Cliburn Piano Competition Now in Semi-Finals

As Tony the Tiger used to say, "It's g-r-r-r-r-eat!" You can watch online at http://www.cliburn.tv/client.aspx. Or YouTube has a Van Cliburn Channel with highlights. Since I can't listen on my local NPR station or watch on PBS, I sure am glad the Van Cliburn Foundation is webcasting it all...

Michael Holman on Dambisa Moyo

From the Financial Times Arena blog:

Of course aid corrupts. The evidence is there, from Congo to Kenya. And who can doubt that most aid to Africa does not work: a greater percentage of Kenyans today live in poverty than at independence some 45 years ago, despite billions of dollars of foreign assistance.

But the consequences of aid are more insidious and more damaging than the pro-aid lobby realises. It undermines the expectations of citizens, and erodes the management capacity of the state. And it destroys the social contract that is at the heart of governance. In return for citizens’ loyalty, expressed in the form of paying tax and defending the state when called on, the citizen expects the provision of basic services: roads, water, clinics and schools.

It is precisely these areas in which foreign non government organisations are most active. If you want a road re-graded, books for your school, drugs for the clinic, or a well for water, you lobby an NGO, for it is more likely to deliver.

The result: the responsibility of the state is diminished, its management capacity ossifies and withers … and the social contract is eroded to the point of collapse. And every year some 100,000 foreign “experts” flock to Africa to administer a system that fails the very people it is supposed to help; and every year some 60,000 of Africa’s best and brightest officially emigrate.

Aid to Africa: not only mad and bad, but dangerous to receive!

Michael Holman is a former Africa editor of the FT

Catholic League Chief Rooting for Sotomayor Confirmation

Writes Stephen Waldman on Beliefnet.org (ht Huffington Post). He quotes this email from Bill Donahue, head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:

"I like the fact that she is not brandishing her religion. I do not want Catholic judges to rule as Catholics but as judges. I am all for Catholic legislators having a Catholic-informed opinion, but a judge has a different charge. Unless something pops that we don't know about, I am not going to oppose her. Indeed, the experiences I had working with the Puerto Rican community lead me to quietly root for her."

IMHO, that's as good as a blessing from the Cardinal...

UPDATE: Another endorsement from Donahue, in The Washington Times:

"If the Republicans are smart, they would not fight this one," he told The Washington Times in an interview...

..."I am looking at this pool of likely competitors, and, far and away, Sotomayor is the best candidate," he said.

According to Donohue's column on the Catholic League website, it may be that he supports Sotomayor because she is Catholic:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments today on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court:

When John Roberts was nominated to be on the high court, Senator Dick Durbin told CNN that he considered it fair game to probe Roberts about his Catholicism. Durbin released a glowing statement yesterday on Sotomayor that never mentioned her religion. When Roberts was questioned by Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Dianne Feinstein, they both asked him whether he agreed with President John F. Kennedy about separation of church and state. Neither even mentioned Sotomayor’s religion in their respective statements yesterday.

When Roberts was nominated, Dahlia Lithwick, legal analyst for Slate, said, “I wouldn’t underestimate the influence of his religion”; when Samuel Alito was nominated, Lithwick said that “People are very, very much talking about the fact that Alito would be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court if confirmed.” Yesterday, Lithwick posted a lengthy piece on Sotomayor that never mentioned her religion. When Roberts was nominated, NPR’s Nina Totenberg said that his wife was “a high officer of a pro-life organization. He’s got adopted children. I mean, he’s a conservative Catholic.” Yesterday, she simply mentioned that Sotomayor attended Catholic schools without ever raising it as an issue. When Roberts was nominated, journalist Adele Stan noted his religion and said, “Rome must be smiling.” Yesterday, in her positive assessment of Sotomayor, she never mentioned her religion.

What’s going on? Are liberal Catholics Catholic? Obviously not, at least according to liberals. After all, if Sotomayor were known as a practicing Catholic, those who fretted over Roberts and Alito would have called 911 by now. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, however, put their worst fears to rest yesterday when he said of the Puerto Rican jurist, “I believe she was raised Catholic.” If this is true, then the telling verb “raised” would explain why liberals like Sotomayor—she’s one of those Catholics they can trust. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

Why I Like the Internet...

Blogger John Lester found a post written by yours truly four years ago about a tour of Mosfilm movie studios, and linked to it on his Russian-themed blog just a few days ago...so I discovered that Mosfilm has setup a very nice website, in English, in the meantime. Still no individual Universal Studios-style tours available, yet...

