In the face of lies..

I have always been curious about how the press would respond to outright lies uttered by politicians. The normal approach has been for them to say " we only report, we dont judge" or to get a quote from the opposition to provide equal access to lies or truth. But is that enough and should that be the really low bar we should accept from journalists who loudly proclaim that they are after the truth and indeed that they are the last defenders of democracy?

I realize it is difficult for mere journalists to investigate and write the facts behind every story they file but when one person or party makes it a consistent policy and brazenly announces it as their strategy?

Greg mitchell tries to deal with it in his blogpost:  " so now it’s “game on.” now more lie and let live. The republicans more or less announced, then displayed, yesterday that they will officially not be bound to facts or even the attempt to stay in the same area code. They won’t give a damn what the media’s first line of defense—those much-heralded “fact check” sites—have to say. So now: will reporters and editors correct lies right in their news stories as they go along and not simply leave it to the (defanged) fact-check projects?"

Yesterday it was reported that Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said at breakfast meeting at the gop convention, “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” 

For the first time, the new york times quickly posted an editorial chronicling the untruths of the gop ads. The former chief new york times editor bill keller noted at his blog that the gop was now going well beyond the usual campaign “distortion” and “oppo jiu-jitsu,” asking: “but why stop there? Why not go whole hog and just make stuff up?”

 Charles p. Pierce, at his esquire blog expressed the most apt outrage in reviewing the entire gop convention, calling the whole evening one big “demonstrable lie.” he closes with just one eloquent word: “liars.”  “and there was only one real story", he says, " for actual journalists to tell at the end of it. The republicans simply don’t care. They don’t care that they lie. They don’t care that their lies are obvious. ...they don’t care that their history is a lie and that, by spreading it, they devalue the actual history of the country, which is something that belongs to us….they don’t care that they lie so obviously that they always get caught, like they did with the evening’s entire theme..the republicans will just tell the lie again. And again. And once more, until people get tired of telling the truth in response.”

This latter point, of course, is key: will the media get tired? It was Daniel Moynihan who said that “you’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.” But suppose there arose on the political scene a practical caucus for the opposite view. We are entitled to our own facts, and we will show you what we think of your attempt to “check” us. If that happened, would the press know what to do? And as one journalist asks plaintively "ok, entire news media called romney’s welfare attack a lie. Campaign still pushing it. Now what?"

“All of this creates a huge problem for the nonpartisan, less ideological core of the fourth estate,” Scherer of Time magazine writes about himself and his peers. “we journalists, after all, are supposed to be champions of facts, accuracy and truth. But audiences have left nonpartisan outlets for the comfort of organizations, like fox news and the new york times editorial page, that focus on one side of the outrage story.”

But Alec Macgillis of the New Republic has a simpler answer  “ use whatever platform you have, speak up about it. If they keep using it, you keep speaking! "

The political press needs to do its job when it comes to the basic task of calling out blatant, repeated dishonesty on the campaign trail. Journalists should be speak confidently into the microphone and declare things “completely false” when their own judgment tells them so. That isn’t a moment you can outsource to fact-checkers. It’s a “which side are you on?” thing: the people who think “you’re not entitled to your own facts,” or those who say: wait a minute, maybe you are? That should be the basic job of a journalist. 

They need to  look into whether someone was telling the truth, if they find that they weren’t, they should say so and repeatedly.

The real issue is “will they?”

Inside The Mind Of A Republican Delegate

In my blogs in the past I have attempted to decipher the underlying beliefs and fears of the Republicans of today. By necessity that has meant examining the writings of various commentators on the subject.Now comes an interesting attempt to do the same thing but now by a conservative columnist- David Frum- yes the same David Frum who was among the most eloquent defenders of Fareed Zakaria. So I give it more than usual credence. Here is what he says may be in the mind of a republican delegate:

"So now I'm reading all this criticism of us for being too white. That's nerve. This convention is no whiter than the conventions that nominated the libs' precious Franklin Roosevelt - or John F. Kennedy for that matter. And we have a damn sight more women.

Anyway, when did it become a crime to be white? Who built this country? Not people from Kenya, I can tell you that.

The polls tell me that something like 100% of black Americans will vote for Barack Obama. Are they bigots because they rally to their guy? So why are we supposed to be bigots because maybe 60% of us rally to our guy?

Like all white Americans, I'm a mutt: a little English, a little Irish, a little German. Probably got some Cherokee up there too, but you don't hear me making a big whoop out of it for an affirmative action board, unlike some Democrats I can mention. My wife's half-Italian. My son's married to a Chinese girl, and my grandkids will be half Chinese. Doesn't bother me. I just want us all to be Americans.

But let's face it: this president has no idea what it means to be American, and I don't care whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya or Indonesia or Uzbeky-beky-beky-stan. To be an American means to work for everything you get. When's he ever worked for anything? It was all handed to him! And now he wants to hand my work over to somebody else.

