Cohort Readings 1
Cohort Readings 1
Please do an Iceberg Model Summary on the reading assigned to your cohort
An iceberg has three paragraphs:
1. A standard what is it about summary (the main points)
2. A comparison of other samples of similar events / concepts
3. An analysis of why these types of events occur (the “big picture” paragraph)
You may read articles / writings from other cohorts if they assist your understanding of your project/paper. This may actually help you gather sources for your paper that can be used for your final draft.
Bear in mind that you are only expected to read the items in your cohort, though, as an assignment grade, an additional iceberg model summaries will not be included in your grade.
In this set of readings, you will find:
ARTDES: Forum on Art and Literature - Mao Tse Tung
BUSECO: When Data Guys Triumph - CADE MASSEY and BOB TEDESCHI (New York Times)
EDUISS: Abridged from Chapter 2: Other People’s Children (Savage Inequalities) Jonathan Kozol
ENVENG: Economy vs. Environment -David Owen (The New Yorker)
ETHBESY: What Batman Teaches Us About Philosophy - Peter Bebergal
HISLIT: Harrapa Civilization http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappa-mohenjodaro.html
LANGCULT: The Thesis of Linguistic Determinism - Carl H. Flygt
MEDCOM: The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season- Neil Mac Farquhar (UN Journal)
POLSCI: Truer to Ourselves: Rethinking US-Israeli Policy - Kellan Schmelz
SCITECH: Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened - Evan Ratliff (Wired Magazine)
Art and Design [ARTDES]
Forum on Art and Literature
By Mao Tse Tung
All art, literature, and thought represent the interests of some class in society. Indeed, there exist literature and art which are for the exploiters and oppressors. Feudal literature and art are literature and art for the landlord class. Such were the literature and art of the ruling class in China’s feudal era. To this day such literature and art still have considerable influence in China. Literature and art for the middle class, the bourgeoisie, are bourgeois literature and art. People like the writer Liang always talk about literature and art as being above the political and social conflicts of a society. But, in fact, they uphold the literature and art of the middle class, and oppose proletarian, that is, worker, literature and art. Then there is the literature and art which exist to serve the imperialists. This we call traitor literature and art.
With us, literature and at are for the people, not for any of the above groups. We have said that China’s new culture at the present stage is an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal culture of the masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. Today, anything that is truly of the masses must necessarily be led by the most advanced workers. Whatever is under the leadership of the middle class property owner, the bourgeois, cannot possibly be for the masses. Naturally, the same applies to the new literature and art which are part of our new culture. We should take over the rich legacy and the good traditions in literature and art that have been handed down from past ages in China and foreign countries, but the aim of our art must still be to serve the masses of the people. Nor do we refuse to use the literary and artistic forms of the past. In our hands these old forms, remodeled and infused with new content, also become something revolutionary in the service of the people.
Who then, are the masses of the people? The greatest portion of the people, constituting more than 90 per cent of our total population, are the factory workers, farm laborers, and peasants, soldiers and owners of small businesses. Therefore, our literature and art are first for the workers, the lass that leads the revolution. Secondly, they are for the farm workers and peasants, the most numerous and most steadfast of our allies in the revolution.
Our literature and art workers must accomplish this task and alter their viewpoint. They must give up the idea that art and thought go beyond and are outside of political concerns. They must gradually move their feet over to the side of the workers, peasants and soldiers, to the side of the proletariat, through the process of going into their very midst and into the thick of practical struggles, and through the process of studying Marxism and society. Only in this way can we have a literature and art that are truly for the workers, peasants, and soldiers-truly proletarian literature and art.
Man’s social life is the only source of literature and art and is incomparably livelier and richer in content. But the people are not satisfied with life alone and demand literature and art as well. Why? Because, while both are beautiful, life as reflected in works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and therefore more universal than actual everyday life. Revolutionary literature and art would create a variety of characters out of real life, and help the masses to propel history forward. For example, there is suffering from hunger, cold and oppression on the one hand, and exploitation and oppression of man by man on the other. These facts exist everywhere and people look upon them as the contradictions and struggles within them and produce works which awaken the masses. These works fire the masses with enthusiasm, and impel them to unite and struggle to transform their environment. Withoug such literature and art, our political and social task could not be fulfilled, or at least not so effectively and speedily. Through the creative labor of revolutionary writers and artists, the raw materials found in the life of the people are shaped into the ideological form of literature and art serving the masses of the people . All our literature and art, whether more advanced or elementary, are for the masses of the people. In the first place, they exist for the workers, peasants and soldiers. All our works of art are created for the workers, peasants, and soldiers and are for their use.
Is this attitude of ours utilitarian? That is, is this attitude of ours simply one which makes all questions of art and thought an issue of social usefulness? We materialists do not oppose utilitarianism in general but only the utilitarianism of the feudal, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes. We oppose those hypocrites who attack utilitarianism in words but in deeds embrace the most selfish and shortsighted utilitarianism. They speak of art and thought as pure and above the worldly concerns of society, but all of their writing protects and supports the material interests of their own class. There is no “ism” in the world that goes beyond considerations of utility in art and thought. In a class society there can be only the utilitarianism of this or that class. We are proletarian revolutionary utilitarians, and take as our point of departure the unity of the present and future interests of the broadest masses, who constitute over 90 percent of the population. Therefore, we are revolutionary utilitarians aiming for the broadest and the most long-range objectives. WE are not narrow utilitarians concerned only with the partial and the immediate. If, for instance, you blame the masses for their utilitarianism and yet for your own utility, or that of a small group, force on the market and propagandize among the masses a work which pleases only the few but is useless or revealing your own lack of self-knowledge. A poem, novel, or painting is good only when it brings real benefit to the masses of the people. Your work may be as beautiful a poem as “The Spring Snow” but if for the time being it appeals only to the few, and the masses are still singing crude works like the “Song of the Rural Poor,” you will get nowhere by simply scolding them. Instead, you must work to raise their level of understanding and enjoyment. The question is to bring about a unity between “The Spring Snow” and the “Song of the Rural Poor,” between higher standards and popularization. Without such a unity, the highest art of any artist cannot help being simply for the political and social use of a small self-interested group. You may call this art “pure and lofty” but that is merely your own name for it which the masses will not accept.
Business and Economics [BUSECO]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/after-moneyball-data-guys-are-triumphant.html
When Data Guys Triumph
By CADE MASSEY and BOB TEDESCHI
JOSHUA MILBERG has plenty of business cred: an M.B.A. from Yale, experience in the mayor’s office in Chicago, a job as a vice president for an energy consulting firm.
But all of that, Mr. Milberg says, matters less than his reputation as “the data guy” — someone who can offer insights through statistical analysis. And for that, he and a growing number of young executives can credit none other than “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” by Michael Lewis.
More than eight years after “Moneyball” was published, the book refuses to shuffle meekly to the remainder bin of public consciousness. Now, “Moneyball,” the movie starring Brad Pitt, could restore the title to best-seller lists.
But a generation of managers like Mr. Milberg, now 31, never really put down “Moneyball,” which examines how the Oakland Athletics achieved an amazing winning streak while having the smallest player payroll in Major League Baseball. (Short answer: creative use of data.)
These managers are savvier with data and more welcomed in business circles in part because of the book. Among other things, Mr. Milberg’s analysis has helped his clients understand when to prioritize high-volume, low-revenue sales over their sexier, high-revenue siblings.
“The book impacted the way I looked at data,” he says. “And it impacted those around me, allowing me to go farther afield with those data than usual.”
At its heart, of course, “Moneyball” isn’t about baseball. It’s not even about statistics. Rather, it’s about challenging conventional wisdom with data. By embedding this lesson in the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, the book has lured millions of readers into the realm of the geek. Along the way, it converted many into empirical evangelists.
This evangelism has created opportunities for the analytically minded. Julia Rozovsky is a Yale M.B.A. student who studied economics and math as an undergraduate, a background that prepared her for a traditional — and lucrative — consulting career. Instead, partly as a result of reading “Moneyball” and finding like-minded people, she pointed herself toward work in analytics. This summer, she interned at the People Analytics group at Google.
Not exactly the traditional human resources department, this group enthusiastically pursues the kind of creative empiricism that Mr. Lewis documents, Ms. Rozovsky says, and it hires M.B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s to help.
Granted, other forces have aided the rise of creative data analysis — Web analytics, behavioral economics, health care reform and technology, to name a few. But “Moneyball” dramatized the principles behind these forces: a reliance on data to exploit inefficiencies, allocate resources and challenge conventional wisdom — and thus broadened their appeal.
“Moneyball” traces Billy Beane’s use of unorthodox analytics to the work of Bill James. Working as a baseball outsider, Mr. James began self-publishing his analysis and commentary in 1977 and built a passionate following. As Mr. Lewis writes, Mr. James “made it so clear and interesting that it provoked a lot of intelligent people to join the conversation.”
This is also what “Moneyball” has done for analytics more generally. Once people see the value of a batter’s O.P.S. — on-base plus slugging percentage, a key measure in the book — it’s a short step to applying similar principles in their own organizations.
If graduate schools are any sign, the boardrooms of the future — especially compensation committees — may be in for a shake-up. Among business school students, there has been a surge in interest in analytics. Some of it is related to sports: today, M.B.A.’s are doing analysis in the N.B.A., the N.F.L. and other leagues. But many students are seeking analytics-related work outside the sports realm.
This surge is affecting even the curriculum. At Yale this fall, Edward H. Kaplan is offering “Mathletics,” a course at the Graduate School of Management that focuses on data analysis in sports. Professor Kaplan is a world-class academic, and a serious one. He researches subjects like terrorism and H.I.V. “I’m just using sports as a way to get students interested in modeling problems,” he says.
Unfortunately, the road from modeling problems to influencing organizational decisions is a long one. In many industries, analysts don’t even have a seat at the table. We have seen this battle up close in the professional football, which lags behind baseball and basketball in the use of analysis. Predictably, those in the N.F.L. who are most interested in analysis are the lieutenants rather than the generals.
That’s typical. In most industries, Generation Moneyball isn’t yet in charge. But as the Nobel laureate Max Planck once said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Still, the trend, if not exactly linear, is moving in the “Moneyball” direction. Brad Pitt can only help.
Cade Massey is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. He has conducted research in collaboration with Google. Bob Tedeschi is a frequent contributor to The New York Times.
Education and Global Issues [EDUISS]
Abridged from Chapter 2:
Other People’s Children
Between 1960 and 1970, as the last white families left the neighborhood, North Lawndale lost three quarters of its businesses, one quarter of its jobs. In the next ten years, 80 percent of the remaining jobs in manufacturing were lost.
“People carry a lot of crosses here,” says Reverend Jim Wolff, who directs a mission church not far from one of the deserted factories. As the factories have moved out, the street gangs have moved in. The Vice Lords, the Disciples, and the Latin Kings have, in a sense, replaced Sears Roebuck, International Harvester, Sunbeam and Western Electric.
He stops the car next to a weed-choked lot close to the corner of Sixteenth and Hamlin. “Dr. King,” he says, “lived on this corner.” There is no memorial. The city, I later learn, flattened the building after Dr. King moved out. A menacing group of teen-age boys is standing on the corner of the lot where Dr. King lived with his family. “Dr. King once said he had met his match here in Chicago. He said that he faced more bigotry and hatred here than anywhere he’d been in the Deep South. Now he’s gone. The weeds have overgrown his memory. I sometimes wonder if the kids who spend their lives out on that corner would be shocked, or even interested, to know that he had lived there once. If you told them, I suspect you’d get a shrug at most…”
On a clear October day in 1990, the voices of children in the first-floor hallway of the Mary McLeod Bethune School are as bright and optimistic as the voices of small children anywhere. The school, whose students are among the poorest in the city, serves one of the neighborhoods in which the infant death rate is particularly high. Nearly 1,000 infants die within these very poor Chicago neighborhoods each year. An additional 3,000 infants are delivered with brain damage or with other forms of neurological impairment.
When the children lie down on the floor to have their naps, I sit and watch their movements and their breathing. A few fall asleep at once, but others are restless. The teacher is not particularly gentle. She snaps at the ones who squirm around—“Relax!” and “Sleep!”—and forces down their arms and knees. The room is sparse: a large and clean but rather cheerless space. There are very few of those manipulable objects and bright-colored shelves and boxes that adorn suburban kindergarten classrooms. The only decorations on the walls are posters supplied by companies that market school materials: “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” “Zoo Animals,” “Community Helpers.” Nothing the children or teacher made themselves.
After 30 minutes pass, the teacher tells the children to sit up. In a somewhat mechanical way, the teacher lifts a picture book of Mother Goose and flips the pages as the children sit before her on the rug. “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow…The children recite the verses with her as she turns the pages. She’s not very warm or animated, but the children are obedient. The book looks worn and old, as if the teacher’s used it many, many years, and shows no signs of adaptation to the race of the black children in the school. Mary is white. Old Mother Hubbard is white. Jack is white. Jill is white. Only Mother Hubbard’s dog is black.
Environment and Energy [ENVENG]
Economy vs. Environment
By David Owen (The New Yorker)
March 30, 2009
The week before last, twenty-five hundred delegates, from more than seventy countries, met in Copenhagen to prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will take place there in December and will produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1992 and will expire in 2012. The speakers in Copenhagen were united by a sense of urgency—and for good reason, given the poor record of most participating countries in meeting their Kyoto targets for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.
So far, the most effective way for a Kyoto signatory to cut its carbon output has been to suffer a well-timed industrial implosion, as Russia did after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. The Kyoto benchmark year is 1990, when the smokestacks of the Soviet military-industrial complex were still blackening the skies, so when Vladimir Putin ratified the protocol, in 2004, Russia was already certain to meet its goal for 2012. The countries with the best emissions-reduction records—Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic—were all parts of the Soviet empire and therefore look good for the same reason.
The United States didn’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but Canada did, and its experience is suggestive because its economy and per-capita oil consumption are similar to ours. Its Kyoto target is a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels. By 2006, however, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on climate initiatives, its greenhouse-gas output had increased to a hundred and twenty-two per cent of the goal, and the environment minister described the Kyoto target as “impossible.”
The explanation for Canada’s difficulties isn’t complicated: the world’s principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk. Gasoline consumption in the United States fell almost six per cent in 2008. That was the result not of a sudden greening of the American consciousness but of the rapid rise in the price of oil during the first half of the year, followed by the full efflorescence of the current economic mess.
The world’s financial and energy crises are connected, and they are similar because credit and fossil fuels are forms of leverage: oil, coal, and natural gas are multipliers of labor in much the same way that credit is a multiplier of wealth. Human history is the history of our ascent up what the naturalist Loren Eiseley called “the heat ladder”: coal bested firewood as an amplifier of productivity, and oil and natural gas bested coal. Fossil fuels have enabled us to leverage the strength of our bodies, and we are borrowing against the world’s dwindling store of inexpensive energy in the same way that we borrowed against the illusory equity in our homes. Moreover, American dependence on fossil fuels isn’t going to end any time soon: solar panels and wind turbines provided only about a half per cent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2007, and they don’t work when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Replacing oil is going to require more than determination.
The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again—through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-investment projects to build new roads and airports (ditto). Our best intentions regarding conservation and carbon reduction inevitably run up against the realities of foreclosure and bankruptcy and unemployment. How do we persuade people to drive less—an environmental necessity—while also encouraging them to revive our staggering economy by buying new cars?
The popular answer—switch to hybrids—leaves the fundamental problem unaddressed. Increasing the fuel efficiency of a car is mathematically indistinguishable from lowering the price of its fuel; it’s just fiddling with the other side of the equation. If doubling the cost of gas gives drivers an environmentally valuable incentive to drive less—the recent oil-price spike pushed down consumption and vehicle miles travelled, stimulated investment in renewable energy, increased public transit ridership, and killed the Hummer—then doubling the efficiency of cars makes that incentive disappear. Getting more miles to the gallon is of no benefit to the environment if it leads to an increase in driving—and the response of drivers to decreases in the cost of driving is to drive more. Increases in fuel efficiency could be bad for the environment unless they’re accompanied by powerful disincentives that force drivers to find alternatives to hundred-mile commutes. And a national carbon policy, if it’s to have a real impact, will almost certainly need to bring American fuel prices back to at least where they were at their peak in the summer of 2008. Electric cars are not the panacea they are sometimes claimed to be, not only because the electricity they run on has to be generated somewhere but also because making driving less expensive does nothing to discourage people from sprawling across the face of the planet, promoting forms of development that are inherently and catastrophically wasteful.
One beneficial consequence of the ongoing global economic crisis is that it has put a little time back on the carbon clock. Because the climate damage done by greenhouse gases is cumulative, the emissions decrease attributable to the recession has given the world a bit more room to devise a plan that might actually work. The prospects for a meaningful worldwide climate agreement probably improved last November, with the election of Barack Obama, but his commitments to economic recovery and carbon reduction—to bringing the country out of recession while also reducing U.S. greenhouse emissions to seventeen per cent of their 2005 level by 2050—don’t pull in the same direction. Creating “green jobs,” a key component of the agenda, is different from creating new jobs, since green jobs, if they’re truly green, displace non-green jobs—wind-turbine mechanics instead of oil-rig roughnecks—probably a zero-sum game, as far as employment is concerned. The ultimate success or failure of Obama’s program, and of the measures that will be introduced in Copenhagen this year, will depend on our willingness, once the global economy is no longer teetering, to accept policies that will seem to be nudging us back toward the abyss.
Ethics and Belief Systems [ETHBESY]
A talk with Robert Arp and Mark D. White
What Batman Teaches Us About Philosophy
By Peter Bebergal
July 13, 2008
ON JULY 18, "The Dark Knight," the much-awaited sequel to "Batman Begins," will swoop into theaters. Director Christopher Nolan has reinvigorated the Batman franchise with his vision of a darker, more realistic crime-fighter. Batman has seen a number of interesting evolutions: in the '30s and '40s he was a gothic-tinged detective; in the '50s, he was a smiling mentor to his new sidekick Robin. In the '80s, Frank Miller's critically acclaimed comics The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year 1 reintroduced Batman as a grim and complex character, a man obsessed with the death of his parents at the hands of a mugger when he was a child.
Unlike most other superheroes, Batman's origins do not include radioactivity, alien heritage, or high-tech armor. Batman is self-made hero, and because of his humanness, he easily becomes a vehicle for asking questions psychological, social, and, well, philosophical. In the new book "Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul," editors Robert Arp of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology and professor Mark D. White of the College of Staten Island (CUNY) have compiled 20 essays by philosophers of every field, from metaphysics to ethics to social-political philosophy. For many of the writers, Batman offers a window into profound real-world issues, particularly in the realm of ethics.
Arp and White frame Batman's ethical dilemmas in three ways. Is Batman a deontologist? That is, does he follow an ethic that must be universally true for all people at all times no matter the consequences? Is Batman a utilitarian, in that he struggles to achieve the best possible outcome for the most well-being? Or is Batman a virtue ethicist who makes moral decisions based on his own capabilities in the face of his ethical dilemmas? (Why, for example, doesn't Batman just kill the Joker? Is it right that he keeps picking up orphan boys and training them to fight crime at his side?)
Ideas interviewed Arp and White separately, by phone; Arp from his office in Buffalo, and White standing outside a comic shop in South Orange, N.J.
IDEAS: What is it about Batman, more than say Superman, that's relevant to philosophy?
WHITE: Because he doesn't have powers, Batman faces more limitations, and limitations force decisions, many of which will be ethical, or more broadly philosophical, in nature. He can't always save everyone, so who to save? How far does he have to push himself for his mission? Superman rarely confronts these issues, because he is so strong and so fast.
IDEAS: We often think of ethics as having to be grounded in some idea of God, but we don't see that with Batman.
ARP: In Batman's universe there is no God. We have to make our meaning, make our own way. Batman becomes the new god, the superhuman that steps up to the plate and metes out justice the way in which God would.
IDEAS: Do you think the realism of the new films helps or hinders thinking about Batman philosophically?
WHITE: I think it definitely helps. This is not the shiny, happy Batman that Adam West portrayed, which was consistent with the comics at the time, or even the more serious Batman that Michael Keaton played. This is how we imagine Batman would be if he were real, given all that he's gone through. This makes him more believable, more realistic, more human. And human beings, more than shiny caricatures, face philosophical dilemmas.
IDEAS: Is Batman a relativist or does he believe in some kind of universal ethic?
ARP: Yes, he believes in some kind of universal ethics, no doubt. Batman thinks there's an objective reality no matter what the situation is. When all is said and done he is still an American superhero, and in that sense he can be black and white. Almost all superheroes are going to be black-and-white objectivists. I can't think of any superhero who champions relativism.
IDEAS: Doesn't this make Batman come across as authoritarian?
WHITE: Batman believes wholeheartedly in his mission, but it's his mission alone, and he very hesitantly involves other people in it. I think he knows his ideas of right and wrong may seem fairly extreme, but he's not asking anybody else to believe in them.
IDEAS: The image of the young Bruce Wayne looking over his dead parents really defines the book. How does someone go from that to dressing like a giant bat?
WHITE: There are children who tragically lose their parents each day, but young Bruce obviously took it differently than most. It stole his innocence and steered him toward devoting his life to helping make sure others don't face the same tragedy he did.
IDEAS: Why does it often take a comic book or movie to get the general public to think about philosophy?
WHITE: Comic books, and quality pop culture in general, are simply more approachable, and lead us to consider philosophical questions without realizing it. Bill Irwin [series editor of the Blackwell Popular Culture and Philosophy books] uses the spoonful-of-sugar analogy: If you make philosophy fun, and use an entry point they are familiar with, they may find out they like it, and then read some "real" philosophy.
IDEAS: Do some scholars see this kind of thing as silly?
ARP: Sure. People think it's just a moneymaker or a way to get your name on something. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. At root we are trying to bring philosophy to people and bring people to philosophy.
IDEAS: Is there anything we can really learn from Batman, a fictional hero, about making our own choices?
WHITE: I see in Batman a great example of devotion and self-sacrifice that can counter the "do what feels good" advice you get in so many self-help books and talk shows. I'm not saying we should all put on a costume and fight crime, but I think we can all learn from Batman's determination to do what he feels is right, even if it doesn't always make him happy. Sometimes doing what's right is more important than doing what feels good.
Cambridge writer Peter Bebergal is coauthor of "The Faith Between Us."
History and Literature [HISLIT]
Harrapa Civilization
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappa-mohenjodaro.html
Some several thousand years ago there once thrived a civilization in the Indus Valley. Located in what's now Pakistan and western India, it was the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. (1) The Indus Valley Civilization, as it is called, covered an area the size of western Europe. It was the largest of the four ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. However, of all these civilizations the least is known about the Indus Valley people. This is because the Indus script has not yet been deciphered. There are many remnants of the script on pottery vessels, seals, and amulets, but without a "Rosetta Stone" linguists and archaeologists have been unable to decipher it.
They have then had to rely upon the surviving cultural materials to give them insight into the life of the Harappan's. (2) Harappan's are the name given to any of the ancient people belonging to the Indus Valley civilization. This article will be focusing mainly on the two largest cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and what has been discovered there.
The discovery of the Indus Valley civilization was first recorded in the 1800's by the British. The first recorded note was by a British army deserter, James Lewis, who was posing as an American engineer in 1826. He noticed the presence of mounded ruins at a small town in Punjab called Harappa. Because Harappa was the first city found, sometimes any of the sites are called the Harappan civilization.
Alexander Cunningham, who headed the Archaeological Survey of India, visited this site in 1853 and 1856 while looking for the cities that had been visited by Chinese pilgrims in the Buddhist period. The presence of an ancient city was confirmed in the following 50 years, but no one had any idea of its age or importance. By 1872 heavy brick robbing had virtually destroyed the upper layers of the site. The stolen bricks were used to build houses and particularly to build a railway bed that the British were constructing. Alexander Cunningham made a few small excavations at the site and reported some discoveries of ancient pottery, some stone tools, and a stone seal. Cunningham published his finds and it generated some increased interest by scholars.
It wasn't till 1920 that excavations began in earnest at Harappa. John Marshall, then the director of the Archaeological Survey of India, started a new excavation at Harappa. Along with finds from another archaeologist, who was excavating at Mohenjo Daro, Marshall believed that what they had found gave evidence of a new civilization that was older than any they had known. (3)
Major excavations had not been carried out for forty years until 1986 when the late George Dales of the University of California at Berkeley established the Harappan Archaeological Project, or HARP. This multidisciplinary study effort consists of archaeologists, linguists, historians, and physical anthropologists.
