Turbulent Times

An Iranian Masterpiece

2012-01-29T15:17:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for a breather from the daily grinds of life and want to lose yourself in a light fare of romance and laughter, steer clear of this movie. But if you want to witness an unflinching look at life in all its pathos and ambiguities, in which faith, loyalty, family values, traditional culture and class distinctions clash in a draining suspense worthy of both Hitchcock and John le Carre, then go see the Iranian masterpiece called “A Separation.”

Director Asghar Farhadi’s movie should win the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year. If not, we can conclude that something is seriously wrong with the Academy. The film has gained worldwide acclaim since its release in 2011 and has been racking up awards at film festivals, most recently the Golden Globe.

But award or no award, this is a superbly-crafted film that deals intelligently and unsparingly with the big questions of life. It pulls no punches. We are gripped by the emotional conflicts of the actors because we realize with a shock that these are our conflicts as well, in one form or another.

Nader (Peyman Maadi) is resisting divorce from his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) because she wants to migrate to a foreign land and he does not. He cannot bear the thought of abandoning his Alzheimer-stricken father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi). The custody of the couple’s 11-year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director’s daughter) is the bone of contention. It is unresolved at this point but Termeh decides to stay with her father when her mother moves in with her parents.

Nader has to find a caretaker for his headstrong but helpless father in a hurry. At his wife’s urging, he hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a chador-clad religious working-class woman. Razieh has problems of her own. She has to care for a young daughter. She has a psychopathic husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini, to deal with. She has to travel a considerable distance by bus to reach Nader’s apartment, a perilous daily undertaking considering that she is pregnant (not known to the protagonists at the outset). She has to lie to her husband about the job because he would not approve of her caring for another man, even if he is over 80. But most of all, looking after an incontinent man turns out to be a nightmare, especially since Nader’s father has a habit of wandering off from the apartment when she is mopping floors or preparing food.

In this combustible mix, things can explode for any number of social, cultural or religious reasons, and they all do. Nader comes home one day in the very first week to find his father unconscious, his hands tied to the bed. Razieh is nowhere to be found. When she does show up, bedlam ensues. A crime of some kind is committed, although we are not sure who actually committed it. Nader finds himself in a court battle with Razieh and her husband, and soon his wife, daughter and neighbors are dragged into it as well. The autocratic and impassive judge infuriates both parties as he oscillates between indifference and high-handedness.

The key event on which the entire movie pivots is never shown, even in flashback. This is Asghar Farhadi’s masterstroke. By visually withholding what really happened (it is only revealed in a few words near the climax), he heightens the tension and achieves a shattering effect. I will not be giving away anything if I paraphrase what Nader says to Razieh as the two families are on the brink of working out a settlement: “Can you swear by the Quran that I am responsible for what happened to you?”

Razieh is unable to do so because, as a believer, she feels that if she lies and commits a sin, it will cast a shadow on her daughter.

A happy ending thus slips away. And when Termeh has to finally decide before a judge who she wants to live with – mom or dad – we see the parents waiting outside in the corridor, separated by a glass door, lost in their private agonies. The ending seems incomplete, similar to the ending in that famous 1882 short story by Frank Stockton called “The Lady, or the Tiger?” But in leaving us with a question, director Farhjadi has in reality made his movie complete, for in the moral universe that we inhabit, heartbreak occurs not from having to choose between right and wrong but between two equally compelling rights.

Muhammad Ali Turns 70

2012-01-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

Muhammad Ali turns 70 today. Happy Birthday, Greatest of All Time!

Time and Parkinson's may have slowed the champ down but his story continues to inspire millions around the world. Some of Ali's feats came from inside the ring but the reason why his story resonates is because of what he did outside. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and became a catalyst for young Americans to take a firm stand against that distant and futile adventure. He rejected the Jim Crow mentality of his country in the '60s with an audacity that was breathtaking and moving. He gave underdogs, particularly African-Americans, the courage to take charge of their destiny. He spoke truth to power long before politicians turned the phrase into a platitude. The boldness to go from Cassisus Clay to Muhammad Ali alone would have moved mountains.