This whole thing about us not being "diverse" enough - can we cut the crap on that? You suddenly load up the country with millions of newcomers, put them on food stamps and unemployment insurance and Medicaid and what all, put them on the voting rolls without any ID - invite them to help themselves to everything that was earned before they showed up - and what do you expect the original Americans to do?

You think we're not diverse? This is what diversity looks like: the newcomers bunching up in one party, the old stock inhabitations bunching up in the other. It's the same in Britain and in France and in Germany, and just about everywhere. You don't like it? Maybe you should have thought of that before you invited half of Mexico to move here.

Nothing against Mexican people! Or black people! Or any kind of people! So long as they pull their weight. Maybe instead of asking us why all these so-called diverse people are not Republicans, maybe you should ask them why they don't support the party for the people who do the work and pay the bills. Maybe it's their problem, not ours, that they identify with a president who is tearing down everything I grew up with.

Whoever you blame, I don't see why I should change my beliefs just because somebody with a different color skin doesn't like them. I don't like Barack Obama's beliefs, but he won't change them on my account. Why is it that the guy with the white skin has to change his mind, not the guy with the other kind of skin? Or why can't we just respect the fact that some of us have one set of beliefs - others have different beliefs - and let us all compete on voting day and may the best team win? Why do you liberals always have to be dragging race into it? Makes me think that it's you guys, who are always blaming just one race for everything that's wrong with America, who are the real racists.

What you want is a country where everybody looks different, and everybody thinks the same. That's what you call diversity. No thanks. You work hard, you pay your way, you quit asking for handouts, and you're American enough for me - and you'll be up there on the podium with Bobby Jindal, Allen West, Herman Cain, and Nikki Haley as a leader of the one party in this country that isn't hung up on race."

From tipping to corruption

 Americans of strong democratic fiber have been railing against tipping ever since the late 19th Century, when the practice drifted over from Europe, borne by wealthy Americans who had traveled to the continent after the Civil War and came back eager to share their new civilized manners with the poor relations at home.As the decades have passed, tipping has only become more ingrained in American habits and business models, which makes it precisely the sort of thing that is most difficult to change. But that doesn’t keep the democratic gag reflex from kicking in on occasion. 

"Tipping is an aristocratic conceit — “There you go, my good man, buy your starving family a loaf” — best left to an aristocratic age. The practicing democrat would rather be told what he owes right up front. Offensively rich people may delight in peeling off hundred-dollar bills and tossing them out to groveling servants. But no sane, well-adjusted human being cares to sit around and evaluate the performance of some beleaguered coffee vendor." - Michael Lewis

In any event, this month, a new study describes another dimension of the problem with tipping: according to a paper in Social Psychology and Personality Science, societies in which you see lots of tipping are also societies where you see lots of … corruption and bribery.

The authors, 

Magnus Thor Torfason, 

Francis J. Flynn, 

and Daniella Kupor,

investigated the link between tipping, an altruistic act, and bribery, an immoral act. They "found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita gross domestic product, income inequality, and other factors. Countries that had higher rates of tipping behavior tended to have higher rates of corruption. We suggest that this surprising association may be accounted for by temporal focus—people may tip and bribe others in order to receive special services in the future. Indeed, in a pair of follow-up survey studies, we find evidence that the link between tipping and bribery can be partly accounted for by prospective orientation."

The data here is new. But the thesis that there is a relationship between gratuities and graft is not as counter-intuitive, or at least as novel, as the researchers let on. William R. Scott's Book: Itching Palm, A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America, written in 1916, made a powerful case against tipping:

-On the economic side, tipping is wrong because it is payment for no service, or double payment for one service; thereby causing the exchange of wealth without a mutual gain.

- Tipping is ethically wrong because one person accepts payment for a service not rendered, or for a service which the employer already has paid to have performed. And because gratuities destroy self-respect.

- Employees defend tipping upon the ground that it compensates them for extra services not covered in their wages. An examination of individual instances shows this contention to be false in a vast majority of the number examined.

- Employers defend the custom on the ground that the public insists upon giving gratuities and they must face competition based upon that condition. But it is shown that employers openly profit by the custom and secretly encourage it.

- Flunkyism is rampant in the American democracy and this aristocratic influence is undermining republican ideals and institutions.The hold which tipping has upon the public is due to unscrupulous appeals to generosity, pride and fear of violating conventional social usage.

- Tipping nowadays is of precisely the same morality as paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates was in Jefferson's day, which the American conscience finally abolished.

Finally,as Scottt says

"If I must build my pride upon another man's humility,
I will not be proud;
If I must build my strength upon another man's weakness,
I will not be strong;
If I must build my success upon another man's failure,
I will not succeed!"