My Post on President Obama's Open Government Dialog

From the National Academy of Public Administration's Open Government Dialog (ht FOIABlog):

To Make FOIA Work, Costs of Non-Disclosure Must Be Greater than Benefits
lajarvik a few seconds ago

Charge agencies daily substantial penalties for each day past statutory deadlines on FOIA request, this may be done by executive order, I believe. Charges should come from overall budget of agency, not FOIA department. Failure to answer FOIA requests by government officials should also be punished by individual reprimands and other administrative sanctions. These guidelines could be worked out by OPM across all agencies to be fair and reasonable--and to provide reasonable incentives for agencies to disclose whenever possible (rather than deny access, now the CYA default).

Why Is This Idea Important?

Right now, the only penalty in a FOIA case for non-compliance is the award of legal fees to the requester...the lawyer's time is worth money under statue, the agency's time is worth money (reasonable fees may be charged for search and copies), yet the requester's time is not worth money. But information, especially time-sensitive information, has value--and often the requester has a time value for the information. Information in 20 days may be worth more than information in 2 years, especially regarding matters of public interest that affect policy. If information may only be revealed after the issue is moot, especially in controversial matters, what was the point of FOIA in the first place? Any official doing a cost/benefit analysis right now must calculate that the risk of disclosure outweighs the risk of denial. That calculus must change for FOIA to become more effective.

Washington Post: A Granddaughter Returns to Her Lost Shanghai Home

Maureen Fan's memoir, in today's Washington Post style section makes for interesting reading:

I come from a family of architects, and so the buildings matter to us. My grandfather was one of the most prominent architects in Shanghai, and designed the Nanking Theater, now the Shanghai Concert Hall; the Rialto, Astor and Majestic movie theaters; the YMCA building on Xizhang Road South; numerous university buildings and private residences; and the Railway and Health ministries in the southern city of Nanjing. But the buildings that drew me most were the ones my family once lived in.

In particular, I kept returning to the house at 1292 Huaihai Rd., the last house my grandfather Robert Fan (or Fan Wenzhao) owned before he left China in 1949, just as the Communists took power. He and my grandmother lived here with their four children, including my father, and a handful of servants.

I first visited this house in 1986, just after college, and again in 2002. I stand before it now, trying to read the history of my family in its sprawl.

My father and mother are also architects, retired from their San Francisco practice since the 1990s. I'm a journalist, raised in suburbia with only an academic understanding of China until I came back in 2005 to study Mandarin and work as a correspondent for The Washington Post.

Fifty years after he left, my father came back to the house he lived in on Huaihai Road, but he refused to go inside. He stood on the sidewalk staring at the house, his eyes red. He didn't want to change the meaning it held from his childhood.

You can also watch a video:

Washington Times: How to Deal with North Korea

From today's Washington Times editorial:

American policymakers would be wise to remember U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, passed a week after the 2006 nuclear test. The resolution strongly condemned the North Korean nuclear test and imposed extraordinary financial sanctions. It called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs and authorized member states, including the United States, to intercept ships bound for North Korea to inspect them for nuclear components.

The United States also can take action under the 2006 North Korea Nonproliferation Act, which authorizes punishing foreigners trading in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea.

So far, the United States and other countries have failed to press North Korea to the limit of these U.N. measures, preferring diplomacy over action. This has only served as a means for North Korea to pursue its nuclear ambitions while the West mouths empty words.

This issue is not limited to the Korean peninsula. North Korea has emerged as the world's leading nuclear proliferator state. The "axis of evil" is alive and well despite the loss of Iraq as one of its charter members. North Korea and Iran have had a long-standing cooperative relationship in nuclear and missile technology.

As is well known in the intelligence community, Iranian technicians were present during North Korea's 2006 nuclear test. North Korean nuclear specialists were covertly videotaped at the secret Syrian nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in September 2007. The reactor reportedly was underwritten by Iran as a means of carrying out nuclear-weapons development outside the country, thus evading the United Nations and other inspection regimes. Iranian missile experts were in North Korea helping prepare for the April 2009 missile launch, and according to Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper, they brought a letter for Kim Jong-il from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserting the importance of mutual cooperation on missile programs, euphemistically referred to as "space technology."

Iran seems to be using North Korea as a platform for nuclear-weapons research and development, keeping away from prying eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Israel's reach. Recent reports of nuclear cooperation between Iran and Venezuela raise the specter of the evil axis extending into the Western Hemisphere.