Since the establishment of HARP, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has served as co-director and field director of the project. Kenoyer was born in Shillong, India, and spent most of his youth there. He went on to receive his advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He is now a professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and teaches archaeology and ancient technologies. Kenoyer's main focus has been on the Indus Valley civilization's where he has conducted research for the last 23 years. Ever since he was a young graduate student, Kenoyer was particularly interested in ancient technology. He has done a great deal of work in trying to replicate processes used by ancient people in the production of jewelry and pottery. One of his first efforts in replicating shell bangle making was then co-authored with George Dales and published in an article. His doctorate studies were based upon this research, and his dissertation is a milestone in the field of experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, besides being the definitive study of Harappan shell working. (4)
Today, Kenoyer is assisted by co-director Richard Meadow of Harvard University and Rota Wright of New York University (A. C.I.V.C. Kenoyer preface) Kenoyer uses a contextual archaeological approach. His work is characterized by the use of cold evidence to draw the outlines of this ancient civilization.
Although , Harappa was undoubtedly occupied previously, it was between 2600-1900 B.C. that it reached its height of economic expansion and urban growth. Radio carbon dating, along with the comparison of artifacts and pottery has determined this date for the establishment of Harappa and other Indus cities. This began what is called the golden age of Harappa. During this time a great increase in craft technology, trade, and urban expansion was experienced. For the first time in the history of the region, there was evidence for many people of different classes and occupations living together. Between 2800-2600 B.C. called the Kot Diji period, Harappa grew into a thriving economic center. It expanded into a substantial sized town, covering the area of several large shopping malls. Harappa, along with the other Indus Valley cities, had a level of architectural planning that was unparralled in the ancient world. (5) The city was laid out in a grid-like pattern with the orientation of streets and buildings according to the cardinal directions. To facilitate the access to other neighborhoods and to segregate private and public areas, the city and streets were particularly organized. The city had many drinking water wells, and a highly sophisticated system of waste removal. All Harappan houses were equipped with latrines, bathing houses, and sewage drains which emptied into larger mains and eventually deposited the fertile sludge on surrounding agricultural fields. It has been surprising to archaeologists that the site layouts and artifact styles throughout the Indus region are very similar. It has been concluded these indicate that there was uniform economic and social structure within these cities. (6)
Other indicators of this is that the bricks used to build at these Indus cities are all uniform in size. It would seem that a standard brick size was developed and used throughout the Indus cities. Besides similar brick size standard weights are seen to have been used throughout the region as well. (7) The weights that have been recovered have shown a remarkable accuracy. They follow a binary decimal system: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, up to 12,800 units, where one unit weighs approximately 0.85 grams. Some of the weights are so tiny that they could have been used by jewelers to measure precious metals. ( 8)
Ever since the discovery of Harappa, archaeologists have been trying to identify the rulers of this city. What has been found is very surprising because it isn't like the general pattern followed by other early urban societies. It appears that the Harappan and other Indus rulers governed their cities through the control of trade and religion, not by military might. It is an interesting aspect of Harappa as well as the other Indus cities that in the entire body of Indus art and sculpture there are no monuments erected to glorify, and no depictions of warfare or conquered enemies. ( 9) It is speculated that the rulers might have been wealthy merchants, or powerful landlords or spiritual leaders. Whoever these rulers were it has been determined that they showed their power and status through the use of seals and fine jewelry.
Seals are one of the most commonly found objects in Harappan cities. They are decorated with animal motifs such as elephants, water buffalo, tigers, and most commonly unicorns. Some of these seals are inscribed with figures that are prototypes to later Hindu religious figures, some of which are seen today.
For example, seals have been recovered with the repeated motif of a man sitting in a yogic position surrounded by animals. This is very similar to the Hindu god of Shiva, who is known to have been the friend of the animals and sat in a yogic position. These seals are known as the Shiva seals. Other images of a male god have been found, thus indicating the beginnings of Shiva worship, which continues to be practiced today in India. (10)
This is an interesting point because of the accepted notion of an Aryan invasion. If Aryan's had invaded the Indus Valley, conquered the people, and imposed their own culture and religion on them, as the theory goes, it would seem unlikely that there would a continuation of similar religious practices up to the present. There is evidence throughout Indian history to indicate that Shiva worship has continued for thousands of years without disruption. [cf. harappan cultural continuity]
The Aryan's were supposed to have destroyed many of the ancient cities right around 1500 B.C., and this would account for the decline of the Indus civilization. However the continuity of religious practices makes this unlikely, and other more probable explanations for the decline of the Harappan civilization have been proposed in recent years; such as climate shifts which caused great droughts around 2200 B.C., and forced the abandonment of the Indus cities and pushed a migration westward. Recent findings have shown that the Sumerian empire declined sharply at this time due to a climate shift that caused major droughts for several centuries. (11) The Harappans being so close to Sumer, would in all probability have been affected by this harsh shift in climate.
Many of the seals also are inscribed with short pieces of the Indus script. These seals were used in order to show the power of the rulers. Each seal had a name or title on it, as well as an animal motif that is believed to represent what sort of office or clan the owner belonged to. The seals of the ancient Harappan's were probably used in much the same way they are today, to sign letters or for commercial transactions. The use of these seals declined when the civilization declined.
In 2001 Kenoyer's excavations unearthed a workshop that manufactured seals and inscribed tablets. This was significant in that combined with the last 16 years of excavations, it provided a new chronology for the development of the Indus script. Previously, the tablets and seals were all grouped together, but now Kenoyer has been able to demonstrate that the various types of seals and tablets emerged at different times. The writing on the seals and tablets might have changed as well through the years. Kenoyer as well as others are trying to conclude when the dates of the script changes were. The revision of this chronology may greatly aid in the decipherment of the script. (12) There has been attempts at deciphering this script, and the results are not widely agreed upon, and its still a point of controversy.
The ruling elite controlled vast trade networks with Central Asia, and Oman, importing raw materials to urban workshops. There is even evidence of trade with Mesopotamia, for Harappan seals and jewelry have been found there. Harappa, along with other Indus cities, established their economic base on agriculture produce and livestock, supplemented by the production of and trade of commodities and craft items. Raw materials such as carnelian, steatite, and lapis lazuli were imported for craft use. In exchange for these goods, such things as livestock, grains, honey and clarified butter may have been given. However, the only remains are those of beads, ivory objects and other finery. What is known about the Harappan's is that they were very skilled artisans, making beautiful objects out of bronze, gold, silver, terracotta, glazed ceramic, and semiprecious stones. The most exquisite objects were often the most tiny. Many of the Indus art objects are small, displaying and requiring great craftsmanship.
The majority of artifacts recovered at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro have been that of crafted objects. Jonathan Kenoyer has been working to recreate many of the craft technologies used by these people. He has successfully recreated the process by which the Harappan's created faience. The process of creating faience ceramics is very complex and technical. It requires such processes as the grinding and partial melting of quartz, fusion aids, and a consistent high temperature of 940 Celsius. A discovery in 2001 of a faience producing workshop revealed that the type of kiln used was very different from what they had thought. As no kiln was discovered in the workshop, Kenoyer suspected that the ancient crafts people had used a kiln assembled from two firing containers. This formed a smaller kiln that was unlike the usual large firing containers. Along with some of his students Kenoyer replicated the process of creating faience using similar tools that the Harappan's had. The result was similar to that of the Harappan's. This showed that the canister-kiln type was a very efficient way of producing faience. (13) Interestingly , Kenoyer has noticed that many of the same firing techniques and production procedures are used today in India and Pakistan as they were thousands of years ago. This is another point indicating that there was a continuity in culture that has been mostly unchanged for thousands of years.
The late George F. Dales, who was a long time mentor of Kenoyer's and established HARP, has said regarding the Aryan invasion theory:
"Nine years of extensive excavations at Mohenjo-Daro ( which seems to have been rapidly abandoned) have yielded a total of some 37 skeletons which can be attributed to the Indus period. None of these skeletons were found in the area of the fortified citadel, where reasonably the last defense of this city would have taken place." He further states that "Despite extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and destruction on the scale of the supposed Aryan invasion." (14)
The skeletal remains found at Harappan sites that date from 4,000 years ago, show the same basic racial types as are found today in Gujarat and Punjab, India. This is interesting, because if a foreign light-skinned people entered and took over, it would seem likely that there would be genetic evidence for this. The long continuity of ethnic groups in this region would indicate that the people living there had not seen an influx of a different ethic group that would have mixed with their own. (15)
After 700 years the Harappan cities began to decline. This is generally attributed to the invasion of a foreign people. However, it now believed by Kenoyer and many other archaeologists that the decline of the Indus cities was a result of many factors, such as overextended political and economic networks, and the drying up major rivers. These all contributed to the rise of a new social order. There is archaeological evidence that around the late Harappan phase, from 1900-1300 B.C. the city was not being maintained and was getting crowded. This suggests that the rulers had were no longer able to control the daily functioning of the city. Having lost authority, a new social order rose up. Although certain aspects of the elites culture, seals with motifs and pottery with Indus script on it, disappeared, the Indus culture was not lost. (16) It is seen that in the cities that sprung up in the Ganga and Yamuna river valleys between 600-300 B.C., that many of their cultural aspects can be traced to the earlier Indus culture. The technologies, artistic symbols, architectural styles, and aspects of the social organization in the cities of this time had all originated in the Indus cities. (17) This is another fact that points to the idea that the Aryan invasion did not happen. The Indus cities may have declined, for various reasons, but their culture continued on in the form of technology, artistic and religious symbols, and city planning. Usually, when a people conquer another they bring with them new ideas and social structures. It would seem that if indeed Aryan's invaded India, then there would be evidence of a completely different sort of religion, craft making, significant changes in art and social structure. But none of this has been found. There appears to be an underlying continuity in the culture of India, and what changes have occurred are due to largely internal factors. This is an idea shared by many prominent archaeologists, such as Kenoyer, George Dales, Jim Shaffer, and Colin Renfrew.
The Aryan's are supposed to have brought the Vedic culture to India. These people and their literature is believed to have then originated after the decline of the Indus Valley civilizations. The Vedas have been dated as being written some time after the Aryan's supposedly invaded, somewhere between 1500-1200 B.C. Many of the Indus sites have been found along the banks of the now dried up Sarasvati river. This river is mentioned throughout the Vedas (18) Recent geological investigations has shown that the Sarasvati was once a very large river (as well as satellite photos of the indus-sarasvati river basin), but dried up around 1900 B. C. due to tectonic movements. (19) The Vedas, however speak of the Sarasvati as a very large and flowing river. If the dating of the Vedic literature is correct, than there is a discrepancy because the Sarasvati river dried up before the Vedas were supposed to have been written. This is an interesting situation. It might seem possible then, that with other evidence showing that there was no influx of an invading people, that the Vedas were then written by the people of the Indus Valley.
Another point that might indicate the Harappan's being a Vedic culture is the discovery of fire altars at several Indus sites. Fire rituals and sacrifice were an important part of Vedic religious practices. But what was significant about these alters, is that they were aligned and constructed in the same manner as later discovered altars were. The fire altars were then Vedic in construction indicating that the Harappan's were a Vedic culture.
The idea that there wasn't in fact an Aryan invasion is supported on many levels, as I have tried to demonstrate. Even today, it is seen in India the legacy of these Indus cities in the traditional arts and crafts, and in the layout of houses and settlements. If there really was an invasion of a people that completely obliterated this other culture, then the many striking similarities we see today in the continuity of Indian culture is certainly most curious. The remains of the Indus civilization are enormous, and most of them are yet to be excavated. There are whole cites that have yet to be excavated, like the largest known Indus culture site of Ganweriwala, in the Cholistan desert of Pakistan. No doubt the continuing excavations will lend more insight into the world of this enigmatic civilization.
Language and World Culture [LANGCULT]
The Thesis of Linguistic Determinism
Carl H. Flygt
The thesis of linguistic determinism is the idea that nothing is available to human consciousness outside its capacity to apply words to it. A possible experience is what it is solely in virtue of its being represented in language. If it has no such representation, it doesn’t exist. A person devoid of the means to express an idea is devoid of that idea.
The thesis was adduced with systematic force by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), a linguist with specialization in Mesoamerican languages and Hopi. Whorf asks whether the concepts of space, time and substance are given in the same form to all human beings, or whether they and their concomitant experiences are conditioned by the structure of the languages they speak. In the same vein he asks whether there are traceable affinities between cultural and behavioral norms and large-scale linguistic patterns. In other words, Whorf asks whether human consciousness might not contain some evolutionary and perhaps even morphological divergences among different language groups with respect to material reality as it is experienced. Then he asks whether such divergences can be traced with linguistic analysis.
Whorf does indeed find differences in the structure of the categorical concept of time between Hopi language and what he calls Standard Average European usage (SAE), which treats time according to a spatial imagination. For the user of SAE, time is conceived and experienced on a linear metaphor that is “patterned on the outer world.” A space of ten days, for example, is a cyclic pattern in time conceived and experienced as a mentally constructed group, as an “imaginary plural.” This pattern has none of the objective reality of, for example, an aggregate of ten books, but it is treated by users of SAE with the same linguistic pattern. For the speaker of SAE, cyclicity brings the conscious response of imaginary plurals, even though the likeness of cyclicity to aggregates is not given by experience prior to language.
The Hopi language, which developed in an arid environment in a culture with no economic surplus, neither reflects nor allows this imaginative convention. For the Hopi, the subjective sense of “becoming later,” which for Whorf is the “essence of time,” dominates the entire conception and the entire experience of this fundamental conceptual category. Hopi language applies plurals and cardinals only to entities such as physical objects that can form an objective group. An expression such as “ten days” is not used, and thus presumably is neither conceived nor experienced. For the Hopi, nothing cloaks the subjective “becoming later,” which is the universal essence of time. Consequently, Hopi culture demonstrates neither historical progress nor material sophistication; at the same time, it supports a tremendous sophistication toward cosmic and occult signs and experiences, and an ontological depth that the user of SAE is challenged to follow.
Other examples of the material difference between use under SAE and under Hopi are adduced, including differences in the way mass nouns are used in SAE to conceptualize materials or in the way imaginative nouns are used to conceptualize phases of cycles, neither of which occur in Hopi. These differences and others are reflected in habitual thought and habitual behavior in the two cultures, and the differences of thought and behavior are reflected in institutional differences between them. Whether a commercialized culture based on time-prorata values (wages, rent, credit, interest, depreciation, insurance) could have developed under the Hopi’s linguistic handling of time and substance seems quite improbable, and certainly the Hopi way of life would be disrupted by increased infiltration of SAE language use and cultural practice.
But which comes first, language patterns or cultural norms?
The theory of linguistic determinism holds that “language is the factor that limits plasticity and rigidifies channels of development in the more autocratic way.” This is because language is a system, and not just an assemblage of norms. It is the factor which, because it is systematic, changes more slowly. Cultural innovation can occur with comparative quickness; linguistic treatment of the Kantian categories, once established, cannot change quickly because it is tied systematically to everything else in language, cultural usage and individual self-consciousness. For the linguistic determinist, the limits of language are the limits of the world.
Media and Communication [MEDCOM]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/world/middleeast/israeli-palestinian-dispute-upstages-arab-spring-at-united-nations.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=arab%20spring%20social%20media&st=cse
United Nations Journal
The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: September 22, 2011
UNITED NATIONS — Hillary Rodham Clinton, sharing a podium during the United Nations General Assembly with half a dozen of the world’s most powerful political women, was waxing enthusiastic about the success of the Arab uprisings when she gave a sudden shout-out to Tunisia.
“Minister! Thank you, minister,” Mrs. Clinton, the secretary of state, enthused as she pointed toward the country’s new minister of women’s affairs. “I think we should give Tunisia a round of applause.”
By rights, this should be the year of Arab uprisings at the yearly gathering of presidents, kings and other potentates. Some of the world’s longest-serving tyrants (and once star attractions among the weeklong marathon of speeches) have been overthrown. The fresh faces here represent nascent Arab governments that profess to want to follow the principles of human rights and good government that the United Nations embodies.
Undoubtedly there have been some thrilling moments for them — in particular a pantheon of world leaders spending several hours making somewhat self-congratulatory speeches about the success of the United Nations in supporting the Libyan rebels. But new tensions in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute largely overshadowed the Arab Spring.
The dispute that has preoccupied the building for the entire week is peaking Friday with dueling speeches less than an hour apart by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, promising to further overshadow those fresh faces of the Arab Spring.
For Lilia Labidi, minister of women’s affairs since the Tunisian revolution in January, her first giddy exposure to the United Nations rapidly dissipated. Her own appeal to the gathering for help in consolidating gains for women in Tunisia elicited little reaction, with Mrs. Clinton, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and various other female heads of state sweeping out of the meeting on empowering women without stopping for even a hello.
Ms. Labidi, although a guest of the United Nations, decided to go home.
“I cannot live here in such luxury,” she said, noting that the $700-a-day cost of her staying in New York would be better spent on a project for rural women.
“To the degree that the Arab Spring is important, one would have wanted more than a warm welcome and a group photograph — what am I bringing back to the Tunisian women?” she said over breakfast in a Midtown Manhattan coffee shop. “The attention of the world has to be much more engaged in our region.”
Ms. Labidi, a soft-spoken professor of anthropology and clinical psychology, said she found it frustrating that the question she was asked the most by people had little bearing on her projects, like improving girls’ access to elementary school. The question she heard over and over: What effect will the revolution have on Tunisian attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, conducts a version of political speed-dating during the gathering, holding a 15-minute meeting with each delegation. Virtually every leader has brought up the need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said a senior aide, while he could not remember any discussions about the Arab revolutions.
When they do come up, they tend to be the connection between the two, all the references about self-determination and political freedom throwing the spotlight on the lack of it for the Palestinians. “We cannot respond to this aspiration for freedom and democracy,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in his speech, “so splendidly and bravely expressed by the Arab peoples, by perpetuating a tragedy, that of the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
If there was one new international political star at the gathering, it was Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the leader of Libya’s Transitional National Council, who drew the kind of attention that had photographers knocking one another to the ground in the scrums that developed around his movements. “Blessings go out to Libya!” yelled one woman repeatedly as the melee subsided.
“This is a great day for all Libyans inside and outside the country!” Mr. Abdel-Jalil said right after the Libya conference, walking around like the rest of the delegation with a smile permanently plastered to his face.
Of course, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi caused quite a stir when he showed up in 2009, though that was inspired because he spoke for 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15; appeared to tear the charter of the United Nations while suggesting that the world body move to his hometown, Surt (now embattled); and set off a media frenzy about where he would pitch his much-traveled, signature tent.
“Another abuse of Libyan resources!” recalled Ibrahim O. Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy permanent representative and one of the first Libyan diplomats to break with the government after the revolution erupted.
He added: “We felt then that he was just not a normal person. These new people are working in the interests of the Libyan people.”
In fact, this year’s gathering was suffering from something of a despot deficit, or at least the ranks of haranguers raging against the evils of capitalism and the West have been drastically thinned by revolutions or disease. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Cuba, literally mailed it in, sending a letter to Mr. Ban demanding an independent Palestinian state.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, much diminished at home by his confrontation with the country’s supreme leader, has said the same thing so many times at the United Nations that it has taken on the aura of a ritual monotony. When a Western ambassador was asked what he anticipated from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech, he quipped, “We are preparing our usual contingency walkout plan.”
Right on schedule, Mr. Ahmadinejad prompted a walkout by the United States and Europe by implying that conspiracies lay behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the Holocaust.
Events that actually concentrated on the Arab world tended to take place on the sidelines. Norway organized a seminar on the role of social media in confronting totalitarian governments, while France as current president of the Group of 8 economic powers held a meeting to reconfirm the international financial assistance pledged to the emerging governments.
There, at least, the Tunisian foreign minister, Mohammed Mouldi Kefi, provided the soaring rhetoric somewhat absent at the main event on Turtle Bay. In expressing the wish that Tunisia and other Arab countries would soon join the ranks of the world’s leading democracies, he said, “I hope that this unfinished symphony that we are now playing can become Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ ”
Political Science [POLSCI]
Truer to Ourselves:
Rethinking US-Israeli Policy
by Kellan Schmelz
During the Obama Administration's recent spat with Israel over the latter's building of a new settlement on traditionally Palestinian land, the generally close relationship between the two nations seemed to shift gears. Since Harry Truman's recognition of Israel in 1948, Israel has enjoyed a level of support from the United States that surpasses that of any other nation, both politically and economically [1]; while many Presidents have disagreed with Israel, few have ever been willing to do so in a way that might appear to threaten this relationship [2]. As Benjamin Netanyahu frequently complained during the crisis, no administration has ever directly pressured Israel to halt the building of settlements on Palestinian land [3], as the Obama Administration repeatedly did throughout the recent political firestorm, or outright demand the establishment of a Palestinian state, as Obama reportedly did. Particularly after eight years of an unabashedly pro-Israeli Bush administration, it is refreshing to have a President who seemingly gets it: a voice in the White House willing to buck past alliances and demand that Israel show accountability and respect human rights.
The Administration faltered, however, when it came to the rhetoric they employed with regards to Israel. For all the Administration's appearances of bucking the unnaturally close American-Israeli relationship, it refused to drop the old talking point that the United States' values justify a close relationship with Israel. Just days after berating Prime Minister Netanyahu about settlements over the phone for 45 minutes [4], Secretary Hillary Clinton stood before AIPAC and praised America and Israel's "values of freedom, equality, democracy, the right to live free from fear, and our common aspirations for a future of peace, security and prosperity" [5] It's a classic line, one that implies that supporting Israel is an American thing to do, so to speak.
What if it isn't true, though? What if supporting Israel so egregiously is actually inherently UN-American?
It is a question worth asking. One issue lies with doublethink on the part of the Obama Administration. Why would the administration claim that American values mandate an uneven hand in Israel's favor while moving towards policies that are quite the opposite? The larger issue at hand, rests on the fact that the US was founded on the specific values; values that articulate what the United States stands for, and what actions it will and will not take. These values are enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. One might argue that the amendment process undermines the concept of "American values", but even the very existence itself is rooted in the principle of protecting Man's rights from tyranny. In all affairs, the United States must seek to uphold these values—even in affairs that primarily affect foreign citizens. To not do so would be a blow to the constitution, and effectively commit high treason.
Hillary's examples of "values" are trite buzzwords. When one looks to the Founders and their own various beliefs about their fledgling nation's role in the world, namely regarding democracy, tyranny, and foreign alliances, the evidence suggests that the United States has been committing high treason for some time.
The Founders, while wary of the idea of Democracy [6], did believe in a government that would accurately reflect the general will of the people. Thomas Jefferson in particular wrote of his longing for a government in which "the will of the people [would] be an effective ingredient" [7], and wrote in the Declaration of Independence of a government derived from "consent of the governed". Such values can be found in the Constitution's establishment of one elected legislative body and an elected President. The US has failed to live up to this value in regards to Israel. Despite near unanimous support in Congress for an egregiously close Israeli friendship, the American people are less unilateral on the issue: most opinion polls show Americans divided between Israeli and Palestinian sympathies, with a great number of undecideds [8]. The common explanation of this points to two groups, lobbies such as AIPAC and the Christian Right, and their respective influence on Congress. One AIPAC representative once boasted his organization "could have the signatures of seventy senators on [a] napkin" in twenty-four hours [9], while Jerry Falwell, who once said "to stand against Israel is to stand against God", was noted for his Moral Majority's influence in persuading Congressmen [10]. Through heavy lobbying, those two factions seem to have goaded Congress into its vast level of support for Israel, and in doing so have led Congress down a path that does not reflect the will of the people.