Ali did all this and more but he faltered several times as well. He was sometimes cruel and mean toward his opponents (Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier). He was callous toward his wife Belinda. He had extra-marital affairs.

Ali acknowledges his failings and that's what allows him to move forward. He was not one to hold grudge against anyone, including himself. He looked in the mirror and saw not only how pretty he was, as he was fond of reminding us, but also how flawed. He touched us with his humanity.

"These are the cards I was dealt, so don't be sad," he often tells his wife and children as they struggle to reconcile with his condition. He has found a serenity in his faith - Islam - that steadies him and fills him with gratitude for having come this far.

Ali never turned down a request for an autograph. He visited the sick whenever he could, persuaded a man about to commit suicide to choose life, and raised millions of dollars for charitable causes. His sense of humor and raw intelligence and, of course, his unparalleled ability to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee made him one of the most beloved icons of our time.

"I'd rather suffer now than in the hereafter," Ali says when people tell him how sorry they are about his Parkinson's. A champion all the way.

The Last Book of Christopher Hitchens

2012-01-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

The last published book of Christopher Hitchens, who died on 15 December, 2011 at age 62, is titled "Arguably." It is a collection of his previously-published essays, a fitting coda to a polemicist and a literary polymath. You don't have to agree with Hitchens, and there was much to disagree about - his support of the Iraq War, for instance - to recognize that his opinions were provocative, well-argued and always a great read. "Boring" is a word you will never associate with anything Hitchens wrote.

I read some of the essays in "Arguably" when they were first published in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and the online magazine Slate. But what I found remarkable in the book is the content of the dedication page: "To the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi, Abu-Abdel Monaam Hamadeh, and Ali Mehdi Zeu."

Unless you were living in the woods as a hermit for the past two years, at least the first name - Mohamed Bouazizi - should ring a bell. He was the Tunisian vendor who set himself afire and launched the Arab Spring last year. But the others?

Well, here is Hitchens: "The three names on the dedication page belonged to a Tunisian street vendor, an Egyptian restaurateur, and a Libyan husband and father. In the Spring of 2011, the first of them set himself alight in the town of Sidi Bouzid, in protest at just one too many humiliations at the hands of petty officialdom. The second also took his own life as Egyptians began to rebel en masse at the stagnation and meaninglessness of Mubarak's Egypt. The third, it might be said, gave his life as well as took it: loading up his modest car with petrol and homemade explosives and blasting open the gate of the Katiba barracks in Benghazi - symbolic Bastille of the detested and demented Qadafi regime in Libya."

Why did Hitchens dedicate his last book to three Muslims who became known only after their death? Because, "in preferring a life-affirming death to a living death-in-life, the harbinger of the Arab Spring hoped to galvanize their fellow subjects and make them aspire to be citizens. Tides will ebb, waves will recede, the landscape will turn brown and dusty again, but nothing can expel from the Arab mind the example and esprit of Tahrir. Once again it is demonstrated that people do not love their chains or their jailers ..."

The faith of the three, Islam, was, of course, of no significance to Hitchens whatsoever. He railed against religion all his life and even wrote a best-seller reveling in his unfaith. What moved Hitchens was obviously the extraordinary courage of three nameless and faceless citizens who answered the calls of their conscience, a rarity at any time and in any age. For Hitchens, if anything could move mountains, this was it.

I always read Hitchens expecting to be provoked and entertained by his though as well as by his use of the language, and I was never disappointed. In fact, his polemical writings against religion, and, in particular, against Islam, only strengthened my faith because he forced me to dig deep and find answers to his charges and attacks with reason, study and yes, belief in the Unseen.

