I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.
A frequent theme in this blog is the importance of local knowledge for development. David Brooks helpfully illustrated in his column today on my home region the Midwest. He brilliantly demonstrates how outsiders can get lost in the jungle in a region not their own.Yes, geography matters :)
Brooks’ Midwest is:
that region of America that starts in central New York and Pennsylvania and then stretches out through Ohio and Indiana before spreading out to include Wisconsin and Arkansas.Mr. Brooks is apparently unaware from his vantage point on the Far Eastern Coastal Rim that central New York is still in the East, not the Midwest. And there has never been a single Midwesterner in two centuries who ever thought they were in the same region as Arkansas.
The Midwest has lost a manufacturing empire but hasn’t yet found a role.Um, Mr. Brooks, were you aware that the Midwest has a few farms? Actually some of the best farmland in the world? and that it produces gigantic agricultural exports for the whole world?
Describing the electoral losses of the Democrats, he says:
The old industry towns in the Midwest were the epicenter of the disaster.Great insight, except for the fact that the only places Democrats won in the Midwest were in the old industry towns. Mr. Brooks, you have just earned a one-month scenic tour to chat with the nonexistent Republican House members in Cleveland, Youngstown, Akron, and Toledo, Ohio; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; South Bend and beautiful Gary, Indiana.
It’s normally agreed that the question “How are you?” doesn’t put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like “A bit early to say.” (If it’s the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, “I seem to have cancer today.”) Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of “life” when your body turns from being a friend to being a foe: the boring switch from chronic constipation to its sudden dramatic opposite; the equally nasty double cross of feeling acute hunger while fearing even the scent of food; the absolute misery of gut-wringing nausea on an utterly empty stomach; or the pathetic discovery that hair loss extends to the disappearance of the follicles in your nostrils, and thus to the childish and irritating phenomenon of a permanently runny nose. Sorry, but you did ask …
Dismayed by the fact that over the past 24 months they have not experienced the immediate short-term personal gain they had hoped for, Americans went to the polls Tuesday and, for the 112th consecutive time, elected the candidates they deserve. "It's my duty," Reading, PA resident Bethany Albertson said as she cast her ballot and joined the staggering majority of citizens who, like every single previous generation of voters, will reap exactly what they have sown. "I haven't seen much difference in my paycheck, and we need a voice for change in our government." Exit polls indicated most voters will be content with what they've got coming to them as long as they see sharp reductions in taxes, health care costs, home foreclosures, economic regulation, unemployment, and the national debt by the time the 112th Congress is halfway through its first legislative session.Even better is The Daily Show's analysis of the punditry's, er, analysis:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Mourning After | ||||
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"America is exceptional, but it is not inherently so." It is the choice of freedom that creates the fragile exception, not a blood/soil birthright.And Michael Kinsley has a wonderful column on this topic, where he notes:
This conceit that we’re the greatest country ever may be self-immolating. If people believe it’s true, they won’t do what’s necessary to make it true. The Brits, who suffer no such delusion (and who, in fact, cherish the national myth of being people who smile through adversity), have just accepted cuts in government spending that no American politician — even a tea bagger — would dream of proposing. Maybe these cuts are a mistake or badly timed, but when the British voted for “change,” they really got it.I tell my students a variation of these: not to assume that the "American Dream" will come true just because they are born here, but that they have to work for it. The "American Dream" is not an entitlement. America is a wonderful place where the work can payoff in many ways. But, hey, it is the work that delivers.
Every time I strike this note, which I guess I do a lot, I hear from people calling me elitist or unpatriotic. Here is my answer: If you think a friend is talking nonsense or behaving in a way that damages both of your long-term interests, it is not elitist to say so. To the contrary, it is treating him or her like an adult and an equal. As for patriotism, if you think your country is in danger, how is it unpatriotic to say so?
The first movie is India’s nominee for the Oscars this year: “Peepli Live.” If nothing else, this movie will prepare the President for India’s rambunctious press corp. While the U.S. has three cable general news channels, India has more than 20 and they compete fiercely for news stories.Have a good time, Mr. President. The best thing to heal from the election bruising.
