Why Do They Hate Us?

Someone I know sent me a translation of Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lillendahl's shocking story of an encounter with the Department of Homeland Security while on a Christmas shopping trip to New York City, from Iceland's Eggman Blog:

Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began. We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties. A detailed interrogation session ensued. I was photographed and fingerprinted. I was asked questions which I felt had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I was forbiddento contact anyone to advise of my predicament and although I was invited at the outset to contact the Icelandic consul or embassy, that invitation was later withdrawn. I don't know why. I was then made to wait while they sought further information, and sat on a chair before the authority for 5 hours. I saw the officials in this section handle other cases and it was clear that these were men anxious to demonstrate their power. Small kings with megalomania.

I was careful to remain completely cooperative, for I did not yet believe that they planned to deport me because of my "crime". When 5 hours had passed and I had been awake for 24 hours, I was told that they were waiting for officials who would take me to a kind of waiting room. There I would be given a bed to rest in, some food and I would be searched. What they thought they might find I cannot possibly imagine. Finally guards appeared who transported me to the new place. I saw the bed as if in a mirage, for I was absolutely exhausted. What turned out was something else. I was taken to another office exactly like the one where I had been before and once again a long wait ensued. In all, it turned out to be 5 hours. At this office all my things were taken from me. I succeeded in sendinga single sms to worried relatives and friends when I was granted a bathroom break. After that the cell phone was taken from me. After I had been sitting for 5 hours I was told that they were now waiting for guards who would take me to a place where I could rest and eat. Then I was placed in a cubicle which looked like an operating room. Attached to the walls were 4 steel plates, probably intended to serve as bed anda toilet. I was exhausted, tired and hungry. I didn't understand the officials’ conduct, for they were treating me like a very dangerous criminal. Soon thereafter I was removed from the cubicle and two armed guards placed me up against a wall. A chain was fastened around my waist and I was handcuffed to the chain. Then my legs were placed in chains. I asked for permission to make a telephone call but they refused. So secured, I was taken from the airport terminal in full sight of everybody. I have seldom felt so bad, so humiliated and all because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law.

You can read the rest of the story at http://eggmann.blog.is/blog/eggmann/

From measurement to judgement...

This just in from the UK, thanks to a tip from my BBC podcast of Radio Four's Today Programme this morning: John Purnell's Department for Media, Culture, and Sport has relased a White Paper intended to re-organize arts funding in Britain. Known as the Mcmaster Review, it is titled: Supporting excellence in the arts - from measurement to judgement.

The author, Edinburgh Festival director Sir Brian McMaster, calls for the abandonment of quantitative "targets" for cultural grants, to be replaced by qualitative evaluations of "excellence." His proposal has already generated a fuss in England, including some protests against the initiative. More on the backlash in this article from the Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile, I read through the report, and can see why people are upset. He's asked the right questions, but so far has not come up with the right answers. There's a lot of procedural and bureaucratic boilerplate--including an unfortunate call for more peer review (often merely "crony review")--with little discussion of competition. Especially odd from a government ministry also responsible for sport.

In the hopes of moving the discussion along, here's a memo to Sir Brian, who is has claimed that the UK is the verge of a new "Renaissance":

If you want a "Renaissance," instead of more bureaucracy and peer panels, encourage competition. Set the "Royal" institutions against the "National" ones, the West End versus the South Bank, and the Regions against London. Artists are as competitive as footballers. Use that energy to foster excellence. Let artistic organizations compete openly and fairly for funding according to fixed criteria, ranked like athletes, so that the heavyweights can't crush the bantamweights.

Still, it is nice that Sir Brian is even talking about "excellence" in the arts. Sir Brian's report has started a debate that I wish we were having here in the USA, and for that he deserves thanks.

Facebook?

Somebody "friended" me a while back, so I joined Facebook. So far, I don't get it. I understand that it might be nice for teenagers or college students looking for new friends, and maybe I'm just too old, but it seems less convenient than email while more complicated than blogging. Maybe I'm missing something, but there may be less to this "social networking" phenomenon than meets that eye.

I'll take an "IdeaBook"--or just a book--any day...

Masterpiece Theatre's Makeover

I got an email the other day from Lynn Smith, a Los Angeles Times reporter covering PBS. She found my book about Masterpiece Theatre with a Google search, and wanted to know what I thought about the big changes to the series. I'll let the LA Times report what I had to say to Ms. Smith (the story is scheduled for Friday's Calendar section).

After the interview, I took a look at the MT website. The new hostess, Gillian Armstrong of The X-Files played Lady Deadlock in Bleak House. The website confirmed my interviewer's report that Masterpiece Theatre will soon be running a Jane Austen marathon. This recalled an earlier post on this blog, quoting Mark Twain on Jane Austen:

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

Mark Twain Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898

Thanks to my own Google search, I discovered Emily Auerbach's interesting article in the Virginia Quarterly Review: "A Barkeeper Entering the Kingdom of Heaven": Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen?" Here's an excerpt:

Mark Twain expressed unparalleled hatred of Jane Austen, defining an ideal library as one with none of her books on its shelves. "Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it," Twain insisted in Following the Equator. Did Mark Twain genuinely detest Jane Austen? Or was the bushy-eyebrowed, irascible Twain merely posing?