There is a silly tendency to anoint people with this or that title after they pass away. "He was the best essayist of his generation," was a refrain we heard after Hitchens' death. It really doesn't matter whether or not he was the best essayist, or whether that title belongs to Gore Vidal or to someone else. The point is that Hitchens brought a fresh point of view to everything he wrote, even when he was wrong, and in doing so, he always strove to fulfil the primary responsibility of a writer: provoke, excite, entertain, and expand the scope of readers while skewering the tyrants, the corrupt and the powerful, without pandering to anyone or to any ideology.

Steve Jobs, Technology and Education

2012-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

The late Steve Jobs of Apple was not smart in the conventional sense. Instead, as his biographer Walter Isaacson tells us in the bestseller “Steve Jobs,” he was a genius. “His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical.”

One of the toughest problems America faces today is in education. Assessing the impact of technology in raising the quality of K-14 education has become a particularly thorny issue, considering that the future of the nation, and billions of dollars, are at stake

It is instructive to consider Jobs’ view on this. Unique among his peers, he positioned himself at the intersection of science and humanities and showed time and again that his gut feeling – intuition – was right in the products he envisioned and helped create.

Jobs didn’t think of technology as the silver bullet of education. As Isaacson points out, he was “somewhat dismissive of the idea that technology could transform education.” The ability to focus, think through problems and solve them requires patience, perseverance and hard work, qualities that technology is unlikely to foster.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates, on the other hand, and with whom Jobs had a contentious professional relationship, has more faith in the power of technology to transform education. His foundation has spent billions of dollars equipping classrooms across the country with state-of-the-art technology. As Gates sees it, it is a crucial innovation to use interactive technology to deliver high-quality materials for teachers and students. He feels that software can be used to tailor lessons for individual students so that they do not waste time on the things they already know and focus on areas they do not. “That's the kind of innovation that can lead to a brighter future for everyone,” says Gates.

Well, we have had over a decade of technology in classrooms – laptops, big interactive screens, software – in school districts from California and Arizona to New York and Maine. Analysis of the vast amount of data collected shows that, so far at least, Jobs’ view is holding out. Despite the extensive presence of technology in the school curricula, test scores remain stubbornly stagnant in reading, math and science.

In contrast, consider the successful Waldorf School in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The school, attended by children of local high-tech executives, operates on the principle that computers and schools don’t mix. Computers, according to the school, constrain creative thinking, reduce human interaction and play havoc with attention spans. Students and their parents couldn’t be more in sync with the Waldorf objectives.

This, of course, does not mean that technology will disappear from the nation’s classrooms. If anything, there will be even more technology in the future. The Waldorf is probably an exception. What it does mean, however, is that we haven’t yet found the best way to use technology to take education to a higher level.

There was one area in education where Jobs had strong feelings. He wanted to blow away the harmful and monopolistic textbook business through digital learning materials. As Isaacson writes, the “textbook industry was $8 billion a year, ripe for digital destruction. That was the next business he wanted to transform. His method was iPad. He wanted to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad.” Jobs’ clearly saw that “the
process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt. But if we can make textbooks free, and they come with this iPad, then they don’t have to be certified.” What was left unsaid was that the relief it would provide to students – mental, financial, physical – would be incalculable.

A cynic might suggest that Jobs’ real goal was to make the iPad ubiquitous in the nation’s classrooms, like other Apple products. But they would be missing the point. Jobs understood that creating new textbooks by world-class authors offered the best chance to free the nation’s students from the unethical and destructive practices of textbook publishers. In spite of earnest recommendations by well-meaning educators, the textbook industry continues to become even more powerful and monopolistic. The digital versions of their bloated and confusing textbooks are offered mostly as options, adding to the already sky-high cost of education. Jobs had the right vision. Recall how he converted music exceutives to his point of view and what he did for music with the iPod. So, for textbooks, if the iPad was his preferred medium of delivery, in all fairness, could anyone object to that?

