Fifty years ago C. P. Snow described the gulf between the two cultures. Today we can be more optimistic about bridging it

By William Waldegrave

Leavis was right: C. P. Snow was not a great intellect, or a great novelist. But you do not have to be either to say something that is true: and Snow did say something which was true, in his Rede lecture of 50 years ago, entitled The Two Cultures. There is something wrong with a civilisation, he said, where knowledge is so compartmentalised that people can count as highly educated and yet be wholly ignorant of huge swaths of what other highly educated people know. How could scientists not read Shakespeare? How could literary people never have heard of the second law of thermodynamics?

Obviously, there has always been specialised knowledge: Cicero would doubtless have been out of his depth in the further reaches of Archimedean mathematics; Richard Bentley would probably have found Newtonian calculus as obscure as did some of the classicists of my day who could read his Horace easily enough a century and a half later but not get the hang of dy by dx. Carlyle it was who talked about political economy as the dismal science. There is little new under the sun.

But the high ambition of cultured people was once to know the geography, at least, of all knowledge. Aristotle had a try at actually doing it all; Virgil, in his own great poem about agriculture, wrote that wonderful line about Lucretius, whose epic has the atom as its hero:

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (Happy the man who could understand the causes of things).

TOL

October 2nd 2009 , by Aashiq Thawerbhoy

Between 1989 and 1992 both Los Angeles and Caracas , two of the largest cities in the United States and Venezuela , experienced intense rioting followed by intense government repression. On the streets of Caracas , scores of Venezuela ‘s most impoverished citizens poured out of their barrios in the surrounding hills and descended into the city center looting stores for food and other necessities, and burning busses. In Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict was released to the public, poverty stricken African American and later Latin American communities started fires, ransacked businesses and engaged in standoffs with the L.A.P.D. (though it was presumed that by the end, poor people of all ethnic backgrounds had joined in). In both instances the government called on army and National Guard troops to squelch out the uprisings. In South Central, Watts and Compton government troops paraded through neighborhoods and business districts imposing a mandatory curfew in an Orwellian spectacle of new world order. In Caracas , the military acted as death squads as they filed into the barrios, often fi ring at anything that moved, emulating an all too familiar aspect of human history. An estimated 3,500 Venezuelans were discovered either dead on the streets or buried in mass graves, though twenty years later the real number is still unknown. The U.S. media unjustly labeled what happened in Los Angeles as merely a ‘race riot’, while the people of Venezuela labeled their uprising the Caracazo or, the “Caracas explosion.”

Today, in regards to politics and economics, both nations are heading in very different directions. It is common knowledge that the events of 1989 in Venezuela were a catalyst for the Socialist changes being implemented by President Hugo Chavez and various coalitions of popular power within the country. Here in the United States, the riots of Los Angeles, rightfully coined as the ‘justice riots’ by Edward Soja, are still widely understood as a race riot and nothing more. However, if we look at the advancements and changes that have taken place in Venezuela since the Caracazo, and the policies that led up to such an event, we can draw similar parallels to the Los Angeles riots, and begin to question where we are at today. The following is an attempt to link the neo-liberal economic policies of the 1980’s to a trend of uprisings, focusing specifically on Los Angeles and Caracas . The analysis shows the effects of the Reagan years on the working class poor in the United States , and the extent to which similar if the not the same neo-liberal policies have transcended onto a smaller resource rich nation such as Venezuela and its poor and oppressed. During this process, the focus shifts back and forth between both countries, and once the historical context is set, I will begin to discuss the political and economic commonalities and aftermath of both events.

Phony Nationalization, Industrial Decline and Failed (Welfare) States

VA

What if Subhas Chandra Bose had returned after the war?

By Ramachandra Guha

I have been reading Philip Roth’s The Plot against America, a magnificent novel by a magnificent novelist. This sets up an intriguing counter-factual: what if, in the American presidential election of 1940, the celebrated aviator, Charles Lindbergh, had stood against the incumbent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt? And what if he had won? Proceeding on the assumption that this is indeed what happened, the novelist sketches a portrait of what America would have looked like under a Lindbergh presidency. The story is told — as so often with Roth —from the perspective of a little Jewish boy growing up in the town of Newark, New Jersey. The novel moves deftly between the life of a single family and the life of the nation as a whole. Personal anxieties are juxtaposed with political transformations, as Lindbergh — in this imagined ‘history’ — makes a pact with Hitler, keeps America out of the war, and induces feelings of paranoia among the Jews of the eastern seaboard.

