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by David Streitfeld

The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.
Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.
Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.
Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.
New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like…”
“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.
For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies could go after any property inherited from the deceased.
But sentiment also plays a large role, the agencies say. Some relatives are loyal to the credit card or bank in question. Some feel a strong sense of morality, that all debts should be paid. Most of all, people feel they are honoring the wishes of their loved ones.
“In times of illness and death, the hierarchy of debts is adjusted,” said Michael Ginsberg of Kaulkin Ginsberg, a consulting company to the debt collection industry. “We do our best to make sure our doctor is paid, because we might need him again. And we want the dead to rest easy, knowing their obligations are taken care of.”

Finally, of course, some of those who pay a dead relative’s debts are unaware they may have no legal obligation.
Scott Weltman of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, a Cleveland law firm that performs deceased collections, says that if family members ask, “we definitely tell them” they have no legal obligation to pay. “But is it disclosed upfront — ‘Mr. Smith, you definitely don’t owe the money’? It’s not that blunt.”
DCM Services, which began in 1999 as a law firm, recently acquired clients in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications and health care; DCM says its contracts preclude it from naming them.
The companies “want to protect their brand,” said DCM’s chief executive, Steven Farsht. Despite the delicacy of such collections, he says his 180-employee firm is providing a service to the economy. “The financial services industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and every dollar we collect improves their profitability,” he said.
To listen to even a small sample of DCM’s calls — executives played tapes of 10 of them for a reporter, electronically edited to remove all names — is to reveal the wages of misery, right down to the penny.
A man has left credit card debt of $26,693.77, the legacy of a battle with cancer. A widow says her husband “had no money. He pretty much just had debt.” Asked about an outstanding account of $1,084.86, a woman says the deceased had no property beyond “some tools in the garage” and an 18-year-old Dodge.
Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.
Brenda Edwards, one of DCM’s top collectors, spoke with a woman in New Jersey about her mother’s $544.96 credit card bill.
“She had no will, no finances, nothing,” the daughter said. “Nothing went to probate.” The $200 in the checking account was used for funeral expenses. But the woman also said the family “filed a form with the county,” indicating that perhaps there was a legal estate after all.
“Is anyone in the family in a position to pay this?” Ms. Edwards asked, adding: “I’m not telling you it needs to be paid at all.”
The woman reached a decision. “I will talk to my brothers and sisters and we will pay this,” she said.
Ms. Edwards has a girlish voice that sounds younger than her 29 years. “If you plant a seed and leave on a good note, they’ll call back and pay it,” she said.
DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information, tools and, some day, products. “We will never sell death. But it’s O.K. to provide things that could be helpful to the survivor,” Mr. Farsht said. Death will be the end of one customer relationship but the beginning of another.
Some survivors are surprised, and a few are shocked, that they are hearing from a collector.
Eric Frenchman, an online consultant, said a DCM agent inquired about his late father’s $50 Discover card balance before the bill was even due. Since Mr. Frenchman had been planning to pay it anyway, he emerged from the experience vowing never to get a Discover card himself.
The major deceased-debt firms say such experiences are rare. Adam Cohen, chief executive of Phillips & Cohen Associates of Westampton, N.J., said his team of 300 collectors “are all trained in the five stages of grief.”
If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.
DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.
One widow wrote that a collector “was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.” Saying that money was “so tight” after her husband died, she added: “It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.”
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By Del Quentin Wilber and Michelle Boorstein

In the Islamic Center of Washington, beneath the 160-foot minaret that towers over Embassy Row, a tale of intrigue has simmered for years. It is marked by bitter recriminations between two men who are credited with rehabilitating its reputation as a prominent symbol of Islam in the United States.
The center’s business manager has been accused of stealing $430,000 from the mosque in a complicated check scam. The key witness against him is the center’s director and imam, a Saudi who says he noticed the crime when he spotted too many checks being written to a gardener.
The Iranian-born business manager has a different story. He says the imam told him to take the money. About half was used to pay off debts and living expenses of two women who were close to the imam, and the rest was used to pay informants for tips about the mosque’s security, he said.
It was enough to confound a jury, which deadlocked 9 to 3 after the business manager’s three-week trial last May.
Now prosecutors are attempting to retry him, and the manager is firing back. He has accused the imam of committing perjury and obstructing justice. A federal judge is expected to rule in coming weeks on whether to drop the charges or prevent the imam from testifying.
Muslim community leaders say the controversy has remained mostly out of the public eye because the center, built in the 1940s by ambassadors of majority-Muslim nations, is not a typical mosque. The center enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence until the 1979 Iranian revolution, when it underwent an acidic struggle for control between the mosque’s board and a dissident group of worshipers, mostly Iranians opposed to the shah of Iran.
There were protests, arrests and other clashes. The board, composed of ambassadors from Muslim nations, locked down the mosque for a time.
In 1984, hoping to put the disputes in the past, the board hired Abdullah Khouj, a professor teaching in his native Saudi Arabia, to be its director and acting imam.
That same year, the board also hired Farzad Darui, who was born in Iran but became a U.S. citizen, as its director of security. Khouj later promoted Darui to be the mosque’s manager.
Khouj did not respond to interview requests made at the mosque and by telephone. Darui declined to comment.
Trial testimony and interviews with worshipers indicated that the men were dedicated to improving the mosque, which today is mostly a gathering place for the diplomatic community. It was this mosque that President George W. Bush chose to visit the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Its Northwest Washington location, far from the large Muslim population clusters in the suburbs, draws a largely transient base of worshipers that includes commuters, students, travelers and a steady flow of taxi drivers.
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(Submitted by a reader)