North Korea has demonstrated a dogged immunity to sanctions. It already is one of the poorest countries in the world, and there are few remaining economic levers at the world's disposal. The communist leadership is willing to pay any price, bear any burden to become a nuclear power, regardless of the cost to its economy or the suffering of its people.

If the six-party talks are to mean anything, China must become more active by restricting fuel and electricity exports to North Korea and ending economic support.

President Obama should order the U.S. Navy, acting under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, to inspect all shipping in and out of North Korea. Measures also should be taken to inspect all aircraft and ground transport. If more resolute action is not taken, North Korea will hold a knife to the throat of the world - forever blustering demands into its frightened ear.

Bronxite Nominated to Supreme Court

No Bronx cheers, this time! According to the Huffington Post,Judge Sonia Sotomayor grew up in the South Bronx. My aunt Lucy lived on Southern Boulevard for 50 years, and we used to visit her there, until she moved to Co-Op City, also in the Bronx . My father worked at Albert Einstein Medical School next to Jacobi Hospital in the Northeast Bronx. We lived in the West Bronx, in Riverdale, during most of my childhood. Although I was born in Manhattan, I was raised in the Bronx, attending classes at P.S. 24 & J.H.S. 141. I can say that while Manhattanites may be more sophisticated and Brooklynites tougher, Bronxites have a special quality not found elsewhere--they are from the Bronx!

You find a list of famous Bronxites on the New York Public Library website, here (it includes people born or who lived in the Bronx). One of my favorite authors is on the list:

Wouk, Herman: grew up in Hunts Point in the 1930s and 40s. His service in the Navy in World War II provided some basis for his great novel, "The Caine Mutiny," and for the later "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance." His experiences in The Bronx, however, provided memorable scenes in two other novels, "City Boy," and "Inside Outside." With a great productive output, Herman Wouk is considered a major American novelist today.

Now, Bronxite Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States--another good sign from the Obama administration.

The NY Daily News has more on the Bronx angle, here.

Dambisa Moyo: How Jeffrey Sachs Keeps Africa Down

In today's Huffington Post, Dambisa Moyo obliquely accuses Jeffrey Sachs of racism in his approach to African aid:

We also know that there is no country -- anywhere in the world -- that has meaningfully reduced poverty and spurred significant and sustainable levels of economic growth by relying on aid. If anything, history has shown us that by encouraging corruption, creating dependency, fueling inflation, creating debt burdens and disenfranchising Africans (to name a few), an aid-based strategy hurts more that it helps.

It is true that interventions such as the Marshall plan in Europe and the Green Revolution in India played vital roles in economic (re)construction. However, the key and (often ignored) difference between such aid interventions and those plaguing Africa today is that the former were short, sharp and finite, whereas the latter are open-ended commitments with no end in sight. The problem with an open-ended system is, of course, that African governments have no incentive to look for other, better, ways of financing their development.

Mr Sachs knows this; how do I know? He taught me while I was studying at Harvard, during which he propounded the view that the path to long-term development would only be achieved through private sector involvement and free market solutions.

Perhaps what I had not gleaned at that time was that Mr. Sachs' development approach was made for countries such as Russia, Poland and Bolivia, whereas the aid- dependency approach, with no accompanying job creation, was reserved for Africa.

Mr. Sachs chooses to ignore that relying on aid at a time when the United States is facing 10 percent unemployment rate and Germany (another leading donor) could contract by as much as 6 percent, is a fool hardy strategy. The aid interventions that Mr. Sachs lauds as evidence of success are merely band aid solutions that do nothing to lift Africa out of the mire -- leaving the continent alive but half drowning, still unable to climb out on its own.

Yes an aid-funded scholarship will send a girl to school, but we ought not to delude ourselves that such largesse will make her country grow at the requisite growth rates to meaningfully put a dent in poverty. No surprise, then, that Africa is on the whole worse off today than it was 40 years ago. For example in the 1970's less that 10 percent of Africa's population lived in dire poverty -- today over 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa lives on less than US$2 a day.

There is a more fundamental point -- what kind of African society are we building when virtually all public goods -- education, healthcare, infrastructure and even security -- are paid for by Western taxpayers? Under the all encompassing aid system too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes, who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations.

Like everywhere else, Africans have the political leadership that we have paid for. Thanks to aid, a distressing number of African leaders care little about what their citizens want or need -- after all it's the reverse of the Boston tea-party -- no representation without taxation.

Some Thoughts On Memorial Day...

From Wikipedia:

Memorial Day formerly was observed on May 30. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) advocate returning to this fixed date,... The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day Address:

“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.[3]”

Since 1987, Hawaii's Senator Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran, has repeatedly introduced measures to return Memorial Day to its traditional date.