Roth’s plot encouraged me to think of comparable counter-factuals in the Indian case. I hope, in future columns, to try out a few hypothetical scenarios, to imagine what our country would have looked like if this or that individual had lived longer or made a different political choice. Let me begin here with a question which doubtless has often been asked by Indians, and not all of them Bengali. What if Subhas Chandra Bose had returned home sometime after the conclusion of the World War II?

It is believed that Bose died in an aircrash over the island of Formosa (as Taiwan was then known) on August 18, 1945. What if the plane had not crashed? Earlier in the same month, atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting the Japanese to surrender to the Allies. Had Bose not taken that plane or had it safely landed, what would he have done? Surely, he would have come back to the country for whose freedom from British rule he had dedicated his life. Perhaps he would not have returned straightaway, choosing to seek temporary refuge in a non-Western country, such as Russia or China. But sooner or later, he would have wended his way back home.

By the late summer of 1945, the British were in no mood to prolong their stay in India. They were exhausted and drained by the war — besides, a Labour government committed to Indian independence had replaced the regime of the arch-imperialist, Winston Churchill. The viceroy, Lord Wavell, had brought the Congress and the Muslim League to the hill town of Simla to discuss the modalities and means of the transfer of power. The question that was now on the minds of the politically alert was — when precisely would the British quit the subcontinent, and when they did, would they leave behind a single nation, or two?

After the defeat of Japan, many members of the Indian National Army did return home. Ordinary soldiers were allowed to return to their villages, but some senior officers were accused by the raj of being deserters, since they had left the service of the British Indian army to join the enemy. The trial was conducted in the precincts of the Red Fort, and attracted much attention, not least because leading Congressmen, including Jawaharlal Nehru, had volunteered to defend them.

What if Bose himself had come back in 1945 or 1946? The British could not have charged him with desertion, since he never was part of their army. Would they have accused him then of ‘treason’? That, for instance, was the charge levelled against John Amery, who had fought on the Axis side despite being the son of a senior British politician. The younger Amery was hanged for betraying his country — could the same have happened to Bose? This is unlikely, for, as a colonial subject, Bose was emphatically not British. (At the same time, he wasn’t legally ‘Indian’ either, since India did not then exist as a nation.)

Had Bose returned to India at the conclusion of World War II he would have placed the British in a bind. The rulers had at first wished to make an example of the INA officers — to sentence them to long prison terms or even to deportation for life. But a massive public outcry forced a retreat. In the end, the officers and soldiers were released. However, the British persuaded Nehru and other nationalist leaders to disallow former INA men from joining (or rejoining) the regular Indian army.

Would the British have tried Bose? Unlikely, for Bose was a patriot who already commanded the admiration of millions of his compatriots. A trial would have merely increased his popular appeal. Perhaps he would have been allowed to quietly re-enter politics. Would he then have rejoined his old party, the Congress, or would he have sought instead to renew his newer party, the Forward Bloc? The decision would have depended as much on personal equations as on political calculations. Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi would have effected a reconciliation, persuading Bose to work alongside Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel in dealing with the British and the Muslim League. On the other hand, Bose might have not have forgiven the slights and wounds of 1939, when he was forced to give up the presidency of the Congress and left with no alternative but to leave the party itself.

TI
(Submitted by reader)

UNDP report warns exodus contributes to crippling ‘brain drain’

By Patrick Galey, Daily Star staff

BEIRUT : “Staggering numbers” of highly skilled graduates are leaving Lebanon each year, severely hampering economic growth, according to new research.

Data published Tuesday in conjunction with the United Nations Development Program’s latest Human Development Report shows an annual migration of roughly 20,000 Lebanese, the majority of which are well-educated. This contributes to a crippling “brain drain,” and strains the national workforce, according to economic and social policy experts.

More than two-thirds of male and 45 percent of female university graduates opt to work abroad – a worrying trend according to assistant professor of economics at American University Beirut, Jad Chaaban.

“Most Lebanese migrants are highly skilled. Many of them are medical or engineering students and a significant proportion of those studying now – more than a third – say they want to leave,” he said. “These are not nice figures.”

Nearly 30 percent of emigrants head for the Gulf states with the US and Australia also hosting several thousand Lebanese expatriates.

The UNDP report, “Overcoming barriers: human mobility and development,” was launched on Tuesday under the auspices of Marta Ruedas, the UN deputy special coordinator for Lebanon .

It contained 2009 rankings tables for levels of human development in individual countries. It ranked Lebanon as the 83rd most desirable place to live based on life expectancy, access to education and quality of life – a fall of five places since 2006.

DS

Theater of the Absurd

By MISSY COMLEY BEATTIE

Is this a bad dream?

No, Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet, three days after he took the oath of office, he droned Pakistan, killing civilians, including children. This continues.

Our country is engaged in three wars.

We have a huge mercenary army, unaccountable to military law.

Guantanamo is still up and running.

Torture, torture, torture. Extreme Rendition.

The US Senate just passed a $636 billion defense-spending bill, less than what the president requested.

Candidate Obama promised change–going outside the Beltway for fresh ideas from political appointees. But there is no business unusual.

Instead, we have Hillary War-Orgasmic Clinton as Secretary of State.

Richard Holier-Than-Thou-Holbrooke, United States Special Envoy to AFPAK.

Bush/Cheney’s Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense.

Gen. Stanley Cover-up-Pat-Tillman’s-Death McChrystal, US Commander in Afghanistan.

Vice President Joe Zionist Biden.

US Imperialism.

Multiple deployment for our troops who return with untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A growing number of troop suicides.

Unequivocal support for Israel and her war crimes against the Palestinians.

Perhap, the Nobel Peace Prize should be renamed the Nobel War Prize. Then, all of this would make sense.

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com

CP
(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

By JOHN CHERIAN

The United States ’ decision to suspend the plan to set up missile bases in eastern Europe signals a strategy to achieve its policy goals.
CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI/AP

In this March 2007 photograph, a Polish woman protests against the U.S. plan for a missile defence base in Poland , during a demonstration in Warsaw .

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s decision to suspend the plans to set up new missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland is being viewed as the first important foreign policy step by the new United States administration. The George W. Bush administration had, in 2002, announced with fanfare that it planned to install a new anti-ballistic missile silo in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic . In August 2008, five months before the Bush administration went out, the U.S. signed agreements with the two countries to operationalise the bases in 2012. The outlandish rationale for this given by the neoconservative administration was that the bases were essential to counter the alleged threat that Iran posed to European security.

The Obama administration, too, insists that threats to Europe from “rogue states” continues to exist. However, Obama, in his live television address in the third week of September, said that his administration would continue to depend on “proven, cost-effective missile systems” using existing bases and sea-based interceptor systems. He said that it was necessary to deploy a defence system “that best responds to the threats that we face”. Such a system, he said, would take the form of a “stronger, smarter and swifter defence” of the U.S. and its military allies.

The President did not, however, spell out the details of the new plan or its possible location.

Robert Gates, the U.S. Defence Secretary, who held the same post in the previous administration, also emphasised that the U.S. had not completely given up its missile defence plan for Europe . Speaking after Obama’s announcement, Gates said that the Pentagon was still in negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic on the deployment of SM-3 missiles on their territory from 2015. The U.S. , Gates went on to say, would continue to deploy its “proven missile defence systems in Europe ”.

FL

by Robert Waterhouse

It’s not quite a Mediterranean setting. St Petersburg on Tampa Bay , Florida , has a whiff of the tropics, with balmy Gulf of Mexico tides home to the manatee and the pelican. But the Salvador Dali Museum , built to house the magnificent collection of the American industrialist A Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor Reese, is at least as important to the Dali legacy as the renowned Theatre-Museum in his home town of Figueres , Catalonia , where the artist is buried. This, simply, is the most complete Dali representation anywhere, displayed with true American flair for clarity and accessibility.

Though the present museum is just 25 years old, work began last December on a new $35m gallery relocated to St Pete’s cultural waterfront, where a 50% increase in floor space will allow permanent display of the collection’s 96 Dali oils, together with a much wider selection of its many other Dali works and artefacts. More importantly, the collection will become storm proof. In a region ever more prone to hurricanes, architect Yann Weymouth’s (1) concept is centred on a reinforced concrete cube, a so-called “treasure box”, with all the priceless artwork located on the third floor, above the floodplain, reached from the foyer by an open staircase intended to echo Dali’s fascination with the spiral enigma. The façade is wrapped by a geodesic glass bubble (also storm-resistant), enclosing non-gallery spaces.

MDip

When it comes to the writing of novels, women have from the outset been able to go toe to toe with their male counterparts, producing from their ranks genuine literary heavyweights whose work is deservedly held in the highest regard. At least, this is true of those writing in English — my own knowledge does not extend much beyond that.

Some will no doubt be bristling already over what on the face of it is an extremely patronising assertion. Why, after all, should it be considered remarkable that women, no less than men, have recorded significant achievements in the novelistic field? My response would be that, like it or not, the record shows that the feminine ability in novel writing would not seem to be reflected in other mainstream fields of artistic creativity. This really begs the question why the novel-writing field should be an exception at all.