[Ishtar: the goddess of love and war in Akkadian (Babylonian) Civilization.]

By Professor Sarojini Sahoo
As the term myth may suggest, it is something which is absurd or fictional. Or is it?
While these beliefs and stories need not be a literal account of actual events, they may yet express ideas that are perceived by some people and cultures to be truths at a deeper or more symbolic level. The word myth comes from the Greek word “mythos.” The Greek Lexicon Liddell and Scott defines “mythos” as: word and speech <1>.

In his essay “Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths?” Paul Veyne writes: “Myth is truthful, but figuratively so. It is not historical truth mixed with lies; it is a high philosophical teaching that is entirely true, on the condition that, instead of taking it literally, one sees in it an allegory” <2>.
In The Golden Bough (1890), Sir James George Frazer writes that all myths were originally connected with the idea of fertility in nature, with the birth, death, and resurrection of vegetation as a constantly recurring motif <3>.

It is very interesting to note that though Mesopotamian, Greek and Hindu civilizations, religions and cultures existed in different parts of the world and were separated by great distances and time, but there are some amazing similarities between their fables and myths. The concept of goddess always lies with sexuality and we find great similarities in all the myths of goddesses in worldwide. In Sumer, the goddess was known as Inanna, and in Babylon and Assyria, was known as Ishtar. She was Aphrodite for the Greeks. The Egyptians called her Hathor, Quaddesha and Aset. To the Phoenicians, she was Astarte. To the Hebrews, she was Ashtoreth and Ashera. And to the Philistines, she was Atergatis.

Though in all these cultures, sex is so suppressed in social conversation that if any one tries to have a conversation about sex or sexuality, some may think of it as “dirty” or “perverted.” But in case of myths (if we consider myths as tales of the people), we find a fascination towards sexual orientation has made these myths more attached to sexual fantasies than to other aspects of life. In his book Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe, Christopher Penczak, an author in the fields of paganism and magic, has elaborately discussed some gods and goddesses created by these myths with the sexual fantasies. For instance, the Greek king Oedipus unwittingly married his mother after killing his father, putting out his eyes when he discovered their identity. The Candomble deity Orungan ravished his mother, Yemanja, who then gave birth to a dozen children as well as the sun and the moon. In one version of the Aztec myth about their mother goddess, Coatlique’s husband physically abused her until one of her several hundred sons took action, killing his father and becoming his mother’s lover. The South American Panare mythology contains an example of father-daughter incest: Whenever the Sun and his daughter the Moon have intercourse, there is a total eclipse. Zeus, who occasionally dallied with handsome human males, was so sexually voracious that he would be positioned near the boiling center of the circle or in other words, at the torrid “heat” of sexual passion. Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas, was not far behind Zeus in his sexual proclivities. He ravished numerous women including the goddess Demeter. He raped Amphitrite, although he latter married her.

In mythology, the gods are often transsexual or can switch sexes in an instant. For example, there is the Balinese god, Syng Hyang Toenggal; a Hindu equivalent would be Indra, the transgendered sky god; and the Nordic equivalent would be the two-gendered Ymir, whose sacrifice was necessary for the creation of the Earth. Quan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion, is often pictured with Buddha. She is seen as beyond human conceptions of male or female, and can change her gender at will, as the occasion demands. Hermaphroditus, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, is a hermaphrodite, giving his name to those whose physiology incorporates both a penis and female breasts. The concept of Ardhanariswara, the “ambisexual” creator god in Hindu mythology, is also compared with the Aztec god Ometecuhtli, who could give birth to the deities of the four directions. Candomble, an African-Brazilian religion, venerates Oxala, the “ambisexual” god of purity and wisdom. Baron Samedi, the Vodoun deity both of death and sexuality, typically is portrayed wearing both male and female garments, and is often pictured inviting men to engage in anal intercourse with him. Another “ambisexual” Vodoun deity is Damballah, the god of rainbows, peace, and prosperity <4>.