Beware the reviews

In recent years, tired of Madison Avenue hard selling tactics, people have been searching for alternate avenues to asses products and services, For some time they put their faith in Consumer Review magazine till so many sprouted that it was clear that many of them were really marketting company ploys. So they shifted to peer review by ordinary people- Craigs List, Angies List became all the the thing. Thus slowly reviews by ordinary people became an essential mechanism for selling almost anything online; they are now used for resorts, dermatologists, neighborhood restaurants, high-fashion boutiques, churches, parks, astrologers and healers — not to mention products like garbage pails, tweezers, spa slippers and cases for tablet computers. In many situations, these reviews are supplanting the marketing department, the press agent, advertisements, word of mouth and the professional critique. 

Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people. But are they?

Mr. Biu Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago,  estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service. The Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines stating that all online endorsements need to make clear when there is a financial relationship, but enforcement has been minimal.

But not just any kind of review will do. They have to be somewhere between enthusiastic and ecstatic. “The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said , whose 2008 research showed that 60 percent of the millions of product reviews on Amazon are five stars and an additional 20 percent are four stars. “But almost no one wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created.”

Recognizing the opportunity, in the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com, to extend that to selling books. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.

The tale of GettingBookReviews.com, which commissioned 4,531 reviews in its brief existence, is a story of a vast but hidden corner of the Internet, where Potemkin villages bursting with ardor arise overnight. At the same time, it shows how the book world is being transformed by the surging popularity of electronic self-publishing. For decades a largely stagnant industry controlled from New York, book publishing is fragmenting and changing at high speed. Twenty percent of Amazon’s top-selling e-books are self-published. But they do not get to the top without adulation, lots and lots of it.

Traditional journalism jobs may be dwindling, but the Internet offers many new possibilities for writers. It has been a boom in what used to be called vanity publishers, which can efficiently produce physical copies that look just as good as anything from the traditional New York houses. But an even bigger factor is the explosion in electronic publishing. It used to take the same time to produce a book that it does to produce a baby. Now it takes about as long as boiling an egg. In 2006, before Amazon supercharged electronic publishing with the Kindle, 51,237 self-published titles appeared as physical books, according to the data company Bowker. Last year, Bowker estimates that more than 300,000 self-published titles were issued in either print or digital form.

Mr. Rutherford’s insight was that reviews had lost their traditional function. They were no longer there to evaluate the book or even to describe it but simply to vouch for its credibility, the way doctors put their diplomas on examination room walls. A reader hears about a book because an author is promoting it, and then checks it out on Amazon. The reader sees favorable reviews and is reassured that he is not wasting his time. But in essence, they were blurbs, the little puffs on the backs of books in the old days, when all books were physical objects and sold in stores. No one took blurbs very seriously, but books looked naked without them.  Also in theory, at least, good reviews are proof that a writer is finding his or her way, establishing an audience and has something worthwhile to say. 

So if you relied on book reviews to guide you to the latest new writer, be warned, that five star review may just be a review that has been paid for by the author. And who are these reviewers- you would be surprised to learn that Bill Clinton is one of them!

And what of the future? The theory is that in the long term, the (real) bad reviews will then drive out the (fake) good reviews. And then you can really believe the reviews that you read.

But this seems to underestimate the powerful motivations that writers have to rack up good reviews — and the ways they have to manipulate them until a better system comes along.

The origin of their discontent

Here is a brilliant- though overlong- article seeking to unravel the racial undertones in the US and what an Obama presidency has meant to the entire populace - black and white. I have presented some excerpts from Teh-Nehisi Coates article that struck a particular cord with me...but the article is worth a read.

"Obama has pitched his presidency as a monument to moderation. He peppers his speeches with nods to ideas originally held by conservatives. He routinely cites Ronald Reagan. He effusively praises the enduring wisdom of the American people, and believes that the height of insight lies in the town square. Despite his sloganeering for change and progress, Obama is a conservative revolutionary, and nowhere is his conservative character revealed more than in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity—race."

"Part of that conservatism about race has been reflected in his reticence: for most of his term in office, Obama has declined to talk about the ways in which race complicates the American present and, in particular, his own presidency. The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear... This irony is rooted in the greater ironies of the country he leads."

"For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government. In warring against that paradox, African Americans have historically been restricted to the realm of protest and agitation."

.

"By virtue of his background—the son of a black man and a white woman, someone who grew up in multiethnic communities around the world—Obama has enjoyed a distinctive vantage point on race relations in America. Beyond that, he has displayed enviable dexterity at navigating between black and white America, and at finding a language that speaks to a critical mass in both communities. He emerged into national view at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, with a speech heralding a nation uncolored by old prejudices and shameful history. There was no talk of the effects of racism. Instead Obama stressed the power of parenting, and condemned those who would say that a black child carrying a book was “acting white.” He cast himself as the child of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas and asserted, “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” When, as a senator, he was asked if the response to Hurricane Katrina evidenced racism, Obama responded by calling the “ineptitude” of the response “color-blind.”