New NASA Chief Vietnam and Four-Time Space Shuttle Vet

The BBC reports that Charles Bolden is both a war hero--Naval aviator, Annapolis graduate, trained in Pensacola--and an astronaut...in addition to being the first African-American nominated to head the troubled US space program. Another good sign from the Obama administration. Here's what the BBC had to say:

Maj-Gen Bolden grew up in segregated South Carolina and flew on more than 100 combat sorties in Vietnam. He joined Nasa in 1980 and is a veteran of four space shuttle flights, commanding the mission that launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in 1990.

He inherits the space agency at a critical time in its history. In 2004, President George W Bush instigated ambitious plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, necessitating the replacement of the shuttle by a new space vehicle. However, the new Ares-Orion vehicle is not expected to be ready until 2015. So for five years after the shuttle's retirement in 2010, American astronauts will be dependent on Russia to fly them into orbit on their space capsule, Soyuz.

In addition, some of Nasa's biggest science programmes are over-budget. This month, the White House ordered a sweeping review of Nasa's manned spaceflight strategy.

Official NASA biography here:http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/bolden-cf.html

Van Cliburn Competition Blog

The Ft. Worth, Texas piano competition is underway, and being covered by it's own blog, here: http://www.cliburn.org/blog/ There's also a live video webcast available, here: http://dev.cliburn.tv/client.aspx. Plus a YouTube Channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/vancliburnfoundation.

Huffington Post: Intellectuals Protest Incoming UNESCO Chief

The intellectuals are Bernard Henri-Levy, Claude Lanzmann, and Elie Wiesel, according to the Huffington Post, which published their manifesto opposing UNESCO's selection of Egyptian abstract painter and culture minister Farouk Hosny today:

Who declared in April 2001: "Israel has never contributed to Civilization in any era, for it has only ever appropriated the contributions of others" -- and added almost two months later: "the Israeli culture is an inhumane culture; it is an aggressive, racist, pretentious culture based on one simple principle: steal what does not belong to in order to then claim its appropriation"?

Who explained in 1997, and has repeated it since in every way possible, that he was the "archenemy" of all attempts to normalize his country's relations with Israel?

Or who, as recently as 2008, responded to a deputy of the Egyptian parliament who was alarmed that Israeli books could be introduced into the Alexandria Library: "Burn these books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you"?

Who said in 2001 in the newspaper Ruz-al-Yusuf that Israel was "aided" in its dark intrigues by "the infiltration of Jews into the international media" and by their diabolical ability to "spread lies"?

To whom do we owe these insane declarations, this anthology of hate and error, and this frenzy of conspiracy theories?

To Farouk Hosny, the Egyptian Minister of Culture for the past fifteen years and undoubtedly the next Director General of UNESCO if nothing is done before the May 30 deadline for nominating candidates to stop his apparently unstoppable march to one of the most important posts of cultural responsibility on the planet.

Even worse: the words that we just cited are only a few -- and not even the most nauseating -- of the innumerable declarations of the same tenor that punctuate the career of Mr. Farouk Hosny over the past fifteen years and that, consequently, precede him as he aspires, even today, to a role on a worldwide scale.

The evidence is there: Mr. Farouk Hosny is not worthy of this role; Mr. Farouk Hosny is the opposite of a man of peace, dialogue, and culture; Mr. Farouk Hosny is a dangerous man, an inciter of hearts and minds. There is only little, very little time left to avoid committing the major mistake of elevating Mr. Farouk Hosny above others to this eminent post.

We thus call on the international community to spare itself the shame that would be the designation, already all but claimed by the candidate himself, of Mr. Farouk Hosny to the post of Director General of UNESCO.

We invite all countries dedicated to liberty and culture to take the initiatives necessary to avert this threat and avoid the disaster that would be his nomination.

We invite the Egyptian President himself, in remembrance of his compatriot Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature who must be spinning in his grave right now -- we invite him, for the honor of his country and as an heir of his great civilization, to become aware of the situation, and, with all urgency, to disown his minister and withdraw his candidacy.

UNESCO has certainly made other mistakes in the past -- but this particular abuse of authority would be so great, so abominable, so incomprehensible. It would be an obvious provocation so transparently contrary to the proclaimed ideals of the UN that UNESCO would not recover.

There is not a minute to lose in order to prevent the irreparable.

We must, without delay, appeal to everyone's conscience to keep UNESCO from falling into the hands of a man who, when he hears the word "culture," responds with a book burning.