In the northern area of Sumeria known as Akkadia, later called Babylonia, women were not confined to the home but instead had a role to play in public life. This was especially true of the priestesses, who owned property and transacted business. Property from family estates was inherited equally by sisters and brothers. A daughter, when she married, was given a dowry that she was allowed to keep in the event of a divorce. Sometime around 2300 BC, all this began to change. The patriarchal form of society began to empower more and the masculine world took a more authoritarian role. A woman might still own property but it was no longer hers to dispose of freely. Now she must first consult her husband and obtain his permission. When Hammurabi formulated his code known as Code of Hammurabi in around 1760 BC, the position of women had obviously been greatly eroded. Sarah Dening <5>, the noted dream expert of noted Kingdom, tries to shape sexual roles in different social sequences cited above through myths in her much acclaimed book The Mythology of Sex <6>.

Dening pointed her finger to the Sumerian myth of Inanna. She was the goddess of love and procreation, similar to the Hindu goddess Rati Devi; Anath of Canaan, Isis of Egypt, and the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar. All these goddesses were rejoiced in their sexuality. Inanna is often depicted resting her foot on the back of a lion, offering the king the symbolic objects indicating his ruling power. Lions, when associated with feminine deities, represent the other side of their character manifesting undomesticated, fierce, aggressive aspect of the female like the Hindu deity Durga.

Although Inanna was the goddess of love and sexuality, she was also called Mother of Harlots and the Great Whore of Babylon, and she declared of herself as a prostitute. Her holy city of Erech was known as “the town of the sacred courtesans.” In no way, therefore, was prostitution in the Babylonian era considered a shameful profession. On the contrary, temples to Ishtar were inhabited by sacred prostitutes or priestesses known as Ishtartu or Joy-Maidens, dedicated to the service of the goddess. Their sexuality was seen as belonging to her, to be used therefore only in the sacred rites undertaken in her worship. Indeed, the original meaning of the word “prostitute” was “to stand on behalf of,” that is, to represent, the power of the goddess <7>. Curiously perhaps, from a contemporary standpoint, Ishtar was often referred to as “Virgin,” implying that her creativity and power were self-engendered and not dependent upon masculine power.

Unlike to the Devdasi system among ancient Hindus where the unmarried maid disciples got married to the gods, in Babylonian culture, the priestesses would undertake the sacred marriage with any male worshipper who wanted union with the goddess. The man, whom the priestess had not met before and would not meet again, spent the night with her in the temple precincts. Their intercourse would put him in contact with the rejuvenating energy of the Goddess, mediated through her priestess who would bestow on him an ecstatic experience. For the priestess, the sexual act represented a ritual offering to the goddess. A very real benefit was therefore enjoyed by all concerned, not least the temple itself which could expect to earn considerable income from such worshippers. Apart from their sexual and commercial activities, temple prostitutes demonstrated considerable gifts in other areas. Because their natural secretions were considered to have a beneficial effect, they were greatly respected as healers of the sick. One clay tablet dating from this era tells us that diseases of the eye can be cured by a harlot’s spittle. These women also acted as seers and were skilled in sorcery and prophecy <8>.

As a result, priestesses often engaged in commerce and might be involved in import and export, land management, and other profitable endeavors. The modern brothel of our own culture, with its “madam,” might perhaps be seen as a somewhat pale reflection of the temple of Ishtar.

According to author Sarah Dening, the myths of Inanna were created when patriarchal milieus had not been in dominant form.

After Hammurabi, comes another myth, the Sumero-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh were two friends having a homosexual relationship. Later they meet the goddess Ishtar, who offers to marry Gilgamesh, promising him untold delights. He, however, preferring his friend Enkidu, rejects her advances in a deeply insulting way, referring to her in derogatory terms:
“Listen to me while I tell the tale of your lovers. There was Tammuz, the lover of your youth. For him you decreed wailing, year after year. You loved the many-coloured roller, but still you struck and broke his wing. You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him, and seven. You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle, and for him, you decreed the whip and spur and a thong. You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day and he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herd-boys chase him away. His own hounds worry his flanks” <9>.

Enraged, Ishtar asks her father to create a heavenly bull to destroy the insolent hero. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull and Enkidu throws its organs into Ishtar’s face. This is too much for the assembly of the gods, who decide that Enkidu must die. This will be the punishment that Gilgamesh must bear. Later, Enkidu is allowed to emerge from the underworld for a visit and Gilgamesh begs him to reveal what death is like.

Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty and was famous for her erotic nature. When we compare Ishtar with Aphrodite, we find the former is more free to her will than the later. For example, Ishtar was never forced to sleep with any one against her will, but in case of Aphrodite, we find she had to sleep with many gods even against her will. Ironically, Aphrodite was wed to Hephaestus, who was lame and considered to be the most unattractive of all the gods. This marriage was through no choice of her own, but instead, was arranged by Zeus in order to keep Aphrodite out of trouble. The goddess of love did not take her wedding vows very seriously and was accustomed to having many affairs involving both gods and men. She had constant relations with Mars. Her children by Mars were Harmonia, Deimos (Fear) and Phobos (Panic). She was also the mother of Hermaphroditus with Mercury (Hermes), Priapus with Dionysus (Bacchus), and Beroe (after whom the city Berytus in Lebanon was named) with Adonis. Aphrodite was also the mother of Eryx and Rhodes by Poseidon, Aeneas and Lyrus with Anchises (a mortal king killed by Zeus for drunkenly telling of his affair with Venus), Astynois with Phaethon (a beautiful young boy whom Venus ravished), Eryx with Butes (of Jason and the Argonauts), and Eros (Cupid) and Anteros (the avenging spirit of spurned love) by unknown fathers.

