Road in Thanjavur."

As Slate noted a few days ago, Rajnikanth is a movie superstar that most Americans (and a good chunk of the world) haven't heard about.  His latest movie, Enthiran, had a worldwide release ... and it is this movie opening that his fans are celebrating by pouring milk down this huge banner.


Pouring milk down the image relates to the centuries-old religious tradition.  And it has spilled over (ha, pun!) to a cinematic idol worship ....!


I have noted this many times before, and will write again: I have come to terms with India by not trying to deconstruct and understand what goes on there ... life there has its own momentum in all possible directions all at once.  The overlapping multiple narratives that Mishra writes of ...

For those of you who have never visited India, pack up and head there. Now!

Quote of the day, on Larry Summers and economists

Summers is unquestionably brilliant, as all who have dealt with him, including myself, quickly realize. And yet rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. For the past two years, I have immersed myself in those worlds in order to make a film, Inside Job, that takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis. And I found Summers everywhere I turned.

Oooooh .... "burn," as my students say :)

The author, Charles Ferguson (director of the new documentary Inside Job and the 2007 documentary No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq) argues that Summers is not the only one, but perhaps the most important among those at an unholy intersection:

Summers's career is the result of an extraordinary and underappreciated scandal in American society: the convergence of academic economics, Wall Street, and political power.

He makes it sound almost as if these modern day academic economists peddling to political and financial powers are the very "economic planners" that those in favor of deregulation and free markets critique.  Another instance of hating somebody so much because of the intense love within? muahahaha

Now, for a mighty blow to the profession:

Over the past 30 years, the economics profession—in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools—has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy. The route to the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic problems that still plague us, runs straight through the economics discipline. And it's due not just to ideology; it's also about straightforward, old-fashioned money.

All right!  Am enjoying this intellectual assault. I am sure there will be plenty of responses at different places.  All in time for the Prize in memory of Nobel. 

Whoever said that intellectual life is a bore.  When it comes to ideas, there is always a battle or two beginning. 

The only problem: these are not mere intellectual discourses in a seminar room, but have profound and mostly disastrous results as policies. 

Are college degrees necessary for employment?

Back in the economic boom times of August 2007, I wrote in an opinion column that:

Perhaps employers here in the United States use the college degree as a sorting tool just as employers in India do. By demonstrating that they successfully negotiated hazards like me, students implicitly tell prospective employers that they have the requisite skills to do the job. But then all we have done is unnecessarily raise the entry-level educational requirement, when in reality a degree is not really required and a high school diploma would have sufficed.

Well, thanks to this tweet from an author whose book was much talked about the past summer, I read an op-ed published in a different part of the country--Kentucky--where the authors (one is a grad student) write that "demand for college degrees increases joblessness":

... it's time to hold businesses accountable for their role in this mess.

The point is, businesses aren't innocent bystanders or even unwitting accomplices; they share in the guilt of the current system. In fixating on four-year degrees, businesses are also hurting themselves.

One of us works at Atkins & Pearce Inc., a Covington manufacturer that's been family-owned for seven generations and that, last year, won Kentucky's Mid-Sized Manufacturer of the Year. Some of the company's best employees — in accounting, in purchasing, in sales, even on the executive committee — do not have college degrees.

It's proof to us that, just because you can hire nothing but degree-holders, it doesn't mean you should.

The day that businesses decide that they don't need to hire college graduates for many of the jobs, well, the revolution will begin.  Until then, ...

How to write about Pakistan

The bitingly sarcastic essay on How to write about Africa is a regular listing in the readings I have for students.  The same publication, Granta, has a an issue focused on Pakistan.  It is not fully online, and my university library doesn't subscribe to Granta.  Why? I have no idea about how universities function.  (editor: isn't a university your employer?  So?)

Anyway, one of the freebies there is How to write about Pakistan  It starts thus:

1. Must have mangoes.
2. Must have maids who serve mangoes.
3. Maids must have affairs with man servants who should occasionally steal mangoes.
4. Masters must lecture on history of mangoes and forgive the thieving servant.
5. Calls to prayer must be rendered to capture the mood of a nation disappointed by the failing crop of mangoes.
6. The mango flavour must linger for a few paragraphs.
7. And turn into a flashback to Partition.
8. Characters originating in rural areas must fight to prove that their mango is bigger than yours.
9. Fundamentalist mangoes must have more texture; secular mangoes should have artificial flavouring.
10. Mangoes that ripen in creative writing workshops must be rushed to the market before they go bad.

It is way too good.  I liked this one-liner:

bear in mind that Pakistan is a market-leader. The Most Dangerous Place in the World^TM.

I would think that a Somali writer would not concede that point though, and argue otherwise :)


Granta: Pakistan from Granta magazine on Vimeo.

Will continue to dream about a trip to Pakistan. One of these days years.

If it is October ... Nobel Prizes will be announced

For the nerd that I am, this upcoming week will be a fantastic one--to follow-up on news on the Nobel recognitions.  A wonderful opportunity to learn a tad, particularly about the significance of the achievements in the sciences; I can't ever let go of that first "academic love" of mine :)

So, what is the schedule of announcements?

Monday, October 4 11:30 a.m. at the earliest	The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Tuesday, October 5 11:45 a.m. at the earliest	The Nobel Prize in Physics
Wednesday, October 6 11:45 a.m. at the earliest	The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Friday, October 8 11:00 a.m.	The Nobel Peace Prize
Monday, October 11 1:00 p.m. at the earliest	The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

According to tradition, the Swedish Academy will set the date for its announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature later.

In Economics, which is technically not a "Nobel Prize," I am rooting for Jagdish Bhagwati. Why? Yes, because he is from India :)  Also because the essays of his that I have read always made sense to me.  And, because of this trivia about his daughter, which is so wonderfully off-beat and unexpected, given all the intellectual achievements in the family.

And, apparently even The Simpsons have picked him as the winner!

For literature, my vote is for Mario Vargas Llosa.  I like how he is more than a man of letters.  Haruki Murakami is more favored by bookies; I would love that too. 

After the disastrous decision last year on the Peace prize, I won't be surprised if the decision is even more bizarre this year.  After all, this is a prize that apparently was not fit for M.K. Gandhi, who certainly leads the list of notable non-winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is a possible prize winner in Medicine