Claude Lanzmann
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Elie Wiesel


Translated from the French by Sara Phenix.

Wall Street Journal on Sri Lanka's Victory Over Tamil Tigers

I never understood why the US and the so-called "international community" insisted that Tsunami aid be funneled to the Tamil Tigers, thus reviving a moribund terrorist movement a few years back. We visited Colombo in 2003 and saw the roadblocks, heard of the 60,000 dead in the civil war, visited the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy where terrorists had machine-gunned worshippers. The Tamil Tigers invented suicide bombing, were trained by the PLO and supported by the USSR, and for a while by India (there is already a Tamil state in India). When the Soviet Union collapsed, it looked like the end...but instead so-called "humanitarian" NGOs and Western governments rushed to their support in the wake of the Tsunami... and prolonged a horrible civil war until its end (we hope) a few days ago by a decisive and crushing military attack.

Strangely, even the Wall Street Journal doesn't seem to understand that the West is partly responsible for the problem, that ongoing negotiations with the Tamil Tigers just made matters worse. Crushing them--and backing the Sri Lankan government--should have been PLAN A, not PLAN B, IMHO. Nevertheless, the paper has the only halfway reasonable commentary that I've read to date, so here's an excerpt from today's editorial:

How Sri Lanka got here is worth recounting. The island's conflict started in 1983. After Sri Lanka's independence from Britain, the ethnic Sinhalese majority pursued many discriminatory policies against the Tamil minority: a Sinhala-only language policy, preferences for Sinhalese in university admissions and government hiring, and the exclusion of Tamils from the police.

The war quickly became more about Prabhakaran's determination to form an independent Tamil state under the exclusive control of his Marxist Tigers than about those Tamil grievances. The Tigers killed many moderate Tamil politicians who would have been willing to cooperate politically with Colombo.

Prabhakaran made extensive use of suicide bombers -- including a teenage girl who blew herself up to assassinate former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 -- and relied heavily on child soldiers. Sri Lanka's conflict has claimed 70,000 lives by most counts. It should have been clear early on that government negotiation would go nowhere with such a committed killer.

Mr. Rajapaksa, elected in 2005, put an end to the "peace process" with Prabhakaran and focused on winning the military fight. In 2007, with the help of a Tiger splinter group, the government subdued the Eastern Province; the first elections were held there last year. The fighting then moved to the North. It has not been cheap or easy. Military spending in the 2009 budget is $1.7 billion, 5% of GDP and 20% of the government's budget.

Colombo also learned lessons from its earlier failures. The military improved its training in counterinsurgency tactics, and Colombo invested the resources to enable the army to hold territory it won. Moves by the United States, Britain, Canada and other countries to freeze Tiger fundraising among the Tamil diaspora helped weaken the Tigers. Mr. Rajapaksa wisely ignored international calls for a ceasefire as he got closer to victory, including threats from the Obama Administration to block $1.9 billion in International Monetary Fund aid money.

The government now faces a potential humanitarian crisis in housing, feeding and clothing the more than 200,000 Tamil civilians who have fled the fighting. Sri Lanka has to more fully address the political grievances of moderate Tamils and ensure that there are economic opportunities for all Sri Lankans. After decades of socialism, several rounds of liberalization have since paved the way for 6% to 8% annual growth even amid a civil war.

As Colombo starts to grapple with those post-conflict problems, everyone else can take note: Thanks to a strategy of defeating the insurgency, Sri Lanka is now in a position to talk seriously about peace and economic growth. When negotiating with terrorists doesn't work, Plan B is defeating them.

More on Sri Lanka from the BBC website, which describes how Western aid to Tamil Tigers has affected "hearts and minds" of the Sinhalese:

Beijing has provided huge stocks of weapons to Sri Lanka in the last few years, at the same time as it has been building a new deep water port on the island's southern coast.

It has not gone unnoticed that China's oil supplies from the Middle East pass through the waters of the Indian Ocean, along the sea lanes just south of Colombo.

Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict has lasted nearly three decades

And now that China has helped Sri Lanka defeat the Tamil Tigers, it may be looking to call in a few favours, as it slowly extends its influence across the region.

All this at a time when the Sri Lankan authorities are casting around for new friends.

They have bitterly resented Western criticism of their conduct of the war.

Suggestions that the treatment of civilians demands an investigation into possible war crimes are angrily rejected.

Those who speak out are quickly condemned, no matter who they are. A few days ago an effigy of UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband was burnt outside the British High Commission in Colombo.

"Tamil Tiger Headquarters" said the graffiti spray-painted onto the wall.

UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens has some reasonable points to make about Sri Lanka in Slate:

I also became vaguely aware that, behind the general litany of Tamil complaints and grievances, many of them justified, there was another force altogether. It was referred to in rather hushed tones as "the Tigers," and its sympathizers could often be detected by their habit of referring not to Sri Lanka or even to Ceylon but to "Eelam": the name of a future Tamils-only state. Unwittingly, I was present during the early stirrings of this organization—which had a good deal of support, as irredentist and ultra-nationalist movements so often do, among the diaspora. There are many high-earning communities of Tamils in other countries of the British Commonwealth as well as in Europe and North America, and their support was a major contributing factor to the duration of Asia's longest insurgency or (if you prefer) civil war: one that may possibly just have ended.

Even if you add the two recognized Tamil populations of Sri Lanka together, they do not amount to even one-fifth of the overall population. But at the height of their desperado militancy, a decade or so ago, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, controlled perhaps one-third of the country's territory, including the Batticaloa-Trincomalee coastline in the east and the Jaffna peninsula in the north. There was never any possibility that the Sinhala parties, or indeed many of the urban Tamils, would accept such a fait accompli. Nor was there any chance that China and Pakistan would allow such an obviously strategic island, with its former Royal Navy harbors and ports, to become partitioned in favor of a minority with such strong links to India.

Under the leadership of the late Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE enormously overplayed its hand. It established a dictatorship in the areas it controlled and recruited both child-soldiers and suicide-bombers. One of the latter even assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991: a truly suicidal thing to do, given the need of the Tamils for Indian sympathy. The hardening of Sinhala sentiment, the inevitable splits and defections that arose from the Jonestown style of Prabhakaran, and, perhaps above all, the acquisition of warplanes and other materiel from China and Pakistan eventually gave traction to the central government in Colombo. Deciding to fight as a conventional army that belonged to a separate state, the LTTE has now been defeated as a conventional army, and its state has ceased to exist. Not since the British defeated the Malayan Communists, who were too much restricted to the Malay Chinese population, in the 1940s and 1950s, has any major Asian rebellion been so utterly defeated.

There remains, as there always did, the question of the Tamil population itself. It doesn't seem overwhelmingly likely that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's victorious regime, currently engaging in a spasm of triumphalism, is in the strongest position to offer a hand to the civilian Tamil leadership. But it would be a very agreeable surprise if it did.

It's just not true, as some liberals tend to believe, that insurgencies, once under way, have history on their side. As well as by nations like Britain and Russia, they can be beaten by determined Third World states, such as Algeria in the 1990s and even Iraq in the present decade. Insurgent leaderships often make mistakes on the "hearts and minds" front, just as governments do, and governments are not always stupid to ban the press from the front line, tell the human rights agencies to stay the hell out of the way, and rely on the popular yearning for law and order. It can also be important to bear in mind, as in Sri Lanka became crucial, that majorities have rights, too.

Did You Ever Want to Play Like a Cuban Drummer?

Now you can learn percussive secrets of the Pearl of the Antillies, from Agustin Blazquez's latest music video, available on YouTube: Rafael Clave Behind The Scenes

Daniel Pipes on Today's Obama-Netanyahu Summit

From DanielPipes.org:

Some predictions: (1) Iran being Netanyahu's top priority, he will avoid a crisis by mouthing the words "two-state solution" and agreeing to diplomacy with the Palestinian Authority. (2) Democrats too will be on their best behavior, checking their alienation through Netanyahu's visit, momentarily averting a meltdown. (3) Obama, who has plenty of problems on his hands, does not need a fight with Israel and its supporters. His move to the center, however tactical, will last through the Netanyahu visit.

Short term prospects, then, hold out more continuity than change in U.S.-Israel relations. Those concerned with Israel's security will prematurely breathe a sigh of relief – premature because the status quo is fragile and U.S. relations with Israel could rapidly unravel.

Even a lack of progress toward a Palestinian state can prompt a crisis, while an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear infrastructure contrary to Obama's wishes might cause him to terminate the bond begun by Harry Truman, enhanced by John Kennedy, and solidified by Bill Clinton.

Jeremy Gerard: Margo Lion Behind Rocco Landesman NEA Choice

According to this article on Bloomberg.com, the choice of Rocco Landesman resulted in part from $500,000 in campaign contributions raised by an adunct professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts:

When President Barack Obama announced his plan to nominate Rocco Landesman as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, I figured Margo Lion had a hand in it. So I called her up.

