15.11.02

VVV

Uzbeks Rewrite History The Uzbek authorities are rewriting the history of their country's relations with the Russians to such an extent that independent scholars fear it may undermine ties between the two countries. Uzbek president Islam Karimov told parliament in August that "the shadow of the USSR", which continued to weigh down on parts of Uzbek society, was a major reason for its problems. He hailed the new generation growing up free of "the totalitarian heritage" of the Soviet Union. "Having visited one of the schools, I asked adolescents, if they knew who was Brezhnev? They answered, 'No, we don't'. Then I asked them, 'Who is Gorbachev?' They again said that they didn't know. And I told them that they are doing great," Karimov told parliament.

The Uzbek authorities are right about one thing. The legacy of Russian and Soviet rule is holding Uzbekistan back. An economy based on cotton monoculture, abysmal health standards in Karakalpakistan (the region near the Aral Sea), state control of farming, and an authoritarian government made up of ex-Soviet cronies are all crippling the nation. It would seem like the solution would be things like economic reform and democratization. But clearly, blaming the Russians and ignoring their past is the way to go.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:08 -- link --

VVV skippy reccommends Eric Alterman's new book, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias And The News. I haven't read it, but I can guess I'd probably agree with much of what it says, insofar as it debunks the "liberal media" myth. As far as I can tell, the media's primary bias is not located on the political spectrum. The media is biased toward personalities, simplistic confrontations, swallowing spin instead of doing real investigation, and reporting the same stories that every other media outlet is reporting.

But I have to take issue with a point made in Amazon's review of the book:

The contemporary argument over media bias features just two points of view. The right argues that the media is biased toward leftists. The center argues, in the words of "Dean" David Broder of The Washington Post, "There just isn't enough ideology in the average reporter to fill a thimble." The idea that the media might, for reasons of ownership, economics, class or outside pressure, actually be more sympathetic to conservative causes than to liberal ones is widely considered to be simply beyond the pale of civilized discourse.

Whoever wrote this has clearly not paid any attention to the Left recently. The theme of "the media is the tool of corporate elites" is as common among the anti-WTO set as the "liberal bias" argument is on the Right. The lecturer I mentioned in my last post, for example, made a big deal out of the conservative slant of the mainstream media, listing the New York Times in the same breath as the Wall Street Journal. I suppose it's understandable that the reviewer could have missed this, though, since the mainstream media rarely pays much attention to these accusations of conservative media bias.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 00:55 -- link --

14.11.02

VVV I went to a lecture today on the anti-WTO-et-al movement. The speaker didn't say much that was very new (or very specific). There was a long question-and-answer period afterward. What struck me was that almost nobody questioned his overall attitude toward international free trade policy, despite it being such a controversial issue. Most questions were along the lines of "how should we begin fighting to make the WTO change its policies?" There were only two people who seemed to really question his conclusions -- one person who thought he wasn't anti-capitalist enough, and one (me) whose carefully-prepared question was based on a misunderstanding of an earlier statement about his feelings toward the World Court. I suspect he wouldn't get this kind of a reception at Colgate.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 20:39 -- link --

VVV The usual Biblical analogy that's made to Marxism is the millennium. According to Marxist theory, capitalism is a self-destructive system that will eventually collapse on itself. Then the proletariat (led by Marxist intellectual planners in the Leninist version) can usher in an age of peace and prosperity that will put an end to the suffering of previous economic systems. Likewise, the Book of Revelation says that the rule of Earth by humans will eventually self-destruct, at which point Jesus will come and begin his 1000-year reign of peace. This reading is sympathetic to Marxism to the extent that Revelation reflects what Marxists think will happen (though it may be less sympathetic in the eyes of those who think Revelation is a fantasy).