One wonders if Apple has leaders as bold, brash and intuitive as Jobs was, leaders who can “think different” and launch projects to turn America’s moribund school system around. If not, high-tech companies specializing in so-called “educational technology” will clean up on the billions of educational dollars available through federal grants and private foundations without making any difference whatsoever, even as thousands of teachers are laid off and school budgets shrink to disastrous levels

The Tyranny of Limited Release

2011-12-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

As a movie buff, I have often chafed at the tyranny of limited release of certain movies. Until now I have suffered in silence but no more. I call upon all my fellow cinema-goers not living in New York and Los Angeles (always the only two cities where "limited release" movies are first , well, released) to rise in mass protest at this archaic, humiliating and downright stupid practice by studio honchos and their evil marketers.

My outrage has boiled over because I have to wait two more weeks before I can see "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" in San Jose, California, the soul of Silicon Valley.

Who decides which cities to release cerebral, unconventional movies first? There is absolutely no data to suggest that New Yorkers and Angelenos are among the most discerning of moviegoers. Nor is there any proof that, financially (the only criterion that matters to film producers and distributors), New York and Los Angeles represent the best markets. Yet this practice of limited release continues as if it is an infallible pillar of our democracy!

What I find most infuriating is the biting, insulting, condescending tag attached to a limited release movie: "Wider Release to Follow." Oh really? Thanks a lot for letting us know. We bumpkins should be grateful that our chance will come only after the sophisticates of New York and Los Angeles have had a chance to view the movie and discuss its merits and demerits casually over coffee.

Here is the "limited release" schedule for le Carre's thriller: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens this week (December 9) in New York and Los Angeles; Dec. 16 in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington; and Dec. 23 in Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., St. Louis, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., Seattle and Austin, Texas, with wider release to follow."

I saw the magnificent BBC production of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" in 1979. I watched it with my newlywed wife who had no stomach for thrillers but who fell in love with this one. George Smiley is as unforgettable in his way as Sherlock Holmes was when I discovered the genius of 221B Baker Street as a kid. I think le Carre is the supreme practitioner in his field. His portrayal of the dark and brutal underpinnings of the cold war is without parallel. Hence my infinite interest in seeing this remake of his masterpiece three decades later.

What brought me to my bursting point was le Carre's own take on the movie: "Once in a lifetime, if a novelist is very lucky, he gets a movie made of one of his books that has its own life and truth. This is the achievement of Tomas Alfredson and his team. Yet I have been asked if an American audience — accustomed to the speed and dash of most movie-making today — will have the concentration span needed to follow an intelligently paced narrative of some complexity? I believe that audiences are far better at doing this than film-makers give them credit for. This is a movie that entertains superbly and thrillingly at its own pace and rhythm — a hypnotic movie that takes you over completely. I don’t believe that any audience, once introduced to it, will be able to take its eyes off the screen.In profound ways, it is touching and often alarming. In less profound ways, it is exciting and occasionally very funny. Its complexities are a pleasure to share, and the more so since the movie gently explains them and delivers a satisfying dénouement.It is a work of art that stays with you, as good works of art do."

Can any movie buff remain still after this? Can you blame me, or any of my fellow sufferers in Silicon Valley, if we were to march down Main Street in protest at this outrageous injustice, this injustice of having to wait for two more weeks to see "TTSP" in our beloved San Jose?

"Why don't you go to San Francisco next week," you may say, "or even to Los Angeles for today's viewing, if you are such an aficionado? People drive to LA every day!"

We will do no such thing as a matter of principle. We will see movies in our own town and in no other. Going to see movies in other cities because it is not available in ours is the hallmark of an unfaithful and shallow human being.

But the producers and the distributors of movies have to shape up, and they better shape up quickly. We will launch mass movements if the tyranny of "limited release" is not lifted before the end of 2011. That's a promise.

Joe Frazier (1944-2011)

2011-11-08T15:37:00.001-08:00

I remember the "Fight of the Century" vividly not because it was the most anticipated bout in boxing history until then but because I (along with another 70 million people) was in existential danger. The date was March 9, 1971 (March 8 in New York). The Pakistani army had put a stranglehold on East Pakistan, later to become Bangladesh. There were aerial bombardments day and night and the Pakistani army would soon launch a genocide against unarmed Bangladeshis. I had taken shelter in a friend's house on that day but in spite of the danger around me, I was listening intently to the BBC's running commentary on an epic battle taking place in distant New York.