Lion, a Broadway producer, shares an office with Landesman, the loquacious, combative owner of five Broadway houses called Jujamcyn Theaters.

More to the point, she’d joined the Obama bandwagon early, raised more than $500,000 for the candidate and helped shape his arts agenda. She was well-situated to put forward Landesman, 61, for the NEA slot. He’s a brilliant choice.

“The president said, ‘Let’s find a game changer,’” Lion told me. “I didn’t have long-held plans, it wasn’t a strategy. But Rocco’s an unusual leader. He combines an impressive intellect, bravery and humor with a talent for getting the best out of people.”

Margo Lion's website provides more background:

Margo Lion was a member of President Barack Obama’s National Finance Committee and served as Co-Chair of his Arts Policy Committee during the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Margo produced the Barack on Broadway fundraiser on September 9, 2007 and the Women for Obama Central Park Rally on February 2, 2008.

Here's a link to a campaign letter from Lion and George Stevens about Obama's arts policy goals: http://margolionltd.com/affiliations/letter_from_margolion_georgestevens.pdf. A glance at Wikipedia tells us that Ms. Lion's first major hit was the musical adaptation of John Waters' Hairspray and that she hails from Charm City--Baltimore, Maryland...

Memo to President Obama: Use Federal Stimulus Funds to Bury Urban Power Lines

TO: The President
FROM: LJ
RE: Using Stimulus Funds to Bury Power Lines
DATE: May 18, 2009

The night before last, a big thunderstorm knocked down some trees that cut power to our urban block in the Nation's Capital. We were without power for some 10 hours before repair crews fixed the problem. The experience reminded me of complaints from participants in a seminar that I teach for families of international diplomats. Every year, some of the foreigners posted here express shock and dismay that their power goes out during storms in Washington, DC. Europeans and delegates from the former Soviet block simply cannot believe that the richest and most powerful country in the world allows its capital to suffer power cuts and blackouts "like a third-world country." I used to just shrug my shoulders and repeat the mantra that "burying power lines is very expensive..."

However, given the massive spending on the stimulus package and the need to create jobs in the USA, it would seem to me that there would be no better time than right now for the Obama administration to announce a federal program to bury power lines in urban areas. These are jobs that can't be moved to China or India, and the benefits will be felt as soon as residents of Washington, DC no longer need to stock up on candles and flashlights every time there is a bad weather forecast.

Furthermore, from a national security point of view it would seem to be a no-brainer that buried power lines are less subject to disruption from terrorism than those hanging on flimsy telephone poles. Needless to say, if climate change predictions are correct, increasingly severe weather would result in more power outages affecting above-ground transmission wires. Not to mention the disruption power cuts cause to the disabled dependent on electrically-powered medical equipment.

Burying power lines with stimulus funds would create jobs, improve national security, and enhance the quality of life in urban areas. At the same time, the latest FiOS and other high-tech connections could be installed, providing infrastructural improvements requisite for the industries of tomorrow where people are living today, perhaps lowering electricity rates in the bargain..Last but not least, it would no doubt help improve the image of America in the hearts and minds of diplomats posted here from around the world.

To those who say it can't be done, let us remind them of your campaign slogan: "Yes, we can!"

The Van Cliburn Piano Competition on Your Laptop...

Thanks to an ad on ArtsJournal.com, I found the Van Cliburn Competition live streaming video website. More info:

Welcome to the Cliburn Competition Webcast!

You will soon enjoy watching the entire competition here at www.cliburn.tv. Starting May 22, all performances will be streamed live eleven hours per day, and then archived for “on-demand” viewing.

In the meantime, we invite you to download the Silverlight program today and launch the webcast player to ensure that it functions properly. During this testing period, you will be able to watch two performances from our 2001 Competition archives featuring gold medalists Stanislav Ioudenitch and Olga Kern.

This player will offer extensive functionality with an array of interactive features, including an online audience vote after each round, an “email the competitor” option, and a blog. Online audiences will also have special access to rehearsals between the Takács Quartet and the pianists, the private sessions between the pianists and the conductor, and orchestra rehearsals with the conductor and the six finalists.

Yet another innovative feature will be a commentary at the bottom of the screen, which will offer pointers and alert the viewer what to listen for during each piece.

We encourage you to sign our guest book so you will be notified when we go live on May 22.

To view the concertos from the 2001 competition archive, you must install the Silverlight 2 plugin. Once installed, click the button below that reads "Click here to launch the player". If you install the plugin and this button is still grayed out, refresh this page and then click it to view the concertos.