But I think Noah's flood may be a better analogy. In Noah's time, the system was irredeemably corrupted. And like in Revelation, God resorted to wiping the slate clean, in order to reconstruct the system anew. But the notable thing about the Flood is that it failed. Noah's family was the best eight people that could be found. They rejected the sin of their day and wanted to build a new society on the clean earth they received. But before too long, humanity relapsed into corruption again. The idea that you could wipe out a bad system and start over from scratch proved not to be feasible.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:40 -- link --

13.11.02

VVV

Is Jesus' Language At Death's Door? In the high mountains and plains of northern Iraq, a region above which U.S jets enforce the Kurdish "no-fly" zone, an ancient, minority Christian community still speaks the language once spoken by Jesus Christ. Human rights groups say the Assyrians — like the Kurds — have suffered under Saddam's systematic attempts to "Arabize" the north, a process that includes driving ethnic minorities from their lands and seizing some of their properties, especially in the strategic, oil-rich northern region bordering the Kurdish enclave. "The Iraqi government has also forced ethnic minorities such as the Assyrians, the Kurds and the Turkomen to sign 'national correction forms' that require them to renounce their ethnic identities and declare themselves to be Arabs," says Hania Mufti of Human Rights Watch. "In a way, it is a form of ethnic cleansing by clearing an area of its ethnic minorities." - via Stand Down

I'm not a huge fan of the hook ABC hung this story on -- are the Assyrians and their language only important because of the Jesus connection? But it's still important to draw attention to how convoluted the ethnic situation in the mideast really is -- it's not "us vs them" or "us and some of them vs the rest" by a long shot. I feel bad for overlooking the Assyrians in the commentary I wrote on the Kurds for this week's Scarlet.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 02:11 -- link --

12.11.02

VVV

Goodbye To All That The "vital center" strategy has landed the [Democratic] party in the mushy middle, pitifully trolling around for illusive suburbanites, astonished that its subtle rhetorical dance wasn't enchanting busy voters. The middle should never be a destination for a political party. The middle is a byproduct of the tug-of-war of ideas. Politics has been trending conservative because the right has been tugging harder than the left. Political territory has to be created through argument and combat. It's not static space. Civil rights activists understood this when they started out in the 1940s. The founders of the modern environmental movement did, too, in the late 1960s, just as America's founders did almost 300 years ago. - via Electrolite

This is an important point, which unfortunately isn't fully elaborated in the article. It points out the flaw in trying to apply (often quantitative) systems thinking to social and ecological problems: there are no independent variables. You can't assume one factor will stay static and then look at how other factors adjust to it. Democratic strategists were wrong because they assumed that the political opinions of the electorate were a given, and they could then adapt their message accordingly. But radical movements are often wrong as well, because they assume that the electorate will shift to accomodate their views.

The world would be a boring place if we could line up everything in a nice chain of causality, where each level adapts itself to the conditions dictated by the previous. Instead, we have everything constantly adjusting to everything else, only to find that everything else has re-adjusted to it.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:24 -- link --

11.11.02

VVV

Global Warmers Admit No Solutions No treaty will prevent global warming, says a key scientist who believes manmade climate change is happening. That's bad news for the United Nations' bureaucrats who are meeting in New Dehli to conclude a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ... On the other hand, Wigley et al.'s gloomy assessment of regulatory and technology-based solutions might just encourage policy makers to pay more attention to the junk science underlying the fantasy of manmade global warming.

The author misreads a study as saying that regulation isn't going to be enough to stop global warming. Then he uses that to demonstrate that the idea of global warming is based on junk science. Global warming is to big to stop, therefore it doesn't exist? Apparently any study that contradicts the mainstream view of global warming is proof of the opposite position, regardless of the actual content of the study. You'd think someone who prides himself on debunking junk science would be careful about unfounded leaps of logic like that. This may be more evidence for my theory that the amount a person claims to be objectively looking at facts and cutting through spin is directly proportional to the degree to which they're trying to prove an ideological point (this story appeared on Fox "we report, you decide" News -- coincidence?).
posted by Stentor Danielson at 12:57 -- link --