The Founders would take further issues with the nature of the US-Israeli alliance. The US Constitution, with its two-thirds majority needed to pass treaties and Congressional approval needed to declare war, was clearly influenced by the desire of the Founders for a government that avoid foreign affairs. The United States has turned its back on this, having fallen instead into what Thomas Jefferson called "entangling alliances" [11] and George Washington warned against in his farewell address. One only has to look at Washington's warnings to know what makes it an entangling alliance. Washington warned that alliances would bring the United States into wars it had no real interest in beyond defending it's ally [12]. Such a prediction is proven every time Israel launches an offense into Gaza with the political support of the United States Congress, or exacts what has been called "collective punishment" on Gaza with military equipment purchased from the United States [13]. Washington goes on to stress that permanent alliances lead to poor relations with other nations, who would feel slighted by their exclusion from the alliance [14]. Gen. David Petraeus outlined this in his recent testimony to US Congress, during which he implied that this country's reputation of being Israel's ally "limits the depth and strength of partnerships with governments and people [in the Middle East]" [15]. Washington's warnings have become prophecy today.
The Founders were also unilaterally opposed to tyranny from any government, much less their own. As Bernard Bailyn of Harvard University points out, the American Revolution itself was fought out of a genuine fear that the British intended to establish a tyrannical state in the Colonies to erode the Colonists' rights [16], while the drafting of the Constitution was marked by attempts to write out any policies that might gear the nation towards tyranny—the demand of some delegates for a King was quickly shot down [17]. Naturally, it would follow that the US would extend this opposition to tyranny to its foreign dealings. In regard to Israel in recent years, it has not. It has largely refused to comment on Israel's institution of an apartheid-like state instituted against the Palestinians in the West Bank, complete with the erosion of legal rights, separate roads to drive on, and reduced access to land [18]. During Israel's disproportionate siege of the Gaza Strip that murdered thousands of Palestinian citizens—often using questionable methods, Congress issued a resolution defending Israel's "right to defend itself' [19]. When the Goldstone Report, alleging human rights violations on both the Palestinian and Israeli side, was issued by the UN Human Rights council, Congress issued another resolution denouncing it [20]. And until recently, the US has tacitly approved of Israel's policies of demolishing Palestinian homes to build Jewish neighborhoods and building in traditional Palestinian zones [21]. Israel, for all intents and purposes, has become a tyrant to its Palestinian counterparts; despite this, the US continues to give Israel exorbitant amounts of military and economic aid, arguably perpetuating such tyranny. The US has lapsed into supporting the kind of tyranny abroad our forefathers fought against at home.
The values argument simply no longer holds. It is enough of a doublethink for the administration to orchestrate a paradigm shift with Israel while claiming that American values mandate an uneven-handed US-Israel relationship. Even the latter claim, though, just seems ludicrous in light of the evidence. Obama is not perfect on Israel; in particular, he seems unlikely to abandon the old line about "unbreakable" bonds anytime soon. But he ought to. Changes in any policy must be backed up by changes in rhetoric. In this case, the policy change is there; the United States appears to be treating Israel with an even hand, and rightly so. Now is the time for the change in rhettoric: if the US hopes to reclaim its values in regards to Israel, the "unbreakable" line must be dropped.
Science and Technology [SCITECH]
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened
By Evan Ratliff
November 20, 2009 |
Shedding Your Identity in the Digital Age
1
August 13, 6:40 PM: I’m driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I’m reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there’s no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught.
I had intended to flee in broad daylight, but when you are going on the lam, there are a surprising number of last-minute errands to run. This morning, I picked up a set of professionally designed business cards for my fake company under my fake name, James Donald Gatz. I drove to a Best Buy, where I bought two prepaid cell phones with cash and then put a USB cord on my credit card — an arbitrary dollar amount I hoped would confuse investigators, who would scan my bill and wonder what gadgetry I had purchased. An oil change for my car was another head fake. Who would think that a guy about to sell his car would spend $60 at Oil Can Henry’s?
I already owned a couple of prepaid phones; I left one of the new ones with my girlfriend and mailed the other to my parents — giving them an untraceable way to contact me in emergencies. I bought some Just for Men beard-and-mustache dye at a drugstore. My final stop was the bank, to draw a $477 cashier’s check. It’s payment for rent on an anonymous office in Las Vegas, which is where I need to deliver the check by midday tomorrow.
Crossing the Bay Bridge, I glance back for a last nostalgic glimpse of the skyline. Then I reach over, slide the back cover off my cell phone, and pop out the battery. A cell phone with a battery inside is a cell phone that’s trackable.
About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe.
What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can’t be detected. Nor will it note that I then double back on rural roads to I-5 and drive south through the night, cutting east at Bakersfield. There will be no digital record that at 4 am I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile.
2
“Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $5,000.”
— wired.com/vanish, August 14, 2009 5:38 pm
Officially it will be another 24 hours before the manhunt begins. That’s when Wired’s announcement of my disappearance will be posted online. It coincides with the arrival on newsstands of the September issue of the magazine, which contains a page of mugshot-like photos of me, eyes slightly vacant. The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me.
The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?
It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.
Wired offered a $5,000 bounty — $3,000 of which would come out of my own pocket — to anyone who could locate me between August 15 and September 15, say the password “fluke,” and take my picture. Nicholas Thompson, my editor, would have complete access to information that a private investigator hired to find me might uncover: my real bank accounts, credit cards, phone records, social networking accounts, and email. I’d give Thompson my friends’ contact information so he could conduct interviews. He would parcel out my personal details online, available to whichever amateur or professional investigators chose to hunt for me. To add a layer of intrigue, Wired hired the puzzle creators at Lone Shark Games to help structure the contest.
I began my planning months in advance. I let my hair and beard grow out, got a motorcycle license, and siphoned off extra cash whenever I visited an ATM, storing it in a hollowed-out book. One day over lunch, a friend from Google suggested software to hide my Internet address — “but all of these things can be broken,” he warned — and how best to employ prepaid phones. I learned how to use Visa and American Express gift cards, bought with cash, to make untraceable purchases online. I installed software to mask my Web searches and generated a small notebook’s worth of fake email addresses.
I shared my plans with no one, not my girlfriend, not my parents, not my closest friends. Nobody knew the route I was taking out of town, where I was going, or my new name. Not even a hint. If I got caught, it would be by my own mistakes.
Friday afternoon, August 14, I arrive in Vegas wearing a suit and sporting my normal brown hair, a beard, and a pair of rectangular tortoiseshell glasses. Carrying enough electronic equipment to stock a RadioShack, I drive straight to a dreary two-story office complex among the strip malls on South Pecos Road and hand over the cashier’s check, securing a tiny windowless office. There I set up two laptops, flip on a webcam to track any activity in the office, and leave.
At CarMax, a used-auto outlet, I then sell my Civic for $3,000. The next day, the first official one of my disappearance, is spent dyeing my hair and goatee jet-black and locking down the security on my laptops — including a third one that I’ll carry with me.
At 5 am on Sunday morning, the graveyard shift clerk at the Tropicana hotel hands over my $100 cash deposit, barely looking up. If she had, she might have noticed that the man checking out of room 480 — wearing a pair of oversize Harry Potter-style glasses, hazel-colored contact lenses, slicked-back hair, and a belt with $2,000 cash hidden in an underside pocket — bears surprisingly little resemblance to the one who checked in two days before.
Read More http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/#ixzz0wtv6eLN2
Please do an Iceberg Model Summary on the reading assigned to your cohort
An iceberg has three paragraphs:
1. A standard what is it about summary (the main points)
2. A comparison of other samples of similar events / concepts
3. An analysis of why these types of events occur (the “big picture” paragraph)
You may read articles / writings from other cohorts if they assist your understanding of your project/paper. This may actually help you gather sources for your paper that can be used for your final draft.
Bear in mind that you are only expected to read the items in your cohort, though, as an assignment grade, an additional iceberg model summaries will not be included in your grade.
In this set of readings, you will find:
ARTDES: Forum on Art and Literature - Mao Tse Tung
BUSECO: When Data Guys Triumph - CADE MASSEY and BOB TEDESCHI (New York Times)
EDUISS: Abridged from Chapter 2: Other People’s Children (Savage Inequalities) Jonathan Kozol
ENVENG: Economy vs. Environment -David Owen (The New Yorker)
ETHBESY: What Batman Teaches Us About Philosophy - Peter Bebergal
HISLIT: Harrapa Civilization http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappa-mohenjodaro.html
LANGCULT: The Thesis of Linguistic Determinism - Carl H. Flygt
MEDCOM: The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season- Neil Mac Farquhar (UN Journal)
POLSCI: Truer to Ourselves: Rethinking US-Israeli Policy - Kellan Schmelz
SCITECH: Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened - Evan Ratliff (Wired Magazine)
Art and Design [ARTDES]
Forum on Art and Literature
By Mao Tse Tung
All art, literature, and thought represent the interests of some class in society. Indeed, there exist literature and art which are for the exploiters and oppressors. Feudal literature and art are literature and art for the landlord class. Such were the literature and art of the ruling class in China’s feudal era. To this day such literature and art still have considerable influence in China. Literature and art for the middle class, the bourgeoisie, are bourgeois literature and art. People like the writer Liang always talk about literature and art as being above the political and social conflicts of a society. But, in fact, they uphold the literature and art of the middle class, and oppose proletarian, that is, worker, literature and art. Then there is the literature and art which exist to serve the imperialists. This we call traitor literature and art.
With us, literature and at are for the people, not for any of the above groups. We have said that China’s new culture at the present stage is an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal culture of the masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. Today, anything that is truly of the masses must necessarily be led by the most advanced workers. Whatever is under the leadership of the middle class property owner, the bourgeois, cannot possibly be for the masses. Naturally, the same applies to the new literature and art which are part of our new culture. We should take over the rich legacy and the good traditions in literature and art that have been handed down from past ages in China and foreign countries, but the aim of our art must still be to serve the masses of the people. Nor do we refuse to use the literary and artistic forms of the past. In our hands these old forms, remodeled and infused with new content, also become something revolutionary in the service of the people.
Who then, are the masses of the people? The greatest portion of the people, constituting more than 90 per cent of our total population, are the factory workers, farm laborers, and peasants, soldiers and owners of small businesses. Therefore, our literature and art are first for the workers, the lass that leads the revolution. Secondly, they are for the farm workers and peasants, the most numerous and most steadfast of our allies in the revolution.
Our literature and art workers must accomplish this task and alter their viewpoint. They must give up the idea that art and thought go beyond and are outside of political concerns. They must gradually move their feet over to the side of the workers, peasants and soldiers, to the side of the proletariat, through the process of going into their very midst and into the thick of practical struggles, and through the process of studying Marxism and society. Only in this way can we have a literature and art that are truly for the workers, peasants, and soldiers-truly proletarian literature and art.
Man’s social life is the only source of literature and art and is incomparably livelier and richer in content. But the people are not satisfied with life alone and demand literature and art as well. Why? Because, while both are beautiful, life as reflected in works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and therefore more universal than actual everyday life. Revolutionary literature and art would create a variety of characters out of real life, and help the masses to propel history forward. For example, there is suffering from hunger, cold and oppression on the one hand, and exploitation and oppression of man by man on the other. These facts exist everywhere and people look upon them as the contradictions and struggles within them and produce works which awaken the masses. These works fire the masses with enthusiasm, and impel them to unite and struggle to transform their environment. Withoug such literature and art, our political and social task could not be fulfilled, or at least not so effectively and speedily. Through the creative labor of revolutionary writers and artists, the raw materials found in the life of the people are shaped into the ideological form of literature and art serving the masses of the people . All our literature and art, whether more advanced or elementary, are for the masses of the people. In the first place, they exist for the workers, peasants and soldiers. All our works of art are created for the workers, peasants, and soldiers and are for their use.
Is this attitude of ours utilitarian? That is, is this attitude of ours simply one which makes all questions of art and thought an issue of social usefulness? We materialists do not oppose utilitarianism in general but only the utilitarianism of the feudal, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes. We oppose those hypocrites who attack utilitarianism in words but in deeds embrace the most selfish and shortsighted utilitarianism. They speak of art and thought as pure and above the worldly concerns of society, but all of their writing protects and supports the material interests of their own class. There is no “ism” in the world that goes beyond considerations of utility in art and thought. In a class society there can be only the utilitarianism of this or that class. We are proletarian revolutionary utilitarians, and take as our point of departure the unity of the present and future interests of the broadest masses, who constitute over 90 percent of the population. Therefore, we are revolutionary utilitarians aiming for the broadest and the most long-range objectives. WE are not narrow utilitarians concerned only with the partial and the immediate. If, for instance, you blame the masses for their utilitarianism and yet for your own utility, or that of a small group, force on the market and propagandize among the masses a work which pleases only the few but is useless or revealing your own lack of self-knowledge. A poem, novel, or painting is good only when it brings real benefit to the masses of the people. Your work may be as beautiful a poem as “The Spring Snow” but if for the time being it appeals only to the few, and the masses are still singing crude works like the “Song of the Rural Poor,” you will get nowhere by simply scolding them. Instead, you must work to raise their level of understanding and enjoyment. The question is to bring about a unity between “The Spring Snow” and the “Song of the Rural Poor,” between higher standards and popularization. Without such a unity, the highest art of any artist cannot help being simply for the political and social use of a small self-interested group. You may call this art “pure and lofty” but that is merely your own name for it which the masses will not accept.
Business and Economics [BUSECO]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/after-moneyball-data-guys-are-triumphant.html
When Data Guys Triumph
By CADE MASSEY and BOB TEDESCHI
JOSHUA MILBERG has plenty of business cred: an M.B.A. from Yale, experience in the mayor’s office in Chicago, a job as a vice president for an energy consulting firm.
But all of that, Mr. Milberg says, matters less than his reputation as “the data guy” — someone who can offer insights through statistical analysis. And for that, he and a growing number of young executives can credit none other than “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” by Michael Lewis.
More than eight years after “Moneyball” was published, the book refuses to shuffle meekly to the remainder bin of public consciousness. Now, “Moneyball,” the movie starring Brad Pitt, could restore the title to best-seller lists.
But a generation of managers like Mr. Milberg, now 31, never really put down “Moneyball,” which examines how the Oakland Athletics achieved an amazing winning streak while having the smallest player payroll in Major League Baseball. (Short answer: creative use of data.)
These managers are savvier with data and more welcomed in business circles in part because of the book. Among other things, Mr. Milberg’s analysis has helped his clients understand when to prioritize high-volume, low-revenue sales over their sexier, high-revenue siblings.
“The book impacted the way I looked at data,” he says. “And it impacted those around me, allowing me to go farther afield with those data than usual.”
At its heart, of course, “Moneyball” isn’t about baseball. It’s not even about statistics. Rather, it’s about challenging conventional wisdom with data. By embedding this lesson in the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, the book has lured millions of readers into the realm of the geek. Along the way, it converted many into empirical evangelists.
This evangelism has created opportunities for the analytically minded. Julia Rozovsky is a Yale M.B.A. student who studied economics and math as an undergraduate, a background that prepared her for a traditional — and lucrative — consulting career. Instead, partly as a result of reading “Moneyball” and finding like-minded people, she pointed herself toward work in analytics. This summer, she interned at the People Analytics group at Google.
Not exactly the traditional human resources department, this group enthusiastically pursues the kind of creative empiricism that Mr. Lewis documents, Ms. Rozovsky says, and it hires M.B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s to help.
Granted, other forces have aided the rise of creative data analysis — Web analytics, behavioral economics, health care reform and technology, to name a few. But “Moneyball” dramatized the principles behind these forces: a reliance on data to exploit inefficiencies, allocate resources and challenge conventional wisdom — and thus broadened their appeal.
“Moneyball” traces Billy Beane’s use of unorthodox analytics to the work of Bill James. Working as a baseball outsider, Mr. James began self-publishing his analysis and commentary in 1977 and built a passionate following. As Mr. Lewis writes, Mr. James “made it so clear and interesting that it provoked a lot of intelligent people to join the conversation.”
This is also what “Moneyball” has done for analytics more generally. Once people see the value of a batter’s O.P.S. — on-base plus slugging percentage, a key measure in the book — it’s a short step to applying similar principles in their own organizations.
If graduate schools are any sign, the boardrooms of the future — especially compensation committees — may be in for a shake-up. Among business school students, there has been a surge in interest in analytics. Some of it is related to sports: today, M.B.A.’s are doing analysis in the N.B.A., the N.F.L. and other leagues. But many students are seeking analytics-related work outside the sports realm.
This surge is affecting even the curriculum. At Yale this fall, Edward H. Kaplan is offering “Mathletics,” a course at the Graduate School of Management that focuses on data analysis in sports. Professor Kaplan is a world-class academic, and a serious one. He researches subjects like terrorism and H.I.V. “I’m just using sports as a way to get students interested in modeling problems,” he says.
Unfortunately, the road from modeling problems to influencing organizational decisions is a long one. In many industries, analysts don’t even have a seat at the table. We have seen this battle up close in the professional football, which lags behind baseball and basketball in the use of analysis. Predictably, those in the N.F.L. who are most interested in analysis are the lieutenants rather than the generals.
That’s typical. In most industries, Generation Moneyball isn’t yet in charge. But as the Nobel laureate Max Planck once said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Still, the trend, if not exactly linear, is moving in the “Moneyball” direction. Brad Pitt can only help.
Cade Massey is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. He has conducted research in collaboration with Google. Bob Tedeschi is a frequent contributor to The New York Times.
Education and Global Issues [EDUISS]
Abridged from Chapter 2:
Other People’s Children
Between 1960 and 1970, as the last white families left the neighborhood, North Lawndale lost three quarters of its businesses, one quarter of its jobs. In the next ten years, 80 percent of the remaining jobs in manufacturing were lost.
“People carry a lot of crosses here,” says Reverend Jim Wolff, who directs a mission church not far from one of the deserted factories. As the factories have moved out, the street gangs have moved in. The Vice Lords, the Disciples, and the Latin Kings have, in a sense, replaced Sears Roebuck, International Harvester, Sunbeam and Western Electric.
He stops the car next to a weed-choked lot close to the corner of Sixteenth and Hamlin. “Dr. King,” he says, “lived on this corner.” There is no memorial. The city, I later learn, flattened the building after Dr. King moved out. A menacing group of teen-age boys is standing on the corner of the lot where Dr. King lived with his family. “Dr. King once said he had met his match here in Chicago. He said that he faced more bigotry and hatred here than anywhere he’d been in the Deep South. Now he’s gone. The weeds have overgrown his memory. I sometimes wonder if the kids who spend their lives out on that corner would be shocked, or even interested, to know that he had lived there once. If you told them, I suspect you’d get a shrug at most…”
On a clear October day in 1990, the voices of children in the first-floor hallway of the Mary McLeod Bethune School are as bright and optimistic as the voices of small children anywhere. The school, whose students are among the poorest in the city, serves one of the neighborhoods in which the infant death rate is particularly high. Nearly 1,000 infants die within these very poor Chicago neighborhoods each year. An additional 3,000 infants are delivered with brain damage or with other forms of neurological impairment.
When the children lie down on the floor to have their naps, I sit and watch their movements and their breathing. A few fall asleep at once, but others are restless. The teacher is not particularly gentle. She snaps at the ones who squirm around—“Relax!” and “Sleep!”—and forces down their arms and knees. The room is sparse: a large and clean but rather cheerless space. There are very few of those manipulable objects and bright-colored shelves and boxes that adorn suburban kindergarten classrooms. The only decorations on the walls are posters supplied by companies that market school materials: “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” “Zoo Animals,” “Community Helpers.” Nothing the children or teacher made themselves.
After 30 minutes pass, the teacher tells the children to sit up. In a somewhat mechanical way, the teacher lifts a picture book of Mother Goose and flips the pages as the children sit before her on the rug. “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow…The children recite the verses with her as she turns the pages. She’s not very warm or animated, but the children are obedient. The book looks worn and old, as if the teacher’s used it many, many years, and shows no signs of adaptation to the race of the black children in the school. Mary is white. Old Mother Hubbard is white. Jack is white. Jill is white. Only Mother Hubbard’s dog is black.
Environment and Energy [ENVENG]
Economy vs. Environment
By David Owen (The New Yorker)
March 30, 2009
The week before last, twenty-five hundred delegates, from more than seventy countries, met in Copenhagen to prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will take place there in December and will produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1992 and will expire in 2012. The speakers in Copenhagen were united by a sense of urgency—and for good reason, given the poor record of most participating countries in meeting their Kyoto targets for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.
So far, the most effective way for a Kyoto signatory to cut its carbon output has been to suffer a well-timed industrial implosion, as Russia did after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. The Kyoto benchmark year is 1990, when the smokestacks of the Soviet military-industrial complex were still blackening the skies, so when Vladimir Putin ratified the protocol, in 2004, Russia was already certain to meet its goal for 2012. The countries with the best emissions-reduction records—Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic—were all parts of the Soviet empire and therefore look good for the same reason.
The United States didn’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but Canada did, and its experience is suggestive because its economy and per-capita oil consumption are similar to ours. Its Kyoto target is a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels. By 2006, however, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on climate initiatives, its greenhouse-gas output had increased to a hundred and twenty-two per cent of the goal, and the environment minister described the Kyoto target as “impossible.”
The explanation for Canada’s difficulties isn’t complicated: the world’s principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk. Gasoline consumption in the United States fell almost six per cent in 2008. That was the result not of a sudden greening of the American consciousness but of the rapid rise in the price of oil during the first half of the year, followed by the full efflorescence of the current economic mess.
The world’s financial and energy crises are connected, and they are similar because credit and fossil fuels are forms of leverage: oil, coal, and natural gas are multipliers of labor in much the same way that credit is a multiplier of wealth. Human history is the history of our ascent up what the naturalist Loren Eiseley called “the heat ladder”: coal bested firewood as an amplifier of productivity, and oil and natural gas bested coal. Fossil fuels have enabled us to leverage the strength of our bodies, and we are borrowing against the world’s dwindling store of inexpensive energy in the same way that we borrowed against the illusory equity in our homes. Moreover, American dependence on fossil fuels isn’t going to end any time soon: solar panels and wind turbines provided only about a half per cent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2007, and they don’t work when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Replacing oil is going to require more than determination.
The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again—through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-investment projects to build new roads and airports (ditto). Our best intentions regarding conservation and carbon reduction inevitably run up against the realities of foreclosure and bankruptcy and unemployment. How do we persuade people to drive less—an environmental necessity—while also encouraging them to revive our staggering economy by buying new cars?
The popular answer—switch to hybrids—leaves the fundamental problem unaddressed. Increasing the fuel efficiency of a car is mathematically indistinguishable from lowering the price of its fuel; it’s just fiddling with the other side of the equation. If doubling the cost of gas gives drivers an environmentally valuable incentive to drive less—the recent oil-price spike pushed down consumption and vehicle miles travelled, stimulated investment in renewable energy, increased public transit ridership, and killed the Hummer—then doubling the efficiency of cars makes that incentive disappear. Getting more miles to the gallon is of no benefit to the environment if it leads to an increase in driving—and the response of drivers to decreases in the cost of driving is to drive more. Increases in fuel efficiency could be bad for the environment unless they’re accompanied by powerful disincentives that force drivers to find alternatives to hundred-mile commutes. And a national carbon policy, if it’s to have a real impact, will almost certainly need to bring American fuel prices back to at least where they were at their peak in the summer of 2008. Electric cars are not the panacea they are sometimes claimed to be, not only because the electricity they run on has to be generated somewhere but also because making driving less expensive does nothing to discourage people from sprawling across the face of the planet, promoting forms of development that are inherently and catastrophically wasteful.
One beneficial consequence of the ongoing global economic crisis is that it has put a little time back on the carbon clock. Because the climate damage done by greenhouse gases is cumulative, the emissions decrease attributable to the recession has given the world a bit more room to devise a plan that might actually work. The prospects for a meaningful worldwide climate agreement probably improved last November, with the election of Barack Obama, but his commitments to economic recovery and carbon reduction—to bringing the country out of recession while also reducing U.S. greenhouse emissions to seventeen per cent of their 2005 level by 2050—don’t pull in the same direction. Creating “green jobs,” a key component of the agenda, is different from creating new jobs, since green jobs, if they’re truly green, displace non-green jobs—wind-turbine mechanics instead of oil-rig roughnecks—probably a zero-sum game, as far as employment is concerned. The ultimate success or failure of Obama’s program, and of the measures that will be introduced in Copenhagen this year, will depend on our willingness, once the global economy is no longer teetering, to accept policies that will seem to be nudging us back toward the abyss.