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye. Hence the old admonishments to be “twice as good.” Hence the need for a special “talk” administered to black boys about how to be extra careful when relating to the police. And hence Barack Obama’s insisting that there was no racial component to Katrina’s effects; that name-calling among children somehow has the same import as one of the oldest guiding principles of American policy—white supremacy. The election of an African American to our highest political office was alleged to demonstrate a triumph of integration. But that acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. And even then, full acceptance is still withheld. The larger effects of this withholding constrict Obama’s presidential potential in areas affected tangentially—or seemingly not at all—by race. Meanwhile, across the country, the community in which Obama is rooted sees this fraudulent equality, and quietly seethes.

“The thing is, a black man can’t be president in America, given the racial aversion and history that’s still out there,” Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Obama, told the journalist Gwen Ifill after the 2008 election. “However, an extraordinary, gifted, and talented young man who happens to be black can be president.” Belcher’s formulation grants the power of anti-black racism, and proposes to defeat it by not acknowledging it. His is the perfect statement of the Obama era, a time marked by a revolution that must never announce itself, by a democracy that must never acknowledge the weight of race, even while being shaped by it. Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president

 "Whatever Obama’s other triumphs, arguably his greatest has been an expansion of the black imagination to encompass this: the idea that a man can be culturally black and many other things also—biracial, Ivy League, intellectual, cosmopolitan, temperamentally conservative, presidential."

It is often said that Obama’s presidency has given black parents the right to tell their kids with a straight face that they can do anything. This is a function not only of Obama’s election to the White House but of the way his presidency broadcasts an easy, almost mystic, blackness to the world. The Obama family represents our ideal imagining of ourselves—an ideal we so rarely see on any kind of national stage.

"The idea that blacks should hold no place of consequence in the American political future has affected every sector of American society, transforming whiteness itself into a monopoly on American possibilities. White people like Byrd and Buckley were raised in a time when, by law, they were assured of never having to compete with black people for the best of anything. Blacks used in­ferior public pools and inferior washrooms, attended inferior schools. The nicest restaurants turned them away. In large swaths of the country, blacks paid taxes but could neither attend the best universities nor exercise the right to vote. The best jobs, the richest neighborhoods, were giant set-asides for whites—universal affirmative action, with no pretense of restitution. Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation: these bonded white people into a broad aristocracy united by the salient fact of unblackness. 

 That a country that once took whiteness as the foundation of citizenship would elect a black president is a victory. But to view this victory as racism’s defeat is to forget the precise terms on which it was secured, and to ignore the quaking ground beneath Obama’s feet. After Obama won, the longed-for post-­racial moment did not arrive; on the contrary, racism intensified. At rallies for the nascent Tea Party, people held signs saying things like Obama Plans White Slavery. Steve King, an Iowa congressman and Tea Party favorite, complained that Obama “favors the black person.” While Beck and Limbaugh have chosen direct racial assault, others choose simply to deny that a black president actually exists. One in four Americans (and more than half of all Republicans) believe Obama was not born in this country, and thus is an illegitimate president. More than a dozen state legislatures have introduced “birther bills” demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship as a condition for putting him on the 2012 ballot. Eighteen percent of Republicans believe Obama to be a Muslim. The goal of all this is to delegitimize Obama’s presidency. If Obama is not truly American, then America has still never had a black president. White resentment has not cooled as the Obama presidency has proceeded.

What we are now witnessing is not some new and complicated expression of white racism—rather, it’s the dying embers of the same old racism that once rendered the best pickings of America the exclusive province of unblackness. 

And yet, since taking office, Obama has virtually ignored race. Race is not simply a portion of the Obama story. It is the lens through which many Americans view all his politics. In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.

"And yet this is the uncertain foundation of Obama’s historic victory—a victory that I, and my community, hold in the highest esteem. Who would truly deny the possibility of a black presidency in all its power and symbolism? Who would rob that little black boy of the right to feel himself affirmed by touching the kinky black hair of his president?"

I am from Mars....

The last few days in the US have been so bizarre that I often wondered whether I was on a different planet. No I am not talking about the brilliant scientific achievement of landing a robot on Mars, rather I am talking about the controversy regarding rape in the US political discourse. Yes , rape.

The headlines and the chatteriti have done nothing else but talk about rape the last few days. In the Republican view, there are all varieties of rape - from legimitate rape, forcible rape to statutory rape. A candidate for the Senate no less talks about how a woman can not get pregnant because of rape.

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Tod Akin, the Republican candidate for the senate from Missouri,  said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

And what pray is “illegitimate rape”? Akin offered some ideas when he co-sponsored a bill that tried to change language about federal funding for abortions for victims of “rape” to cover only “forcible rape.” 