Peepli Live explores how Indian news channels manufacture news to gain ratings. In the movie, a farmer contemplates suicide as the only way out of his family’s crushing debt. Unfortunately, the story is familiar to Indian audiences, as there has been a scourge of farmer suicides because of mountains of debt.
It’s the flip side of emerging India, the India that used to be written about: poor, hungry and destitute. That India still exists. And Mr. Obama will probably miss most of it visiting Mumbai and Delhi. Hundreds of millions of Indians still live on less than $1.25 a day and many have a hand to mouth existence.
For many Indians — and potentially Mr. Obama — Peepli Live was a vivid reminder of how far India still has to go and how important it is that the Indian economic miracle succeed.
The next is “3 Idiots.” Based loosely on a book, 3 Idiots explores the lives of three engineering students at an Indian Institute of Technology-like institution. It puts a human face on the experience of the workers that populate the Bangalore of American myth.
Militants unleashed a wave of deadly attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 113 people in Shiite neighborhoods in an apparent bid to provoke a new sectarian war in the country.What does President Bush think about his decision to go after those weapons of mass destruction that he said existed, and that otherwise we would see mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons?
Seventeen car bombs and other blasts shook the city at sunset in one of the bloodiest days this year. The coordinated attacks, which bore the earmark of the Sunni Arab militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, came just 48 hours after 58 people were killed after armed men seized a Baghdad church.
"The new Qaeda has started its work again in Iraq," a senior Iraqi security commander warned, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The situation is very bad."
In the autobiography, Mr Bush defends his decision to invade Iraq, according to advanced copies of the book.Crap!
He argues that both America and the Iraqis are better off without former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom he calls a "homicidal dictator".
But Mr Bush admits that he was shocked when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
"No one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons," he writes. "I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do."
on Tuesday, California voters will choose to go further and broadly legalize marijuana. I hope so. Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did, and California may now be pioneering a saner approach.Unfortunately, it does not look like Californians will begin the end to this insane war on drugs.
"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science."The libertarian Jacob Sullum quoting from a new study in The Lancet that "rates the harmfulness of 20 psychoactive drugs according to 16 criteria and finds that alcohol comes out on top."
As usual, defenders of drinking are outraged by the comparison between alcohol and illegal drugs. Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, tells The Sun, "The vast majority of people know it's just not rational to say that enjoying a social beer with friends in the pub or glass of wine over dinner has the moral or societal equivalence of injecting heroin or smoking a crack pipe." Such reactions are based on the observation that the vast majority of drinkers are not alcoholics. Despite alcohol's very real dangers, they generally manage to consume it in a way that not only does not harm them or others but on balance enhances their lives. Here is the point that defensive drinkers like Simmonds miss: If this is possible with alcohol, it is possible with any intoxicant that large numbers of people have shown an interest in consuming.alc
Will Juan Williams now be fearful every time he sees a toner cartridge, even though most toner cartridges are not evil?That is Professor Daniel Drezner commenting on the latest al Qaeda failure. Looks like he has shifted his humor from his fascination for Salma Hayek :)
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Terror 2.0 by Yemen - Sad Libs | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Terror 2.0 by Yemen | ||||
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Sourceअप्रियस्यापि पथ्यस्य परिणामः सुखावहः ।
वक्ता श्रोता च यत्रास्ति रमन्ते तत्र संपदः ॥- हितोपदेश, सुहृद्भेदA matured (well thought out) speech will bring out good results even when it is harsh (or unpleasant). Any place where there are people with clear mind to talk and open mind to listen will always prosper.
- Hitopadesha, Suhrudbheda
An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for accommodation to become more attractive than further combat.Isn't this what the Kashmir issue, too, has been for sixty-plus years? The cease-fire and the "line of control" in place has merely perpetuated the war, instead of ushering in a sense of peace.
Since the establishment of the United Nations and the enshrinement of great-power politics in its Security Council, however, wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease-fires and armistices have frequently been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting.
Caption at the source: Rains doesn't seem to deter these Chennaiites who are indulging in Deepavali shopping in T. Nagar, Chennai's famous marketplace. Photo: R. Shivaji Rao