My hero, Muhammad Ali, was fighting the pretender to the throne, a ferocious fighter named Joe Frazier. I had no doubt that Ali would win. How could this fearless pugilist, who had galvanized the world's downtrodden and the oppressed and who spoke truth to power so boldly, lose?

But the unthinkable happened. Ali lost. With his relentless attack, Frazier had apparently worn Ali down. I carried the hurt with me for several days until the genocide by the Pakistani army made everything else insignificant.

Bangaldesh had become an independent nation in December of 1971. In August of 1974, I found myself in Philadelphia as a graduate student at Temple University. By then, I had seen the "fight of the century" dozens of times on TV. One day, on a lark, I called up Frazier's gym in North Philly. Frazier was preparing for a fight (I think it was with Joe Bugner) and the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that his sparring sessions were open to the public. I wanted to see him in action. An assistant answered and gave me the time of the session.

I took the subway and suddenly there was the man himself, throwing punches at his sparring partners. In person, he looked rather small but there was no mistaking his intent, which was to tear off his opponent's head. The ring looked too small to contain his ferocity.

After the sessions, Frazier was all smiles and mingled with the onlookers. I remember the scene after all these years.

Ali and Frazier fought two more times, including the classic "Thrilla in Manila", and Ali avenged himself by winning both times.

Boxing fans knew that if Frazier ran into a bigger version of himself, he would be defeated. That's what happened with George Foreman who punished him mercilessly in their two bouts, although Frazier gave a better account of himself in the second bout than in the first.

Frazier nursed the psychological hurt that Ali inflicted on him and apparently took the hurt to his grave. That's unfortunate. On learning of his nemesis's death, Ali said, “The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration.”

It would have been wonderful if Ali and Frazier had reconciled in public. Both brought out the best boxing skills in each other and both helped each other reach the summit of pugilistic excellence. But a correction is in order in the wake of all the glorification of Frazier now that he has moved on. Contrary to what some sports writers are saying or have said, Ali was the better boxer but even more importantly, the better human being. If we are defined by the challenges we take on in life, there just is no comparison. That in no way diminishes the fundamental goodness of Frazier.

Rest in peace, Joe.

The Arab World After Gadhafi

2011-10-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

The flag of freedom flies high across Libya today. After only eight months, Libyan fighters liberated their country from Moammar Gadhafi, a tyrant who had waged war against his people for more than four decades.

Celebrations have rightly broken out in the public squares and plazas of Libya, but this happiness must be tempered by the momentous tasks that lie ahead for the Transitional National Council and for Libyans themselves. It will not be easy to build a just and tolerant society overnight in a country that did not experience the rule of law for 42 years. But the march must begin, even if the journey is long and arduous.

What happens in Libya has profound implications for an Arab world in flux. If Libyans can lay the foundation of an open and democratic society within the context of their tradition and renounce retribution in favor of rebuilding, neighboring Arab countries can rid themselves of their dinosaurs as well and move confidently toward an enlightened future. There will undoubtedly be mistakes and setbacks. Tribal animosities may flare. (The recent massacre of Egyptian Christians shows how horribly things can go wrong). But if the national council can forge a representative government, there is no limit to what the long-suffering Arab people can accomplish.

In a country of only 6 million, Libya was earning hundreds of millions of dollars from 1.6 million barrels of oil a day. But Gadhafi squandered it all. While the masses lived on crumbs, he lavished wealth and patronage on himself, his family and his sycophants, even as he stirred up trouble abroad. He had his gaudy uniforms, for instance, tailored in Paris. He justified these excesses by making his inane “The Green Book” the de facto constitution of Libya. Under his dictatorship, Libyans, with 0.27 barrels of oil per citizen per day, became poorer on the average than Mexicans, while the average Emirati (UAE), on 0.34 barrels of oil per citizen per day, became richer than the average American.

