Are International NGOs Out of Control?

From Gerald M. Steinberg's article in Middle East Quarterly:

"The horrors of the Holocaust and the outrage over the failure of Allied powers to intervene provided the impetus for the creation of today's international human rights system, anchored in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations (U.N.) and individual governments were the primary actors in establishing new international norms, but in time, a network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) essentially privatized this international regime. The most powerful of them--Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), and others--exert a tremendous influence in the U.N., the European Union (EU), and Western capitals. The NGO community has prospered and grown. In 1948, sixty-nine NGOs had consultative status at the U.N.; by 2000 their numbers had swollen to over 2000, the majority defining themselves as 'universal human rights organizations'.

"Initially, human rights NGOs did little work in the Middle East. During the 1970s, these groups played a central role in the Helsinki process and in furthering the human rights agenda of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Helsinki Watch (which later became Human Rights Watch) and Amnesty International were instrumental in protesting the denial of human rights to Jews in the Soviet Union and the communist regimes of eastern Europe, including the case of Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky.

"The emphasis in this early stage was on the protection of the rights of individuals in repressive systems. But over the last decade, NGOs have expanded their agendas dramatically, going far beyond campaigning against the violation of individual rights. The leaders of these organizations have been able to parlay the platforms and the massive resources at their disposal, to influence "high politics" on behalf of those they cast as the weak and oppressed. NGOs were heavily involved in the politics of the civil conflict between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (FARC) guerillas, in the boycott that led to regime change in South Africa, in the debate over the legality of the Iraq war, and in the complex negotiations on the convention to ban land mines. NGOs are also very active in civil-society-building activities that reflect explicitly political and ideological agendas in many countries around the world.

"In the process, they have taken sides in international disputes. Nowhere has that been more evident than in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Major NGOs such as HRW, Amnesty, and Christian Aid, working closely with the media and groups such as the U.N. Human Rights Commission, have been instrumental in promoting the Palestinian political agenda, using the terminology of international law. In 2001, the NGO community set the political agenda and shaped the discussions of the U.N. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WARC, held in Durban, South Africa), a gathering that became an anti-Israeli rally. NGOs also drove the U.N. General Assembly resolution that referred the Israeli separation barrier to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. These NGOs also have gained a great deal of influence in shaping the Middle East policies of the EU, both collectively and as expressed by individual governments, as well as in the U.S. State Department."

Marco Polo in the Cornfields

Also while I was in Bloomington, I had a chance to hear the Silk Road Ensemble in concert at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, a lovely old movie house cum cultural center. It was a fantastic evening.

The Silk Road ensemble is:
Rahman Assadollahi - Qarmon (Azerbaijani button Accordion)–absolutely spectacular! A real star, magnificent showmanship, passion, muscisianship, energy, and with a shock of white hair, big moustache, and dramatic flair. He’s from Tehran, and was just wonderful, such pain and sadness and joy and longing all combined in virtuoso solos. The audience went wild, all his CDs disappeared immediately from the sales kiosk in the lobby.
Munish Sharifov-Kamancha –from Azerbijan, excellent, too, played Eastern and Western numbers with great panache.
Novrus Mamedov-Vocal, Saz & Percussion–also Azerbaijani, also wonderful.
Arif Bagirov-Tar & Guitar-born in Azerbijan, he taught at Tashkent Music School Number 1, and was accompanist fro Ilyas Malayev and Mahabbat Shamayeva.
Avner Shakov-Naqara and Doira–born to a Bukharan Jewish family of musicians, he was the Ringo Starr of this group. Not surprisingly, he’s an alumnus of the drum department at the Tashkent conservatory.
Hakan Toker-Piano-from the Turkish city of Mersin, he has a piano degree from Indiana University. He was young and handsome, with a moustache that looked like one on a terra cotta relic from Alexander the Great. He got up and danced, too…
Shahyar Daneshgar-Vocal and Percussion-an Azerbaijani from Tehran, also an IU alumnus–and a lecturer on Central Eurasian Studies. He’s such a good musician, and such a charming MC, I’d believe what he says about the region…

They gave a heck of a performance. The show began at 7:30 and lasted until after 11 pm. There was a big delegation of Azerbaijanis in the audience, the concert was so exciting that lots of them marched up onto the stage and started dancing to the accordion and orchestra.

