A refreshing look at Pakistan's dysfunction and its future

In a brilliant article,  George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace examines the relationship between Pakistan and the US and outlines a strategy moving forward.

He begins by saying that  " the United States .. needs to confront the more important question of Pakistan’s future. The United States has been a major player there for sixty years; if Pakistan is dangerously dysfunctional, Washington helped enable it to get this way. .The United States has frequently cited its interests in Pakistan: securing Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal; preventing war between it and India; counterterrorism; inducing Pakistan’s cooperation in stabilizing Afghanistan; and fostering development and democratization in what will soon be the world’s most populous Muslim-majority state. "

"For decades that posture has had the unintended but undeniable effect of empowering Pakistan’s grossly oversized and hyperactive military and intelligence services at the expense of the country’s civil society and progress toward effective governance. Washington’s collusion with the Pakistani security establishment has amounted to enablement—the indulgence and augmentation of a friend’s self-destructive outlook and actions. To stop doing harm, the United States would first have to give up the illusion that it can change the Pakistani military’s mindset, and stop offering money to do so. It would have to pause and then redesign a large aid program so hamstrung by anti-corruption and security measures that it antagonizes recipients and seems designed to fail. "


His conclusion: "there are two strategic shifts the United States could make to help Pakistanis. The most important and easiest is to stop making things worse—stop enabling Pakistan’s dysfunctional actors. The second is to diminish the U.S. footprint in Pakistan and its fingerprints on the civilian assistance that it offers, and instead pool efforts with Pakistanis and other state and multinational actors who share the goal of building a peaceful democracy..With good intentions, successive administrations and Congresses have colluded with the Pakistani army and intelligence services to maintain their oversized, dysfunctional roles in Pakistan and South Asia. There is no evidence that U.S. blandishments or threats will motivate this security establishment to change its mindset and provide space and resources for Pakistani civilians to create a national identity around internal reconciliation, justice, development, and democratization."


Ultimately it is for Pakistanis to save themselves.

On losing a loved one

Few times in our lives are more devastating than the death of a loved one. Losing a loved one, be it a brother or sister, father or mother, is always hard and emotionally devastating. But nothing compares to the utter desolation that is caused by the loss of a child. Nothing.

It is frequently said that the grief of bereaved parents is the most intense grief known. The grief caused by their child's death is not only painful but profoundly disorienting-children are not supposed to die. When a child dies, parents feel that a part of them has died, that a vital and core part of them has been ripped away. Bereaved parents indeed do feel that the death of their child is "the ultimate deprivation".

Recently a friend of five decades lost his brilliant son, while still in his prime, to a mindless, random crime on the streets of a city half a world away from him. While his friends rallied to his side, the fact is that no words could provide even a modicum of solace to the bereaved parents. In such times, the only comfort is the memories of the past..

Sometimes when such a loss occurs, but at a distance, it is paradoxically easier to bear its emotional trauma. I remember when a few weeks ago my aunt- who had been like a mother to me for almost four decades- died half a world away from me, the loss was immediately painful and overwhelming. But I was half a world away and could continue with the illusion that she was still around. I continued to hear her voice in my head and see her in my dreams. It was as if she was still there and that when I returned home it would be as it had always been. Time heals and so by the time I would return, perhaps the scabs would have covered the painful wound, the environment would have changed, her house would not be the same and everything would not remind one of her at every step.

But if one had been present at the bedside at the moment of death, it certainly would have been different. Every moment afterword would then have been a reminder, every voice, every scent would have conjured the loved one and the loss would have dug ever deeper into the soul. It is also why husbands rarely long outlive the demise of their wives. It has been said that widowers tend to express their loss as one of "dismemberment," as if they had lost something that kept them organized and whole. "Everything reminds me of her" as one recent widower wailed. It has been described as "being lost without a compass" usually due to the profound loneliness that follows, often leading to profound depression and then an early death.

It is this perhaps why most religions advise developing a remoteness and distance, as one grows older and prepares for death. For Mors certa — hora incerta, "Death is certain, only the hour is uncertain." As one becomes older the feelings of a lifetime pile up and any loss – and there will come these losses almost at regular intervals- would soon drain the emotional reservoir built up over a lifetime. Buddhism urges us to “make therefore an island for yourself."For death in Buddhism is not indeed the absolute end — but it does mean the breaking of all ties that bind us to our present existence, and therefore, the more detached we are from this world and its enticements, the more ready we shall be for a peaceful end.