Unlike poetry, which has been around for millennia, novels — that is, fictional prose narratives — are a comparatively recent phenomenon, with the first important English works essentially only beginning to appear from the early 18th century onwards. The first female giant, Jane Austin, began writing towards the end of that century, although her first published works only appeared a decade or so later. How Austin ’s stock has risen since her death is a remarkable story in itself. Certainly, she was already well-respected and reasonably popular in her own day, but since her death her reputation has increased exponentially to the point that she is regarded as being amongst the very foremost of English language novelists. (As a devoted Janeite, how much I would enjoy being able to go back in time and tell her this — relative fame came so late to her, and premature death so cruelly early).

Following Jane Austin came a slew of formidable women prose writers. There were the Bronte sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne. All three were major talents who in lives cut even shorter than Austin managed to produce such enduring masterpieces as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Villette and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. So far as Wuthering Heights goes, it is little less than a literary miracle that the spinster daughter of a mid-Victorian clergyman should have produced a work of such haunting power and unparalleled originality.

George Eliot — the famous pen-name of Mary Anne Evans — lived longer, and left as considerable a legacy. Her Middlemarch in particular is regarded by many as the single greatest English novel, and I may well share that view. The sheer sweep of Eliot’s vision of society, the depths of her insight into the human psyche and the power of her intellectual observations in this work are quite breathtaking.

Nineteenth century giants like Dickens, Hardy, Conrad and Thackeray have their feminine counterparts in Austen, the Brontes, Eliot and Gaskell. In the 20th century, Dorothy Parker, Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch are hardly eclipsed even by such formidable talents as F Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh and Graeme Greene.

TL

ISTANBUL – Radikal

Turkey continues to score an abysmal rank on the UNDP’s Human Development Index, despite an increase in Turkey’s life expectancy rates, literacy and gross national product over the past 27 years. Overall the country has slipped three places this year, but specifically the role of women in society has earned the worst mark. Turkey ranked 101 out of 109.

Despite progress in some vital indicators of a healthy society, the role of women in Turkish society remains very low and the country has regressed on the U.N. Human Development Index.

Turkey ranked 101 out of 109 countries in the 2009 Gender Empowerment Measure, or GEM, released on Monday as a part of the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP’s, Human Development Index.

Turkey dropped three places in this year’s Human Development Index, ranking 79 out of 182 countries, but the alarmingly low rank in the Gender Equality Index is a strong indicator that the country has a long way to go to empower women politically and economically in order to achieve gender equality.

The GEM bases its rankings on indicators such as the active role played by women in politics and the economy. The GEM was included in the Human Development Index for the first time in 1995.

Despite an increase in Turkey’s life expectancy rates, literacy and gross national product over the past 27 years, the country continues to be ranked low on the UNDP’s Human Development Index. When spilt into the four sections of extremely developed, developed, developing and undeveloped, Turkey falls into the category of developed with Cuba and Saudi Arabia, which are ahead of Turkey’s neighbors Armenia and Iran. But in the GEM results, Turkey is only ahead of Tonga, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh and Yemen.

“The results demonstrate that Turkey is at a stand still, there are no reforms being implemented to show development,” said Pinar ?lkkaracan, coordinator of the Women’s Human Rights Foundation, in her result analysis. ?lkkaracan said in the 2000s there have been significant changes to the Turkish Penal Code and development toward gender equality, but today these changes are not being taken forward. According to ?lkkaracan, the issue of employment also needs to be addressed in order to progress in the area of gender equality.

HDN

Anna Politkovskaya in Helsinki in December 2002

© Katja Tähjä

5 October 2009
Human rights activists in Russia and the North Caucasus face increasing violence and intimidation three years after the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Amnesty International said on Monday.

In a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Amnesty International urged him to take genuine steps to stop the attacks and for his administration to demonstrate a commitment to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice.

“That those who murdered Anna Politkovskaya and ordered her killing remain free reflects a failure by the Russian authorities to fully investigate such crimes,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

A number of people who have spoken out against human rights violations in the country, including human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, have been killed or faced intimidation, most likely as a result of the work they were doing.

In January this year, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had been working closely with Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in Moscow. Anastasia Baburova, a journalist, was gunned down at his side.

Attacks against those working to protect human rights are common in the North Caucasus. On 15 July, Natalia Estemirova of the Memorial Human Rights Centre was abducted in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic. Her body was found later the same day in Ingushetia.

Natalia Estemirova had received a number of threats in connection with her human rights work.

Her killing has taken place in a climate when human rights activists have been verbally attacked by the Chechen authorities, who accuse them of being supporters of illegal armed groups.

Amnesty International condemns comments of high ranking officials given around the time of her killing.

AO