But that is now past. If Libyan leaders can quickly repair damages to the pipelines and ramp up oil production, it is estimated that the country can start earning as much as $80 million per day at today’s price. It will ease the way toward economic justice for ordinary Libyans. The government will need billions of dollars to steer their country toward the modern age but it has to be cautious because the vultures are already circling.

While Libya scrambles to put its political and economic houses in order, Arabs beyond Libya are rejoicing as well.

One Arab leader, in particular, has been put on notice: Syria’s Bashar Assad. This dictator has been receiving master lessons from Gadhafi on how to put down mass uprisings. Now that his hero has been dispatched after being dragged from a rat hole, Assad must be wondering about his own fate. He, along with Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, knows that tyrannies are doomed, that hereditary power is history. Syrians and Yemenis are emboldened by the feat of the Libyans and will go all out to overthrow their despots, despite the terrible sacrifices they will undoubtedly have to make.

The larger issue is one of a renaissance in the Arab world. In a sense, the entire Arab world has been caught in a knowledge time-warp for decades. Despite earning trillions of petro-dollars, there has been no world-class discovery or invention from this part of the world in recent times due to bad governance, misplaced priorities and politicized religion. Yet we know that the Golden Age of the Arabs from the 9th through the 13th centuries brought about major advances in mathematics, science, and medicine. Muslim scientists invented algebra, explained principles of optics, demonstrated the body's circulation of blood, named stars, built observatories and created universities.

The situation today? Here is one grim statistics: the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with 57 member states, claims only 8.5 scientists, engineers, and technicians per 1000 population, compared with a world average of 40.7, and 139.3 for countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

It is possible that as freedom flowers and representative governments take shape in these countries, a new generation of young people will rise to meet the challenges of the 21st century in science, art and technology.

The Gadhafis and the Assads of the world pour poison on the aspirations of their people. They keep them chained to the dark impulses of the soul. As equality, justice, dignity and freedom blossom among Arabs, can a renaissance be far behind?

Thoreau and the "Occupy Wall Street" Movement

2011-10-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

What would Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) make of the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement now sweeping America and the world?

Based on how he lived and what he wrote, it is likely that the author of Civil Disobedience (1849), whose words inspired Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, would throw his full support behind it.

Thoreau defended John Brown when the abolitionist seized a federal armory in 1859 to arm slaves to rise against the South. He built his own cabin by Walden Pond without borrowing a cent from the bank. He had observed how the crushing burden of mortgages robbed his neighbors of their economic freedom. “When the farmer has got his house,” he wrote in Walden, “he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him.”

If Thoreau were to review the “State of the Union,” these are some of the grim statistics he would encounter in America today:

- The richest 1 percent (the One Percenters) take home almost 25% of the national income, which represents a more unequal wealth distribution than most of the world’s banana republics.

- From 1980 to 2005, more than 80% of the total increase in incomes went to the One Percenters. They now have more net worth (34%) than the bottom 90 percent (29%), according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 14 million Americans (9.1%) are unemployed as of September 2011. (This does not include the significant number of Americans who have given up looking for jobs, particularly those over 50). About as many Americans are working only part-time because they are unable to find full-time work.

- 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty, the most in more than 50 years. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are at an all-time high. Over 50 million Americans do not have any medical insurance.

- The CEOs of the largest American companies earn an average of more than 500 times as much as the average worker.

In New York, the epicenter of the OWS protest, the wealth of the One Percenters derives almost entirely from the sector known primarily for its “financial innovation.” These “innovators” work in Wall Street, commercial and investment banks, hedge funds and credit card and insurance companies. They create nothing. Instead, they claim to create “value” by speculating with others’ money, be it in mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, gas and food prices, always hedging the bets so that they end up with piles of cash whether society wins (rarely) or loses (almost always).