Ethics and Belief Systems [ETHBESY]
A talk with Robert Arp and Mark D. White
What Batman Teaches Us About Philosophy
By Peter Bebergal
July 13, 2008
ON JULY 18, "The Dark Knight," the much-awaited sequel to "Batman Begins," will swoop into theaters. Director Christopher Nolan has reinvigorated the Batman franchise with his vision of a darker, more realistic crime-fighter. Batman has seen a number of interesting evolutions: in the '30s and '40s he was a gothic-tinged detective; in the '50s, he was a smiling mentor to his new sidekick Robin. In the '80s, Frank Miller's critically acclaimed comics The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year 1 reintroduced Batman as a grim and complex character, a man obsessed with the death of his parents at the hands of a mugger when he was a child.
Unlike most other superheroes, Batman's origins do not include radioactivity, alien heritage, or high-tech armor. Batman is self-made hero, and because of his humanness, he easily becomes a vehicle for asking questions psychological, social, and, well, philosophical. In the new book "Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul," editors Robert Arp of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology and professor Mark D. White of the College of Staten Island (CUNY) have compiled 20 essays by philosophers of every field, from metaphysics to ethics to social-political philosophy. For many of the writers, Batman offers a window into profound real-world issues, particularly in the realm of ethics.
Arp and White frame Batman's ethical dilemmas in three ways. Is Batman a deontologist? That is, does he follow an ethic that must be universally true for all people at all times no matter the consequences? Is Batman a utilitarian, in that he struggles to achieve the best possible outcome for the most well-being? Or is Batman a virtue ethicist who makes moral decisions based on his own capabilities in the face of his ethical dilemmas? (Why, for example, doesn't Batman just kill the Joker? Is it right that he keeps picking up orphan boys and training them to fight crime at his side?)
Ideas interviewed Arp and White separately, by phone; Arp from his office in Buffalo, and White standing outside a comic shop in South Orange, N.J.
IDEAS: What is it about Batman, more than say Superman, that's relevant to philosophy?
WHITE: Because he doesn't have powers, Batman faces more limitations, and limitations force decisions, many of which will be ethical, or more broadly philosophical, in nature. He can't always save everyone, so who to save? How far does he have to push himself for his mission? Superman rarely confronts these issues, because he is so strong and so fast.
IDEAS: We often think of ethics as having to be grounded in some idea of God, but we don't see that with Batman.
ARP: In Batman's universe there is no God. We have to make our meaning, make our own way. Batman becomes the new god, the superhuman that steps up to the plate and metes out justice the way in which God would.
IDEAS: Do you think the realism of the new films helps or hinders thinking about Batman philosophically?
WHITE: I think it definitely helps. This is not the shiny, happy Batman that Adam West portrayed, which was consistent with the comics at the time, or even the more serious Batman that Michael Keaton played. This is how we imagine Batman would be if he were real, given all that he's gone through. This makes him more believable, more realistic, more human. And human beings, more than shiny caricatures, face philosophical dilemmas.
IDEAS: Is Batman a relativist or does he believe in some kind of universal ethic?
ARP: Yes, he believes in some kind of universal ethics, no doubt. Batman thinks there's an objective reality no matter what the situation is. When all is said and done he is still an American superhero, and in that sense he can be black and white. Almost all superheroes are going to be black-and-white objectivists. I can't think of any superhero who champions relativism.
IDEAS: Doesn't this make Batman come across as authoritarian?
WHITE: Batman believes wholeheartedly in his mission, but it's his mission alone, and he very hesitantly involves other people in it. I think he knows his ideas of right and wrong may seem fairly extreme, but he's not asking anybody else to believe in them.
IDEAS: The image of the young Bruce Wayne looking over his dead parents really defines the book. How does someone go from that to dressing like a giant bat?
WHITE: There are children who tragically lose their parents each day, but young Bruce obviously took it differently than most. It stole his innocence and steered him toward devoting his life to helping make sure others don't face the same tragedy he did.
IDEAS: Why does it often take a comic book or movie to get the general public to think about philosophy?
WHITE: Comic books, and quality pop culture in general, are simply more approachable, and lead us to consider philosophical questions without realizing it. Bill Irwin [series editor of the Blackwell Popular Culture and Philosophy books] uses the spoonful-of-sugar analogy: If you make philosophy fun, and use an entry point they are familiar with, they may find out they like it, and then read some "real" philosophy.
IDEAS: Do some scholars see this kind of thing as silly?
ARP: Sure. People think it's just a moneymaker or a way to get your name on something. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. At root we are trying to bring philosophy to people and bring people to philosophy.
IDEAS: Is there anything we can really learn from Batman, a fictional hero, about making our own choices?
WHITE: I see in Batman a great example of devotion and self-sacrifice that can counter the "do what feels good" advice you get in so many self-help books and talk shows. I'm not saying we should all put on a costume and fight crime, but I think we can all learn from Batman's determination to do what he feels is right, even if it doesn't always make him happy. Sometimes doing what's right is more important than doing what feels good.
Cambridge writer Peter Bebergal is coauthor of "The Faith Between Us."
History and Literature [HISLIT]
Harrapa Civilization
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappa-mohenjodaro.html
Some several thousand years ago there once thrived a civilization in the Indus Valley. Located in what's now Pakistan and western India, it was the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. (1) The Indus Valley Civilization, as it is called, covered an area the size of western Europe. It was the largest of the four ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. However, of all these civilizations the least is known about the Indus Valley people. This is because the Indus script has not yet been deciphered. There are many remnants of the script on pottery vessels, seals, and amulets, but without a "Rosetta Stone" linguists and archaeologists have been unable to decipher it.
They have then had to rely upon the surviving cultural materials to give them insight into the life of the Harappan's. (2) Harappan's are the name given to any of the ancient people belonging to the Indus Valley civilization. This article will be focusing mainly on the two largest cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and what has been discovered there.
The discovery of the Indus Valley civilization was first recorded in the 1800's by the British. The first recorded note was by a British army deserter, James Lewis, who was posing as an American engineer in 1826. He noticed the presence of mounded ruins at a small town in Punjab called Harappa. Because Harappa was the first city found, sometimes any of the sites are called the Harappan civilization.
Alexander Cunningham, who headed the Archaeological Survey of India, visited this site in 1853 and 1856 while looking for the cities that had been visited by Chinese pilgrims in the Buddhist period. The presence of an ancient city was confirmed in the following 50 years, but no one had any idea of its age or importance. By 1872 heavy brick robbing had virtually destroyed the upper layers of the site. The stolen bricks were used to build houses and particularly to build a railway bed that the British were constructing. Alexander Cunningham made a few small excavations at the site and reported some discoveries of ancient pottery, some stone tools, and a stone seal. Cunningham published his finds and it generated some increased interest by scholars.
It wasn't till 1920 that excavations began in earnest at Harappa. John Marshall, then the director of the Archaeological Survey of India, started a new excavation at Harappa. Along with finds from another archaeologist, who was excavating at Mohenjo Daro, Marshall believed that what they had found gave evidence of a new civilization that was older than any they had known. (3)
Major excavations had not been carried out for forty years until 1986 when the late George Dales of the University of California at Berkeley established the Harappan Archaeological Project, or HARP. This multidisciplinary study effort consists of archaeologists, linguists, historians, and physical anthropologists.
Since the establishment of HARP, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has served as co-director and field director of the project. Kenoyer was born in Shillong, India, and spent most of his youth there. He went on to receive his advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He is now a professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and teaches archaeology and ancient technologies. Kenoyer's main focus has been on the Indus Valley civilization's where he has conducted research for the last 23 years. Ever since he was a young graduate student, Kenoyer was particularly interested in ancient technology. He has done a great deal of work in trying to replicate processes used by ancient people in the production of jewelry and pottery. One of his first efforts in replicating shell bangle making was then co-authored with George Dales and published in an article. His doctorate studies were based upon this research, and his dissertation is a milestone in the field of experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, besides being the definitive study of Harappan shell working. (4)
Today, Kenoyer is assisted by co-director Richard Meadow of Harvard University and Rota Wright of New York University (A. C.I.V.C. Kenoyer preface) Kenoyer uses a contextual archaeological approach. His work is characterized by the use of cold evidence to draw the outlines of this ancient civilization.
Although , Harappa was undoubtedly occupied previously, it was between 2600-1900 B.C. that it reached its height of economic expansion and urban growth. Radio carbon dating, along with the comparison of artifacts and pottery has determined this date for the establishment of Harappa and other Indus cities. This began what is called the golden age of Harappa. During this time a great increase in craft technology, trade, and urban expansion was experienced. For the first time in the history of the region, there was evidence for many people of different classes and occupations living together. Between 2800-2600 B.C. called the Kot Diji period, Harappa grew into a thriving economic center. It expanded into a substantial sized town, covering the area of several large shopping malls. Harappa, along with the other Indus Valley cities, had a level of architectural planning that was unparralled in the ancient world. (5) The city was laid out in a grid-like pattern with the orientation of streets and buildings according to the cardinal directions. To facilitate the access to other neighborhoods and to segregate private and public areas, the city and streets were particularly organized. The city had many drinking water wells, and a highly sophisticated system of waste removal. All Harappan houses were equipped with latrines, bathing houses, and sewage drains which emptied into larger mains and eventually deposited the fertile sludge on surrounding agricultural fields. It has been surprising to archaeologists that the site layouts and artifact styles throughout the Indus region are very similar. It has been concluded these indicate that there was uniform economic and social structure within these cities. (6)
Other indicators of this is that the bricks used to build at these Indus cities are all uniform in size. It would seem that a standard brick size was developed and used throughout the Indus cities. Besides similar brick size standard weights are seen to have been used throughout the region as well. (7) The weights that have been recovered have shown a remarkable accuracy. They follow a binary decimal system: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, up to 12,800 units, where one unit weighs approximately 0.85 grams. Some of the weights are so tiny that they could have been used by jewelers to measure precious metals. ( 8)
Ever since the discovery of Harappa, archaeologists have been trying to identify the rulers of this city. What has been found is very surprising because it isn't like the general pattern followed by other early urban societies. It appears that the Harappan and other Indus rulers governed their cities through the control of trade and religion, not by military might. It is an interesting aspect of Harappa as well as the other Indus cities that in the entire body of Indus art and sculpture there are no monuments erected to glorify, and no depictions of warfare or conquered enemies. ( 9) It is speculated that the rulers might have been wealthy merchants, or powerful landlords or spiritual leaders. Whoever these rulers were it has been determined that they showed their power and status through the use of seals and fine jewelry.
Seals are one of the most commonly found objects in Harappan cities. They are decorated with animal motifs such as elephants, water buffalo, tigers, and most commonly unicorns. Some of these seals are inscribed with figures that are prototypes to later Hindu religious figures, some of which are seen today.
For example, seals have been recovered with the repeated motif of a man sitting in a yogic position surrounded by animals. This is very similar to the Hindu god of Shiva, who is known to have been the friend of the animals and sat in a yogic position. These seals are known as the Shiva seals. Other images of a male god have been found, thus indicating the beginnings of Shiva worship, which continues to be practiced today in India. (10)
This is an interesting point because of the accepted notion of an Aryan invasion. If Aryan's had invaded the Indus Valley, conquered the people, and imposed their own culture and religion on them, as the theory goes, it would seem unlikely that there would a continuation of similar religious practices up to the present. There is evidence throughout Indian history to indicate that Shiva worship has continued for thousands of years without disruption. [cf. harappan cultural continuity]
The Aryan's were supposed to have destroyed many of the ancient cities right around 1500 B.C., and this would account for the decline of the Indus civilization. However the continuity of religious practices makes this unlikely, and other more probable explanations for the decline of the Harappan civilization have been proposed in recent years; such as climate shifts which caused great droughts around 2200 B.C., and forced the abandonment of the Indus cities and pushed a migration westward. Recent findings have shown that the Sumerian empire declined sharply at this time due to a climate shift that caused major droughts for several centuries. (11) The Harappans being so close to Sumer, would in all probability have been affected by this harsh shift in climate.
Many of the seals also are inscribed with short pieces of the Indus script. These seals were used in order to show the power of the rulers. Each seal had a name or title on it, as well as an animal motif that is believed to represent what sort of office or clan the owner belonged to. The seals of the ancient Harappan's were probably used in much the same way they are today, to sign letters or for commercial transactions. The use of these seals declined when the civilization declined.
In 2001 Kenoyer's excavations unearthed a workshop that manufactured seals and inscribed tablets. This was significant in that combined with the last 16 years of excavations, it provided a new chronology for the development of the Indus script. Previously, the tablets and seals were all grouped together, but now Kenoyer has been able to demonstrate that the various types of seals and tablets emerged at different times. The writing on the seals and tablets might have changed as well through the years. Kenoyer as well as others are trying to conclude when the dates of the script changes were. The revision of this chronology may greatly aid in the decipherment of the script. (12) There has been attempts at deciphering this script, and the results are not widely agreed upon, and its still a point of controversy.
The ruling elite controlled vast trade networks with Central Asia, and Oman, importing raw materials to urban workshops. There is even evidence of trade with Mesopotamia, for Harappan seals and jewelry have been found there. Harappa, along with other Indus cities, established their economic base on agriculture produce and livestock, supplemented by the production of and trade of commodities and craft items. Raw materials such as carnelian, steatite, and lapis lazuli were imported for craft use. In exchange for these goods, such things as livestock, grains, honey and clarified butter may have been given. However, the only remains are those of beads, ivory objects and other finery. What is known about the Harappan's is that they were very skilled artisans, making beautiful objects out of bronze, gold, silver, terracotta, glazed ceramic, and semiprecious stones. The most exquisite objects were often the most tiny. Many of the Indus art objects are small, displaying and requiring great craftsmanship.
The majority of artifacts recovered at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro have been that of crafted objects. Jonathan Kenoyer has been working to recreate many of the craft technologies used by these people. He has successfully recreated the process by which the Harappan's created faience. The process of creating faience ceramics is very complex and technical. It requires such processes as the grinding and partial melting of quartz, fusion aids, and a consistent high temperature of 940 Celsius. A discovery in 2001 of a faience producing workshop revealed that the type of kiln used was very different from what they had thought. As no kiln was discovered in the workshop, Kenoyer suspected that the ancient crafts people had used a kiln assembled from two firing containers. This formed a smaller kiln that was unlike the usual large firing containers. Along with some of his students Kenoyer replicated the process of creating faience using similar tools that the Harappan's had. The result was similar to that of the Harappan's. This showed that the canister-kiln type was a very efficient way of producing faience. (13) Interestingly , Kenoyer has noticed that many of the same firing techniques and production procedures are used today in India and Pakistan as they were thousands of years ago. This is another point indicating that there was a continuity in culture that has been mostly unchanged for thousands of years.
The late George F. Dales, who was a long time mentor of Kenoyer's and established HARP, has said regarding the Aryan invasion theory:
"Nine years of extensive excavations at Mohenjo-Daro ( which seems to have been rapidly abandoned) have yielded a total of some 37 skeletons which can be attributed to the Indus period. None of these skeletons were found in the area of the fortified citadel, where reasonably the last defense of this city would have taken place." He further states that "Despite extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and destruction on the scale of the supposed Aryan invasion." (14)
The skeletal remains found at Harappan sites that date from 4,000 years ago, show the same basic racial types as are found today in Gujarat and Punjab, India. This is interesting, because if a foreign light-skinned people entered and took over, it would seem likely that there would be genetic evidence for this. The long continuity of ethnic groups in this region would indicate that the people living there had not seen an influx of a different ethic group that would have mixed with their own. (15)
After 700 years the Harappan cities began to decline. This is generally attributed to the invasion of a foreign people. However, it now believed by Kenoyer and many other archaeologists that the decline of the Indus cities was a result of many factors, such as overextended political and economic networks, and the drying up major rivers. These all contributed to the rise of a new social order. There is archaeological evidence that around the late Harappan phase, from 1900-1300 B.C. the city was not being maintained and was getting crowded. This suggests that the rulers had were no longer able to control the daily functioning of the city. Having lost authority, a new social order rose up. Although certain aspects of the elites culture, seals with motifs and pottery with Indus script on it, disappeared, the Indus culture was not lost. (16) It is seen that in the cities that sprung up in the Ganga and Yamuna river valleys between 600-300 B.C., that many of their cultural aspects can be traced to the earlier Indus culture. The technologies, artistic symbols, architectural styles, and aspects of the social organization in the cities of this time had all originated in the Indus cities. (17) This is another fact that points to the idea that the Aryan invasion did not happen. The Indus cities may have declined, for various reasons, but their culture continued on in the form of technology, artistic and religious symbols, and city planning. Usually, when a people conquer another they bring with them new ideas and social structures. It would seem that if indeed Aryan's invaded India, then there would be evidence of a completely different sort of religion, craft making, significant changes in art and social structure. But none of this has been found. There appears to be an underlying continuity in the culture of India, and what changes have occurred are due to largely internal factors. This is an idea shared by many prominent archaeologists, such as Kenoyer, George Dales, Jim Shaffer, and Colin Renfrew.
The Aryan's are supposed to have brought the Vedic culture to India. These people and their literature is believed to have then originated after the decline of the Indus Valley civilizations. The Vedas have been dated as being written some time after the Aryan's supposedly invaded, somewhere between 1500-1200 B.C. Many of the Indus sites have been found along the banks of the now dried up Sarasvati river. This river is mentioned throughout the Vedas (18) Recent geological investigations has shown that the Sarasvati was once a very large river (as well as satellite photos of the indus-sarasvati river basin), but dried up around 1900 B. C. due to tectonic movements. (19) The Vedas, however speak of the Sarasvati as a very large and flowing river. If the dating of the Vedic literature is correct, than there is a discrepancy because the Sarasvati river dried up before the Vedas were supposed to have been written. This is an interesting situation. It might seem possible then, that with other evidence showing that there was no influx of an invading people, that the Vedas were then written by the people of the Indus Valley.
Another point that might indicate the Harappan's being a Vedic culture is the discovery of fire altars at several Indus sites. Fire rituals and sacrifice were an important part of Vedic religious practices. But what was significant about these alters, is that they were aligned and constructed in the same manner as later discovered altars were. The fire altars were then Vedic in construction indicating that the Harappan's were a Vedic culture.
The idea that there wasn't in fact an Aryan invasion is supported on many levels, as I have tried to demonstrate. Even today, it is seen in India the legacy of these Indus cities in the traditional arts and crafts, and in the layout of houses and settlements. If there really was an invasion of a people that completely obliterated this other culture, then the many striking similarities we see today in the continuity of Indian culture is certainly most curious. The remains of the Indus civilization are enormous, and most of them are yet to be excavated. There are whole cites that have yet to be excavated, like the largest known Indus culture site of Ganweriwala, in the Cholistan desert of Pakistan. No doubt the continuing excavations will lend more insight into the world of this enigmatic civilization.
Language and World Culture [LANGCULT]
The Thesis of Linguistic Determinism
Carl H. Flygt
The thesis of linguistic determinism is the idea that nothing is available to human consciousness outside its capacity to apply words to it. A possible experience is what it is solely in virtue of its being represented in language. If it has no such representation, it doesn’t exist. A person devoid of the means to express an idea is devoid of that idea.
The thesis was adduced with systematic force by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), a linguist with specialization in Mesoamerican languages and Hopi. Whorf asks whether the concepts of space, time and substance are given in the same form to all human beings, or whether they and their concomitant experiences are conditioned by the structure of the languages they speak. In the same vein he asks whether there are traceable affinities between cultural and behavioral norms and large-scale linguistic patterns. In other words, Whorf asks whether human consciousness might not contain some evolutionary and perhaps even morphological divergences among different language groups with respect to material reality as it is experienced. Then he asks whether such divergences can be traced with linguistic analysis.
Whorf does indeed find differences in the structure of the categorical concept of time between Hopi language and what he calls Standard Average European usage (SAE), which treats time according to a spatial imagination. For the user of SAE, time is conceived and experienced on a linear metaphor that is “patterned on the outer world.” A space of ten days, for example, is a cyclic pattern in time conceived and experienced as a mentally constructed group, as an “imaginary plural.” This pattern has none of the objective reality of, for example, an aggregate of ten books, but it is treated by users of SAE with the same linguistic pattern. For the speaker of SAE, cyclicity brings the conscious response of imaginary plurals, even though the likeness of cyclicity to aggregates is not given by experience prior to language.
The Hopi language, which developed in an arid environment in a culture with no economic surplus, neither reflects nor allows this imaginative convention. For the Hopi, the subjective sense of “becoming later,” which for Whorf is the “essence of time,” dominates the entire conception and the entire experience of this fundamental conceptual category. Hopi language applies plurals and cardinals only to entities such as physical objects that can form an objective group. An expression such as “ten days” is not used, and thus presumably is neither conceived nor experienced. For the Hopi, nothing cloaks the subjective “becoming later,” which is the universal essence of time. Consequently, Hopi culture demonstrates neither historical progress nor material sophistication; at the same time, it supports a tremendous sophistication toward cosmic and occult signs and experiences, and an ontological depth that the user of SAE is challenged to follow.
Other examples of the material difference between use under SAE and under Hopi are adduced, including differences in the way mass nouns are used in SAE to conceptualize materials or in the way imaginative nouns are used to conceptualize phases of cycles, neither of which occur in Hopi. These differences and others are reflected in habitual thought and habitual behavior in the two cultures, and the differences of thought and behavior are reflected in institutional differences between them. Whether a commercialized culture based on time-prorata values (wages, rent, credit, interest, depreciation, insurance) could have developed under the Hopi’s linguistic handling of time and substance seems quite improbable, and certainly the Hopi way of life would be disrupted by increased infiltration of SAE language use and cultural practice.
But which comes first, language patterns or cultural norms?
The theory of linguistic determinism holds that “language is the factor that limits plasticity and rigidifies channels of development in the more autocratic way.” This is because language is a system, and not just an assemblage of norms. It is the factor which, because it is systematic, changes more slowly. Cultural innovation can occur with comparative quickness; linguistic treatment of the Kantian categories, once established, cannot change quickly because it is tied systematically to everything else in language, cultural usage and individual self-consciousness. For the linguistic determinist, the limits of language are the limits of the world.
Media and Communication [MEDCOM]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/world/middleeast/israeli-palestinian-dispute-upstages-arab-spring-at-united-nations.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=arab%20spring%20social%20media&st=cse
United Nations Journal
The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: September 22, 2011
UNITED NATIONS — Hillary Rodham Clinton, sharing a podium during the United Nations General Assembly with half a dozen of the world’s most powerful political women, was waxing enthusiastic about the success of the Arab uprisings when she gave a sudden shout-out to Tunisia.
“Minister! Thank you, minister,” Mrs. Clinton, the secretary of state, enthused as she pointed toward the country’s new minister of women’s affairs. “I think we should give Tunisia a round of applause.”
By rights, this should be the year of Arab uprisings at the yearly gathering of presidents, kings and other potentates. Some of the world’s longest-serving tyrants (and once star attractions among the weeklong marathon of speeches) have been overthrown. The fresh faces here represent nascent Arab governments that profess to want to follow the principles of human rights and good government that the United Nations embodies.
Undoubtedly there have been some thrilling moments for them — in particular a pantheon of world leaders spending several hours making somewhat self-congratulatory speeches about the success of the United Nations in supporting the Libyan rebels. But new tensions in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute largely overshadowed the Arab Spring.
The dispute that has preoccupied the building for the entire week is peaking Friday with dueling speeches less than an hour apart by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, promising to further overshadow those fresh faces of the Arab Spring.
For Lilia Labidi, minister of women’s affairs since the Tunisian revolution in January, her first giddy exposure to the United Nations rapidly dissipated. Her own appeal to the gathering for help in consolidating gains for women in Tunisia elicited little reaction, with Mrs. Clinton, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and various other female heads of state sweeping out of the meeting on empowering women without stopping for even a hello.
Ms. Labidi, although a guest of the United Nations, decided to go home.
“I cannot live here in such luxury,” she said, noting that the $700-a-day cost of her staying in New York would be better spent on a project for rural women.
“To the degree that the Arab Spring is important, one would have wanted more than a warm welcome and a group photograph — what am I bringing back to the Tunisian women?” she said over breakfast in a Midtown Manhattan coffee shop. “The attention of the world has to be much more engaged in our region.”
Ms. Labidi, a soft-spoken professor of anthropology and clinical psychology, said she found it frustrating that the question she was asked the most by people had little bearing on her projects, like improving girls’ access to elementary school. The question she heard over and over: What effect will the revolution have on Tunisian attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, conducts a version of political speed-dating during the gathering, holding a 15-minute meeting with each delegation. Virtually every leader has brought up the need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said a senior aide, while he could not remember any discussions about the Arab revolutions.