If I were I musicologist, I could tell you what it all meant. But all I can say was the show was great, the musicians were great, the MC was great. If the Silk Road ensemble ever plays near you, run–don’t walk–to the ticket office…

Art in the Cornfields

Last weekend, after giving a talk at an academic conference at Indiana University, I took a short drive along twisting country roads to Nashville, Indiana. The town is an art colony, and since the 1920s has been a favored retreat for painters from Indianapolis. It is nearby the historic home/studio of T.C. Steele (1847-1926), founder of the "Hoosier Group" of artists. Nashville is a little bit like Carmel, California, with a midwestern accent. Nowadays, the town is pretty touristy. There is a fake train that pulls visitors on tours through the streets, lots of scented candle shops, and a gallery/shop dedicated to the work of Thomas Kinkade, "painter of light". Those sort of tourist traps aren't worth a detour. Luckily, there is much that is worth seeing and experiencing. For example, I had lunch at a fish fry under a big white tent, sponsored by the Volunteer Fire Department. Along with the fried fish sandwich I got an ear of fresh roasted corn (they ran out of apple cider), no doubt picked at a nearby farm. Down the road from the fish fry was the municipal Brown County Art Gallery, founded in 1926. It displayed a lot of works, in a variety of styles. And while Nashville, Indiana isn't Greenwich Village or Paris, it is a very nice spot to stop for lunch on the road from Bloomington to Indianapolis. At this time of year, the fall foliage was turning, so the ride featured colorful splashes of reds and golds around every turn. And artists still live in the area. From October 1-31, Brown County offers an artist's studio tour.

Florida's Terror Factor

According to Daniel Pipes, the terror factor is making a difference in the Florida senate campaign:

"Both candidates 'are consumed with al-Arian,' notes Marc Caputo in the Miami Herald. But there the symmetry stops, for the public so far has penalized Ms Castor and rewarded Mr. Martinez. It recognizes that for Mr. Martinez, Mr. Al-Arian was not an issue while Castor for six long years failed to handle the problem the professor presented. According to a Mason-Dixon poll, Ms Castor's soft treatment of Mr. Al-Arian ranks as her 'chief weakness.' A Martinez advisor reports that when asked, 'Who do you think is better on terrorism?' voters favor Mr. Martinez 2-1. Mr. Martinez has also enjoyed a 20 percent increase since August of voters who view him favorably; Ms Castor won just a 4 percent increase. The 'all Al-Arian all the time' campaign has several implications:
As Islamist terrorism grows in menace and capabilities, how American politicians deal with it is becoming more central to their attractiveness as candidates and their stature as leaders. The American voter rewards a tough policy toward those suspected of ties to terrorism. Both major parties must ignore those activists (Grover Norquist for the Republicans, James Zogby for the Democrats) who argue for courting the Islamist vote. It is unclear who will win the tight Florida race; it is clear, however, that politicians who coddle terrorists have adopted a losing electoral strategy."

The Diplomad Endorses Bush

From The Diplomad:

"The Old Europeans and the NY Times bunch don't have a clue about how the world works. They think that words equal action; that feel-good resolutions and pronouncements at the UN, the International Criminal Court, or some other international fora will make evildoers reconsider. In fact, it's worse than that; they can't bring themselves to acknowledge the presence of evil, for them disputes are just misunderstandings open to resolution by men of goodwill. The Euros and their American imitators deny that Western civilization survives because the hard-pressed American taxpayer maintains 12 aircraft carrier battle groups, an incredibly lethal air force, and divisions of superbly trained and motivated marines and soldiers ready, willing and demonstrably able to reach out and 'touch' any corner of the globe. The same crowd who told us the USSR was a superpower with whom we needed to reach an accommodation, now tell us that the USSR was never really a threat and that it 'imploded' on its own, not because of anything the USA did. Likewise, they tell us that we are 'overreacting' to 9/11 and that, as a consequence, we have lost the sympathy of the world. They deride our patriotism and reverence for the flag, and snicker when we stand at attention at the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. They believe in the Michael Moore version of America. They simply cannot comprehend how it is that rock-and-roll addicted, video game playing, orange-haired, suburban teen-age 'mall rats' will respond to their country's hour of crisis, enlist in overwhelming numbers, and then in weeks take apart the 'fierce warriors of Afghanistan' or roll into Baghdad while hardly breaking a sweat. These people don't have a clue, and we must not elect a President who takes them seriously."