Thoreau would find that in the America of today, the One Percenters control the rest of the population, the Ninetynine Percenters, through economic and political hegemony. He would find that our government has become a government of the One Percenters, by the One Percenters, and for the One Percenters. He would be deeply disappointed with President Obama who promised to clean up the economic disaster he inherited from George Bush. Obama vowed to be an agent of change, a beacon of hope. Instead, he coddled those responsible for the meltdown - bankers, hedge fund operators, reckless speculators and other assorted wealthy sociopaths - and bailed them out with billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, while turning a blind eye to their uninterrupted multi-million dollar quarterly bonuses.

But Thoreau would also be heartened by the sight of his moral descendants taking a stand. What began as a small gathering by a handful of New Yorkers on September 17 has spread not only coast to coast but beyond, including cities like Rome, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney and Tokyo. Like the Arab Spring, this grassroots movement has no leaders, heroes or ideologues, only ordinary citizens bound by a fierce desire to right the terrifying inequity that threatens that most fundamental of rights, our freedom.

Seeing the resolve of protesters growing by the day, Thoreau would reconsider deleting from Walden, circa 2011, his biting observation that the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Occupy Wall Street movement is drawing the “mass of men” into an ever-widening circle of passionate activism. Yes, the movement grew from the desperation of intolerable injustice but now it has acquired a momentum that transcends desperation, charging the national and international discourse with timeless ideas of equality, fairness and justice.

“We are the 99” is a banner that Henry David Thoreau would have been proud to unfurl on Main Street, America, for the world to behold and act upon.

A Persistent and Visionary Entrepreneur

2011-10-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

No one realized the confluence of technology, entertainment and design in digital products and transformed them into objects of desire more than Steve Jobs. The co-founder of Apple, who passed away at 56 from pancreatic cancer, will be remembered for his seminal contributions to technology with such products and entities as the Macintosh (1984), Pixar (1986), iMac (1998), Mac OS X (2000), iPod (2001), iTunes Store (2003), iPhone (2007), MacBook Air (2008), and iPad (2010). The list is long and unique and sets him apart from other tech innovators who were lucky to hit the bull’s eye with one or two products.

In technology, Jobs believed in revolution, not evolution. His obsession with the look and feel of a product down to the last excruciating detail often rubbed his underlings and executives the wrong way. He could be cruel with criticism and brutal in his appraisal of others. But in the end, everyone who worked for him and was influenced by him became his fierce acolytes. When relentless excellence is the goal, walking on eggshells is not a priority.

Jobs was an anomaly in that he extolled the value of a liberal arts education when only STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) were (and are) held up as the gateway to employability. Before dropping out of college at 17, the only course he found satisfying was one on calligraphy, an experience he later used in creating graceful fonts for the Macintosh.

Jobs was neither a software nor a hardware engineer but he was the quintessential catalyst who made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. He created products from the user’s perspective, not the geek’s or the executive’s. The mouse, the user interface, the built-in network, the playful and friendly computers, these innovations and more were designed with you and me in mind. He made the computer truly personal.

All these raise an intriguing question: Where did this unique synthesis of art and science come from? Perhaps the clue lies in genealogy, although the story is suffused with sadness.

Steven Paul Jobs was born out of wedlock to a 23-year-old Syrian Muslim immigrant from Wisconsin named Abdul Fattah Jandali and his 23-year-old German-American girlfriend named Joanne Schieble. In the conservative America of 1955, the baby didn’t stand a chance of growing up with his biological parents, particularly considering that his mother came from an ultra-orthodox Christian family.

Joanne Schieble couldn’t convince her parents of marrying an Arab Muslim and so moved to liberal San Francisco. Although the couple formally married later, Joanne put up the baby for adoption without letting Jandali know about it.

The Arab-American boy was adopted by an American-Armenian family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Clara Hagopian and her husband Paul Jobs had been married for seven years. She was incapable of conceiving, so the couple eagerly adopted the baby who was to change the world in unimaginable ways.