In his extensive correspondence with fellow author and critic William Dean Howells, Mark Twain seemed to enjoy venting his literary spleen on Jane Austen precisely because he knew her to be Howells' favorite author, In 1909 Twain wrote that "Jane Austin" [sic] was "entirely impossible" and that he could not read her prose even if paid a salary to do so. Howells notes in My Mark Twain (1910) that in fiction Twain "had certain distinct loathings; there were certain authors whose names he seemed not so much to pronounce as to spew out of his mouth."

His prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me, I suppose after he had been reading some of my unsparing praise of her—I am always praising her, "You seem to think that woman could write," and he forbore withering me with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long and he more pitied than hated me for my bad taste.

Rather than pitying Twain when he was sick, Howells threatened to come and read Pride and Prejudice to him. Twain marveled that Austen had been allowed to die a natural death rather than face execution for her literary crimes.

Separate But Equal (1991)

Just watched this the other night, somehow missed the 1991 TV showing. Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Cleavon Little, and Richard Kiley bring the 1953 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education to life in a memorable, if sometimes slow-moving, epic. Five Stars.

You can get it from Netflix, here.

Penguin Plunge

While the cousin of someone I know is driving across India in an auto-rickshaw for his favorite charity (and employer), my cousin Dan is preparing to dive into a frozen section of Hampton Beach in New England...also for a charity--New Hampshire's Special Olympics. You can follow his Penguin Plunge on the official website, here.

Rickshaw Run Update

John's mother has heard from her Rickshaw Run contestant, and shared the URL for his blog, where his team's progress across India can be tracked:

http://mercycorpsrickshaw.blogspot.com/.

Trans-India Rickshaw Run

The cousin of someone we know is racing across India, from Cochin to Kathmandu, in an auto-rickshaw, to benefit the NGO he works for in Darjeeling. We found the official website for Rickshaw Run, but can't track his vehicle across the map of India, because we don't know where he is (the race began on January 1st, to run for 10 days). No GPS transmitter, apparently. You can find out more about the race on the Rickshaw Run homepage. We checked the website for the travel agency behind the concept, The Adventurists, but no tracking him there, either...(John, if you read this, please phone home, your mother is worried about you...)

Did Steinberg's New Yorker Cartoon Begin Here?

Does this map looks familiar? An old print, as spotted on the wall of the bathroom of the sister of someone we know, in Florida...

...Looked like it may have inspired this famous Steinberg New Yorker cover.

Sunset in the Tropics, December, 2007

 

Beach Scene, December 2007

  As seen on holiday...

Happy New Year!

  Back from winter holiday in sunny climes, blogging resumes...

Happy Holidays!

Going on vacation for a while, blogging will be light. Hope to be back full-time in January.

Meanwhile, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Raymond Lloyd: Abusing Power to Suppress Truth

Received this email from Raymond Lloyd, who thought our readers might find it of interest:

Abusing Power to Suppress Truth: Letter 1: 24 February 2007
The case of Lennart Bage (Sweden)
President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Rome
14-15 February 2007

In this and possible future emails I shall describe the substance of my revelations which led you to bar me from IFAD’s Governing Council on 14 and 15 February 2007; your cowardice in not informing me in advance of my travel to Rome that I would be barred; your dastardliness in obliging junior colleagues to tell lies to keep me out; your abuse of the Italian police to bar me from an international meeting; and ask for an apology and compensation...

You can read the whole thing, at this link.

Comments Pan Amazon's "Kindle" E-Book Reader

On Amazon's review page for Kindle,twice as many posts give the new device 1 star v. those who give it 5 stars.

I'm an Amazon stockholder, "Associate" marketplace seller, and author, so in principle I'd like another way to distribute content. From what I've read, this may not be it--at least, not yet. Not only the price point, but the various limits and marketing agreements. Plus, commenters point out it doesn't display PDF files. Software problems. Come on...

What makes Amazon work as a site is that they stock practically everything in print. So why limit Kindle's database to 90,000 books and a few hundred blogs (I assume mine is not one of them)? My guess is that there is no deal with database kings like Google--which owns Blogger plus all those scanned books in public domain. Copyright problems.

So, this seems like it will be of limited use, at least till they work the kinks out. Plus, it looks like a giant PalmPilot. Too big to clip to the belt, and even at 10 ounces, why add weight to carrying a laptop?

I don't know the answer--Amazon did not loan me a test model--but they may have to open the whole concept up a bit to make it work. Consider "Kindle" a Beta version, not a final product, at least for now.