But his biological nonsense expands the question of what even that means. What is his picture of the sort of rape scenario that would cause the female body to “shut that whole thing down,” absent divine intervention? Does he think that all rapes unfold like abduction scenes in silent movies, with someone thrown over the shoulder, kicking and screaming, and that the violence somehow causes the machinery to go offline, or activates some hormonal force field? What about rape at gunpoint, when a woman’s best option for staying alive might be staying very still, and her best option for staying sane to be as detached as possible? Or does Akin think that doing what one could to survive would delegitimize the rape—or that a legitimate victim is one who sees rape as a fate worse than death? Is it fear that shuts that whole thing down, or disgust? Fear and sex and pregnancy are not strangers. What about someone who is twelve years old, or mentally incapacitated, or unconscious? The problem here is not just whether Akin thinks conception during rape is possible, but what he thinks rape is.

Of course, he is citing scientific evidence to back his statement -Dr. Jack C. Willke, the father of the antiabortion movement and a physician and former president of the National Right to Life Committee. He  is the oft-cited source of the theory that rape-related pregnancies are “rare.” The theory is sometimes used by antiabortion advocates to argue that abortion laws should not contain exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. Willke believes that trauma caused by violent rape causes a woman’s reproductive system to shut down.

And what are the facts: According to a 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. The journal put the national rape-related pregnancy rate at 5% among victims age 12 to 45.

The tragedy is that Akin sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology!

And the fact is, as Obama put it, " rape is rape".

The new recipe for living long

Khushwant Singh has always had a contrarian view of things throughout his life which both provokes and enrages his admirers. Here is the latest from his collection on how to live long on a single malt whisky, exercise or massage twice a day, lean diet, be generous and keep a clean bowel. And most important select your parents with care!

 I kid you not. But he must know something - after all he is 98 years old and still going strong.

Rookhi Sookhy Khai kay ......Khushwant Singh @ 98

 

Coming on to 98 and still earning more than I did in my younger days, people ask me how I manage to do it. They regard me as an expert on longevity. I have pronounced on the subject before; I will repeat it with suitable amendments based on my experience in the past two years.*

Earlier I had written that longevity is in one’s genes: children of long-living parents are likely to live longer than those born to short-lived parents. This did not happen in my own family. My parents who died at 90 and 94 had five children, four sons and a daughter.

The first to go was the youngest of the siblings. Next went my sister who was the fourth. My elder brother who was three years older than me went a couple of years ago. Two of us remain; I, who will soon be 98, and my younger brother, a retired Brigadier three years younger than me and in much better health. He looks after our ancestral property.

Nevertheless, I still believe gene is the most important factor in determining one’s life-span. More important than analysing longevity is to cope with old age and make terms with it.

As we grow older, we are less able to exercise our limbs. We have to devise ways to keep them active. Right into my mid-eighties, I played tennis every morning, did rounds of Lodhi gardens in winter and swam for an hour in summer. I am unable to do this anymore. The best way to overcome this handicap is regular massages. I have tried different kinds and was disappointed with the oil drip and smearing of oil on the body. A good massage needs powerful hands going all over one’s body from the skull to the toes. I have this done at least once a day or at times twice a day.

I am convinced that this has kept me going for so long. Equally important is the need to cut down drastically one’s intake of food and drink. I start my mornings with guava juice. It is tastier and more health-giving than orange or any other fruit juice. My breakfast is one scrambled egg on toast. My lunch is usually patli kichri with dahi or a vegetable. I skip afternoon tea. In the evening, I take a peg of single malt whisky. It gives me joy and exhilaration.

Before I eat supper, I say to myself “Do not eat too much.” I also believe that a meal should have just one kind of vegetable or meat followed by a pinch of chooran. It is best to eat alone and in silence. Talking while eating does not do justice to the food and you swallow a lot of it. For me no more Punjabi or Mughlai food. I find South India idli, sambhar and grated coconut easier to digest and healthier.

Never allow yourself to be constipated. The stomach is a storehouse of all kinds of ailments. Our sedentary life tends to make us constipated. Keep your bowels clean however you can: by laxatives, enemas, glycerin suppositories, whatever. Bapu Gandhi fully understood the need to keep bowels clean. Besides, taking an enema every day, he gave enemas to his women admirers.

Impose strict discipline on your daily routine. If necessary, use a stop-watch. I have breakfast exactly at 6.30 am lunch at noon, drink at 7 pm, supper at 8. Try to develop peace of mind. For this you must have a healthy bank account. Shortage of money can be very demoralising. It does not have to be in crores, but enough for your future needs and possibility of falling ill. Never lose your temper, it takes a heavy toll and jangles one’s nerves. Never tell a lie. Always keep your national motto in mind: Satyamev Jayate - only truth triumphs.