Referring to the transformation of ethical values of myths with the change of milieus in society, Dening writes “Given that myths tend to reflect aspects of the culture prevalent at the time, we may surmise that intimate relationships between men were not considered unusual. This could perhaps be expected in a society where archaeological evidence has shown that women had, by now, a very inferior role. Dual standards existed for married life, where a wife might be put to death for adultery, while a husband was free to enjoy as many women as he chose, provided he did not seduce the wife of another man” <10>

If the myths are in any way to be considered as the reflection of ‘social ideas’ of any group or society, then we can say that with the development of patriarchal control over feminine civil rights, the sexual freedom described in those myths was cut down from the women’s world and transferred to the men’s world with anti-feminist moral milieus which gradually made the female a sex object, however powerful they might be in their goddess perspectives. This is a strapping point, I believe, that the sex negative feminists have to think of before raising their voice against the sex role attitudes of the female.

Bibliography:

<1> Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon is the world’s most authoritative dictionary of ancient Greek. Indispensable for biblical and classical studies alike, the world’s most comprehensive and authentic word list.
(An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, (7th edition), published by Oxford University Press, USA; (December 31, 1945), ISBN-13: 978-0199102068.
<2> Veyne, Paul (1988). Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on Constitutive Imagination. (translated by Paula Wissing). University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-85434-5.
<3> The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The book was originally published in two volumes in 1890.Now it is available with Touchstone , published in December 1, 1995, ISBN-13: 978-0684826301.
<4> Penczak, Christopher: Gay witchcraft: Empowering the tribe, published by Red Wheel/Weiser, Boston, 2003, ISBN-13: 9781578632817
<5> Sarah Dening, a psycho therapist of UK, began her career by studying for a degree in Philosophy at London University and subsequently went on to work in film production, PR and then to run an art gallery. In the early 1980’s, she set up the first public floatation tank facility in the UK whilst working towards becoming a Jungian psychotherapist. Many people had extraordinary experiences whilst floating including being reunited with a long-dead father and meeting an angel! For the last eighteen years she had been busy developing therapy practices in London and York. Dream work is an important aspect of Jungian therapy and she had worked with hundreds of clients, helping them to understand how their dreams can further their personal development. For nine years she had written a weekly national newspaper column interpreting readers’ dreams in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and, latey, in the Daily Mirror. She died in August 2007 with cancer. She wrote several books like Healing Dreams, The Everyday I Ching, Dreams made Easy, The Mythology of Sex, etc.
<6> Dening, Sarah: The Mythology of Sex, Publisher: Batsford Ltd (5 Nov 1996), ISBN-13: 978-0713481112
<7> Sandars, N. K. ( Translators): The Epic of Gilgamesh, published by Penguin, 1960,. ISBN-13: 9780140441000
<8> Marling, Roderick W: VAMACARA TANTRA, KamaKala Publications, Portland , Oregon , 1997
<9> Sandars, N. K. ( Translators) : The Epic of Gilgamesh, published by Penguin, 1960,. ISBN-13: 9780140441000, p. 86
<10> Dening, Sarah: The Mythology of Sex, Publisher: Batsford Ltd (5 Nov 1996), ISBN-13: 978-0713481112
Professor Sarojini Sahoo is an author and a feminist and can be reached at sarojinisahoo2003@yahoo.co.in.
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Media Revolution or Mirage?
By ROBIN BLACKBURN
Perhaps you have to be a visitor, as I am from the UK, to register the astonishing media revolution currently underway in the United States – and the threat it constitutes to the country’s progressive press.
Once upon a time the New York Times backed the Iraq War, published phoney reportage on WMD and supported an [unsuccessful] coup against Venezuela’s elected leader. Some of its star columnists – with super-jingo Thomas Friedman heading the list – purveyed market fundamentalism. As for the US cable networks, their chauvinism and demagogy is a by-word.
Yet suddenly I’m living in a parallel universe where Newsweek’s cover declares ‘We Are All Socialists Now’, and the New York Times outflanks the Nation, the Comedy channel turns deadly serious and MSNBC mocks the consensus.
Instead of neo-liberal triumphalism the New York Times finds space to cover some real issues. Safire and Kristol have been dropped and in their place a steady drumbeat from Krugman and Dowd urges Obama to nationalize the banks and lock up miscreant CEOs. Recently a detailed op-ed explained that the administration’s foreclosure policy – giving tiny loans to help mortgagees make their interest payments – was useless. What had to be done was for Treasury to pony up serious money to pay down principal on mortgage debt. Another outlined ‘How to Leave Afghanistan’. On March 14 Evo Morales explained to Times readers that the campaign to criminalise the chewing of coca, ‘a healthy indigenous past-time’, was cruel and unjust. And in the Business section Gretchen Morgensohn’s exposé of the Pharaonic scale of the public indulgence of AIG and the zombie banks was picked up and endorsed by the main section.
Meanwhile the most circulated item on Facebook is Jon Stewart’s Daily Show interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’, in which he took the strident share-booster to the cleaners, complete with deadly clips showing Cramer advocating scams he now claims to disavow. Stewart previously denounced Israeli slaughter in Gaza when the rest of the US media and political world preferred to look the other way.
The new openness of the Times no doubt reflects a new conjuncture – the voters’ pain at depression hits, anger at bail-outs for the rich and greedy, a creeping paralysis which the White House fails to address, and, close to home, the purchase of the paper’s stock by Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire – not forgetting the specter of an end to print newspapers. Likewise the Daily Show is occupying new territory at a time when Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is refreshing the tired recipes of cable news by imitating alternative network stars like Amy Goodman and Laura Flanders.
Obama’s Plan A – inviting those who created the catastrophe to fix it – is foundering before our eyes, so it is good that some are working on Plan B. The trouble is Plan B needs a lot of work if it is not to collapse like a credit default swap issued by Lehman Brothers. Indeed what is really needed is Plan C.
Thus nationalizing the banks is a good starting point if the aim is to construct a public utility finance system. But if the aim is simply to return the banks to the private sector as soon as possible – as Krugman urges – their lending policy will not help investment and small businesses on the scale now needed. Likewise ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq and Afghanistan is fine, but should not mean leaving behind huge military bases bulging with US troops.
All those pieces comparing Obama with Roosevelt alert us to a problem. Then the president had to reckon with a surging labor movement. And he could mobilise a strategic detail of red experts when he gave $40 billion to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to build five hundred giant plants, taking a strategic stake in all the corporations which need these facilities. By 1945 the US government owned large chunks of Lockheed, Boeing and GM, but red scares led to the closing of the RFC.
The TVA and RFC were examples of the sort of bold public enterprise now needed but where are those needed to staff them? Some of those laid-off bankers might serve as useful foot-soldiers but they will need competent commanders and planners.
Of course there is a dream-like quality to media radicalization. Friedman’s effort in the Times of March 18 brought me back to reality. Apparently we all have to rally behind an even larger bail-out of the very same banks that have been rescued at such cost several times before. Forget nationalization. Instead US households who have lost about $12 trillion (so far) must foot the bill for ‘bank healing’ which requires ‘another big, broad taxpayers’ safety net’.
The media revolution may be exhausted but if the president follows this advice it could be street barricades and bank occupations next.
Robin Blackburn writes for New Left Review and is a visiting professor at the New School in New York. He can be reached at robinblackburn68@hotmail.com