Renzo Piano's New New York Times Building, November, 2007

 

This was the view from our room in New York's Times Square Hilton a couple of weeks ago. Workers were putting the finishing touches on what looked to us like an anonymous corporate office tower. We walked through the lobby--excuse me, "atrium"--and peered around. IMHO, Not bad, not particularly ugly, not particularly anything...

New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviewed the building in the paper today:

Even as journalists at The Times adjust to their new home, they worry about the future. As advertising inches decline, the paper is literally shrinking; its page width was reduced in August. And some doubt that newspapers will even exist in print form a generation from now.

 

Jackson Diehl on Human Rights Watch's Blind Eyes For Hugo Chavez

According to Jackson Diehl in today's Washington Post, Human Rights Watch apparently isn't watching the Venezuelan president's attacks on human rights:

During eight years in office, Chávez has already taken control of Venezuela's courts, congress, television stations and petroleum industry; his congress granted him the right to rule by decree. The constitutional rewrite will allow him to control the central bank and its reserves, override elected local governments with his own appointees, declare an indefinite "state of emergency" in which due process and freedom of information would be suspended, and use the army to maintain domestic political order under the slogan "fatherland, socialism or death!" It will also abolish any limit on presidential terms for a 53-year-old ruler who would otherwise be compelled to step down by 2012.

If you're thinking you haven't heard much about this transformation in a major oil-producing country two hours by air from Miami, you're right. U.S. media and human rights groups have basically ignored Chávez's latest power grab. Human Rights Watch, which has been conducting a campaign about what it says is the "human rights crisis" in neighboring, democratic Colombia in close cooperation with congressional Democrats, has issued no statement on the Venezuelan violence -- including the shooting of the students by government-backed paramilitaries on Nov. 7 -- and objected to only one of the 69 new constitutional articles.

Salman Ahmad on Pakistan

Writing in today's Washington Post, the Pakistani singing star says he doesn't like Musharraf--or Bhutto:

Yet Benazir Bhutto is no savior. The queen of hypocrisy, she has managed to hypnotize Western liberals with her claim to represent progressive elements in the Muslim world. Bhutto is a charlatan. How can she call herself a democrat while also appointing herself head of the Pakistan People's Party for life? Her time as prime minister brought staggering levels of corruption and graft. Bhutto's niece and sister-in-law accuse her of conspiring to murder her own brother, Murtaza, who challenged her power during her second term. She continues to see Pakistan as her personal feudal fiefdom to be plundered. A false prophet of democracy, she threatens to bring back the rule of the gangster rather than the rule of law.

During the late '90s, I recorded a song called "Accountability" and made a video that satirized Pakistani politicians whose corruption scandals were being reported internationally. The response of Bhutto's government was to ban the video and threaten my life. In the years since Bhutto fled Pakistan to escape corruption investigations, her desire to regain power has blinded her to the struggle being waged by Pakistanis on behalf of true democracy. A member of her own party, Aitzaz Ahsan, the lawyer who won Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry's reinstatement as chief justice of the Supreme Court after Musharraf dismissed him early this year, languishes in jail -- along with thousands of others. Meanwhile, Bhutto attends diplomatic receptions and makes speeches about freedom and liberty. While lawyers and human rights activists faced the threat of injury and death for standing up to Musharraf's regime, she was in sunny Dubai, waiting for Washington's go-ahead to return.

Kosovo UN Corruption Widespread

According to Maciej Zaremba, in today's Washington Post:

The United Nations could argue that it lacks the funds to pay judges. But then why does it pay an employee from Sierra Leone more than $11,000 per month to teach Kosovars how to run their railroads? The Kosovar railroad workers, who survive on just over $200 per month, were more than a little offended to learn that Sierra Leone's last trains stopped running in 1975. Their teacher was an expert on harbors.

U.N. top brass knows full well that Kosovars are losing patience. Last year Inga-Britt Ahlenius, U.N. undersecretary general for internal oversight services, warned if the administration continued to ignore corruption, the whole mission could be jeopardized. "[T]he reluctance by senior Mission management to address fraud and corruption will have a devastating impact on public perception inside and outside of Kosovo," she wrote.

Bruce Bawer on "Peace Studies"

From City Journal:

George Orwell would have understood the attraction of privileged young people to the Peace Racket. “Turn-the-other-cheek pacifism,” he observed in 1941, “only flourishes among the more prosperous classes, or among workers who have in some way escaped from their own class. The real working class . . . are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.” If so many young Americans have grown up insulated from the realities that Vegetius and Sun Tzu elucidated centuries ago, and are therefore easy marks for the Peace Racket, it’s thanks to the success of the very things the Peace Racket despises above all—American capitalism and American military preparedness.

What’s alarming is that these students don’t plan to spend their lives on some remote mountainside in Nepal contemplating peace, harmony, and human oneness. They want to remake our world. They plan to become politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers, teachers, activists. They’ll bring to these positions all the mangled history and misbegotten ideology that their professors have handed down to them. Their careers will advance; the Peace Racket’s influence will spread. And as it does, it will weaken freedom’s foundations.