Team America: World Police

Reviewed by OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today:

'"The Feel-Good Hit of the Season: This column doesn't normally do movie reviews, but we just have to let the world know how much we adore 'Team America: World Police,' which we saw Saturday night in a big-screen IMAX theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Seeing an audience in deep-blue Manhattan cheer the destruction of the Eiffel Tower restored our faith in American unity. Be warned: This film will not be everyone's cup of tea. It's rife with obscene language, explicit sex (albeit involving anatomically incorrect puppets) and fake vomit. Reviewer Ed Blank of the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review calls it a work of 'crude excess' that widens 'the abyss between satire and garbage.' But the sanctimonious left-wing twit Roger Ebert also pans it; he's especially aggrieved by the song 'Everyone Has AIDS,' which even Andrew Sullivan says 'deserves to win an Oscar.' If the gross-out elements don't put you off, you will find 'TAWP' heartwarming, hilarious, inspiring and patriotic. And, as New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott acknowledges, 'the movie has an argument.' Unfortunately, we can't tell you what the argument is, because it rests entirely on vulgar anatomical references, and this is a family newspaper's Web site. We will say that the argument is simple yet profound, making the case for the war on terror in a way that ought to be especially appealing to immature males. If this film continues to do well at the box office, it could give President Bush a boost with the youth vote."

A Short History of Assassins

Martin Kramer argues that assassination must be understod in the context of a struggle between tradition and modernity, in Middle East Quarterly:

"Until modern times, there existed no form of legitimacy in the Middle East outside of Islam. Rulers ruled in the name of God; assassins struck them down in the name of God. The assassinations of the early caliphs and the struggle between the Sunni rulers and the Assassins in the Middle Ages took precisely this form: each side claimed to act in accord with divine will, revealed in divine texts. Religion played a crucial role in the rationale of assassination, but it also played a crucial role in the rationale of government, law, and warfare--indeed, of everything. This invocation of God by the ruler and his assassin characterized the entire pre-modern period in the Islamic world, right up to the end of the nineteenth century. Assassination in modern times may be divided roughly into three sequential stages, in which the rationales shift dramatically. In the first stage, rulers continued to rule in the name of God as they always had, but their assassins claimed to act in the name of the nation. In the second stage, rulers themselves claimed to rule in the name of the nation; the assassins also claimed to act on behalf of the nation in striking them down. In the third stage, the present one, rulers still claim to rule in the name of the nation, but it is now assassins who claim to act in the name of God. This essay will briefly illustrate these three stages with examples."

News Flash: Kerry Talks Like Bush

From Language Log:

The thing is, I don't believe that George Bush's public speaking is nearly as different from John Kerry's, in terms of linguistic coherence, as (many) people think.

Let's start out by noting that the arguments about coherence go both ways. Bush has been stereotyped as linguistically and cognitively inept; but Kerry has been stereotyped as distracted by details, unable to articulate the forest for parenthesizing about the trees. When Kathleen Hall Jamieson told a NYT reporter that "the language of decisiveness is subject, verb, object, end sentence", she was supplying quotes to bolster the reporter's theory that "Kerry has a tendency to ramble, when an audience wants punchiness", and that he uses too many hedges, "words and grammatical constructions that imply uncertainty or qualification".

If you think about it, the two men's different stereotypes can be applied to exactly the same behavior, giving alternative and roughly opposite explanations for the same facts. If Bush sputters or rambles, it's because he's got some sort of linguistic or cognitive deficit: he's not intellectual enough. If Kerry sputters or rambles, it's because he's trying to be too nuanced, not responding from the gut: he's too intellectual.

But roughly as often as not, the stereotypes don't fit. For example, consider this passage from Kerry's side of the second presidential debate:

And I believe ((that)) if we have the option which scientists tell us we do
of curing Parkinson's
curing diabetes
curing
uh uh a- a-
you know
some kind of a- a- of a-
uh ((s- p- th- you know))
paraplegic, or quadraplegic, or
uh uh you know a spinal cord injury, anything
that's the nature of the human spirit.

This is hardly a paragon of linguistic facility, either syntactically or phonetically. There's that embarrassingly long (almost 7-second) delay in lexical access. If George Bush had experienced a lexical-access breakdown like this, we'd have commentary all over the "internets" about early senile dementia and the like. There's also a pronunciation issue here -- an extra schwa between [p] and [l] in paraplegic and quadraplegic, similar to the extra schwa in Bush's much-discussed "nucular" pronunciation of nuclear.

Glenn Reynolds on Bush

From The Guardian :

"'God forbid a success story: 'US political blogger Glenn Reynolds says the media are doing their best to ignore the implication of elections elsewhere: that George Bush may have been doing something right."