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Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.
Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s.
Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said.
His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
To test mental agility, the study participants had to solve puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols.
The same tests are already used by doctors to spot signs of dementia.
In nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22.
The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability.
Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.
Professor Salthouse said his findings suggested “some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s.”
Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust agreed, saying: “This research suggests that the natural decline of some of our mental abilities as we age starts much earlier than some of us might expect – in our 20s and 30s.
“Understanding more about how healthy brains decline could help us understand what goes wrong in serious diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Alzheimer’s is not a natural part of getting old; it is a physical disease that kills brain cells, affecting tens of thousands of under 65s too.
“Much more research is urgently needed if we are to offer hope to the 700,000 people in the UK who live with dementia, a currently incurable condition.”
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by Kanaga Raja

The financial crisis with a “made in USA” label on it is now affecting developing countries worldwide including those that had undertaken good financial market regulation as well as good monetary macroeconomic policies, Nobel Laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz said on Wednesday.
“In fact, many of the developing-country central banks have policies that are much more prudent and [have] much better regulation than some of the advanced industrial countries that are currently facing a problem,” Stiglitz told a media briefing at the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s office here.
His personal view is that some of the advanced industrial countries should go to the developing countries and study what they did to learn what good regulation entails.
Noting that there are many distortions to the international trade regime such as tariffs and subsidies, Stiglitz said that subsidies provided by the industrial countries to their companies and financial institutions “have totally destroyed the level playing field” for years to come. It means that companies and financial firms in developed countries can undertake risks, knowing that if there is a problem, they may be bailed out.
He called for funds to be provided to the developing countries to offset this distortion in the global economic system.
Speaking briefly on the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations, Stiglitz said that while it’s not likely that the Doha Round “will reach completion quickly” particularly given the current disturbance to the free market, the developed countries can help the poorest countries by unilaterally opening up their markets to the developing countries.
Stiglitz, who is also a professor of economics at Columbia University, is in Geneva attending meetings of the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, which he chairs. The Commission was formed last November by the President of the UN General Assembly Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua.
While in Geneva, Stiglitz also made a presentation of the Commission’s work at an UNCTAD meeting on Thursday. According to the UNCTAD press office, the meeting was not open to the media, but civil society groups were able to attend.
At the media briefing on Wednesday, Stiglitz explained that the Commission of Experts was set up to look at the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries in order to assess the kinds of reforms needed in the global financial system. The recommendations that the Commission is likely to come up with will serve as a preparation for the discussions that are going on that will lead to the UN high-level conference which will be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York at the beginning of June.
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Watch the trailer of Che