When they do come up, they tend to be the connection between the two, all the references about self-determination and political freedom throwing the spotlight on the lack of it for the Palestinians. “We cannot respond to this aspiration for freedom and democracy,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in his speech, “so splendidly and bravely expressed by the Arab peoples, by perpetuating a tragedy, that of the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
If there was one new international political star at the gathering, it was Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the leader of Libya’s Transitional National Council, who drew the kind of attention that had photographers knocking one another to the ground in the scrums that developed around his movements. “Blessings go out to Libya!” yelled one woman repeatedly as the melee subsided.
“This is a great day for all Libyans inside and outside the country!” Mr. Abdel-Jalil said right after the Libya conference, walking around like the rest of the delegation with a smile permanently plastered to his face.
Of course, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi caused quite a stir when he showed up in 2009, though that was inspired because he spoke for 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15; appeared to tear the charter of the United Nations while suggesting that the world body move to his hometown, Surt (now embattled); and set off a media frenzy about where he would pitch his much-traveled, signature tent.
“Another abuse of Libyan resources!” recalled Ibrahim O. Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy permanent representative and one of the first Libyan diplomats to break with the government after the revolution erupted.
He added: “We felt then that he was just not a normal person. These new people are working in the interests of the Libyan people.”
In fact, this year’s gathering was suffering from something of a despot deficit, or at least the ranks of haranguers raging against the evils of capitalism and the West have been drastically thinned by revolutions or disease. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Cuba, literally mailed it in, sending a letter to Mr. Ban demanding an independent Palestinian state.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, much diminished at home by his confrontation with the country’s supreme leader, has said the same thing so many times at the United Nations that it has taken on the aura of a ritual monotony. When a Western ambassador was asked what he anticipated from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech, he quipped, “We are preparing our usual contingency walkout plan.”
Right on schedule, Mr. Ahmadinejad prompted a walkout by the United States and Europe by implying that conspiracies lay behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the Holocaust.
Events that actually concentrated on the Arab world tended to take place on the sidelines. Norway organized a seminar on the role of social media in confronting totalitarian governments, while France as current president of the Group of 8 economic powers held a meeting to reconfirm the international financial assistance pledged to the emerging governments.
There, at least, the Tunisian foreign minister, Mohammed Mouldi Kefi, provided the soaring rhetoric somewhat absent at the main event on Turtle Bay. In expressing the wish that Tunisia and other Arab countries would soon join the ranks of the world’s leading democracies, he said, “I hope that this unfinished symphony that we are now playing can become Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ ”
Political Science [POLSCI]
Truer to Ourselves:
Rethinking US-Israeli Policy
by Kellan Schmelz
During the Obama Administration's recent spat with Israel over the latter's building of a new settlement on traditionally Palestinian land, the generally close relationship between the two nations seemed to shift gears. Since Harry Truman's recognition of Israel in 1948, Israel has enjoyed a level of support from the United States that surpasses that of any other nation, both politically and economically [1]; while many Presidents have disagreed with Israel, few have ever been willing to do so in a way that might appear to threaten this relationship [2]. As Benjamin Netanyahu frequently complained during the crisis, no administration has ever directly pressured Israel to halt the building of settlements on Palestinian land [3], as the Obama Administration repeatedly did throughout the recent political firestorm, or outright demand the establishment of a Palestinian state, as Obama reportedly did. Particularly after eight years of an unabashedly pro-Israeli Bush administration, it is refreshing to have a President who seemingly gets it: a voice in the White House willing to buck past alliances and demand that Israel show accountability and respect human rights.
The Administration faltered, however, when it came to the rhetoric they employed with regards to Israel. For all the Administration's appearances of bucking the unnaturally close American-Israeli relationship, it refused to drop the old talking point that the United States' values justify a close relationship with Israel. Just days after berating Prime Minister Netanyahu about settlements over the phone for 45 minutes [4], Secretary Hillary Clinton stood before AIPAC and praised America and Israel's "values of freedom, equality, democracy, the right to live free from fear, and our common aspirations for a future of peace, security and prosperity" [5] It's a classic line, one that implies that supporting Israel is an American thing to do, so to speak.
What if it isn't true, though? What if supporting Israel so egregiously is actually inherently UN-American?
It is a question worth asking. One issue lies with doublethink on the part of the Obama Administration. Why would the administration claim that American values mandate an uneven hand in Israel's favor while moving towards policies that are quite the opposite? The larger issue at hand, rests on the fact that the US was founded on the specific values; values that articulate what the United States stands for, and what actions it will and will not take. These values are enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. One might argue that the amendment process undermines the concept of "American values", but even the very existence itself is rooted in the principle of protecting Man's rights from tyranny. In all affairs, the United States must seek to uphold these values—even in affairs that primarily affect foreign citizens. To not do so would be a blow to the constitution, and effectively commit high treason.
Hillary's examples of "values" are trite buzzwords. When one looks to the Founders and their own various beliefs about their fledgling nation's role in the world, namely regarding democracy, tyranny, and foreign alliances, the evidence suggests that the United States has been committing high treason for some time.
The Founders, while wary of the idea of Democracy [6], did believe in a government that would accurately reflect the general will of the people. Thomas Jefferson in particular wrote of his longing for a government in which "the will of the people [would] be an effective ingredient" [7], and wrote in the Declaration of Independence of a government derived from "consent of the governed". Such values can be found in the Constitution's establishment of one elected legislative body and an elected President. The US has failed to live up to this value in regards to Israel. Despite near unanimous support in Congress for an egregiously close Israeli friendship, the American people are less unilateral on the issue: most opinion polls show Americans divided between Israeli and Palestinian sympathies, with a great number of undecideds [8]. The common explanation of this points to two groups, lobbies such as AIPAC and the Christian Right, and their respective influence on Congress. One AIPAC representative once boasted his organization "could have the signatures of seventy senators on [a] napkin" in twenty-four hours [9], while Jerry Falwell, who once said "to stand against Israel is to stand against God", was noted for his Moral Majority's influence in persuading Congressmen [10]. Through heavy lobbying, those two factions seem to have goaded Congress into its vast level of support for Israel, and in doing so have led Congress down a path that does not reflect the will of the people.
The Founders would take further issues with the nature of the US-Israeli alliance. The US Constitution, with its two-thirds majority needed to pass treaties and Congressional approval needed to declare war, was clearly influenced by the desire of the Founders for a government that avoid foreign affairs. The United States has turned its back on this, having fallen instead into what Thomas Jefferson called "entangling alliances" [11] and George Washington warned against in his farewell address. One only has to look at Washington's warnings to know what makes it an entangling alliance. Washington warned that alliances would bring the United States into wars it had no real interest in beyond defending it's ally [12]. Such a prediction is proven every time Israel launches an offense into Gaza with the political support of the United States Congress, or exacts what has been called "collective punishment" on Gaza with military equipment purchased from the United States [13]. Washington goes on to stress that permanent alliances lead to poor relations with other nations, who would feel slighted by their exclusion from the alliance [14]. Gen. David Petraeus outlined this in his recent testimony to US Congress, during which he implied that this country's reputation of being Israel's ally "limits the depth and strength of partnerships with governments and people [in the Middle East]" [15]. Washington's warnings have become prophecy today.
The Founders were also unilaterally opposed to tyranny from any government, much less their own. As Bernard Bailyn of Harvard University points out, the American Revolution itself was fought out of a genuine fear that the British intended to establish a tyrannical state in the Colonies to erode the Colonists' rights [16], while the drafting of the Constitution was marked by attempts to write out any policies that might gear the nation towards tyranny—the demand of some delegates for a King was quickly shot down [17]. Naturally, it would follow that the US would extend this opposition to tyranny to its foreign dealings. In regard to Israel in recent years, it has not. It has largely refused to comment on Israel's institution of an apartheid-like state instituted against the Palestinians in the West Bank, complete with the erosion of legal rights, separate roads to drive on, and reduced access to land [18]. During Israel's disproportionate siege of the Gaza Strip that murdered thousands of Palestinian citizens—often using questionable methods, Congress issued a resolution defending Israel's "right to defend itself' [19]. When the Goldstone Report, alleging human rights violations on both the Palestinian and Israeli side, was issued by the UN Human Rights council, Congress issued another resolution denouncing it [20]. And until recently, the US has tacitly approved of Israel's policies of demolishing Palestinian homes to build Jewish neighborhoods and building in traditional Palestinian zones [21]. Israel, for all intents and purposes, has become a tyrant to its Palestinian counterparts; despite this, the US continues to give Israel exorbitant amounts of military and economic aid, arguably perpetuating such tyranny. The US has lapsed into supporting the kind of tyranny abroad our forefathers fought against at home.
The values argument simply no longer holds. It is enough of a doublethink for the administration to orchestrate a paradigm shift with Israel while claiming that American values mandate an uneven-handed US-Israel relationship. Even the latter claim, though, just seems ludicrous in light of the evidence. Obama is not perfect on Israel; in particular, he seems unlikely to abandon the old line about "unbreakable" bonds anytime soon. But he ought to. Changes in any policy must be backed up by changes in rhetoric. In this case, the policy change is there; the United States appears to be treating Israel with an even hand, and rightly so. Now is the time for the change in rhettoric: if the US hopes to reclaim its values in regards to Israel, the "unbreakable" line must be dropped.
Science and Technology [SCITECH]
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened
By Evan Ratliff
November 20, 2009 |
Shedding Your Identity in the Digital Age
1
August 13, 6:40 PM: I’m driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I’m reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there’s no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught.
I had intended to flee in broad daylight, but when you are going on the lam, there are a surprising number of last-minute errands to run. This morning, I picked up a set of professionally designed business cards for my fake company under my fake name, James Donald Gatz. I drove to a Best Buy, where I bought two prepaid cell phones with cash and then put a USB cord on my credit card — an arbitrary dollar amount I hoped would confuse investigators, who would scan my bill and wonder what gadgetry I had purchased. An oil change for my car was another head fake. Who would think that a guy about to sell his car would spend $60 at Oil Can Henry’s?
I already owned a couple of prepaid phones; I left one of the new ones with my girlfriend and mailed the other to my parents — giving them an untraceable way to contact me in emergencies. I bought some Just for Men beard-and-mustache dye at a drugstore. My final stop was the bank, to draw a $477 cashier’s check. It’s payment for rent on an anonymous office in Las Vegas, which is where I need to deliver the check by midday tomorrow.
Crossing the Bay Bridge, I glance back for a last nostalgic glimpse of the skyline. Then I reach over, slide the back cover off my cell phone, and pop out the battery. A cell phone with a battery inside is a cell phone that’s trackable.
About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe.
What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can’t be detected. Nor will it note that I then double back on rural roads to I-5 and drive south through the night, cutting east at Bakersfield. There will be no digital record that at 4 am I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile.
2
“Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $5,000.”
— wired.com/vanish, August 14, 2009 5:38 pm
Officially it will be another 24 hours before the manhunt begins. That’s when Wired’s announcement of my disappearance will be posted online. It coincides with the arrival on newsstands of the September issue of the magazine, which contains a page of mugshot-like photos of me, eyes slightly vacant. The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me.
The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?
It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.
Wired offered a $5,000 bounty — $3,000 of which would come out of my own pocket — to anyone who could locate me between August 15 and September 15, say the password “fluke,” and take my picture. Nicholas Thompson, my editor, would have complete access to information that a private investigator hired to find me might uncover: my real bank accounts, credit cards, phone records, social networking accounts, and email. I’d give Thompson my friends’ contact information so he could conduct interviews. He would parcel out my personal details online, available to whichever amateur or professional investigators chose to hunt for me. To add a layer of intrigue, Wired hired the puzzle creators at Lone Shark Games to help structure the contest.
I began my planning months in advance. I let my hair and beard grow out, got a motorcycle license, and siphoned off extra cash whenever I visited an ATM, storing it in a hollowed-out book. One day over lunch, a friend from Google suggested software to hide my Internet address — “but all of these things can be broken,” he warned — and how best to employ prepaid phones. I learned how to use Visa and American Express gift cards, bought with cash, to make untraceable purchases online. I installed software to mask my Web searches and generated a small notebook’s worth of fake email addresses.
I shared my plans with no one, not my girlfriend, not my parents, not my closest friends. Nobody knew the route I was taking out of town, where I was going, or my new name. Not even a hint. If I got caught, it would be by my own mistakes.
Friday afternoon, August 14, I arrive in Vegas wearing a suit and sporting my normal brown hair, a beard, and a pair of rectangular tortoiseshell glasses. Carrying enough electronic equipment to stock a RadioShack, I drive straight to a dreary two-story office complex among the strip malls on South Pecos Road and hand over the cashier’s check, securing a tiny windowless office. There I set up two laptops, flip on a webcam to track any activity in the office, and leave.
At CarMax, a used-auto outlet, I then sell my Civic for $3,000. The next day, the first official one of my disappearance, is spent dyeing my hair and goatee jet-black and locking down the security on my laptops — including a third one that I’ll carry with me.
At 5 am on Sunday morning, the graveyard shift clerk at the Tropicana hotel hands over my $100 cash deposit, barely looking up. If she had, she might have noticed that the man checking out of room 480 — wearing a pair of oversize Harry Potter-style glasses, hazel-colored contact lenses, slicked-back hair, and a belt with $2,000 cash hidden in an underside pocket — bears surprisingly little resemblance to the one who checked in two days before.
Read More http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/#ixzz0wtv6eLN2
Cohort Readings 2
Cohort Readings 2
Please do an Iceberg Model Summary on the reading assigned to your cohort
An iceberg has three paragraphs:
1. A standard what is it about summary (the main points)
2. A comparison of other samples of similar events / concepts
3. An analysis of why these types of events occur (the “big picture” paragraph)
You may read articles / writings from other cohorts if they assist your understanding of your project/paper. This may actually help you gather sources for your paper that can be used for your final draft.
Bear in mind that you are only expected to read the items in your cohort, though, as an assignment grade, an additional iceberg model summaries will not be included in your grade.
In this set of readings, you will find:
ARTDES: EcoFriendly Houses / http://www.ecofriendlyhouses.net/index.php?page=ecofriendlyhouses Please explore the remainder of the website
BUSECO: Visual Literacy / http://brigittakinadi.blogspot.com/2010/10/shock-advertising.html
EDUISS: Document - Slovakia: A tale of two schools: Segregating Roma into special education in Slovakia http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR72/007/2008/en ENVENG: Made to Break reveals the roots of our throwaway culture- Terry Tamminen http://www.grist.org/article/grossman1 ETHBESY: Was the Tsunami Caused by Karma? A Buddhist View – Kusala Bhikshu http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/karma.html
HISLIT: The Two Hundred Year War – G.M. Tamas http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
LANGCULT: Recovering Women’s History http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-50/recovering-women-s-history-3009876
MEDCOM: Profile: Al Jazeera: Revolutionizing Middle Easter Media and Perceptions – Pierre Tristam
POLSCI: The Life of a Diplomat – Eva Holland
SCITECH: Gene Therapy Corrects Sickle Cell in Laboratory Study – Science Daily
Eco Friendly Houses
The Klein Bottle experimental house explores the theme of a mathematical puzzle. The architecture features a rain water collection system and solar paneling.
The XERO Project is one of the entries to the Vision Dallas design competition which aims to make Dallas a greener city. The proposal brings local agriculture, orchards, gardens and food stalls into the city of Dallas, all under one roof.
This concept from USA-based Nectar, an engineering and design firm, features a tower fitted with 200-400 trees in areas of high pollution. It functions like a gigantic filter—scrubbing smog and converting CO2 into oxygen.
The trees inside the structure would be nourished using a windmill-powered pump system, so it would not significantly contribute to our energy consumption.
The Bibliosphere, an administration and student services buiding at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, concentrates on sustainability, with natural lighting, ventilation, and uses only renewable energy sources. It consumes 50 percent less energy than German regulations require.
The World Games Stadium, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, is powered by 8'844 solar panels decked across its 14,155m2 roof. It can hold 55'000 spectators, was designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito, and cost upwards of us$150m to build. It should generate 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year; enough electricity to power up to 80% of the surrounding neighbourhood after being fed into the grid on the days when the stadium is unused.
BUSECO
http://brigittakinadi.blogspot.com/2010/10/shock-advertising.html
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Shock Advertising
Shock advertising is undeniably a controversial issue in the world of mass media today. Benetton’s ads are a good example of shock advertising. Their intentionally scandalous ads are made to stir a strong reaction in its audience, thus leading to publicity and increasing sales. However, the important question to consider is whether shock advertising is used for a good cause, or if they are used to simply increase profit.
Benetton’s creative director, Toscani, states that they use controversial images in their ads to increase awareness of current pressing issues. For example, one of their most popular advertisements is the photograph of David Kirby, a man with AIDS, lying on his deathbed as his family grieves for him. Benetton claims that they used this photograph to raise AIDS awareness around the world. Although the ad did possibly play a role in this, Benetton did not use this image for only altruistic purposes. For example, if they were trying to increase awareness, why did they not include a phone number or website about the issue of AIDS in the ad? Instead, they included an 800 number for customers who wanted to request their catalog. They did not provide any information about the issue as well, like who David Kirby was, his contributions to raising AIDS awareness, the dangers of the disease, and so on. If they were truly dedicated to promoting the cause, perhaps they also could have placed information booths regarding AIDS in their stores. Likewise, Benetton’s ad portraying the bloody uniform of a soldier killed in the Bosnian war offers no information about the war itself. Ultimately Benetton’s focus was not on raising awareness of AIDS or war, but awareness of their brand – to obtain publicity, recognition and thus purchases their products.
Moreover, Benetton’s advertisements mock the values and beliefs of many people in order to simply stir up controversy. For example, their advertisement portraying a priest kissing a nun romantically enraged the Catholic community. Toscani states that Benetton wants to “spark commentary on serious issues.” At the time and even currently, there is no issue on the disloyalty of nuns to their religious commitment. Benetton simply wanted to focus attention on their company.
Thus, while Benneton’s use of shock advertising may be financially beneficial for the company, its influences on society are certainly more questionable. Although they claim to be raising awareness of important issues, their actions do not reflect their commitment to this cause, as reflected in their lack of information provided regarding AIDS and the Bosnian war. Moreover, Benetton uses images that do not portray any “real” issues and unnecessarily challenge people’s values. Ultimately, Benetton’s use of shock advertising is selfish - their priority is to simply add the number of zeros in their bank account.
EDUISS
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR72/007/2008/en/c0c45cb3-58d7-11dd-a0f9-8dfec124dda9/eur720072008eng.html#1.1.%20INTRODUCTION|outline
Document - Slovakia: A tale of two schools: Segregating Roma into special education in Slovakia “What does special school mean to you?” “Special school is the gypsy school.” A 12-year-old Romani girl, pupil of the special elementary school of Pavlovce nad Uhom
In November 2007 Amnesty International published “Still separate, still unequal: Violations of the right to education for Romani children in Slovakia”1. The report highlighted the segregation of Romani children within the public education system through their discriminatory placement in “Roma-only” or special schools for children with mental disabilities. Regrettably, the government of Slovakia has so far failed to acknowledge the real extent of the problem and, consequently, to take comprehensive measures to reverse the situation.
Following the publication of the report Amnesty International was contacted by the mayor of Pavlovce nad Uhom in eastern Slovakia and the director of its mainstream school, alleging that Romani children were being placed erroneously in the municipality’s special school. As a result Amnesty International carried out further research, visiting the country in March/April 2008 to investigate the case and meet with the Roma community, school staff and local, regional and central government authorities. This report documents the violations of the human right to education identified during that visit.
99.5 per cent of the approximately 200 pupils of the special school in Pavlovce nad Uhom are Roma. Following inspections instigated by the mayor in 2007, it was officially acknowledged that 17 of these pupils did not belong in the special school. Amnesty International believes the real number is far higher.
Officially, children can only be placed in special schools2 after the formal diagnosis of a mental disability and only with the full consent of the parents. However, Amnesty International found that many children had not been assessed at all and that the assessment itself was deeply flawed. At the same time parental consent was often neither free nor informed.
Special schools – officially designed for children with mental disabilities – follow a greatly simplified curriculum which severely reduces future employment prospects and further education opportunities for those children whose rightful place is in mainstream education. The de facto segregation of Romani children in inferior schools compounds their marginalization and reinforces racial prejudices.
The human rights violations in Pavlovce nad Uhom are not just the result of individual human error, but of a broader failure to eliminate discrimination in both the design and the implementation of the Slovak education system.
In May 2008, Slovakia adopted a new Schools Act which expressly prohibits discrimination and segregation in education. A couple of months earlier, the Government of Slovakia adopted a policy paper on Roma Inclusion, which briefly mentions ethnic segregation in the public education system and lists a number of aspirations and proposals which would, if implemented, go some way to addressing the difficulties highlighted in this report.
It is necessary to go further. The elimination in practice of segregated and unequal schooling requires that the Slovak authorities acknowledge the serious structural failings that still exist in the Slovak education system and that this report shows can only be addressed by comprehensive reforms.
As a matter of priority, Amnesty International urges the Slovak authorities to identify all children erroneously placed in special schools, restore them to mainstream integrated education and provide additional support to compensate them for their loss.
The school year in Pavlovce nad Uhom begins again on 1 September. Action is needed now to ensure that all its children receive the quality education that they are entitled to.
Pavlovce nad Uhom is a municipality located in the east of Slovakia, 10km from the border with Ukraine. According to the municipal authorities, 2,600 of the 4,500 inhabitants are Roma. A high percentage of the Romani population in Slovakia live in settlements situated outside towns and villages, often lacking water and electricity supplies, sanitation systems, and paved roads.
However, the Roma in Pavlovce nad Uhom are to a great extent integrated with the rest of the population. Many of them are less economically disadvantaged and enjoy better living conditions than Roma communities in other parts of Slovakia. Since the 1990s and particularly following the accession of Slovakia to the European Union (EU) in 2004, many Romani inhabitants of Pavlovce nad Uhom have migrated temporarily to other EU countries, mainly to the UK and Ireland, for work.
There are two primary schools in Pavlovce nad Uhom: a mainstream elementary school with a nursery school attached, and a special elementary school for children with “mental disabilities.”3
During the school year 2007/2008, 550 children were enrolled at the mainstream school. According to the school’s management, 342 (62 per cent) of the enrolled children were Roma. However, in practice many Romani children do not attend regularly, often because they emigrate temporarily with their families. The number of Romani children attending the elementary school at the time of Amnesty International’s visit was estimated at just over 100 (18 per cent of the total number of enrolled children). Roma and non-Roma study in the same classes at the mainstream school and, according to school staff, a social worker, and some of the Roma children and parents Amnesty International met, they generally coexist smoothly.
According to the director of the special elementary school, at the time of Amnesty International’s visit there were 205 children attending the Pavlovce nad Uhom special school. Only one of them was non-Roma – although as noted above the Roma population for the town as a whole is estimated at about 50 per cent. According to the municipal authorities, until the school year 1999/2000 there were only around 120 pupils enrolled at the special school. The number of Romani children enrolled at the special school, as a percentage of the total population of Romani children in the municipality, has risen by more than 50 per cent in recent years.
School Year
Number of Pupils
2006/2007
2007/2008
2008/2009
Mainstream elementary school (including the nursery)
596
550
535
Special elementary school
188
221
237
Figure 1: Source: Ministry of Education. According to official data for the last two and the coming school years, the number of pupils enrolled at the mainstream school of Pavlovce nad Uhom has been decreasing, while the number of pupils at the special school has been increasing. The data reflects the number of pupils registered in each of the schools at the start of the school year.4
Taking into consideration migration patterns and the actual number of children attending the two elementary schools of Pavlovce nad Uhom, it is striking that nearly two thirds of the Romani children attending school in the town in March 2008 were placed at the special school. Amnesty International is concerned that there is a pattern of segregation of Romani children into the special school, which is seen by many Romani inhabitants, including the children attending it, as the “gypsy school.”
Since 2004, both the director of the mainstream school and the mayor of Pavlovce nad Uhom have raised concerns – in the form of written complaints and at official meetings – with the Košice Regional School Authority. The Authority is directly responsible for the 40 special elementary schools in the region including Pavlovce nad Uhom. The complaints related to administrative and admissions irregularities at the special school including accepting pupils without the formal assessment required under Slovak law.