The seduction of buying

We have always known that retailers, for better or for worse, are the masters of seduction and priming--brainwashing us to believe in perception rather than reality. That has been true of most products but it is difficult to think of this approach being applied to shopping for food. In this fascinating article, the author, Martin Lindstorm takes us through the tricks of perception used by one prominent market chain, Whole Foods, to entice its customers to its produce. But most chains use the same tricks with different degrees of success.

At the entrance of most stores you enter the realm of a freshly cut flowers. These are what advertisers call "symbolics"--unconscious suggestions. In this case, letting us know that what's before us is bursting with freshness. Fruit, vegetables and fresh flowers are all always near the entrance because  'It's supposed to make women feel healthy and wholesome — so if they buy enough of this stuff, then they won’t feel guilty about buying mountains of crisps and biscuits later, which of course is what their kids will actually eat.'

Flowers, as everyone knows, are among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth. Which is why fresh flowers are placed right up front--to "prime" us to think of freshness the moment we enter the store. Consider the opposite--what if we entered the store and were greeted with stacks of canned tuna and plastic flowers? Having been primed at the outset, we continue to carry that association, albeit subconsciously, with us as we shop.

The prices for the flowers, as for all the fresh fruits and vegetables, are scrawled in chalk on fragments of black slate--a tradition of outdoor European marketplaces. It's as if the farmer pulled up in front of Whole Foods just this morning, unloaded his produce, then hopped back in his flatbed truck to drive back upstate to his country farm. The dashed-off scrawl also suggests the price changes daily, just as it might at a roadside farm stand or local market. But in fact, most of the produce was flown in days ago, its price set at the Whole Foods corporate headquarters in Texas. Not only do the prices stay fixed, but what might look like chalk on the board is actually indelible; the signs have been mass-produced in a factory.

Ever notice that there's ice everywhere in this store? Why? Does hummus really need to be kept so cold? What about cucumber-and-yogurt dip? No and no. This ice is another symbolic. Similarly, for years now supermarkets have been sprinkling select vegetables with regular drops of water--a trend that began in Denmark. Why? Like ice displays, those sprinkled drops serve as a symbolic, albeit a bogus one, of freshness and purity. Ironically, that same dewy mist makes the vegetables rot more quickly than they would otherwise.

Speaking of fruit, you may think a banana is just a banana, but it's not. Dole and other banana growers have turned the creation of a banana into a science, in part to manipulate perceptions of freshness. In fact, they've issued a banana guide to greengrocers, illustrating the various color stages a banana can attain during its life cycle. Each color represents the sales potential for the banana in question. For example, sales records show that bananas with Pantone color 13-0858 (otherwise known as Vibrant Yellow) are less likely to sell than bananas with Pantone color 12-0752 (also called Buttercup), which is one grade warmer, visually, and seems to imply a riper, fresher fruit. Companies like Dole have analyzed the sales effects of all varieties of color and, as a result, plant their crops under conditions most ideal to creating the right 'color.'

And as for apples? Believe it or not, my research found that while it may look fresh, the average apple you see in the supermarket is actually 14 months old.

Supermarkets are awash with tricks to get us to spend more — giant trollies that beg to be filled. Three-for-two offers that lumber us with dozens of loo rolls. 'Destination goods' such as milk and eggs are always hidden right at the back.  It turns out that the gorgeous fresh-looking blood-red meat in the meat counter isn’t nearly as red and bloody as it looks. It’s just lit with red-tinted lights. Even the lettuce isn’t always as fresh and green as it looks — but appears so thanks to clever lighting. You need to notice even little things like putting their main door to the right, because people that walk counterclockwise through a store spend more---weird! Even the fact that people like music playing is a result of marketing research which shows that people buy  more in a soothing atmosphere thus created. Researchers at Leicester University even discovered that when supermarkets play French music, sales of French wines rise. When they pipe German folk music, shoppers opted for German wines.