Mark Steyn on the Debate

From SteynOnline:

"INSTANT DEBATE REACTION
1) Bob Schieffer is a terrible moderator: The questions are so much worse and so much more pompous than those from audience members last week. That lame-o 'poverty' question is a classic: It's fair enough to talk about poverty, but the assumption that the way to lessen poverty is to increase the minimum wage is reflexive leftie laziness.
2) 'Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?' Do you believe choosing dumb questions is a choice or socially conditioned by 73 years in the CBS newsroom?"

From Our Ironies of Fate Department...

Thanks to OpinionJournal, this fascinating history of the link between the Baghdad Opera House and Arizona State University, from The Observer:



"In his fading years, the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright embarked on a final grand project. Invited in 1957 by King Faisal of Iraq to design a new opera house, Wright expanded the brief into a plan for Baghdad complete with museums, parks, university and authentic bazaar. Dispensing with his 'prairie style', he peppered the scheme with domes, spires and ziggurats. The 1958 revolution meant that none of it was built. But the ever-resourceful Wright simply offered the design to a new client. And today, the Baghdad opera house is the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium at Arizona State University: an example of Wright's versatility and the forum for next week's presidential debate. Under the arches of a lost Iraqi skyline, George W Bush and John Kerry will meet in debate for the final time. "

Solizhan Sharipov Returns to the Cosmos

Ferghana.Ru reports that Solizhan Sharipov, an ethnic Uzbek Russian citizen, from Kyrgyzstan's Ferghana Valley, will blast off on October 14th.

Soyuz-TMA-5 commander Sharipov is a Russian cosmonaut from the Ferghana Valley. This is going to be his second space flight. In 1998, he was a pilot on the ten-day Russian-American Endeavor expedition to Mir station. On a request from Uzbek Academician Shavkat Vakhidov and this correspondent who accompanied him to Cape Canaveral, Sharipov took state flag of the Republic of Uzbekistan and pennant of Uzbekiston Khavo Iullari (national airlines) with him to the orbit. Sharipov was decorated for the flight - a NASA bronze medal, order Hero of Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbek order Buyuk Khizmatlar Uchun. Sharipov received the Russian order For Service to the Fatherland (IV degree) at a later date. Rukhaniyat international foundation made Sharipov the Man of 1998 and presented him with a Kyrgyz racer (it lives at Sharipov's dacha near his native Uzgen nowadays)."

Mark Steyn on Ken Bigley's Murder

Here's the Mark Steyn column banned by The Telegraph:

"Paul Bigley can be forgiven his clumsiness: he's a freelancer winging it. But the feelers put out by the Foreign Office to Ken Bigley's captors are more disturbing: by definition, they confer respectability on the head-hackers and increase the likelihood that Britons and other infidels will be seized and decapitated in the future. The United Kingdom, like the government of the Philippines when it allegedly paid a ransom for the release of its Iraqi hostages, is thus assisting in the mainstreaming of jihad."

Putin Goes To China

From Mosnews:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused in the West of backtracking on democracy, turns East this week, the Reuters news agency reports. Putin will visit China which many in the Kremlin camp see as a model of an economically-successful autocracy. Some Chinese analysts also see Putin’s trip, starting on Thursday on the heels of one by French President Jacques Chirac, as a sign that China’s new leader Hu Jintao is seeking stronger ties with Europe and Russia to balance those with Washington. Putin’s three-day trip comes a month after he proposed to nominate rather than elect regional governors and change the rules of parliamentary polls —- moves, criticised in the West, that would strengthen his already tight grip on Russia. “In the eyes of foreign investors, the centralisation of political power can make Russia much more similar to China, which has the best investment climate among developing countries,” the business daily Vedomosti wrote."

Middle East Quarterly on The Arab Mind

From Middle East Quarterly:

"While critics skimmed [Raphael] Patai's book for generalizing quotes, they skirted the book's premise, as restated by De Atkine: culture matters and cultures differ. The realization by Americans that culture counts explains the commercial success of several cultural handbooks, addressing the very issues that concerned Patai. And while there is no reason to believe that The Arab Mind had the specific influence Hersh attributed to it, the resulting publicity has sent its sales soaring, further extending the life of the book. The following is De Atkine's foreword to The Arab Mind, reprinted here...

"...Finally, in his 1983 edition, Patai takes an optimistic view of the future of the Arab world but adds a caveat to his prediction with the comment that this could happen "only if the Arabs can rid themselves of their obsession with and hatred of Zionism, Israel, and American imperialism." In the eighteen years since those words were written, none of these obsessions has been put to rest. In fact, they have increased. The imported 1960s and 1970s Western ideologies of Marxism and socialism have given way to Islamism, a synthesis of Western-style totalitarianism and superficial Islamic teachings, which has resurrected historical mythology and revitalized an amorphous but palpable hatred of the Western "jinns." Nevertheless, many astute observers of the Arab world see the so-called "Islamic revival" with its attendant pathologies as cresting and beginning to recede. Ultimately, the Arabs, who are an immensely determined and adaptable people, will produce leadership capable of freeing them from ideological and political bondage, and this will allow them to achieve their rightful place in the world."