At a meeting on 3 October 2007 with the director of the Košice Regional School Authority, the mayor and the director of the mainstream school expressed their concerns over the transfer of pupils from the mainstream to the special school.
According to the mainstream school’s director, 25 of its registered pupils did not return to school in September 2007 after the summer holidays. The school was later officially informed that for the 2007/2008 school year those children had been transferred and registered at Pavlovce nad Uhom special school. The mayor and director of the mainstream school argued, however, that the children’s school attendance and results did not justify their transfer to the special school. Many of the children, some of whom Amnesty International delegates met, had coped very well with the mainstream curriculum, achieving good grades up until their transfer.
Additionally, Amnesty International was told by staff that such allegedly unjustified transfers had increased in the recent years. Amnesty International was told of at least 25 more children having been transferred from the mainstream to the special school for the start of the 2006/2007 school year. In previous years, transfers apparently took place, but involved fewer pupils.
The mayor and mainstream director’s allegations stipulated that pupils admitted to the special school had undergone either incomplete or no proper assessment prior to admission. It was also alleged that some pupils had been recruited directly from the Romani community.
To read the full article: link on the hyperlink at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR72/007/2008/en/c0c45cb3-58d7-11dd-a0f9-8dfec124dda9/eur720072008eng.html#1.1.%20INTRODUCTION|outline
ENVENG
http://www.grist.org/article/grossman1 Made to Break reveals the roots of our throwaway culture by Terry Tamminen
29 Jun 2006
What could be more American than reaching for something new? The U.S. is, after all, a nation founded on the rejection of tradition and a profound belief in invention. This urge has given us more than two centuries of powerful technology, but has also made Americans the world's most voracious consumers. The propensity to buy, discard, and buy again is no accident, explains Giles Slade in the engaging Made to Break, which chronicles the history and consequences of Americans' obsession with the next new thing.
"Deliberate obsolescence in all its forms -- technological, psychological, or planned -- is a uniquely American invention. Not only did we invent disposable products, ranging from diapers to cameras to contact lenses, but we invented the very concept of disposability itself," writes Slade, a Canadian cultural historian who has spent years teaching abroad and observes North American consumer culture from his home near Vancouver, B.C.
Having just written a book about high-tech trash myself, I called Slade recently to talk about the origins of this breed of consumerism. "We landed on the East Coast and had this enormous new continent to consume. We worked our way west killing things," he said, only partly in jest. "We had an ethic of conservation and reuse, but it was lost as new materials of the 19th century allowed for disposable goods, and manufacturers learned about the profitability of repetitive consumption."
In the late 1800s, with the advent of packaged biscuits (with brand names Uneeda and Iwanna) and paper shirtfronts (developed to satisfy demand for spotless whites from men without access to laundry), manufacturers began to realize the seemingly endless commercial potential of short-lived products. Freshness and brand name would be linked to lure repeat customers.
While some of the first disposable products were designed for men -- including razor blades and condoms -- it was in marketing such products to women that a whole new era in American consumption was born. In the 1920s, as society became more urban and more women entered the workforce, manufacturers -- flush with surplus goods stockpiled for World War I -- fully understood the potential of selling products that could be promoted as both hygienic and convenient. From Band-Aids and sanitary napkins, it was a short leap to Dixie cups and Swiffer mops.
Among the eye-opening revelations of Made to Break is Slade's account of the anti-thrift campaigns launched in the wake of World War I. During the war, the U.S. Treasury Department initiated a frugality campaign opposed by wary merchants. In 1917, Slade recounts, "stores in every city began displaying signs reading, 'Business as Usual. Beware of Thrift and Unwise Economy.'" And a few years later, New York retailers "launched the National Prosperity Committee, with posters that read 'Full Speed Ahead!' 'Clear the Track for Prosperity!' 'Buy What You Need Now!'" (Those sentiments, I realized, were echoed 80 years later, in the grief-stricken days following Sept. 11, when President Bush exhorted Americans to "go shopping" -- to show that our resolve and values had not been shaken.)
An entertaining historian with a conversational style, Slade explores the Depression-era development of marketing campaigns that encouraged rapid automobile replacement and resulted in products designed not to last -- a concept called "death dating." By the end of World War II, Americans' self-image and esteem were entwined with the possession of the shiny and new as never before. Then, in the 1950s and '60s, the media began touting a plethora of products whose novelty outweighed their necessity, to a growing -- and increasingly affluent -- audience. To this day, says Slade, "We evaluate ourselves and those around us by what they display. It's a very hard cycle to break."
In recent years, our embrace of technology and insatiable appetite for the new converged with planned obsolescence, as Americans' acquisition of consumer electronics began to skyrocket. Americans now own more than 2 billion of these digital devices -- with short life spans dictated by rapidly evolving semiconductors -- and dispose of hundreds of millions of computers, cell phones, televisions, and other such equipment each year. Some of this equipment is truly obsolete. Some has simply been cast aside in favor of a new model. ("My son has a perfectly good MP3 player, but he wants an iPod because it's the dead-coolest thing to have, while my father loved durability and things made to last," Slade tells me. In the book, he pins that generational disparity on "a unique combination of psychological and technological obsolescence.")
The result is a growing stream of hazardous waste that is gradually awakening us to the costs of our disposable society. Millions of tons of e-waste end up in U.S. landfills each year, and millions more are exported to developing countries. Some are simply dumped there, while others are recycled under unsafe, unhealthy, and environmentally hazardous conditions. Given the global nature of the business and the volume at which we're producing and consuming PCs, cell phones, CD players, PDAs, MP3 players, and the like, the impacts are being felt worldwide.
So is there any real hope, I ask Slade? How do we undo this cycle of consumption? "A lot of really sophisticated people devoted a lot of time and thought to developing this system," he says. "We need to look at the problem creatively and rethink it. Our whole economy is based on buying, trashing, and buying again. We need to rethink industrial design."
In the United States, where we still cling to the myth of the endless frontier and equate progress and prosperity with the ability to jettison things, the notions of reuse and recycle have been slow to take hold. The idea of designing a product with the end of its life and impacts of its production in mind is still novel, and American businesses tend to regard the idea of producer responsibility -- which holds the manufacturer responsible for a product at the end of its useful life -- as a threat to profit margins. But in other parts of the world, governments and manufacturers are confronting the costs of disposability at long last.
"During the next few years, the overwhelming problem of waste of all kinds will, I believe, compel American manufacturers to modify industrial practices that feed upon a throwaway ethic," Slade writes. "The golden age of obsolescence -- the heyday of nylons, tailfins, and transistor radios -- will go the way of the buffalo."
Terry Tamminen is the former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and is now a policy adviser and author. His latest book is Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction.
ETHBESY
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/karma.html
Was the Tsunami Caused by Karma? - A Buddhist View -- by Kusala Bhikshu
The world is filled with so much pain and suffering and now a Tsunami kills over 170,000 people. Why did so many people have to die, was it their karma?
I was watching the news, listening to a famous American Buddhist scholar say the death and destruction caused by the Tsunami, "Was karma." A simple answer and a great sound bite to a complex question, but to say the reason behind this tragic event was simply karma appears glib and indifferent.
I've never found the cause of anything in Buddhism to be just one thing. Saying the reason for a complex chain of events is the result of one action-- whether it's God, sin or karma-- doesn't seem like a viable option for a Buddhist. Buddhist cosmology is non-theistic and lacks a first cause. I admit some Buddhists feel karma can replace God as a first cause, because Buddhism has a moral code and lacks a divine law giver... But is it fair to say that a Tsunami is the moral consequence of unskillful intention, speech and action?
The Buddha was clear on this. We lack a realistic world view because of lust, greed, hatred and delusion. Science can add some clarity and meaning, but the Buddha warned us about this world of ours (samsara) being unsatisfactory, it's the place where birth, death and change occur. We experience pain because we have a body/mind, and suffer because of desire and impermanence.
Sickness, injury, aging and death are simply the signs of flux in an insufferable world.
Early Buddhism gives us something called the five Niyamas, or the five aspects of cosmic order. These Niyamas can deepen our understanding and give meaning to why things happen. Niyama is a Pali term (language of early Buddhism) for cosmic order. The Niyamas show how certain conditions, laws of nature, work at different levels of cause and effect.
The First Niyama (Utu Niyama) is the law of physical matter. It is the physical, inorganic order of existence. Seasonal changes, earthquakes, floods, gravity and heat are some of the many examples. It roughly embraces the laws of physics and chemistry.
The Second Niyama (Bija Niyama) is the law of living matter, the physical organic order, like cells and genes, whose laws are similar to the science of biology.
The Third Niyama (Kamma Niyama) is Karma. Karma is the activity of transforming energy through intention, speech and action. The result of this energy transformation is only considered wholesome or skillful if less suffering or no suffering is produced. Karma is the cause, and Vipaka (Pali) is the result. It is the principle of conditionality operative on the moral plane. This sequence of cause and consequence replaces a divine law giver. In Buddhism there is a moral law, but no lawgiver and no one to administer it. This Niyama pertains to the world of ethical responsibility.
The Fourth Niyama (Dhamma Niyama) is the Spiritual or transcendent. This principle of conditionality operates on the spiritual level. The natural phenomenon that occurs with the birth of a Buddha, and the reasons for Buddhist Practice are in this group. This Niyama has to do with the spiritual laws that govern ultimate reality.
The Fifth Niyama (Citta Niyama) is mind. This Niyama implies mental activity such as consciousness, perception, conception, etc. Mental phenomenon arises because of conditions; the mind is not an independent agent. This is like the science of psychology.
The Utu, Bija, Kamma, and Citta Niyamas are types of conditionality in the relative sense, the cause and consequence of everyday life. Dhamma Niyama has to do with the spiritual laws that govern ultimate reality, like emptiness, not-self or our progress through the different stages of the Buddhist path.
These ever changing physical, biological, psychological, ethical and spiritual components give life to our pain and suffering. Our existence, and ultimately our death and rebirth depend on a complex combination of aggregates. There is no 'One Thing' that determines anything in Buddhism it is always the interconnected and interdependent flux of 'Many Things.'
HISLIT
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
The Two-Hundred Years War
Searching for the origins of the Kosovo conflict--in the eighteenth century.
G. M. Tamás
"For sheer primitive rage," said an old sage, "commend me to a thorough-going humanitarian when you get him well roused." As I write (in mid-May), the left-center governments of North America and Western Europe--self-certified do-gooders all--are showering thousands of tons of hardware and hi-tech hellfire on targets in Yugoslavia selected by their "intelligence" agencies. The policy follows this syllogism:
1. We must stop the terror in Kosovo.
2. The bombing will not stop the terror in Kosovo.
3. Let's get on with the bombing.
Such is the reasoning of the most powerful, most prosperous, best-educated, and best-informed nations on earth.
To be sure, the conflict in Yugoslavia defies any facile moral calculus. NATO is fighting a "just war" in the narrow sense of its being directed against a horrible genocidal regime, and pursued with the intention of upholding human rights. But it is also the wrong war, since it does not alleviate the predicament of the victims it purports to rescue. In this it parallels the Iraq imbroglio where, after long years of sanctions, boycott, and air strikes, the position of Kurds, Shiites, leftists, and other anti-Saddam forces are now much worse. The belief in the righteousness of NATO's case is undermined by US support for authoritarian regimes practicing ethnic cleansing and massacre as an instrument of policy--in Cambodia, Guatemala, Colombia, and Turkey. Still, the enemy, Milosevic is evil; our side is merely absurd and unprincipled.
This "just" but "wrong" war is dividing and destroying the West European left, just as the first timid steps were underway to inaugurate a non-ethnic, non-racist citizenship in Germany and France, and it threatens to ruin East European democracy altogether. There may be no attractive solution but better understanding may help to reduce the current horror.
THE ORACLES have already spoken out on the explanation of the conflict and the ensuing genocide and massive population "transfer." But their reasoning is not much better than the NATO syllogism. Consider two first-rate minds, both with Balkan roots. The post-Marxist Slovene thinker, Slavoj Zizek, delivers himself of the opinion that all that talk about ethnic nationalism is just nonsense, the essence is "power struggle."2 The Bulgarian-French writer, Julia Kristeva, locates the essence in culture. She presents us with a dramatic contrast of East and West in 1793: while the Protestant Kant-according to her-was representing rational understanding (entendement, Verstand), Orthodox monks were translating Philokalia from the Byzantine Greek. QED. What more proof could we ask for that Orthodox Slavs are irrational, thus inferior?
Two famous East European novelists shared their views with Western audiences, too. György Konrád blames the West, not unfairly, for encouraging separatism and believing the canard that Yugoslavia was in some sense more of an "artificial" creation than most states. "The West" writes Konrád, "recognizes, protects, and maintains by force of arms a Bosnia made up of three republics, three nationalities: an entity no less artificial than was Yugoslavia. The West recognized ethnic nationalism and helped it to victory, opening the door to the violent expulsions. By giving top priority to national self-determination and rejecting on principle the federation inherited from the communist era, the West made individual human rights and lawful, democratic autonomy for cultural minorities subservient to [ethnic] nationalist hysteria.… Western politicians believe they act against Milosevic, but they act for him: the West has walked into the trap."
The Albanian novelist, Ismaïl Kadaré, however, believes that we have another aggression of would-be Christians against non-Christians on our hands. Kadaré thinks that the Serbs have been bloodthirsty thugs throughout their history. But surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), he finds words of praise for the Kanun, the medieval Albanian handbook of ritual vendetta, even for what he calls "its central part, 'The Rules of Death.' "
Among important Western authors, Susan Sontag, in an article of almost Wieseltierian ferocity, memorably (or ominously) called "Why Are We In Kosovo?" declares herself fed up with European whining and bellyaching about what she feels is "a just war."
The well-known social critic, Jean Baudrillard, basing his theory on the counter-intuitive hypothesis that the leaders of the Western world cannot be complete idiots (why not?), thinks that Milos6evi´c is evil, but so is everyone else. All the capitalist countries are trying to get rid of their mostly immigrant minorities, to "eliminate heterogeneous and fractious elements" locally and achieve globalization, as it were, globally.
Meanwhile, in Yugoslavia, sheer dementia seems to reign supreme. In her stunning war diary Biljana Srbljanovi´c--Serb playwright and admirably courageous member of the Yugoslav democratic opposition (that, according to Dr. Z6iz6ek does not exist)--reports that the air attacks in Belgrade are announced on Serbian radio and television by a disembodied voice belonging to somebody called "Avram Israel," and the Serb TV broadcasts endless reruns of Schindler's List. The Serbs and the Albanians alike are now identifying themselves with the Jews known to them from Hollywood's anti-fascist kitsch. Miss Srbljanovic's generalized moral nausea is the most hopeful and refreshing development since NATO's war began.
But apart from this nausea, the analyses--however plausibly and forcefully stated--are not particularly helpful, and other discussions are comparably ignorant and unilluminating. The past matters in this conflict, and the major commentators are strikingly uninformed about the relevant history--a 200-year legacy that has fostered ethno-cultural division, produced a world without citizens, and correspondingly limited current options to a federal structure policed by external force, or a collection of ethnically pure states, or continued slaughter.
To read the full article go to:
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
LANGCULT
http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-50/recovering-women-s-history-3009876
Recovering women’s history
30 September 2007 16:24
Reviewed by LIZ MARTYN
Despite several decades of academic feminism, women remain hidden in mainstream Indonesian history. Writing the history of Gerwani, the women's organisation closely linked to the communist party PKI, was not only an exercise in recovering a hidden history, but in countering misrepresentation by 20 years of New Order ideology.
Former Gerwani members plead for their history to be returned to them, countering the military's construction of their organisation. One says: 'What really makes me sad is that my children learn such ugly things about Gerwani. I realised my son was holding something back from me. Finally he came to me and asked, "Ma, why did you become a member of such a group, so morally depraved, bringing ruin to the country? Were you a whore too? Everybody said that all Gerwani members were whores and bad women". How can I explain to him what we lived for, what our ideals were? I still see the confusion and shame in his eyes. How will he ever understand my life?' (p. xi).
Democracy
Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia) was one of the largest women's organisations operating in the newly independent Indonesian state. Formed in 1950 so 'politically conscious' women could fight for women's and children's rights and democracy, it had over 650,000 members by 1957. It took on a political role as well as the social work and educational roles of most Indonesian women's organisations.
The military account of the coup of 30 September 1965 is that Gerwani members were implicated in the sexual torture of the kidnapped generals. Wieringa shows this is a fabrication. In the transition from Sukarno's Old Order to Suharto's New it paid a heavy price in deaths, imprisonment, and exile. By 1967 the organisation had been destroyed.
Wieringa's main question in this doctoral dissertation is what Gerwani did in the 1950s and early 1960s that provoked the backlash from the New Order state. She notes the contrast between what she views as the regressive, docile, male-dominated women's organisations of the New Order and the more aggressive women's organisations of the nationalist and 1950s era.
Her central argument is that Gerwani became more drawn to Sukarno and the PKI's 'male' domain of politics. This demanded a political role for women, stepping outside accepted roles, and bringing themselves into conflict with other women's organisations and the community at large. Islamic sections in particular were relieved when Gerwani was destroyed. The new regime had issued its warning about the appropriate place for Indonesian women.
Feminist or socialist?
Wieringa highlights an internal power struggle between the feminist and socialist streams within the organisation. Gender issues important to Gerwani members could be in conflict with their political beliefs. In these cases Gerwani followed a PKI line rather than their gender interests. An important point in non-western women's organisation is that they view oppression as coming from sources other than gender only.
Although Wieringa tends to take today's western feminist interests as a measuring point for analysing Gerwani, resulting in a judgmental account at times, overall this is a very important contribution to Indonesian history and politics. It unravels a fascinating history that has been hidden from most, and ably demonstrates how gender can be used as an important tool of political and historical analysis.
MEDCOM
Profile: Al Jazeera
Profile: Al Jazeera Revolutionizing Middle Eastern Media and Perceptions By Pierre Tristam
The Basics
Al Jazeera, the 24-hour, Arabic-language satellite television news network viewable throughout the Middle East and most of the world, went on the air on Nov. 1, 1996. Al Jazeera’s English-language network went on the air in November 2006. The network is based in Doha, Qatar, the small Arab, peninsular nation jutting into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia’s eastern midsection. “Al Jazeera” is Arabic for “the peninsula.” The network is heavily funded by Qatar’s royal family. Boycotts and pressure from other Arab regimes, most notably Saudi Arabia, keeps advertisers away and prevents the station from becoming self-sufficient.
Al Jazeera’s Viewership and Reach
Satnam Mapharu, Al Jazeera’s public relations chief, says the network’s combined Arabic and English services has 2,500 staff members and journalists from 40 countries. The network broadcasts from four centers — Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington D.C. It has bureaus around the world. The station claims that its English-language service reaches 100 million homes. Its Arabic service has an audience of about 40 million to 50 million.
How Al Jazeera Was Born
Luck played a big role in Al Jazeera’s creation and expansion. In 1995 Qatar’s Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa overthrew his father and immediately set to reforming the country’s media and governance. His aim was to transform Qatar into a Persian Gulf version of Switzerland. He thought good publicity would help. So would opening up the emirate’s media. An Arab version of CNN would attain both objectives. The BBC in 1994 had started just such a station in Qatar, with Saudi money. The Saudis soon discovered that the BBC’s independence wasn’t what they were paying for. The venture dissolved, leaving 250 BBC-trained journalists unemployed. Qatar’s emir swooped in, hired 120 of them, and Al Jazeera was born.
“The result,” The New York Times’ John Burns wrote in 1999 , “has been a sensation in the 22 Arab countries where Al Jazeera’s broadcasts can be seen. In Algiers’s Casbah, in Cairo’s slums, in the suburbs of Damascus, even in the desert tents of Bedouins with satellite dishes, the channel has become a way of life. In its 30 months on air, it has drawn viewers in droves from the mind-numbing fare offered by the region’s state-run networks, whose news coverage often amounts to little more than a reverential chronicle of government affairs.”
Banned, Boycotted and Bombed
Al Jazeera’s style of reporting candidly and aggressively from throughout the Arab world was a new experience for Arab regimes. Those regimes often didn’t react happily. The Algerian government prevented Al Jazeera’s correspondent from working there for a brief period in 2004. Bahrain banned the station’s personnel from operating from there between 2002 and 2004. On Nov. 13, 2001, U.S. missiles destroyed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul.
One month later, one of Al Jazeera’s correspondents in Afghanistan, Sami al Hajj, was apprehended by Pakistani authorities and charged, falsely, with having a forged passport. He was turned over to American authorities, who shipped him to the Pentagon’s Gantanamo Bay prison camp, where he’s been held ever since, without charge or proper representation. On April 8, 2003, American forces bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Baghdad killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub.
In March 2008, the Israeli government imposed a boycott on Al Jazeera reporters working in Israel. Israeli authorities charged Al Jazeera with showing bias in its reporting of Israel’s clashes with Hamas in Gaza.
Al Jazeera and the Bush Administration
The Bush administration makes no secret of its disdain for Al Jazeera. It criticizes the station for broadcasting video clips of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures, as well as for its alleged anti-American slant. The criticism, more general than specific, is simple-minded and largely misinformed, however. The station does carry video clips from al-Qaeda figures, but in the context of its news-gathering responsibilities—and in the absence of other stations’ willingness, in the United States especially, to broadcast the material. American stations have seldom refrained from re-broadcasting Al Jazeera’s clips.
Al Jazeera’s alleged anti-American slant is also a simplification. The station is unquestionably not pro-American. Nor is it pro-Israeli. But its experiences with regimes across the Middle East, including with the leadership of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and its Hamas counterparts, have earned it equal-opportunity disdain. More recently, Al Jazeera has been losing its aggressive edge to curry favor with the Qatari and Saudi regime.
Problems with the English-Language Service
In January 2008, Britain’s Guardian reported that “Al-Jazeera’s troubled English language news channel is facing a “serious staffing crisis” after scores of journalists left or have not had contracts renewed amid claims of a revolt over working conditions.” Resignations have reportedly occurred across the board due to the expenses of running the English-language network. “There are also renewed reports of tensions between al-Jazeera’s Arabic language channel, which has been on air since 1996, and the more recently launched English outlet. Sources have added that executives on the main Arabic al-Jazeera network are trying to exert more control over the English language outlet, which is mainly staffed by western journalists.”
But the station was also preparing to open bureaus in Gaza and Nairobi, and expand its marketing in the English-speaking world. In September 2007, Al Jazeera hired Phil Lawrie, formerly CNN’s vice president for commercial distribution, to “to spearhead the effort as Director of Global Distribution,” according to an Al Jazeera news release .
POLSCI
The life of a diplomat
By Eva Holland On February 18, 2008 · 23 Comments
Cocktail parties, foreign dignitaries, expense accounts – the stereotypical life of a diplomat hardly meshes with the Matador philosophy of greener, sustainable travel and of honest interaction with the local culture.
BUT WHEN YOU’RE thinking of jobs that allow for a lifetime of travel, it’s a tough one to ignore. And as it turns out, the reality is both less glamorous and, perhaps, more in keeping with your goals and principles than you’d expect.
I recently asked Doug Holland (my dad), who is currently serving as a Canadian Foreign Service Officer in Barbados, what life in the diplomatic corps is really like. Read on to see if you have what it takes – and if the job’s for you.
What does a diplomat really do, anyway?
Most countries’ diplomatic responsibilities are divided up into three main categories: political, trade, and consular services.
So, “a political officer, in a small mission like ours in Barbados, is a generalist who reports on local developments and advocates for support for Canadian interests,” such as a Canadian-supported motion at the United Nations or a similar multilateral international effort.
“A trade officer promotes the interests of Canadian companies, by introducing them to useful contacts, making them aware of commercial opportunities, providing guidance for visits and basic information they can use.”
A consular officer deals with day-to-day travel problems like lost passports, and in an emergency, “provides essential services to Canadians in need.”
On an average day, a political officer might write a speech for a visiting high-ranking politician from back home or attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
A trade officer might put an engineering firm from their home country in touch with a local government, to help them land a contract setting up the new light rail system.
A consular officer might have to sort out the case of a visiting national accused of a crime, or contact family members back home in the case of an injury or death.