And nothing is random. Big-name brands are all positioned in the middle of aisles, drawing shoppers past everything else on their way.  The most expensive of any range is invariably at eye level while generics, a fraction of the price, are tucked safely  down by your feet. Even the most expensive washing powder is cunningly placed in the eye line. The tricks are endless. Mirrors in shop windows slow shoppers down. Posher goods are displayed on the right (according to American research, most customers will subconsciously veer right at any opportunity, though no one seems to know why). Light purple coloring in a store is associated with luxury and encourages people to spend.  Blue has a calming effect and is often associated with trust.

Then there are those cardboard boxes with anywhere from eight to ten fresh cantaloupes packed inside each one. These boxes could have been unpacked easily by any one of Whole Foods' employees, but they're left that way on purpose. Why? For that rustic, aw-shucks touch. In other words, it's a symbolic to reinforce the idea of old-time simplicity. It's ingenious in its ability to evoke the image of Grapes of Wrath-era laborers piling box after box of fresh fruit into the store.

While Whole Foods may entice customers to buy more than they need or intend from a utility standpoint, they are engaging customers emotionally, creating desire and delivering a compelling customer experience. As so aptly described, they think about the shopping experience from the customers' perspective. After all customers buy with one of two primary mindsets. One is the pursuit of utility where the agenda is the best trade-off between convenience and price, a rather indifferent human experience. The other is emotional engagement where the reward is the experience itself. Companies like Whole Foods offer the latter to customers who voluntarily shop there. Too be sure, there is a seduction going on, but just as in love, it is pleasurable and enriching for many, and they like it. So much for perception versus reality !

The worlds rudest hand gestures - better than a tweet!

This does not require any explanations!

A taxi cuts you off in Rome. A Mumbai merchant spurns your best offer. A maitre d' snubs you in Beirut. At times like these, words can fail even the most seasoned polyglot. But now salvation is literally at hand, thanks to Rude Hand Gestures of the World, by Romana Lefevre, with photographs by Daniel Castro. If I'd had a copy of this in my days as a boy diplomat, my Foreign Service career would have come to an even more abrupt halt! Herewith a sampling, courtesy of the ever-brilliant Chronicle Books, of how to throw down with the locals, wherever you are: 

LE CAMEMBERT

Daniel Castro

FULL SCREEN

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Meaning: “Shut up”
Used in: France

This gesture mimes the closing of the mouth. Hold the fingers straight and then close them against the thumb.

The seven stages of fatherhood

We are all familiar with Shakespearean line about how "one man in his time plays many parts. His acts being seven ages. ( to those who have forgotten these lines that we all learned at school, I have attached them below!) I am begining to think of fatherhood in a similar vein with its seven stages too:

"Days of awe and wonder". When a father beholds his first child, he is struck speechless, awestruck to see such a tiny image of himself complete in all respects. Every day brings a new wonder- today he smiled, then he sneezed, he opened his eyes, he said his first word, he actually said  "da da". A sight of him or her erases all troubles of life and you could hours just gazing into his eyes and making him smile. These are the golden years for all dads.

"The all knowing one". As they grow older, they are convinced that their father knows everything and has the answer to any questions they may have. It is a conviction that they carry with a confidence that does your heart good. Your boss at work may think you are an idiot but come home and your child looks up to you with adoration in his eyes. The signature line of this period is " My daddy can do anything." What more can a man want?

"You dont know anything". But the onset of teen years turns this adoration upside down. Now you know nothing. Every little thing has to be explained you in detail and in an exasperated voice. Now dad this is how you work the computer. Or this is not what we do at the prom. You dont understand fashion and please please dont play those songs in public they are so so old. The signature line of these years is " Father? he's hopelessly old-fashioned."


"Who is this person". Off they go to college and the crysllais turns into a butterfly that you hoped for but could not belive. Is this the person who never studied till just before the exam day? How come she is working from daybreak to midnight? How has he invented this new cure for the latest disease? How has he blossomed forth only in a few years? Where did all this energy come from? The signature line for this period is well "Wow!"

"I never knew ye". Then they meet a partner and you never can understand their behaviour anymore. The cooing and billing that goes on and that from a person who winced when you hugged him in public. And god forbid if you actually kissed him. The concentration on family and finances turns your head. How come he never thought of all this so carefully when he was living at home. How come his champagne tastes have now turned to root beer? You sometimes have to ask "Who are these people?"