Che is a 2008 biopic about Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro as Che. The film is actually a merged version of two films by Soderbergh: The Argentine and Guerrilla. The first part focuses on the Cuban revolution, from the moment Fidel Castro, Guevara and other revolutionaries landed on the Caribbean island, until they toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista two years later. The second part focuses on Che’s attempted revolution and eventual demise in Bolivia.

By Amy Taxin

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Aditi Mahmud and her family moved from Bangladesh to Los Angeles more than a decade ago, they landed in a gritty neighborhood that has long been a haven for Korean immigrants.
Now, the graduate student and other Bangladeshis want to carve out a special district in Koreatown and name it for their own homeland.
The proposal has shocked and angered Korean-American leaders who have worked for years to turn Koreatown into a Southern California cultural destination.
“There is a pride in calling this Koreatown,” said Chang Lee, chairman of the Korean-American Federation of Los Angeles. “The residents and businesspeople, when they heard the news, they were appalled.”
As first proposed last year, the district would have cut a half-mile swath through the heart of the nation’s largest Korean enclave, a bustling area of Buddhist temples, restaurants and businesses a few miles west of downtown.
Since then, both sides have agreed to create Little Bangladesh on the fringe of Koreatown instead of within its core. But the actual boundaries are still being debated, and a final agreement has yet to be reached.
The turf fight is unusual for Los Angeles, where roughly 40 percent of residents were born abroad.
Over the years, the City Council has granted special district designations to a number of areas, including Chinatown, Thai Town and Little Ethiopia after residents filed petitions seeking the status.
There are no direct financial benefits, but neighborhoods can raise their profiles and perhaps their economic fortunes by being noted on maps and streets signs and getting mentions in the media.
“It’s how the rest of the world sees that area,” said Paul Ong, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It gives people a sort of mental map.”
Some communities have gone a step further and created assessment districts where merchants agree to tax themselves to fund cleanups, security and cultural events.
Koreatown is already one of the most high-profile areas in the city, but it didn’t seek an official designation from the city until February — after the proposed creation of Little Bangladesh.
“I think it is ridiculous for us not to be recognized by the city when everyone de facto does,” said Grace Yoo, executive director of the Korean American Coalition.
Immigrants from the nation now known as Bangladesh began arriving in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, with the Koreatown neighborhood becoming a first-stop for many who needed help getting a start in the U.S.
In recent years, more Bangladeshis have left the poor nation with the help of a U.S. government green card lottery, said Preeti Sharma, a community advocate with the nonprofit South Asian Network.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey puts the number of Bangladeshis in Los Angeles County at 3,000. Consulate officials say the figure is actually closer to 50,000.
An estimated 200,000 Koreans live in Los Angeles County.
Mohammed Miah said he wrote the proposal to create Little Bangladesh to increase understanding of his country and his culture. Others see it as a way to lure visitors from outside the neighborhood to its shops, restaurants and events.
“It will bring more crowds,” said Majib Siddiquee, chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the Bangladesh Association of California. “The thing we agreed with the Korean community is, this should be an example to see how beautiful the communities can coexist in one little area.”
Mahmud believes Little Bangladesh would be a source of pride for immigrants, including her parents.
“They came here for education, for me, for their only child,” said Mahmud, whose parents still live in the two-bedroom apartment they rented when they arrived. “They need some sort of recognition that they can still be Bangladeshi here and lift their head up high.”
Han Dong-yeop, a Korean sushi chef, just shrugged his shoulders at the prospect of a new name for the neighborhood where he has worked for nearly a decade.
“Why not?” he said. “We live together anyway.”
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(Submitted by a reader)