We look forward to sharing this extraordinary musical event with you via the Internet.

David Gardner: Saudi Arabia--Laboratory of Jihad

Ali Alyami of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia sent me David Gardner's interesting article about Wahabism in Saudi Arabia from the current issue of The New Statesman. An excerpt:

It is inescapable, however, that the al-Saud need to curb the corrosive power of the religious establishment and lead the kingdom towards a form of modernity that its religious heritage can sustain. And the most feasible way forward is to enlist Islamist progressives.

This loosely connected group of Islahiyyun or “reformers” has rediscovered the thinking of Islamic revivalists and reformers of more than a century ago, and turned it into a devastating critique of Ibn Abdul Wahhab.

Encouraged by Abdullah, the newspaper al-Watan (the nation, or homeland) became a forum for this debate, as did internet discussion groups, such as Muntada al-Wasatiyya, set up by the dissident Islamist Mohsen al-Awajy.

This still embryonic force has already achieved three major changes. First, the groups have presented their demands collectively, instead of petitioning individually at the majlis or court of the prince. The turning point was a 2003 petition signed by leading Islamist reformers and liberals. Second, the document proposed allowing diversity in matters of faith and politics – in a country where uniformity on both has long been imposed. And third, it broke the taboo about speaking against Wahhabism, and implied that it was this distorted form of Islam that was preventing Saudi Arabia from becoming a successful modern state all its citizens could easily support.

It is important to realise that the petition, titled “A vision for the present and future of the homeland”, draws on sources of renewal that are and will remain Islamic and, in important ways, Islamist. However alien this fusion of religion and politics may seem to secular westerners, it is key to any possibility of change, because it provides reformers with an authenticity and a legitimacy that deflects charges of foreign influence and intrusion. Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Qassim, a former Saudi judge and reformer, is an authority on this. “Al-Qaeda and the clergy are essentially doing the same thing in different ways – putting pressure on the House of Saud for being less devout than it should be. This paralyses reform,” he tells me. “The only way out is to dilute the link with Wahhabi fanaticism.

“The only way forward is to win the legitimacy of society itself – through political reform that does not depend on the approval of the clergy. If you make society part of reform you can overcome the clergy. It is the only way.”

The demands of the Islamist reformers include free elections, freedom of expression and association, an independent judiciary, a fairer distri bution of wealth, and a clearer foreign policy arrived at through open debate – in short, a constitutional monarchy, if nowhere near a bicycling monarchy. “We are limiting our demands to very specific issues, and reiterating the al-Saud’s right to stay at the top of the tree,” says Mohsen al-Awajy. “They think it’s for tactical reasons, but the fact is there is no real alternative.”

Just how fundamental it is that liberals and Islamists take on Wahhabism cannot be overstated. But the liberals are an infinitesimal minority, tainted in the eyes of the masses with corruption and decadence. As one senior prince puts it, with a certain melancholy: “We liberals sit around a bottle of scotch and complain to each other, and then, the next morning, do nothing. Yet if we don’t get real progress, economically, socially and politically, we are going to be in a terrible mess in five to ten years.”

He, at least, shows an awareness alien to much of a bloated royal family that affects not to understand where a privy purse ends and a public budget begins, and continues to squander fabulous public wealth. Military spending, for example, is about three times the average for a developing country and is used as a mechanism for distributing power and wealth within the top ranks of the House of Saud – which is more than 5,000 princes strong.

No wonder that it is the Islamist reformers, numerically and ideologically, who are the real force for change. They can credibly argue that they intend no separation between mosque and state, but a redefinition of the relationship between the al-Saud and the al-Sheikh.

“Saudi Arabia has to be an Islamic state; it is the birthplace of Islam. The question is which Islam?” says Jamal Khashoggi, editor of al-Watan and adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington and London. “The alliance should be between the state and Islam, not between the House of Saud and the House of al-Sheikh.”
Awajy, whose candour lost him his job as a university professor, argues: “The contract between the two houses is no longer in the interests of the Saudi people; if we tolerated it in the past it does not mean we will in the future. Real reform cannot take place within the Wahhabi doctrine.”

The Wahhabi establishment has pumped the poison of bigotry into the Saudi mainstream throughout the existence of the kingdom. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, it became impossible to ignore that its ideas and al-Qaeda’s were pretty much the same. It is hard to imagine how the House of Saud will survive unless it breaks decisively with these ideas. Or, as one Saudi reformer put it: “If this clerical establishment is incapable of imagining the solutions we need to modern problems, then the answer is clear – we have to find another establishment.”