"Return of the all( almost) knowing one". The grand kids arrival turns the clock back. The telephone now rings constantly after years of silence. What do we do if he cries at night? Should we feed him the new feeds? Which school should he go to? It is like old times again except that this time you have both your child and soon enough his child asking you for your advice. The signature line of these years is, hopefully, "Before we decide, let's get dad's opinion."


"Child of your children". A little while later when you have grown even older, you now become the child in the household. It is the time when your children delight on lecturing you on all aspects of life from diet to excercise, from financial matters to being out without informing them. They coddle you and fuss over you and even as they berate you for all and sundry things, you are deluged with their concern all around and about you. It is as if all the love you ever gave them when they were young is being repaid a thousand time over. It is I confess a time that I have come to love.

With that life turns a full circle.

---------------------------------------------------------------

" And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

The workplace bully

 Every working adult has known one -- a boss who loves to throw his (or her) weight around, wanting 24 hour affirmation of his superiority, who delights in making subordinates squirm, whose moods radiate through the office, sending workers scurrying for cover, whose very voice causes stomach muscles to clench and pulses to quicken. I had one for four years and can testify to the tragedy such a boss brings to any organization. He leaves the organization dispirited, scouring for cover, without any incentive to innovate, and afraid to speak out. Dissatisfaction spreads rapidly, rivalries simmer, sycophants flourish. Normally self-confident professionals dissolve into quivering bundles of neuroses and in the end there is real decline in productivity. But it takes a while for his superiors to find this out. And in my case, they did finally threw him out but the damage was done.

Researchers have long been interested in the bullies of the playground, exploring what drives them and what effects they have on their victims. Only recently have investigators turned their attention to the bullies of the workplace. Around the country, psychologists who study the dynamics of groups and organizations are discovering why cruel bosses thrive, how employees end up covering for managers they despise and under what conditions workers are most likely to confront and expose a bullying boss.

Bullying bosses, studies find, differ in significant ways from the schoolyard bullies. In the schoolyard, particularly among elementary school boys, bullies tend to pick on smaller or weaker children, often to assert control in an uncertain social environment in which they feel vulnerable. But adult bullies in positions of power are already dominant, and they are just as likely to pick on a strong subordinate as a weak one, said Dr. Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash. And surprisingly women are at least as likely as men to be the aggressors, but they are also more likely to be targets.

A manager might use bullying to swat down a threatening subordinate or a manager might be looking for a scapegoat to carry the department, or the supervisor's, frustrations. But very often many managers bullied subordinates for the sheer pleasure of exercising power. These workplace tyrants spread misery, though from the outside it looks as if they are doing a fine job. It does not help matters, psychologists say, that people who enjoy abusing power frequently also revere it and are quick to offer that reverence to the even-more-powerful. Bullying bosses are often experts at ''managing up’’ and hence are very often effective in covering up their abusive workplace behavior.

Ambition, experts say, is the bully's most insidious deputy. It looks like if there's a strong leader in the group, then that person's behavior is contagious and hence threatening to the boss. And if that leader is nasty, others become bystanders and keep silent and ''this moral disengagement spreads like a germ.''

The most common form of resistance to a cruel manager remains the old-fashioned grousing session. Sharing the misery over lunch or a drink can makes everyone feel a little better and signal the first step in jointly responding to the abuse. Sociologists who study dissent within large organizations like factories and hospitals find that informal kvetching sessions may evolve into effective resistance when workers are united, well connected with others in the organization and trust the company's higher-ups to hear their case. More often, though, grousing simply feeds on itself, sometimes devolving into elaborate self-contained gatherings in which the central activity is bad-mouthing and mimicking the boss. It is those who are not part of a tight group, who feel truly desperate and in danger of losing their jobs, who appear most likely to speak up, he said. Most others learn to perform an elaborate dance, trying to preserve their status while being careful not to forfeit their sense of decency, all the while looking for an escape hatch.

Bully bosses come in a variety of styles, but each seeks the same goal: absolute control. They may spout the company line about teamwork and consensus building, but in practice, they're always looking out for numero uno. They're not after a win-win; they're out to win, period. In their view, everyone within the organization is either above or below them.