Give generously. Remember you can’t take it with you. You may give to your children, servants or charity. You will feel better. There is joy in giving. Drive out envy of those who have done better than you in life. A Punjabi verse sums up:Rookhi Sookhy Khai kay Thanda Paani Pee Na Veykh paraayee chonparian na Tarssain jee (Eat dry bread and drink cold water Pay no heed or envy those who smear their chapattis with ghee) Do not conform to the tradition of old people spending time in prayer and long hours in places of worship. That amounts to conceding defeat. Instead take up a hobby like gardening, growing bonsai, helping children of your neighborhood with their homework.

A practice which I have found very effective is to fix my gaze on the flame of candle, empty my mind of everything, but in my mind repeat Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti. It does work. I am at peace with the world. We can’t all be Fauja Singh who at 100 run a marathon race but we can equal him in longevity and creativity. I wish all my readers long, healthy lives full of happiness.

Khushwant Singh

Defending Zakaria ( contd)

Yesterday, the Washington Post retracted its story accusing Fareed Zakaria of scalping quoted material from a book by Clyde Prestowitz.

The quoted material was in fact properly attributed in all editions of Fareed's book "The Post-American World". A fact now acknowledged by the accuser,  Clyde Prestowitz  who had brought the accusation to the Washington Post originally.

He has now  issued his own apology. 

Here is Prestowitz's statement in full:

"When Fareed Zakaria’s Post American World first appeared in 2008, I found that it contained a quotation from my 2005 book, Three Billion New Capitalists. There was no end note number next to the quote. Thinking it may have been an oversight, I sent a note to Mr. Zakaria suggesting the addition of an end note. I received no response.

Recently I suggested that Mr .Zakaria may have neglected properly to attribute the quote. However, since carefully reviewing several editions of his book, I have discovered that in an odd juxtaposition, reference to my book is made at the conclusion of an end note to one of Tom Friedman’s books. I had overlooked this reference earlier because the note was attached to Tom’s book title.

While I believe that the current standards and format for attribution have become confusingly sketchy and misleading, the error was mine and I offer sincere apologies for the confusion, misunderstanding, and hurt that my suggestions and inaccurate reading caused."

Defending Zakaria (contd)

In a recent blog I wrote about the controversy created by an article in the Washington Post about the alleged plagiarisms by Fareed Zakaria. Today the Washington Post issued this apology, posted at the top of Farhi's article:

"This article incorrectly states that in his 2008 book, “The Post-American World,” Fareed Zakaria failed to cite the source of a quotation taken from another book. In fact, Zakaria did credit the other work, by Clyde V. Prestowitz. Endnotes crediting Prestowitz were contained in hardcover and paperback editions of Zakaria’s book. The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article. We regret the error and apologize to Fareed Zakaria."

What the Post apology does not mention is that while the article damaging Zakaria's reputation was published on the front page for two days, the one paragraph apology is snuck in on page 2 of the paper among the ads and mastheads! It also does not say whether the journalist Farhi who wrote the false article still has a job at the Post or the editor who did not do the basic job of checking the facts in the story before clearing it. So much for journalistic integrity!

This measly apology does not do much to repair the damage done to Zakaria's reputation or indeed to Washington Post's own reputation. Of all the professions, the one that resists any accountability has been journalism. It is only rarely that they fire journalists who have levied false accusations based on demonstrably false data- the only one I recall is the New York Times firing two journalists - one who concocted the Iraq war story and the other who wrote about drug users. It is time that the readers demand a higher level of integrity from this profession as well because clearly self policing does not work.

Living with and understanding procrastinators

Every family has its procrastinators and it is important for other members of the family to understand the mindset of the procrastinators. There is a certain logic to their view of things and how they need to be done. Paradoxically often they are people who not only get a lot done but have a reputation for getting a lot done. They don't have neat desks or even neat desktops on their laptops. They spend a lot of time playing catch-up. But they are likely to be creative and on the whole amiable. After all, if you tend to keep people waiting, it makes them crabby; it doesn't pay to make things worse by being crabby yourself.

The truth is that most procrastinators are structured procrastinators. This means that although they may be putting off something deemed important, their way of not doing the important thing is to do something else. Like reading instead of completing their expense report before it's due. Or rifling through old recipes rather than going ahead with the cooking. Or playing video games rather than working on their work resumes. 

It is true that such people often feel bad about being procrastinators. This emerges in their constant defensiveness about why they procrastinate and thus annoy others. For starters, they need to be honest. They need to admit that they are a procrastinator, and also admit that it is a flaw. Maybe someday you will no longer be a procrastinator. After you lose 20 pounds, get in shape, polish up your high-school French, and write that novel, you may get around to pursuing some self-help regimen that will eliminate this flaw from your personality. But for now, don't compound the flaw with denial. If you admit to being a procrastinator, others will probably try hard to find something nice to say about you.