Giuliani on Kerry

Responding to quotes from Matt Bai's New York Times article, Giuliani takes on Kerry:

"'So I think this is a seminal issue, this is one that explains or ties together a lot of things that we've talked about. Even this notion that the Kerry campaign was so upset that the Vice President and others were saying that he doesn't understand the threat of terrorism; that he thinks it's just a law enforcement action. It turns out the Vice President was right. He does and maybe this is a difference, maybe this is an honest difference that we really should debate straight out. He thinks that the threat is not as great as at least the President does, and I do, and the Vice President does.'"

Why the Afghan Election Matters

From The Argus:

"If you haven't heard by now, the big fuss about yesterday's election in Afghanistan was over the use of the wrong ink. As the above picture shows, there were different methods for inking the thumbs of voters.* Now, I have no information either way, but I have seen nothing to indicate that all or only one of the two kinds of ink washed off. Regardless, the election is hailed as a major success, free of major irregularities. And, you know what, thank goodness that what everyone is complaining about is ink. Complaints about inks, ballot design, and what have you are the kinds of things that happen every day in democracies. That's not to say that Afghanistan has arrived, but it took a major step. Pictures of voters defy many of our stereotypes about what a democratic citizenry looks like, and to see hands emerging from beneath the folds of burqas to drop ballots into boxes makes for a pretty powerful image if you ask me. The success of yesterday's election lies in that it happened, that the Afghan people were enthusiastic about it, and that 'violence was the exception, not the rule.' Instead, there was excitement and celebration across the country (via Robert Tagorda)."

Roger L. Simon on the American Media

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter:

"Bad Fiction: I confess I paid little attention to ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin's memo to his staff until a friend reminded me to look late last night. I did a double take. Are these people actually paid to do this? Even if journalism school (or whatever training Halperin took) is essentially meaningless, you would think that, after Rathergate, basic common sense would dictate you didn't put nonsense like this on paper, even internally:

The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done. Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that.

Oolala. Talk about arrogance and bon chic bon genre... not even the pretense of journalistic even-handedness is made. It's almost self-parody. In fact, it is. Allow me to be blunt. These buffoons of the mainstream media as presently conceived must be upended and destroyed, their objectivity be revealed as the farce that it is. They are writers of fiction - and bad fiction at that. Strike that. Make that horrendous boring propaganda worthy of this building [ed. note, in Moscow during Soviet times]."

Nathan Hamm on the US Elections

From Holland's Amerika kiest:

"Needless to say, I'm disappointed with both candidates. The world stands at a turning point, and the times call for an extraordinary leader. Instead, our choice in America is between two ordinary men, neither of whom are doing anything to help make clear to Americans the gravity of the choice they will make next month."

Who Is Matt Bai?

The blogosphere is buzzing with reaction to Matt Bai's profile of John Kerry in the New York Times Sunday Magazine yesterday. So we looked him up, and found this biography at Newsweek.MSNBC.com. 1990 Tufts graduate, 1994 Columbia Journalism School product, so he knows his East Coast Liberals.

Bai's Kerry profile was genuinely interesting, and had some nice character moments, such as the time John Kerry told his aide to get rid of the Evian water and replace it with something American--Saratoga water, it turned out, after some prodding from Bai. "Sometimes I drink tap water," Kerry admitted. A Marie Antionette let-them-eat-cake moment, if there ever was one. The article quotes Yale's John Lewis Gaddis on the history of American pre-emption, and sketches out what a Kerry doctrine might look like, if Kerry could ever explain it. Basically, it's Bush-lite, the war on terror without the military.

Best of all is Bai's account of Kerry's apparent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Symptoms include uncontrollable rages, generalized hostility and paranoia, and frequent flashbacks to killing people in Vietnam, a subject Kerry repeatedly raised with Bai.

Overall, an article well-worth reading, and not quite the sycophantic pablum that one has come to expect from The Times Magazine. Bai has a future ahead of him.

The same paper also has an almost pornographic front-page story of Kerry's wealthy childhood, summers spent in a French chateau, and Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous existence today as a neighbor of George Soros and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Times story makes Kerry sound almost like Citizen Kane. All he needs is a sled called "Rosebud"...