Paul Babiak, a New York industrial-organizational psychologist and co-author of "Snakes in Suits," advises against trying to "help" or befriend a bully; their aggressive behavior hides an inner need that is well beyond reason. "Studies indicate that bullies are actually inept people who are not talented, maybe have a rage against themselves that they express outward toward people they see as being better than they are. It's from a point of weakness that they express their violence toward others."Bullies never self-correct, and the reason is they hold everyone else responsible for their behavior. To change, you have to be willing to take responsibility for your own actions, and bullies do not. All of your reasonable, logical, compassionate attempts to get along with a bully will ultimately backfire.

While there are many strategies for dealing with workplace bullies and many a book has been written on the subject, the fact is that the only thing a bully respects is people who stand up to hime and who won't be bullied.

Fghting back

Some weeks ago I wrote a piece decoding the present day republicans. Many of my readers responded by asking me what should the democrats do in the face of this reality. My answer is five fold:

1. Continue to rally the country behind pass the Jobs bill. With each passing day, more and more details of the impact on the local and state level should be spelt out. Chris Mathews on Hardball has set an example - he lists all the unrepaired and dangerous bridges in each state the president goes to.

2. Accept that republicans will not pass part or total of the bill and use every part of executive power to bolster the jobs situation. Every week a cabinet member needs to take to the airwaves to indicate the cost of delay and its impact on the jobs situation.

3. Accept that the supercommittee will fail and the automatic cuts will ensue. But implementing the cuts will be in the hands of the executive agencies. They should even now begin to target republican areas so that the hurt is immediate and deep. The lobbyists will pick these vibes early and start pushing the concerned republicans to move.

4. File suits against all the state government republican attempts to curtail voting rights and take it to the supreme court. Let this be a fight all next year. Ask each senator/rep/governor whether he agrees with the attempt to limit voting rights.

5. Continue the ground roots effort of 2008 but quietly without fanfare.

Does democracy work? Comparing China and India

Economist Yasheng Huang compares China to India, and asks how China's authoritarian rule contributed to its astonishing economic growth -- leading to a big question: Is democracy actually holding India back? Huang's answer may surprise you.


MIT and Fudan University professor Yasheng Huang is an authority on how to get ahead in emerging economies. The China and India Labs he founded at MIT's Sloan School of Management specialize in helping local startups improve their strategies. His book Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (2008) chronicles three decades of economic reform in China and documents the critical role that private entrepreneurship played in the Communist nation’s “economic miracle.” Huang believes that China is moving away from Marxism (public ownership) but not Leninism (ideology of state control) -- and that strong social fundamentals are the key reason for its growth. Yet he believes that India's democratic institutions provide a long term growht model that is likely to rival that of China's.

The journalist and the spies- ISI and the future of Pakistan

In a revealing article, the author shows the depth of ISI involvement in the affairs of the state in Pakistand and their role in every aspect of its life. This is equivalent to KGB running the old USSR and is likely to meet a similar fate in time. Some excerts below:


"Since the founding of Pakistan, in 1947, one of the country’s central myths has been the indispensability of the Army. Along with its appendage the I.S.I., it has intervened regularly in domestic politics, rigging votes and overthrowing elected governments. Civilians have been viewed by the Army as a collective nuisance, easily undermined or ignored".


"Pakistan is one of the world’s poorest countries, but it has the eighth-largest army, which takes up nearly a quarter of the country’s federal budget. The Army’s oligarchs have appropriated a remarkable amount of the country’s wealth; they have substantial investments in the oil-and-gas industry and own shopping centers, farms, banks, and factories. Members of the Army are believed to traffic in narcotics, guns, and mercenaries. Officers live behind high walls, in manicured compounds of a luxury unimaginable to the average Pakistani. Army officers send their children to special schools and avail themselves of special hospitals. “The Pakistani Army is like a mafia,” Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent author who has written extensively about the Pakistani military, said. “The Army has its own interests, and it will eliminate any opposition to those interests, including civilian governments.”


But the most pernicious of the Army’s activities has been its long alliance with Islamist militants. Since the late seventies, the military and the I.S.I. have trained and directed thousands of militants to fight in Indian Kashmir—an area that Pakistan has claimed since independence—and in Afghanistan. For years, the I.S.I. has offered sanctuary to Taliban leaders, who have used Pakistan as a base for planning operations.