By DOUGLAS J. FEITH and JUSTIN POLIN

ON March 5, in the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan, forces believed to be affiliated with the Taliban bombed the shrine of Rahman Baba (born around 1650), the most revered Pashtun poet. The attack evokes one of the grosser Taliban outrages from the pre-9/11 era: the dynamiting in 2001 of the enormous stone Buddhas in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley.
This use of bombs as cultural commentary is especially notable in that the shrine was sacred to other Muslims. It reminds the world, and especially complacent Muslims, that the Islamist extremists’ war is a civil war within Islam — and not just a “holy war” against other religions and the United States. It should show American policymakers the wisdom of working to persuade Pashtuns to reject the Taliban.
The bombers took aim at the poet’s shrine because it represented Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that has long been predominant in India and Pakistan. The Sufism of Rahman Baba generally stresses a believer’s personal relationship with God and de-emphasizes the importance of the mosque. It refrains from exalting violence and war and praises such virtues as tolerance, devotion and love. Its practice relies extensively on dance, music and poetry. Some of Sufism’s most esteemed poets and scholars are women.
The extremists are determined to destroy Pakistan’s moderate Sufi tradition — by claiming the exclusive right to fly the banner of Islam and asserting this claim through cultural, educational and violent means. Through intimidation, they silence musicians, still dancers and oppress women. As a result, artists and performers are leaving Pakistan’s Swat Valley and the North-West Frontier Province in droves.
Though the Sufi tradition has been widely followed for centuries in South Asia, its hold is weakening as the extremists flex their muscles. Pakistan’s inability to enforce its laws in the border region with Afghanistan has allowed extremists to threaten dominance in northwestern Pakistan.
The United States may be able to help Pakistan prevent this, however, by supporting Pashtun opposition to the extremists. The Pashtuns who oppose the Taliban need protection. The extremists have gunned down, bombed and hanged those who have worked against them. It would help to improve the government’s schools in the region and thus reduce the appeal and influence of Taliban-run madrassas. And by building roads and creating jobs and business opportunities for the Pashtuns, the Pakistani government, with American help, could counter the money and other material blandishments offered by the extremists.
It is a costly failing that the American government has been unable to communicate quickly with the Pashtun community about the attack on the Rahman Baba shrine. Congress has provided trillions of dollars to support military action in the fight against terrorism, but it has not yet provided resources for a strategic communications capacity that could be the key to victory.
If it had the equipment and personnel for the job, the United States could broadcast radio programs for the Pashtuns commemorating Rahman Baba’s life and poetry, thus helping to revive the collective memory of Sufism and inspiring opposition to the Taliban. Other programs could highlight the cultural and physical devastation wrought by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The United States conducted impressive strategic communications during the cold war. Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and other programs conveyed information and ideas that contributed to the discrediting and ultimate defeat of Soviet communism.
Pakistan’s Islamist extremists apparently know the value of strategic communications. They preach and broadcast, understanding that every non-extremist school they close, every artist they force to move, every moderate tribal leader they kill and every Sufi shrine they destroy can increase their powers of intimidation and persuasion.
The problem along the Afghan border is not mass support for Islamist extremism. Rather it is widespread acquiescence by people who are fearful and demoralized. As the extremists work to demonstrate that only they represent the true Islam, Pashtuns can reflect on the warnings against cruelty and violence that Rahman Baba outlined in “Sow Flowers”:

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.
Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall
You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.

Douglas J. Feith, a former under secretary of defense, is a senior fellow and Justin Polin is a research associate at the Hudson Institute.
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(Submitted by a reader with the following comments: “Lo, the bizarre spectacle of neocon Douglas Feith, who Gen. Tommy Franks called ‘the f- stupidest guy on the planet,’ quoting a Pathan poet and talking about Sufism!”

By Asma Jahangir

The heart of Pakistan’s crisis is arbitrary power. The solution is a democratic system founded on the rule of law, says Asma Jahangir.

Pakistan has in the last two years been living through some of the worst moments of its history – as well as its most promising. The relentless violence, assassinations, mass arrests, the imposition of emergency rule and rising militancy have been devastating for the country. At the same time, the people’s resistance to authoritarianism, their rejection through the ballot-box of political forces aligned to the military, and their opposition to undemocratic moves by the civilian government are hopeful signs for democracy.

The extraordinary story of what has happened in the 2007-09 period suggests that the intersection of these trends leaves Pakistan now poised between two very different possible futures.

The inside track
The oppressive regime of General Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power in October 1999, appeared at the start of 2007 to be well entrenched. There was great social discontent, and many Pakistanis were in despair. Then on 9 March 2007 the general-president unceremoniously removed from office Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan. This sacking of a popular and independent figure provoked a spontaneous rebellion by the legal fraternity, enthusiastically backed by many sections of society. The army and the president were unprepared for this widespread movement against the military regime. They assumed that as so often before the government would control the situation in characteristic fashion: by brute power or worse (as when political leaders in Balochistan had been hunted down and killed). They also expected that the George W Bush administration would find some way of rescuing Pervez Musharraf.
To an extent, an attempt was made to do precisely that. A plan was hatched in Washington and London to cobble together an alliance between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto (the exiled leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party [PPP]) – that, it was hoped, might defuse the situation. It was a classic “fix” by the foreign allies and spin-masters of the Pakistani state and Bhutto alike, who in their wisdom had carved out a clean and convenient formula of military-civilian partnership to take forward the “war on terror”.
Such plans have a way in Pakistan of being sabotaged by their supposed beneficiaries. In this case, Musharraf did not relent from his authoritarian path, even as he promised fair and free parliamentary elections. He was given another five-year presidential term by national and provincial assemblies on 6 October 2007, then imposed a state of “emergency plus” on 3 November. This compelled Benazir Bhutto to turn to other political forces and Pakistani civil society for support, dismaying those in the west who had promoted her inside track to power. Alas, the process in any case took a violent turn when Benazir Bhutto, two months after her return from exile, was tragically assassinated on 27 December 2007 at a campaign rally. The perpetrators – again, as so often in Pakistan – have so far evaded arrest and justice.