 Dr. Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University, who is writing a book on the " art of procrastination" has some helpful advise:

"First, don't listen to most of the advice offered to procrastinators by people who don't have this particular flaw." For example: "Keep your commitments to a minimum, so you won't be distracted." This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being. If a procrastinator doesn't want to work on something, it won't help to have nothing else to do. It's better to have lots of things to do, so you can work on some of them as a way of not doing the task that, for whatever reason, you seek to avoid.

Second, don't sit around feeling bad because you lack willpower. That will make you a depressed procrastinator but won't help you get anything done. Most of us lack all kinds of powers. I can't add long columns of figures in my head. That's what calculators are for. Tools give us the ability to make up for what we lack in native powers. The procrastinator has tools that allow him to manipulate himself to achieve results he can't get with willpower alone.

A third bit of advice: avoid perfectionism. I don't mean avoid doing things perfectly. If you are at all like me, that's not a problem. I mean avoid fantasizing about doing things perfectly. Often procrastination is just a way of giving ourselves permission to do a less-than-perfect job on something that doesn't require a perfect job anyway. Or maybe it's a way of getting those we work with to the point where they say, "For crying out loud, just give me something!" You need to give your boss a memo that provides the basic facts; it doesn't need to read like Hemingway.

Sometimes the information available to accurately complete any project is directly proportional to the elapsed time. For example you may be 6 months into a design when some marketing or business “fact” changed and months of work need to be re-done. Thus waiting until the last possible moment may often, paradoxically, provide you with the most efficient use of your time.

But the real key to effective procrastination is speed. If you wait until the minimum amount of time to complete the task, and then work steadily and efficiently, you will be happier and more productive.

Last, but perhaps most important: Learn how to be less annoying to the non-procrastinators around you. 

Defending Zakaria

The recent outrage at Zakaria for his minor plagiarism of a paragraph from another journalist is quite amazing. But it should not surprise one that in todays US culture, faux outrage sells papers and leads to internet clicks. Normally I would dismiss these really thin accusations as arising from jealousy and competitive pressures in the journalistic world but then two great pieces from Joe Klein and David Frum caught my eye. Here are two journalists, from opposite sides of the divide, willing to stake their reputation in defending the integrity of Fareed.

 “Schadenfreude makes my blood run cold, especially when practiced by journalists who have a tendency to get on their high horses about others of their ilk.” writes Joe Klein, " Now Fareed Zakaria is under the gun for plagiarism. Fareed did something wrong, lifting a paragraph from the New Yorker (or relying on a research assistant who lifted it), for which he has apologized and has been punished with a one-month suspension. But now there’s been a less than admirable piling on by other journalists. 

David Frum, admirably defends him here. “I have known Fareed Zakaria since 1986” he says, ”Over those years, we have had our personal ups and downs. As with any of us, there are criticisms to be made of him and his work. Recently he made a serious mistake, for which he has accepted the consequences without self-excuse. But building that mistake into some larger narrative of lack of intellectual integrity? And using charges themselves false in order to tarnish his reputation? That's plain wrong."

And he continues, “In the instance in which I saw Fareed's work methods close up, I can attest: the work was done right. I have to imagine there are many, many other people who could say the same thing.”

Joe Klein concludes; “But what’s happening now is unfair. Blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. I think it would be best to put this in perspective: Zakaria has done an awful lot of original thinking in his career.  He is likely to do a lot more. Once again, the spectacle of the witch hunt is far more problematic than the severity of the misdemeanor.”

From my own perspective, Fareed Zakaria has been one of the few original thinkers with a global view. His Sunday program GPS should become a model for talk shows in its ability to gather real experts and his willingness to let them expound their view in some detail without interruptions. His writings have also provided a hopeful, optimistic vision and he has not been shy in proposing new solutions to old problems. In my view the few who have stepped forward after a number of years to accuse him reflect a sourness of grapes and smallness of mind that should remind you to take these writers with greater care at their lack of integrity.

As for Fareed Zakaria, he made a mistake, he forthrightly apologized,  he has paid a penalty and that should be the end of it. 

Courage and Cowardice

The political scene in the US during the run up to the November elections has become uglier with invectives flying around with immoral abandon and little concern for truth or civility. The atmosphere seems akin to what Yeat wrote of when he said

 "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;"

It is truly a time when

    "The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity."

One of my big disappointments has been the complete absence of courage in the elite of the country. No one is willing to stand up and say "enough of this nonsense", let us think of the country first. And worse the polity is willing to accept this descent into a morass of self pity and abegnation. In every country it is not possible to have a Nelson Mandela or a Gandhi that keeps the country facing and dealing with its moral dilemmas, but surely it is possible for some leaders in the US to stand up to the dirt and calumny that today passes for public discourse. Why are there no religious leaders who command moral authority, why are not any retired political elites who can stand up for something other than partisan gain?