In recent years, as Pakistan has edged toward anarchy, the I.S.I. has grown bolder and more violent. This spring, a witness testified in federal court in Chicago that I.S.I. agents were deeply involved in the planning of the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008, which killed a hundred and sixty-three people. The witness, a Pakistani-American named David Headley, said that he had received espionage training from I.S.I. operatives, and that he had provided hours of video surveillance of the Mumbai target to the I.S.I. and a terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Taiba. Headley testified that he understood Lashkar to be operating “under the umbrella of the I.S.I.”



As for journalists, the most tragic part of it is the feeling of hopelessness that it has generated even among the bravest of them all:

“I used to be a brave journalist,” Sheikh told me one day as we rode in a car across the Punjabi plains. “But I will be frank with you. I don’t want to get killed like Saleem. I don’t want to suffer like Saleem did. So I’m not part of the war anymore. I am just writing stereotypical bullshit stories—and no one is angry.”

“I used to look for stories that would open people’s eyes,” Sheikh said. “Now I am just a stupid correspondent doing stupid stories. And I am happy. I am happy.” ♦

Want some Sikh cheese?

Ever independent and always the entreprenaurs, the sikhs have now captured a part of the Italian cheese industry.

Decoding the new republicans

I have been deeply puzzled by the nihilistic turn politics have taken in the US in the past few years. Leading this charge have been the new republicans. It has become evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. But what really lies behind this new face of the once proud party of Abraham Lincoln. Small parts of these answers are emerging slowly into the public domain. Now a former staff member of the Republican party has written  a blistering attack on the policy and the strategies of this now increasingly nihilistic party. 


John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

The Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. 

2. They worship at the altar of Mars.  While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

3. Pandering to fundamentalism is now a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets. Also around all of this is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science.

How do these belief systems- if you can call them that- work out in real life and in the republican strategies today.

Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. "A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner." A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media have now unbeknown to themselves also become deeply complicit in this phenomenon. A complicitness made explicitly clear in the Fox news channel and the slowly insidious takeover of Wall stree Journal and even the once proudly independent Washingtpost. And implicitly in the lack of political courage in the main stream media. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'" The media seem oblivious that one side - or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.

Indeed it almost seems that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.

The republicans have not stopped there and have started adopting tactics that  are even less savory. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise not only university students but the old, the poor and the infirm. Republicans may be among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy but domestically, they don't want those people voting.


Indeed if one looks at the record of the republicans in the past few years, one is struck by how closely their tactics resemble that of the communist party- the same willingness to undermine all organs of the state by declaring them anti people, the same use of threats and blackmail, the same solid block voting on issues following a party directive, capturing of voting booths and denying voters their right to vote but really ensuring that those who vote only vote one way, and the identical cloaking of blatant grab for power by pious pratings of people power or love of the constitution.


Underlying all this is also a fact that no Republican thinks that any Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Remember that the Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected. The disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, which many Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - while never unambiguously slapping down the myth is a modern version of racism. Then came the myth of the "other" or "who is Obama". Now the new myth being assiduously being peddled by the republicans is that "the president is out of his depth".


"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." (That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in 1954.) How far has the present day republican party fallen!

 Some liberal writers have opined that there are two different wings of the republican party- there is the   "business" wing of the GOP and then there is the religious right. And that after the primary elections, the "real republican party"will assert itself. But the fact is that there is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two wings of the party want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witch trials.

All democrats ignore this at their peril. Indeed all Americans too.

The typewriter lives on in India

Here is a lovely story about a rapidly disappearing era...

India's typewriter culture survives the age of computers in offices where bureaucracy demands typed forms and in rural areas where many homes don't have electricity.

By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times

September 1, 2011

Reporting from New Delhi— 

It's a stultifying afternoon outside the Delhi District Court as Arun Yadav slides a sheet of paper into his decades-old Remington and revs up his daily 30-word-a-minute tap dance.

Nearby, hundreds of other workers clatter away on manual typewriters amid a sea of broken chairs and wobbly tables as the occasional wildlife thumps on the leaky tin roof above.

"Sometimes the monkeys steal the affidavits," Yadav said. "That can be a real nuisance."

The factories that make the machines may be going silent, butIndia's typewriter culture remains defiantly alive, fighting on bravely against that omnipresent upstart, the computer. (In fact, if India had its own version of "Mad Men," with its perfumed typing pools and swaggering execs, it might not be set in the 1960s but the early 1990s, India's peak typewriter years, when 150,000 machines were sold annually.)