The politics of control
Amid spiralling violence in early 2008, Islamic militants were able to capture the tribal areas of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other parts of the province too. A combination of financial crisis and energy shortages further worsened the situation. The election, postponed after Benazir Bhutto’s death, was held on 18 February 2008, with the PPP winning a larger number of seats than the other main opposition party, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML [N)]). The return of democracy – marked by a short-lived coalition between the PPP and PML (N), which broke up on 25 August – placed great pressure on Musharraf. He resigned the presidency of Pakistan on 18 August, to be replaced on 6 September by Benazir’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari. Musharraf followed by transferring the leadership of the army to General Ashfaq Kayani on 28 November 2007.
Asif Ali Zardari, the new president, had never been popular among Pakistanis, but was tolerated as an alternative to military rule. He had cleverly used the slogan of national reconciliation to sneak his way into becoming head of state, and once there went back on all the public promises he had made of restoring all the judges and respecting the supremacy of parliament. The much promised “national reconciliation” gave way to nepotism and intrigue.
In these circumstances, the unity and morale of the lawyers’ movement that had demanded the rule of law and energised the public were damaged when a number of deposed judges conditionally agreed to rejoin the judiciary at the PPP’s invitation. Some lawyers were tempted – and bought – by offers of promotion.
The effect of the election had been to focus energy on the high-level political process and away from civil society. But the passing of the presidency to Asif Ali Zardari did not change the fact that the judiciary remained weak and corrupt, and delivered its judgments at the bidding of the head of state. This politicisation of the judiciary again became a key issue when Pakistan’s supreme court passed an order disqualifying from office Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, Zardari’s main opponents who were in power in the largest province of the country (Punjab).
On 25 February 2009, as soon as the judgment was made, the president imposed “governor rule” in Punjab and the doors of the provincial parliament were locked so that it could not meet to elect its leader. Moreover, decrees were issued granting amnesty to those accused of corruption and other charges.

The triumphal march
The lawyers had already announced a “long march” to the capital, Islamabad – a last desperate attempt to stage a sit-in outside of parliament until the judges (especially the deposed Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry) were restored. Now they had the backing of the second largest political party in the country, as well as of thousands of outraged citizens who believed that their new president had gone too far.
The government overreacted to the long march. It was a reminder of the Musharraf days and their destructive legacy. The security forces confiscated lorries carrying goods in order to block roads and barricade the capital. Several lawyers and political activists were arrested, beaten, threatened, and locked in their houses. Despite this, more and more people defied the curbs placed on their movement, gathering in Lahore to move on to Islamabad.
As a last resort, the infamous interior ministry warned people that militants were planning an imminent bomb-attack and therefore the long march should be abandoned. But the people called this bluff and joined the march in Lahore. An estimated one million people were on the roads.
The merciless beatings and use of tear-gas did not deter the crowds. Eventually the police chief gave up and Islamabad panicked. The prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the army chief, with the support of foreign diplomats, won agreement from the president to restore the chief justice and find a way to settle the Punjab dispute.
Thus, in the early hours of 16 March, the prime minister addressed the nation and announced that the demands of the marchers had been accepted, including (with effect from 21 March) the restoration of Chaudhry to his post. The long march – and Pakistani civil society more widely – had won a great victory over arbitrary power.

The top-down failure
But this is far from the end. The president is still in power and retains his capacity to foment trouble. Even as the people’s (and the opposition’s) victory was being celebrated, the presidency was manoeuvring to keep the elected government of Punjab out in the cold, in part by approaching judges who could be “persuaded” to make the right decisions. A meeting between the prime minister and Nawaz Sharif may lead to the restoration of the Punjab government, though this will be only one concession among many infractions.
The way the president exercises power invites a dangerous intervention by the military. It also shifts the focus of governance away from far more pressing issues such as the spread of militancy. Even as the crisis over the judiciary and the rule of law has escalated in Pakistan, Islamic militants in other parts of the country have set up their own lawyer-free judicial system. It perpetrates rough and easy justice, among other things pushing back women behind four walls. The chief justice may have resumed work but the judicial system in Swat and Malakand (to name only those) has been hijacked by religious zealots.
These two years have been tumultuous. Pakistan’s leaders, and their foreign allies, have thought that they could impose top-down solutions and thus secure power and subdue the Pakistani people. The people have proved them wrong. But the crises afflicting the country remain. Pakistan has a long way to go before it can claim to have established a decent democratic system founded on respect for the rule of law.
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(Submitted by a reader)