On the other hand the airwaves are full of the "worst" who are full of passionate intensity. Only in the US can a drug addict like Rush Limbaugh command million dollars for his radio show and spew hatred and invective around the clock. Yet none in the republican party- that he has come to represent - has the courage to call him out on his outrageous assertions. Or when they do ,they soon retreat into their shells at the first calls from listeners egged on by Rush.

In short there is a shortage of courage and an overflow of cowardice in the US scene today that bodes ill for the future. The scene is little different in India but there at least there is an Anna Hazare willing to sacrifice his life for his principles, an Anand Kejriwal who has given up a promising career to fight for a cleaner society. Where are the Anna Hazares in the US today?

Poetry and the Olympics

The 2012 Olympics will leave behind an unusual legacy. Walking around the Olympic Park in years to come, you’ll find poems waiting for you at every corner. There’s Tennyson – some lines from “Ulysses”, ending with, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” . Joining this are

Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning

‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?’

Freedom’s Plow by Langston Hughes

‘First in the heart is the dream.
Then the mind starts seeking a way."

Variation on a Theme of Rilke by Denise Levertov

‘and what I heard was my whole self
Saying and singing what it knew: I can.’

Dignified by Sean O’Brien
‘To change the world by mastering a game.’

Whatever else happens to the place generations from now, there will be evidence that the Olympic Games of 2012 inspired some poets to leave their words for the future.

This is part of an initiative called Winning Words, masterminded by William Sieghart, the founder of National Poetry Day, to “carpet the nation with poetry”.

The Winning Words project has permanent poetry installations placed throughout the Olympic Park , supported and delivered by the Olympic Delivery Authority as part of their strategy to integrate art into the Park. There is also be a series of temporary poems displayed during the games by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’ in order to continually animate the Olympic site. 

The ambitions of Winning Words also extends beyond the Olympics, aiming to ‘carpet the nation in poetry’ by encouraging communities to create their own temporary or permanent installations in their own villages, towns and cities.

"In our increasingly alienated modern lives," he says, " an appropriate poem can be more helpful than many forms of therapy." We love our poetry but are often intimidated by it. Yet we consume more greetings cards than any other nation, enjoy our chants on the football terraces and have contributed significantly to the canon of rap music. Poetry is all around us, and as our great cultural legacy to the world it deserved to feature in the Olympic park and celebrations. That's what Winning Words is all about: the joy of inspiration and of shared understanding.

He also has a book "Winning Words"which has 160 or so poems, from the ancient to the modern, that believe can inspire and help the reader through the tribulations of daily existence, by providing a sense of complicity and understanding. 

Lies, damned lies and pundits....

If you were confused by the political scene in the US presidential elections, let me add some fuel to the fire.

In the space of two days, two so called pundits of the press published articles that are so violently contradictory,that you wonder if they are talking about the same election in the same year.

Here is Michael Tomasky predicting an Obama landslide with various facts and figures and the latest polls.

Not to be outdone, another so called pundit, Dick Morris predicts a Romney landslide using various polls.

I will not bore you with the logic behind either prediction but it says something about the level of lies and prevebrication in todays journalism that both views exist side by side and the objective editors make no attempt to sort out fact from fiction of these claims.

Well, actually New York Times does but through a subterfuge- it employs a blogger, Nate Silver, who cranks out a daily prediction of his own though with some thoughtful data and a willingness to share the models on which these predictions are based. And what does his model say today-- Obama wins 300 electoral votes as compared to 270 needed for a victory!

Light at the end of the tunnel

I have always been curious about this expression- "light at the end of the tunnel"- popularised during the the dark days of the vietnam war. That is until recently when its import affected me personally. 


All of us go through phases in our life when it feels that darkness would completely envelope us, when there seems to be no hope of any reprieve from the daily indignities or tragedies. It is at these times that we turn to religion and supernatural to provide a modicum of hope to light the way out of the darkness.


Many of us wish that our end come with speed and quickness that there be no lingering around in hospital beds for days on end. But life is not so amenable- when we ask to live longer we often forget that the length comes with a price- pain and sorrow. I remember the poignant solilquoy of Cyrano de Bergerac, sorrowing that he could not even chose the manner of his death:


"To be struck down,
Pierced by sword i' the heart, from a hero's hand!'
That I had dreamed. O mockery of Fate!
--Killed, I! of all men--in an ambuscade!
Struck from behind, and by a lackey's hand!'Tis very well. I am foiled, foiled in all, 
Even in my death."

But it is also true that in the depths of darkness, there will always emerge someone who will light the way  forward, providing a dim ray of hope and giving a rationale for overcoming the travails of the time.

In my case it was my grandson. Just nine months old, he would talk to me twice a day from across the world, sharing his joy and wonder of the day. His parents would regale me with his latest exploits- the first words, the first steps, the delightful smile and his own music. Through the wonders of technology, I would see him the first thing in the morning and the last thing before I fell asleep. It was hard to be despondent after these conversations and not to be hopeful that may be, just maybe, things would turn out to be all right.