Credit for its lingering presence goes to India's infamous bureaucracy, as enamored as ever of outdated forms (often in triplicate) and useless procedures, documents piled 3 feet high and binders secured by pink string.

Other loyalists include the over-50 generation and, conversely, young people in rural areas who dream of a call-center job but can't yet afford a laptop. There are also certain advantages to a machine without a power cord in a country where 400 million people still lack electricity.

"Power failures help us," said Rajesh Palta of Delhi's Universal Typewriter shop, whose family fled Pakistan for India during the 1947 partition with their most precious possessions: four typewriters.

Perhaps it's telling that India decided only last year to remove typewriter production as a component of its wholesale price index measuring inflation.

Although bureaucrats in growing numbers embrace computers, the governments of several states, including those containing New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, still require manual typing tests. And that's music to the ears of typing institutes, second-hand typewriter dealers and repairmen.

"I don't know why the test hasn't changed," said Debolina Mitra, a manual instructor at Kolkata's George Telegraph Typing Institute. "It's bureaucrat logic."

India's lingering love affair with correction fluid and carbon paper befits a country that often seems caught in two centuries, where high-tech companies and an ambitious space program coexist with human-powered rickshaws and feudal village life.

Indian firm Godrej and Boyce, one of the world's last typewriter makers, released its first commercial model in 1955, reportedly inspired by then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who saw it as a "symbol of independent and industrialized India." Nehru reportedly received one of the first machines.

Over the next few decades, owning a manual typewriter was a major status symbol. "Small companies with a typewriter were really going somewhere," Palta said.

Demand during the 1960s and '70s was so high that customers waited up to six months for new machines, which cost nearly as much as a recent engineering graduate's yearly salary of about $175.

"The better customers got first dibs," said C.K. Chawla, head of New Delhi's Chawla Typewriters, which suffered a break-in during the early 1970s and then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's gold-plated machine — in for repairs — was stolen.

"Usually insurance companies take forever," said Chawla, whose typewriter repair business is still a going concern, even if he has been forced to diversify. "But with Gandhi's, they settled almost immediately."

Typing was all but compulsory for any woman who wanted a job, said Geeta Meshran, 53, who banged away for 22 years in the Mumbai government's typing pool. Efficiency wasn't always paramount there. "I often worked as slowly as possible, so I wouldn't have to retype the page," she said.

A reflection of the machine's glamour is captured in the 1970 film "Bombay Talkie," with one classicscene showing women in canary yellow bell bottoms dancing atop oversized typewriter keys and singing "typewriter, tip, tip, tip" in high-pitched tones. "Typewriter keys represent the keys of life," one character says. "And we human beings dance on them."

"Typewriters were a real symbol of Indian life. Just consider how many laws and birth certificates came from its keys," said Abhishek Jain, who at age 13 set a world record in 1991 typing 117 words a minute on a Godrej manual.

(This followed another 15-minutes-of-fame moment when a typist from Mumbai, then known as Bombay, secured a Guinness record in 1986 for typing continuously for 123 hours on a Godrej.)

But by the mid-1990s, the typewriter was on its way out in India. Godrej — which once advertised that its durable machine "makes a good secretary a great one" — lasted longer than competitors by increasing exports as foreign makers dropped out.

Many typists began to pick up computer skills as manual dealers diversified into selling fax and photocopy machines.

"Two years ago, when a customer said he got our name from Google, I asked him, 'What's a Google?'" said Palta, in a shop filled floor to ceiling with manual typewriters stored like shelved books. "But we have to move with the times, and I now use computers."

The decline accelerated when the 2008 global financial crisis hit, and in October 2009 Godrej switched its last production line over to refrigerators, an easy decision financially, company officials said, but emotionally difficult.

The conservative family-owned company ended the era without fanfare. Most media noticed only this year when Godrej happened to mention it had only a few remaining machines.

"If we'd realized the interest, we'd have made a big splash at the time," said Milind Dukle, the company's operations general manager.

Now Godrej has announced that it is selling off its last few hundred machines, sparking a string of obituaries mourning the loss of that satisfying "ting" at the end of each line.