There are also more specialized roles for development experts, police or military attachés, and more, but the bulk of the work falls into these three main categories.
What are the perks?
Salaries vary across different governments and across different roles, but a rough spectrum might run from $35 000 to $100 000 per year, not including upper management. Other benefits include extra vacation time, “family reunion” flights, subsidized (and sometimes flashy) accommodation, duty-free goods, and more.
And then of course, there’s the travel, which “can range from the mundane and limited to exotic and too frequent.” For example: since arriving in Barbados, “I’ve been to Antigua twice, Dominica twice, Grenada, St. Kitts, St. Lucia twice and St. Vincent, all within less than 5 months – but I’ve not seen much of any of them,” thanks to meetings and report-writing.
Still, living and working as a diplomat, contrary to stereotype, can lead to a great deal of knowledge and insight about a country. Between invitations to cultural events and celebrations, endless briefings about local customs, and the simple immersion of everyday life, “you can get to know things about a country that few others would.”
Can diplomats ‘make a difference’ in the world?
Diplomats go where the average traveler can’t, from full-on hot zones like Iraq and Afghanistan to (marginally) more stable, impoverished places like Haiti or Chad.
While most development and aid work is done by more specialized staff, diplomats in these areas nevertheless have the opportunity to help repair a fractured economy, spread the gospel of electoral accountability, or get involved in the refugee claims process.
Even in calmer areas, there are still ample opportunities to effect positive change: “I like to think I am making a difference by promoting Canadian training for police, military, etc. and by encouraging regional institutional development so the good guys can better compete with the organized criminals.
Or making a difference by fostering Canadian standards for government procurement that will reduce corruption and old boys’ influence/control.” In other areas, “a trade officer might say she makes a difference by increasing a company’s sales so it employs more people.”
And a consular officer makes a difference for at least one stressed-out traveler when they arrange a replacement passport quickly, or, in a worst-case scenario, “when they send the body bag home promptly.”
Sounds pretty sweet – what’s the catch?
Some of the big-picture downsides can include social, cultural and linguistic isolation, or even physical danger. And of course, moving around the world every three years or so can take a heavy toll on families, as spouses are forced to sacrifice their own careers and children hop from school to school.
On a day-to-day basis, there are also the inevitable expat frustrations, when “things don’t work they way they ‘should’ like in Canada.” Then there are the financial challenges in the pricier cities of the world, “where our salaries don’t match up to what the locals get, so you’re in this really interesting place but can’t afford to go to a restaurant.”
How do I sign up?
Competition is fierce for a relatively small number of positions: baseline requirements generally include a bachelor’s degree (though a masters is increasingly an ‘unofficial’ requirement), and tough-to-quantify characteristics like judgment and intelligence. Language skills are an asset, as is prior international experience.
Expect an extended testing process rather than a straightforward resume-and-cover-letter, interview-and-offer type of scenario. You might be tested on your writing skills, your knowledge of world events, logic, or aptitude for languages.
In the latter stages, expect to have to pass a serious security screening: this may include exams relating to your physical and mental health, extensive police background checks, and the accumulation of a fair bit of your personal information in a file folder somewhere in your government’s intelligence branch.
For more information, try the US Department of State, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, or the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
SCITECH
Gene Therapy Corrects Sickle Cell Disease In Laboratory Study ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2008) — Using a harmless virus to insert a corrective gene into mouse blood cells, scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have alleviated sickle cell disease pathology. In their studies, the researchers found that the treated mice showed essentially no difference from normal mice. Although the scientists caution that applying the gene therapy to humans presents significant technical obstacles, they believe that the new therapy will become an important treatment for the disease.
Sickle cell disease, which affects millions of people worldwide, arises because of a tiny genetic defect in the gene for beta-globin, a protein component of hemoglobin. This defect causes hemoglobin-containing red blood cells to tend to deform, clump and break apart. The resulting clogged blood vessels can lead to cognitive dysfunction by causing small strokes in the brain and cause damage to kidneys, liver, spleen and lungs. The only permanent cure for the disease is a bone marrow transplant to give recipients blood-forming cells that will form normal beta-globin. However, such transplants are rare because of the lack of compatible donors.
Researchers have long known that symptoms of the disease could be alleviated by persistence in the blood of an immature fetal form of hemoglobin in red blood cells. This immature hemoglobin, which usually disappears after birth, does not contain beta-globin, but another form called gamma-globin. St. Jude researchers had found that treating patients with the drug hydroxyurea encourages the formation of fetal hemoglobin and alleviates disease symptoms.
"While this is a very useful treatment for the disease, our studies indicated that it might be possible to cure the disorder if we could use gene transfer to permanently increase fetal hemoglobin levels," said Derek Persons, M.D., Ph.D., assistant member in the St. Jude Department of Hematology.
He and his colleagues developed a technique to insert the gene for gamma-globin into blood-forming cells using a harmless viral carrier. The researchers extracted the blood-forming cells, performed the viral gene insertion in a culture dish and then re-introduced the altered blood-forming cells into the body. The hope was that those cells would permanently generate red blood cells containing fetal hemoglobin, alleviating the disease.
In the experiments, reported in the advanced, online issue of the journal Molecular Therapy, the researchers used a strain of mouse with basically the same genetic defect and symptoms as humans with sickle cell disease. The scientists introduced the gene for gamma-globin into the mice's blood-forming cells and then introduced those altered cells into the mice.
The investigators found that months after they introduced the altered blood-forming cells, the mice continued to produce gamma-globin in their red blood cells.
"When we examined the treated mice, we could detect little, if any, disease using our methods," said Persons, the paper's senior author. "The mice showed no anemia, and their organ function was essentially normal."
The researchers also transplanted the altered blood-forming cells from the original treated mice into a second generation of sickle cell mice to show that the gamma-globin gene had incorporated itself permanently into the blood-forming cells. Five months after that transplantation, the second generation of mice also showed production of fetal hemoglobin and correction of their disease.
"We are very encouraged by our results," Persons said. "They demonstrate for the first time that it is possible to correct sickle cell disease with genetic therapy to produce fetal hemoglobin. We think that increased fetal hemoglobin expression in patients will be well tolerated and the immune system would not reject the hemoglobin, in comparison to other approaches."
While Persons believes that the mouse experiments will lead to treatments in humans, he cautioned that technical barriers still need to be overcome. "It is far easier to achieve high levels of gene insertion into mouse cells than into human cells," he said. "In our mouse experiments, we routinely saw one or two copies of the gamma-globin gene inserted into each cell. However, in humans this insertion rate is at least a hundred-fold less."
Persons' laboratory is currently working with other animal and human cells to develop methods to achieve a high enough gene insertion rate to make the gene therapy clinically useful.
Other authors of this paper include Tamara Pestina, Phillip Hargrove, Dennis Jay, John Gray and Kelli Boyd (all of St. Jude).
This research was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a Cancer Center Support Core Grant and ALSAC.
Please do an Iceberg Model Summary on the reading assigned to your cohort
An iceberg has three paragraphs:
1. A standard what is it about summary (the main points)
2. A comparison of other samples of similar events / concepts
3. An analysis of why these types of events occur (the “big picture” paragraph)
You may read articles / writings from other cohorts if they assist your understanding of your project/paper. This may actually help you gather sources for your paper that can be used for your final draft.
Bear in mind that you are only expected to read the items in your cohort, though, as an assignment grade, an additional iceberg model summaries will not be included in your grade.
In this set of readings, you will find:
ARTDES: EcoFriendly Houses / http://www.ecofriendlyhouses.net/index.php?page=ecofriendlyhouses Please explore the remainder of the website
BUSECO: Visual Literacy / http://brigittakinadi.blogspot.com/2010/10/shock-advertising.html
EDUISS: Document - Slovakia: A tale of two schools: Segregating Roma into special education in Slovakia http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR72/007/2008/en ENVENG: Made to Break reveals the roots of our throwaway culture- Terry Tamminen http://www.grist.org/article/grossman1 ETHBESY: Was the Tsunami Caused by Karma? A Buddhist View – Kusala Bhikshu http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/karma.html
HISLIT: The Two Hundred Year War – G.M. Tamas http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
LANGCULT: Recovering Women’s History http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-50/recovering-women-s-history-3009876
MEDCOM: Profile: Al Jazeera: Revolutionizing Middle Easter Media and Perceptions – Pierre Tristam
POLSCI: The Life of a Diplomat – Eva Holland
SCITECH: Gene Therapy Corrects Sickle Cell in Laboratory Study – Science Daily
Eco Friendly Houses
The Klein Bottle experimental house explores the theme of a mathematical puzzle. The architecture features a rain water collection system and solar paneling.
The XERO Project is one of the entries to the Vision Dallas design competition which aims to make Dallas a greener city. The proposal brings local agriculture, orchards, gardens and food stalls into the city of Dallas, all under one roof.
This concept from USA-based Nectar, an engineering and design firm, features a tower fitted with 200-400 trees in areas of high pollution. It functions like a gigantic filter—scrubbing smog and converting CO2 into oxygen.
The trees inside the structure would be nourished using a windmill-powered pump system, so it would not significantly contribute to our energy consumption.
The Bibliosphere, an administration and student services buiding at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, concentrates on sustainability, with natural lighting, ventilation, and uses only renewable energy sources. It consumes 50 percent less energy than German regulations require.
The World Games Stadium, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, is powered by 8'844 solar panels decked across its 14,155m2 roof. It can hold 55'000 spectators, was designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito, and cost upwards of us$150m to build. It should generate 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year; enough electricity to power up to 80% of the surrounding neighbourhood after being fed into the grid on the days when the stadium is unused.
BUSECO
http://brigittakinadi.blogspot.com/2010/10/shock-advertising.html
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Shock Advertising
Shock advertising is undeniably a controversial issue in the world of mass media today. Benetton’s ads are a good example of shock advertising. Their intentionally scandalous ads are made to stir a strong reaction in its audience, thus leading to publicity and increasing sales. However, the important question to consider is whether shock advertising is used for a good cause, or if they are used to simply increase profit.
Benetton’s creative director, Toscani, states that they use controversial images in their ads to increase awareness of current pressing issues. For example, one of their most popular advertisements is the photograph of David Kirby, a man with AIDS, lying on his deathbed as his family grieves for him. Benetton claims that they used this photograph to raise AIDS awareness around the world. Although the ad did possibly play a role in this, Benetton did not use this image for only altruistic purposes. For example, if they were trying to increase awareness, why did they not include a phone number or website about the issue of AIDS in the ad? Instead, they included an 800 number for customers who wanted to request their catalog. They did not provide any information about the issue as well, like who David Kirby was, his contributions to raising AIDS awareness, the dangers of the disease, and so on. If they were truly dedicated to promoting the cause, perhaps they also could have placed information booths regarding AIDS in their stores. Likewise, Benetton’s ad portraying the bloody uniform of a soldier killed in the Bosnian war offers no information about the war itself. Ultimately Benetton’s focus was not on raising awareness of AIDS or war, but awareness of their brand – to obtain publicity, recognition and thus purchases their products.
Moreover, Benetton’s advertisements mock the values and beliefs of many people in order to simply stir up controversy. For example, their advertisement portraying a priest kissing a nun romantically enraged the Catholic community. Toscani states that Benetton wants to “spark commentary on serious issues.” At the time and even currently, there is no issue on the disloyalty of nuns to their religious commitment. Benetton simply wanted to focus attention on their company.
Thus, while Benneton’s use of shock advertising may be financially beneficial for the company, its influences on society are certainly more questionable. Although they claim to be raising awareness of important issues, their actions do not reflect their commitment to this cause, as reflected in their lack of information provided regarding AIDS and the Bosnian war. Moreover, Benetton uses images that do not portray any “real” issues and unnecessarily challenge people’s values. Ultimately, Benetton’s use of shock advertising is selfish - their priority is to simply add the number of zeros in their bank account.
EDUISS
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR72/007/2008/en/c0c45cb3-58d7-11dd-a0f9-8dfec124dda9/eur720072008eng.html#1.1.%20INTRODUCTION|outline
Document - Slovakia: A tale of two schools: Segregating Roma into special education in Slovakia “What does special school mean to you?” “Special school is the gypsy school.” A 12-year-old Romani girl, pupil of the special elementary school of Pavlovce nad Uhom
In November 2007 Amnesty International published “Still separate, still unequal: Violations of the right to education for Romani children in Slovakia”1. The report highlighted the segregation of Romani children within the public education system through their discriminatory placement in “Roma-only” or special schools for children with mental disabilities. Regrettably, the government of Slovakia has so far failed to acknowledge the real extent of the problem and, consequently, to take comprehensive measures to reverse the situation.
Following the publication of the report Amnesty International was contacted by the mayor of Pavlovce nad Uhom in eastern Slovakia and the director of its mainstream school, alleging that Romani children were being placed erroneously in the municipality’s special school. As a result Amnesty International carried out further research, visiting the country in March/April 2008 to investigate the case and meet with the Roma community, school staff and local, regional and central government authorities. This report documents the violations of the human right to education identified during that visit.
99.5 per cent of the approximately 200 pupils of the special school in Pavlovce nad Uhom are Roma. Following inspections instigated by the mayor in 2007, it was officially acknowledged that 17 of these pupils did not belong in the special school. Amnesty International believes the real number is far higher.
Officially, children can only be placed in special schools2 after the formal diagnosis of a mental disability and only with the full consent of the parents. However, Amnesty International found that many children had not been assessed at all and that the assessment itself was deeply flawed. At the same time parental consent was often neither free nor informed.
Special schools – officially designed for children with mental disabilities – follow a greatly simplified curriculum which severely reduces future employment prospects and further education opportunities for those children whose rightful place is in mainstream education. The de facto segregation of Romani children in inferior schools compounds their marginalization and reinforces racial prejudices.
The human rights violations in Pavlovce nad Uhom are not just the result of individual human error, but of a broader failure to eliminate discrimination in both the design and the implementation of the Slovak education system.
In May 2008, Slovakia adopted a new Schools Act which expressly prohibits discrimination and segregation in education. A couple of months earlier, the Government of Slovakia adopted a policy paper on Roma Inclusion, which briefly mentions ethnic segregation in the public education system and lists a number of aspirations and proposals which would, if implemented, go some way to addressing the difficulties highlighted in this report.
It is necessary to go further. The elimination in practice of segregated and unequal schooling requires that the Slovak authorities acknowledge the serious structural failings that still exist in the Slovak education system and that this report shows can only be addressed by comprehensive reforms.
As a matter of priority, Amnesty International urges the Slovak authorities to identify all children erroneously placed in special schools, restore them to mainstream integrated education and provide additional support to compensate them for their loss.
The school year in Pavlovce nad Uhom begins again on 1 September. Action is needed now to ensure that all its children receive the quality education that they are entitled to.
Pavlovce nad Uhom is a municipality located in the east of Slovakia, 10km from the border with Ukraine. According to the municipal authorities, 2,600 of the 4,500 inhabitants are Roma. A high percentage of the Romani population in Slovakia live in settlements situated outside towns and villages, often lacking water and electricity supplies, sanitation systems, and paved roads.
However, the Roma in Pavlovce nad Uhom are to a great extent integrated with the rest of the population. Many of them are less economically disadvantaged and enjoy better living conditions than Roma communities in other parts of Slovakia. Since the 1990s and particularly following the accession of Slovakia to the European Union (EU) in 2004, many Romani inhabitants of Pavlovce nad Uhom have migrated temporarily to other EU countries, mainly to the UK and Ireland, for work.
There are two primary schools in Pavlovce nad Uhom: a mainstream elementary school with a nursery school attached, and a special elementary school for children with “mental disabilities.”3
During the school year 2007/2008, 550 children were enrolled at the mainstream school. According to the school’s management, 342 (62 per cent) of the enrolled children were Roma. However, in practice many Romani children do not attend regularly, often because they emigrate temporarily with their families. The number of Romani children attending the elementary school at the time of Amnesty International’s visit was estimated at just over 100 (18 per cent of the total number of enrolled children). Roma and non-Roma study in the same classes at the mainstream school and, according to school staff, a social worker, and some of the Roma children and parents Amnesty International met, they generally coexist smoothly.
According to the director of the special elementary school, at the time of Amnesty International’s visit there were 205 children attending the Pavlovce nad Uhom special school. Only one of them was non-Roma – although as noted above the Roma population for the town as a whole is estimated at about 50 per cent. According to the municipal authorities, until the school year 1999/2000 there were only around 120 pupils enrolled at the special school. The number of Romani children enrolled at the special school, as a percentage of the total population of Romani children in the municipality, has risen by more than 50 per cent in recent years.
School Year
Number of Pupils
2006/2007
2007/2008
2008/2009
Mainstream elementary school (including the nursery)
596
550
535
Special elementary school
188
221
237
Figure 1: Source: Ministry of Education. According to official data for the last two and the coming school years, the number of pupils enrolled at the mainstream school of Pavlovce nad Uhom has been decreasing, while the number of pupils at the special school has been increasing. The data reflects the number of pupils registered in each of the schools at the start of the school year.4
Taking into consideration migration patterns and the actual number of children attending the two elementary schools of Pavlovce nad Uhom, it is striking that nearly two thirds of the Romani children attending school in the town in March 2008 were placed at the special school. Amnesty International is concerned that there is a pattern of segregation of Romani children into the special school, which is seen by many Romani inhabitants, including the children attending it, as the “gypsy school.”
Since 2004, both the director of the mainstream school and the mayor of Pavlovce nad Uhom have raised concerns – in the form of written complaints and at official meetings – with the Košice Regional School Authority. The Authority is directly responsible for the 40 special elementary schools in the region including Pavlovce nad Uhom. The complaints related to administrative and admissions irregularities at the special school including accepting pupils without the formal assessment required under Slovak law.
At a meeting on 3 October 2007 with the director of the Košice Regional School Authority, the mayor and the director of the mainstream school expressed their concerns over the transfer of pupils from the mainstream to the special school.
According to the mainstream school’s director, 25 of its registered pupils did not return to school in September 2007 after the summer holidays. The school was later officially informed that for the 2007/2008 school year those children had been transferred and registered at Pavlovce nad Uhom special school. The mayor and director of the mainstream school argued, however, that the children’s school attendance and results did not justify their transfer to the special school. Many of the children, some of whom Amnesty International delegates met, had coped very well with the mainstream curriculum, achieving good grades up until their transfer.
Additionally, Amnesty International was told by staff that such allegedly unjustified transfers had increased in the recent years. Amnesty International was told of at least 25 more children having been transferred from the mainstream to the special school for the start of the 2006/2007 school year. In previous years, transfers apparently took place, but involved fewer pupils.
The mayor and mainstream director’s allegations stipulated that pupils admitted to the special school had undergone either incomplete or no proper assessment prior to admission. It was also alleged that some pupils had been recruited directly from the Romani community.
To read the full article: link on the hyperlink at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR72/007/2008/en/c0c45cb3-58d7-11dd-a0f9-8dfec124dda9/eur720072008eng.html#1.1.%20INTRODUCTION|outline
ENVENG
http://www.grist.org/article/grossman1 Made to Break reveals the roots of our throwaway culture by Terry Tamminen
29 Jun 2006
What could be more American than reaching for something new? The U.S. is, after all, a nation founded on the rejection of tradition and a profound belief in invention. This urge has given us more than two centuries of powerful technology, but has also made Americans the world's most voracious consumers. The propensity to buy, discard, and buy again is no accident, explains Giles Slade in the engaging Made to Break, which chronicles the history and consequences of Americans' obsession with the next new thing.
"Deliberate obsolescence in all its forms -- technological, psychological, or planned -- is a uniquely American invention. Not only did we invent disposable products, ranging from diapers to cameras to contact lenses, but we invented the very concept of disposability itself," writes Slade, a Canadian cultural historian who has spent years teaching abroad and observes North American consumer culture from his home near Vancouver, B.C.
Having just written a book about high-tech trash myself, I called Slade recently to talk about the origins of this breed of consumerism. "We landed on the East Coast and had this enormous new continent to consume. We worked our way west killing things," he said, only partly in jest. "We had an ethic of conservation and reuse, but it was lost as new materials of the 19th century allowed for disposable goods, and manufacturers learned about the profitability of repetitive consumption."
In the late 1800s, with the advent of packaged biscuits (with brand names Uneeda and Iwanna) and paper shirtfronts (developed to satisfy demand for spotless whites from men without access to laundry), manufacturers began to realize the seemingly endless commercial potential of short-lived products. Freshness and brand name would be linked to lure repeat customers.
While some of the first disposable products were designed for men -- including razor blades and condoms -- it was in marketing such products to women that a whole new era in American consumption was born. In the 1920s, as society became more urban and more women entered the workforce, manufacturers -- flush with surplus goods stockpiled for World War I -- fully understood the potential of selling products that could be promoted as both hygienic and convenient. From Band-Aids and sanitary napkins, it was a short leap to Dixie cups and Swiffer mops.
Among the eye-opening revelations of Made to Break is Slade's account of the anti-thrift campaigns launched in the wake of World War I. During the war, the U.S. Treasury Department initiated a frugality campaign opposed by wary merchants. In 1917, Slade recounts, "stores in every city began displaying signs reading, 'Business as Usual. Beware of Thrift and Unwise Economy.'" And a few years later, New York retailers "launched the National Prosperity Committee, with posters that read 'Full Speed Ahead!' 'Clear the Track for Prosperity!' 'Buy What You Need Now!'" (Those sentiments, I realized, were echoed 80 years later, in the grief-stricken days following Sept. 11, when President Bush exhorted Americans to "go shopping" -- to show that our resolve and values had not been shaken.)
An entertaining historian with a conversational style, Slade explores the Depression-era development of marketing campaigns that encouraged rapid automobile replacement and resulted in products designed not to last -- a concept called "death dating." By the end of World War II, Americans' self-image and esteem were entwined with the possession of the shiny and new as never before. Then, in the 1950s and '60s, the media began touting a plethora of products whose novelty outweighed their necessity, to a growing -- and increasingly affluent -- audience. To this day, says Slade, "We evaluate ourselves and those around us by what they display. It's a very hard cycle to break."
In recent years, our embrace of technology and insatiable appetite for the new converged with planned obsolescence, as Americans' acquisition of consumer electronics began to skyrocket. Americans now own more than 2 billion of these digital devices -- with short life spans dictated by rapidly evolving semiconductors -- and dispose of hundreds of millions of computers, cell phones, televisions, and other such equipment each year. Some of this equipment is truly obsolete. Some has simply been cast aside in favor of a new model. ("My son has a perfectly good MP3 player, but he wants an iPod because it's the dead-coolest thing to have, while my father loved durability and things made to last," Slade tells me. In the book, he pins that generational disparity on "a unique combination of psychological and technological obsolescence.")
The result is a growing stream of hazardous waste that is gradually awakening us to the costs of our disposable society. Millions of tons of e-waste end up in U.S. landfills each year, and millions more are exported to developing countries. Some are simply dumped there, while others are recycled under unsafe, unhealthy, and environmentally hazardous conditions. Given the global nature of the business and the volume at which we're producing and consuming PCs, cell phones, CD players, PDAs, MP3 players, and the like, the impacts are being felt worldwide.
So is there any real hope, I ask Slade? How do we undo this cycle of consumption? "A lot of really sophisticated people devoted a lot of time and thought to developing this system," he says. "We need to look at the problem creatively and rethink it. Our whole economy is based on buying, trashing, and buying again. We need to rethink industrial design."
In the United States, where we still cling to the myth of the endless frontier and equate progress and prosperity with the ability to jettison things, the notions of reuse and recycle have been slow to take hold. The idea of designing a product with the end of its life and impacts of its production in mind is still novel, and American businesses tend to regard the idea of producer responsibility -- which holds the manufacturer responsible for a product at the end of its useful life -- as a threat to profit margins. But in other parts of the world, governments and manufacturers are confronting the costs of disposability at long last.
"During the next few years, the overwhelming problem of waste of all kinds will, I believe, compel American manufacturers to modify industrial practices that feed upon a throwaway ethic," Slade writes. "The golden age of obsolescence -- the heyday of nylons, tailfins, and transistor radios -- will go the way of the buffalo."
Terry Tamminen is the former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and is now a policy adviser and author. His latest book is Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction.
ETHBESY
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/karma.html
Was the Tsunami Caused by Karma? - A Buddhist View -- by Kusala Bhikshu
The world is filled with so much pain and suffering and now a Tsunami kills over 170,000 people. Why did so many people have to die, was it their karma?