Even so, some aficionados hope there are enough spare parts and ribbons floating around to keep Indian typewriters tip-tip-tipping for years, hardly the first time they've defied expectations. Dukle recalls that at the time he joined Godrej, people already were saying the machines had only a few years left. "That was two decades ago," he said.

"The computer is lifeless, but there's a sheer joy in manual typing," said Jain, the record-holder. "It's a kind of music.

"Bicycles survived after cars. Why not typewriters? Let there be free choice, I say."

Pakistan - a state adrift

A long but perceptive piece from Al Jazeera worth a read.

"The last 10 years have been something less than kind to Pakistan. Since it was famously told that it either stood with the United States in its "War on Terror" or faced being bombed "back to the Stone Age" in 2001, it has lost 35,000 citizens to "terror"-related attacks and violence, with 3,500 of those being security forces and military personnel who were either targeted by militant groups or were killed during military operations. It has endured countless attacks against both civilian targets and state personnel and infrastructure. It has seen the killing of arguably the country's most nationally popular leader in a suicide-bombing-and-shooting attack at a political rally, , the assassinations of a provincial governor and a federal minister for opposing a controversial blasphemy law, , an expanded US drone strike campaign since 2009 (killing an estimated at least 2,309 people, of whom at least 392 were civilians, and the killing of the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, on the doorstep of the country's military academy in a covert strike by US special forces.


Economically, its Gross Domestic Product has grown by 22.5 per cent (in real terms) to $174.8m, with an accompanying rise in consumer inflation from 3.7 per cent to 13.7 per cent for the country's now 174 million citizens. It has had two major International Monetary Fund bailouts, seen annual economic growth of around seven per cent give way to economic stagnation due to an over-dependence on credit and foreign direct investment in the growth bubble, and a massive influx of US military and civilian aid, culminating in the Kerry Lugar Bill, under which Pakistan is to receive $7.5bn over five years in civilian-only aid.

Politically, the country has seen two parliamentary elections on either side of seven years of military rule, an unprecedented liberation of media freedoms, a popular mass movement for the reinstatement of its Supreme Court Chief Justice and the overthrow of said military ruler, the killing of the largest national party's leader and the subsequent ascendance of her widely unpopular husband to the country's presidency,  a continuing movement for secession in the country's largest province (by area) and bitter political conflict, sometimes resulting in bouts of violence claiming hundreds of lives, as most recently seen in Karachi.

And all of this is before one gets to the natural disasters: two major earthquakes, a tropical cyclone and major flooding which, put together, killed more than 75,000 people (96 per cent of those in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake) and affected more than 20 million (the vast majority after the devastating floods in 2010).

The country lurches, then, from crisis to catastrophe and back again, stopping briefly at moments of opportunity.

The Pakistani state, and society at large, meanwhile "could not really make up their mind about how they should deal with all kinds of militant Islamic groups, including the Taliban", he continues. The result has been a country that is "socially and psychologically fractured", where its citizens feel a sense of "anxiety and insecurity" at the lack of clear answers regarding their lives. "If you socially analyse this issue, you run deep into a cultural, intellectual and social crisis and the crisis borders on duplicity and a total lack of integrity: you don't want to say it is your war, although it is. And you don't want to say that you are an American ally, but you are," rails Raees. "I think that Pakistan has this mythical idea that when [the US withdraws], life will return to status quo. It's not going to happen. .. Pakistan may have a particularly difficult time with the Afghan Taliban after the withdrawal, given that most of its commanders are now young men who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan. "These are kids who have become mid-level commanders who hate Pakistan and hate the ISI."

Ultimately, Pakistan's problems remain more deep-rooted than simply those of circumstance – or, in this case, a particular circumstance, which killed more than 3,000 people in cities on the other side of the globe. With space of political discourse ever narrowing, the challenges Pakistan faces are both existential and pragmatic: it needs to answer questions of identity whilst simultaneously paying its bills, feeding 174 million citizens and, in a both real and metaphorical sense, holding itself together.

A foreign policy that appears to be based on running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, however, indicates that when it comes to the international community, and particularly its immediate neighbours, it will likely continue to muddle through on the knife edge of stability.

Or, put in a local idiom: Pakistan is the dhobi ka kutta: na ghar ka, na ghat ka. It is the washerman's dog, belonging neither inside his home nor in his workplace. It sits, a state at war with both itself and silently with those around it, licking its wounds."