I was watching the news, listening to a famous American Buddhist scholar say the death and destruction caused by the Tsunami, "Was karma." A simple answer and a great sound bite to a complex question, but to say the reason behind this tragic event was simply karma appears glib and indifferent.
I've never found the cause of anything in Buddhism to be just one thing. Saying the reason for a complex chain of events is the result of one action-- whether it's God, sin or karma-- doesn't seem like a viable option for a Buddhist. Buddhist cosmology is non-theistic and lacks a first cause. I admit some Buddhists feel karma can replace God as a first cause, because Buddhism has a moral code and lacks a divine law giver... But is it fair to say that a Tsunami is the moral consequence of unskillful intention, speech and action?
The Buddha was clear on this. We lack a realistic world view because of lust, greed, hatred and delusion. Science can add some clarity and meaning, but the Buddha warned us about this world of ours (samsara) being unsatisfactory, it's the place where birth, death and change occur. We experience pain because we have a body/mind, and suffer because of desire and impermanence.
Sickness, injury, aging and death are simply the signs of flux in an insufferable world.
Early Buddhism gives us something called the five Niyamas, or the five aspects of cosmic order. These Niyamas can deepen our understanding and give meaning to why things happen. Niyama is a Pali term (language of early Buddhism) for cosmic order. The Niyamas show how certain conditions, laws of nature, work at different levels of cause and effect.
The First Niyama (Utu Niyama) is the law of physical matter. It is the physical, inorganic order of existence. Seasonal changes, earthquakes, floods, gravity and heat are some of the many examples. It roughly embraces the laws of physics and chemistry.
The Second Niyama (Bija Niyama) is the law of living matter, the physical organic order, like cells and genes, whose laws are similar to the science of biology.
The Third Niyama (Kamma Niyama) is Karma. Karma is the activity of transforming energy through intention, speech and action. The result of this energy transformation is only considered wholesome or skillful if less suffering or no suffering is produced. Karma is the cause, and Vipaka (Pali) is the result. It is the principle of conditionality operative on the moral plane. This sequence of cause and consequence replaces a divine law giver. In Buddhism there is a moral law, but no lawgiver and no one to administer it. This Niyama pertains to the world of ethical responsibility.
The Fourth Niyama (Dhamma Niyama) is the Spiritual or transcendent. This principle of conditionality operates on the spiritual level. The natural phenomenon that occurs with the birth of a Buddha, and the reasons for Buddhist Practice are in this group. This Niyama has to do with the spiritual laws that govern ultimate reality.
The Fifth Niyama (Citta Niyama) is mind. This Niyama implies mental activity such as consciousness, perception, conception, etc. Mental phenomenon arises because of conditions; the mind is not an independent agent. This is like the science of psychology.
The Utu, Bija, Kamma, and Citta Niyamas are types of conditionality in the relative sense, the cause and consequence of everyday life. Dhamma Niyama has to do with the spiritual laws that govern ultimate reality, like emptiness, not-self or our progress through the different stages of the Buddhist path.
These ever changing physical, biological, psychological, ethical and spiritual components give life to our pain and suffering. Our existence, and ultimately our death and rebirth depend on a complex combination of aggregates. There is no 'One Thing' that determines anything in Buddhism it is always the interconnected and interdependent flux of 'Many Things.'
HISLIT
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
The Two-Hundred Years War
Searching for the origins of the Kosovo conflict--in the eighteenth century.
G. M. Tamás
"For sheer primitive rage," said an old sage, "commend me to a thorough-going humanitarian when you get him well roused." As I write (in mid-May), the left-center governments of North America and Western Europe--self-certified do-gooders all--are showering thousands of tons of hardware and hi-tech hellfire on targets in Yugoslavia selected by their "intelligence" agencies. The policy follows this syllogism:
1. We must stop the terror in Kosovo.
2. The bombing will not stop the terror in Kosovo.
3. Let's get on with the bombing.
Such is the reasoning of the most powerful, most prosperous, best-educated, and best-informed nations on earth.
To be sure, the conflict in Yugoslavia defies any facile moral calculus. NATO is fighting a "just war" in the narrow sense of its being directed against a horrible genocidal regime, and pursued with the intention of upholding human rights. But it is also the wrong war, since it does not alleviate the predicament of the victims it purports to rescue. In this it parallels the Iraq imbroglio where, after long years of sanctions, boycott, and air strikes, the position of Kurds, Shiites, leftists, and other anti-Saddam forces are now much worse. The belief in the righteousness of NATO's case is undermined by US support for authoritarian regimes practicing ethnic cleansing and massacre as an instrument of policy--in Cambodia, Guatemala, Colombia, and Turkey. Still, the enemy, Milosevic is evil; our side is merely absurd and unprincipled.
This "just" but "wrong" war is dividing and destroying the West European left, just as the first timid steps were underway to inaugurate a non-ethnic, non-racist citizenship in Germany and France, and it threatens to ruin East European democracy altogether. There may be no attractive solution but better understanding may help to reduce the current horror.
THE ORACLES have already spoken out on the explanation of the conflict and the ensuing genocide and massive population "transfer." But their reasoning is not much better than the NATO syllogism. Consider two first-rate minds, both with Balkan roots. The post-Marxist Slovene thinker, Slavoj Zizek, delivers himself of the opinion that all that talk about ethnic nationalism is just nonsense, the essence is "power struggle."2 The Bulgarian-French writer, Julia Kristeva, locates the essence in culture. She presents us with a dramatic contrast of East and West in 1793: while the Protestant Kant-according to her-was representing rational understanding (entendement, Verstand), Orthodox monks were translating Philokalia from the Byzantine Greek. QED. What more proof could we ask for that Orthodox Slavs are irrational, thus inferior?
Two famous East European novelists shared their views with Western audiences, too. György Konrád blames the West, not unfairly, for encouraging separatism and believing the canard that Yugoslavia was in some sense more of an "artificial" creation than most states. "The West" writes Konrád, "recognizes, protects, and maintains by force of arms a Bosnia made up of three republics, three nationalities: an entity no less artificial than was Yugoslavia. The West recognized ethnic nationalism and helped it to victory, opening the door to the violent expulsions. By giving top priority to national self-determination and rejecting on principle the federation inherited from the communist era, the West made individual human rights and lawful, democratic autonomy for cultural minorities subservient to [ethnic] nationalist hysteria.… Western politicians believe they act against Milosevic, but they act for him: the West has walked into the trap."
The Albanian novelist, Ismaïl Kadaré, however, believes that we have another aggression of would-be Christians against non-Christians on our hands. Kadaré thinks that the Serbs have been bloodthirsty thugs throughout their history. But surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), he finds words of praise for the Kanun, the medieval Albanian handbook of ritual vendetta, even for what he calls "its central part, 'The Rules of Death.' "
Among important Western authors, Susan Sontag, in an article of almost Wieseltierian ferocity, memorably (or ominously) called "Why Are We In Kosovo?" declares herself fed up with European whining and bellyaching about what she feels is "a just war."
The well-known social critic, Jean Baudrillard, basing his theory on the counter-intuitive hypothesis that the leaders of the Western world cannot be complete idiots (why not?), thinks that Milos6evi´c is evil, but so is everyone else. All the capitalist countries are trying to get rid of their mostly immigrant minorities, to "eliminate heterogeneous and fractious elements" locally and achieve globalization, as it were, globally.
Meanwhile, in Yugoslavia, sheer dementia seems to reign supreme. In her stunning war diary Biljana Srbljanovi´c--Serb playwright and admirably courageous member of the Yugoslav democratic opposition (that, according to Dr. Z6iz6ek does not exist)--reports that the air attacks in Belgrade are announced on Serbian radio and television by a disembodied voice belonging to somebody called "Avram Israel," and the Serb TV broadcasts endless reruns of Schindler's List. The Serbs and the Albanians alike are now identifying themselves with the Jews known to them from Hollywood's anti-fascist kitsch. Miss Srbljanovic's generalized moral nausea is the most hopeful and refreshing development since NATO's war began.
But apart from this nausea, the analyses--however plausibly and forcefully stated--are not particularly helpful, and other discussions are comparably ignorant and unilluminating. The past matters in this conflict, and the major commentators are strikingly uninformed about the relevant history--a 200-year legacy that has fostered ethno-cultural division, produced a world without citizens, and correspondingly limited current options to a federal structure policed by external force, or a collection of ethnically pure states, or continued slaughter.
To read the full article go to:
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/tamas.html
LANGCULT
http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-50/recovering-women-s-history-3009876
Recovering women’s history
30 September 2007 16:24
Reviewed by LIZ MARTYN
Despite several decades of academic feminism, women remain hidden in mainstream Indonesian history. Writing the history of Gerwani, the women's organisation closely linked to the communist party PKI, was not only an exercise in recovering a hidden history, but in countering misrepresentation by 20 years of New Order ideology.
Former Gerwani members plead for their history to be returned to them, countering the military's construction of their organisation. One says: 'What really makes me sad is that my children learn such ugly things about Gerwani. I realised my son was holding something back from me. Finally he came to me and asked, "Ma, why did you become a member of such a group, so morally depraved, bringing ruin to the country? Were you a whore too? Everybody said that all Gerwani members were whores and bad women". How can I explain to him what we lived for, what our ideals were? I still see the confusion and shame in his eyes. How will he ever understand my life?' (p. xi).
Democracy
Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia) was one of the largest women's organisations operating in the newly independent Indonesian state. Formed in 1950 so 'politically conscious' women could fight for women's and children's rights and democracy, it had over 650,000 members by 1957. It took on a political role as well as the social work and educational roles of most Indonesian women's organisations.
The military account of the coup of 30 September 1965 is that Gerwani members were implicated in the sexual torture of the kidnapped generals. Wieringa shows this is a fabrication. In the transition from Sukarno's Old Order to Suharto's New it paid a heavy price in deaths, imprisonment, and exile. By 1967 the organisation had been destroyed.
Wieringa's main question in this doctoral dissertation is what Gerwani did in the 1950s and early 1960s that provoked the backlash from the New Order state. She notes the contrast between what she views as the regressive, docile, male-dominated women's organisations of the New Order and the more aggressive women's organisations of the nationalist and 1950s era.
Her central argument is that Gerwani became more drawn to Sukarno and the PKI's 'male' domain of politics. This demanded a political role for women, stepping outside accepted roles, and bringing themselves into conflict with other women's organisations and the community at large. Islamic sections in particular were relieved when Gerwani was destroyed. The new regime had issued its warning about the appropriate place for Indonesian women.
Feminist or socialist?
Wieringa highlights an internal power struggle between the feminist and socialist streams within the organisation. Gender issues important to Gerwani members could be in conflict with their political beliefs. In these cases Gerwani followed a PKI line rather than their gender interests. An important point in non-western women's organisation is that they view oppression as coming from sources other than gender only.
Although Wieringa tends to take today's western feminist interests as a measuring point for analysing Gerwani, resulting in a judgmental account at times, overall this is a very important contribution to Indonesian history and politics. It unravels a fascinating history that has been hidden from most, and ably demonstrates how gender can be used as an important tool of political and historical analysis.
MEDCOM
Profile: Al Jazeera
Profile: Al Jazeera Revolutionizing Middle Eastern Media and Perceptions By Pierre Tristam
The Basics
Al Jazeera, the 24-hour, Arabic-language satellite television news network viewable throughout the Middle East and most of the world, went on the air on Nov. 1, 1996. Al Jazeera’s English-language network went on the air in November 2006. The network is based in Doha, Qatar, the small Arab, peninsular nation jutting into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia’s eastern midsection. “Al Jazeera” is Arabic for “the peninsula.” The network is heavily funded by Qatar’s royal family. Boycotts and pressure from other Arab regimes, most notably Saudi Arabia, keeps advertisers away and prevents the station from becoming self-sufficient.
Al Jazeera’s Viewership and Reach
Satnam Mapharu, Al Jazeera’s public relations chief, says the network’s combined Arabic and English services has 2,500 staff members and journalists from 40 countries. The network broadcasts from four centers — Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington D.C. It has bureaus around the world. The station claims that its English-language service reaches 100 million homes. Its Arabic service has an audience of about 40 million to 50 million.
How Al Jazeera Was Born
Luck played a big role in Al Jazeera’s creation and expansion. In 1995 Qatar’s Crown Prince Hamad bin Khalifa overthrew his father and immediately set to reforming the country’s media and governance. His aim was to transform Qatar into a Persian Gulf version of Switzerland. He thought good publicity would help. So would opening up the emirate’s media. An Arab version of CNN would attain both objectives. The BBC in 1994 had started just such a station in Qatar, with Saudi money. The Saudis soon discovered that the BBC’s independence wasn’t what they were paying for. The venture dissolved, leaving 250 BBC-trained journalists unemployed. Qatar’s emir swooped in, hired 120 of them, and Al Jazeera was born.
“The result,” The New York Times’ John Burns wrote in 1999 , “has been a sensation in the 22 Arab countries where Al Jazeera’s broadcasts can be seen. In Algiers’s Casbah, in Cairo’s slums, in the suburbs of Damascus, even in the desert tents of Bedouins with satellite dishes, the channel has become a way of life. In its 30 months on air, it has drawn viewers in droves from the mind-numbing fare offered by the region’s state-run networks, whose news coverage often amounts to little more than a reverential chronicle of government affairs.”
Banned, Boycotted and Bombed
Al Jazeera’s style of reporting candidly and aggressively from throughout the Arab world was a new experience for Arab regimes. Those regimes often didn’t react happily. The Algerian government prevented Al Jazeera’s correspondent from working there for a brief period in 2004. Bahrain banned the station’s personnel from operating from there between 2002 and 2004. On Nov. 13, 2001, U.S. missiles destroyed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul.
One month later, one of Al Jazeera’s correspondents in Afghanistan, Sami al Hajj, was apprehended by Pakistani authorities and charged, falsely, with having a forged passport. He was turned over to American authorities, who shipped him to the Pentagon’s Gantanamo Bay prison camp, where he’s been held ever since, without charge or proper representation. On April 8, 2003, American forces bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Baghdad killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub.
In March 2008, the Israeli government imposed a boycott on Al Jazeera reporters working in Israel. Israeli authorities charged Al Jazeera with showing bias in its reporting of Israel’s clashes with Hamas in Gaza.
Al Jazeera and the Bush Administration
The Bush administration makes no secret of its disdain for Al Jazeera. It criticizes the station for broadcasting video clips of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures, as well as for its alleged anti-American slant. The criticism, more general than specific, is simple-minded and largely misinformed, however. The station does carry video clips from al-Qaeda figures, but in the context of its news-gathering responsibilities—and in the absence of other stations’ willingness, in the United States especially, to broadcast the material. American stations have seldom refrained from re-broadcasting Al Jazeera’s clips.
Al Jazeera’s alleged anti-American slant is also a simplification. The station is unquestionably not pro-American. Nor is it pro-Israeli. But its experiences with regimes across the Middle East, including with the leadership of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and its Hamas counterparts, have earned it equal-opportunity disdain. More recently, Al Jazeera has been losing its aggressive edge to curry favor with the Qatari and Saudi regime.
Problems with the English-Language Service
In January 2008, Britain’s Guardian reported that “Al-Jazeera’s troubled English language news channel is facing a “serious staffing crisis” after scores of journalists left or have not had contracts renewed amid claims of a revolt over working conditions.” Resignations have reportedly occurred across the board due to the expenses of running the English-language network. “There are also renewed reports of tensions between al-Jazeera’s Arabic language channel, which has been on air since 1996, and the more recently launched English outlet. Sources have added that executives on the main Arabic al-Jazeera network are trying to exert more control over the English language outlet, which is mainly staffed by western journalists.”
But the station was also preparing to open bureaus in Gaza and Nairobi, and expand its marketing in the English-speaking world. In September 2007, Al Jazeera hired Phil Lawrie, formerly CNN’s vice president for commercial distribution, to “to spearhead the effort as Director of Global Distribution,” according to an Al Jazeera news release .
POLSCI
The life of a diplomat
By Eva Holland On February 18, 2008 · 23 Comments
Cocktail parties, foreign dignitaries, expense accounts – the stereotypical life of a diplomat hardly meshes with the Matador philosophy of greener, sustainable travel and of honest interaction with the local culture.
BUT WHEN YOU’RE thinking of jobs that allow for a lifetime of travel, it’s a tough one to ignore. And as it turns out, the reality is both less glamorous and, perhaps, more in keeping with your goals and principles than you’d expect.
I recently asked Doug Holland (my dad), who is currently serving as a Canadian Foreign Service Officer in Barbados, what life in the diplomatic corps is really like. Read on to see if you have what it takes – and if the job’s for you.
What does a diplomat really do, anyway?
Most countries’ diplomatic responsibilities are divided up into three main categories: political, trade, and consular services.
So, “a political officer, in a small mission like ours in Barbados, is a generalist who reports on local developments and advocates for support for Canadian interests,” such as a Canadian-supported motion at the United Nations or a similar multilateral international effort.
“A trade officer promotes the interests of Canadian companies, by introducing them to useful contacts, making them aware of commercial opportunities, providing guidance for visits and basic information they can use.”
A consular officer deals with day-to-day travel problems like lost passports, and in an emergency, “provides essential services to Canadians in need.”
On an average day, a political officer might write a speech for a visiting high-ranking politician from back home or attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
A trade officer might put an engineering firm from their home country in touch with a local government, to help them land a contract setting up the new light rail system.
A consular officer might have to sort out the case of a visiting national accused of a crime, or contact family members back home in the case of an injury or death.
There are also more specialized roles for development experts, police or military attachés, and more, but the bulk of the work falls into these three main categories.
What are the perks?
Salaries vary across different governments and across different roles, but a rough spectrum might run from $35 000 to $100 000 per year, not including upper management. Other benefits include extra vacation time, “family reunion” flights, subsidized (and sometimes flashy) accommodation, duty-free goods, and more.
And then of course, there’s the travel, which “can range from the mundane and limited to exotic and too frequent.” For example: since arriving in Barbados, “I’ve been to Antigua twice, Dominica twice, Grenada, St. Kitts, St. Lucia twice and St. Vincent, all within less than 5 months – but I’ve not seen much of any of them,” thanks to meetings and report-writing.
Still, living and working as a diplomat, contrary to stereotype, can lead to a great deal of knowledge and insight about a country. Between invitations to cultural events and celebrations, endless briefings about local customs, and the simple immersion of everyday life, “you can get to know things about a country that few others would.”
Can diplomats ‘make a difference’ in the world?
Diplomats go where the average traveler can’t, from full-on hot zones like Iraq and Afghanistan to (marginally) more stable, impoverished places like Haiti or Chad.
While most development and aid work is done by more specialized staff, diplomats in these areas nevertheless have the opportunity to help repair a fractured economy, spread the gospel of electoral accountability, or get involved in the refugee claims process.
Even in calmer areas, there are still ample opportunities to effect positive change: “I like to think I am making a difference by promoting Canadian training for police, military, etc. and by encouraging regional institutional development so the good guys can better compete with the organized criminals.
Or making a difference by fostering Canadian standards for government procurement that will reduce corruption and old boys’ influence/control.” In other areas, “a trade officer might say she makes a difference by increasing a company’s sales so it employs more people.”
And a consular officer makes a difference for at least one stressed-out traveler when they arrange a replacement passport quickly, or, in a worst-case scenario, “when they send the body bag home promptly.”
Sounds pretty sweet – what’s the catch?
Some of the big-picture downsides can include social, cultural and linguistic isolation, or even physical danger. And of course, moving around the world every three years or so can take a heavy toll on families, as spouses are forced to sacrifice their own careers and children hop from school to school.
On a day-to-day basis, there are also the inevitable expat frustrations, when “things don’t work they way they ‘should’ like in Canada.” Then there are the financial challenges in the pricier cities of the world, “where our salaries don’t match up to what the locals get, so you’re in this really interesting place but can’t afford to go to a restaurant.”
How do I sign up?
Competition is fierce for a relatively small number of positions: baseline requirements generally include a bachelor’s degree (though a masters is increasingly an ‘unofficial’ requirement), and tough-to-quantify characteristics like judgment and intelligence. Language skills are an asset, as is prior international experience.
Expect an extended testing process rather than a straightforward resume-and-cover-letter, interview-and-offer type of scenario. You might be tested on your writing skills, your knowledge of world events, logic, or aptitude for languages.
In the latter stages, expect to have to pass a serious security screening: this may include exams relating to your physical and mental health, extensive police background checks, and the accumulation of a fair bit of your personal information in a file folder somewhere in your government’s intelligence branch.
For more information, try the US Department of State, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, or the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
SCITECH
Gene Therapy Corrects Sickle Cell Disease In Laboratory Study ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2008) — Using a harmless virus to insert a corrective gene into mouse blood cells, scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have alleviated sickle cell disease pathology. In their studies, the researchers found that the treated mice showed essentially no difference from normal mice. Although the scientists caution that applying the gene therapy to humans presents significant technical obstacles, they believe that the new therapy will become an important treatment for the disease.
Sickle cell disease, which affects millions of people worldwide, arises because of a tiny genetic defect in the gene for beta-globin, a protein component of hemoglobin. This defect causes hemoglobin-containing red blood cells to tend to deform, clump and break apart. The resulting clogged blood vessels can lead to cognitive dysfunction by causing small strokes in the brain and cause damage to kidneys, liver, spleen and lungs. The only permanent cure for the disease is a bone marrow transplant to give recipients blood-forming cells that will form normal beta-globin. However, such transplants are rare because of the lack of compatible donors.
Researchers have long known that symptoms of the disease could be alleviated by persistence in the blood of an immature fetal form of hemoglobin in red blood cells. This immature hemoglobin, which usually disappears after birth, does not contain beta-globin, but another form called gamma-globin. St. Jude researchers had found that treating patients with the drug hydroxyurea encourages the formation of fetal hemoglobin and alleviates disease symptoms.
"While this is a very useful treatment for the disease, our studies indicated that it might be possible to cure the disorder if we could use gene transfer to permanently increase fetal hemoglobin levels," said Derek Persons, M.D., Ph.D., assistant member in the St. Jude Department of Hematology.
He and his colleagues developed a technique to insert the gene for gamma-globin into blood-forming cells using a harmless viral carrier. The researchers extracted the blood-forming cells, performed the viral gene insertion in a culture dish and then re-introduced the altered blood-forming cells into the body. The hope was that those cells would permanently generate red blood cells containing fetal hemoglobin, alleviating the disease.
In the experiments, reported in the advanced, online issue of the journal Molecular Therapy, the researchers used a strain of mouse with basically the same genetic defect and symptoms as humans with sickle cell disease. The scientists introduced the gene for gamma-globin into the mice's blood-forming cells and then introduced those altered cells into the mice.
The investigators found that months after they introduced the altered blood-forming cells, the mice continued to produce gamma-globin in their red blood cells.
"When we examined the treated mice, we could detect little, if any, disease using our methods," said Persons, the paper's senior author. "The mice showed no anemia, and their organ function was essentially normal."
The researchers also transplanted the altered blood-forming cells from the original treated mice into a second generation of sickle cell mice to show that the gamma-globin gene had incorporated itself permanently into the blood-forming cells. Five months after that transplantation, the second generation of mice also showed production of fetal hemoglobin and correction of their disease.
"We are very encouraged by our results," Persons said. "They demonstrate for the first time that it is possible to correct sickle cell disease with genetic therapy to produce fetal hemoglobin. We think that increased fetal hemoglobin expression in patients will be well tolerated and the immune system would not reject the hemoglobin, in comparison to other approaches."
While Persons believes that the mouse experiments will lead to treatments in humans, he cautioned that technical barriers still need to be overcome. "It is far easier to achieve high levels of gene insertion into mouse cells than into human cells," he said. "In our mouse experiments, we routinely saw one or two copies of the gamma-globin gene inserted into each cell. However, in humans this insertion rate is at least a hundred-fold less."
Persons' laboratory is currently working with other animal and human cells to develop methods to achieve a high enough gene insertion rate to make the gene therapy clinically useful.
Other authors of this paper include Tamara Pestina, Phillip Hargrove, Dennis Jay, John Gray and Kelli Boyd (all of St. Jude).
This research was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a Cancer Center Support Core Grant and ALSAC.