Jobs never showed any interest in knowing his biological father. In August of 2011, Jandali, now 80 and a vice-president of a Casino in Reno, Nevada, (he has said that he is not a practicing Muslim but that he is proud of his Islamic heritage) publicly reached out to his son, saying, “I live in the hope that before it is too late he will reach out to me. Even to have just one cup of coffee with him just once will make me a very happy man.”

While there was no reconciliation, is it not possible that the confluence of the East and the West played a decisive role in shaping Jobs into who he was? The keen eye for aesthetics, the flair for technology, the uncanny ability to sense the potential in people and mold them into a never-ending source of creativity, probably came from this mix of two distinct bloodstreams.

Technology has a way of making today’s hottest products obsolete tomorrow. A new Jobs may appear out of the blue to create products that make the iPhones and the iPads look positively arcane.

But even if the digital revolution that Jobs spawned is supplanted by another, there is something else that he produced, or rather wrote, that I believe will stand the test of time. It is the commencement speech that he delivered at Stanford University in 2005.

It is among the most stirring and inspiring addresses ever, dealing with the fragility of life, the power of persistence, the elixir of creativity, and the inevitability of death. Everyone I know who has read it has been profoundly moved by it and resolved to make something of their lives.

“Your time is limited,” he said in conclusion in that address, “so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinion drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs lived his own life. He moved confidently in the direction of his dreams and passions, relentlessly focused on his goals while never letting failures (and he had quite a few) daunt him. There are lessons in it for all.

A Perspective on the 9/11 Attacks

2011-09-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

A week after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, my doorbell rang one evening. Gail, my neighbor and a devout Christian, stood apologetically, sorrow etched on her face. “I brought this for you,” she said. It was a miniature marble mosque with a golden dome. “I searched all over the Internet for it. Just wanted you to know we are with you and your family.”

I knew instantly where she was coming from. American Muslims were under siege. That’s how it felt in the immediate wake of the fall of the twin towers. My neighbor was trying to put me at ease. The same scene was playing out all over the country. Concerned neighbors and coworkers who had known Muslims in their midst were offering moral support against insults, injuries and death threats by a minority of Americans who equated us with the murderous fanatics who rained death and destruction on that serene Autumn day. For every American who shot at Muslims, hurled insults and splattered pig blood on mosque doors, however, there were several who threw a protective shield around us. The police were deployed to safeguard mosques. Christian and Jewish women wore hijab to accompany Muslim women on their errands. Interfaith dialogues sprouted everywhere and leaders demanded that citizens abide by the law.

But the besieged feeling persisted. Fox and other right-wing media outlets openly questioned our loyalty, accusing us of being a fifth column. Muslims who were coming of age in 2001 reacted to this onslaught in one of two ways: many embraced the faith more strongly while some were intimidated enough to abandon it. The shrill anti-Muslim voices rose and fell over the years and now, ten years later, they have metastasized into well-funded Islamophobia with the rise of the Tea party and the more extreme elements of the Republican Party. One consequence has been that most Muslims have come out of their cocoons and are engaging with the larger American society in many more ways than they used to before the 9/11 attacks. A recent Pew Research Center poll is instructive. 48% of American Muslims think the American people are generally friendly toward Muslims, 32% think they are neutral, 16% think they are unfriendly and 4% “don’t know.”

Ten years on, two things about the Sept. 11 attacks stand out.

The first is the rejection by the overwhelming majority of Muslims of al-Qaida and its nihilistic ideology. This murderous fringe group offered nothing but death and destruction. We were able to see through its sophistry and condemned its leaders and foot-soldiers in no uncertain terms, even though Islamophobes claimed that we did not raise our voice against the extremists, a canard if ever there was one. The failure of al-Qaida is evident in the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the revolutions sweeping Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Syria that has already dethroned some entrenched dictators. The uprisings have all been indigenous movements in which al-Qaida played no role whatsoever, an obvious indication of their irrelevance and insignificance.

The second is the catastrophic overreaction of the United States. The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban began in October 7, 2001, and had the support of most nations of the world. But when President George Bush, in concert with his diabolical VP Dick Cheney, decided to launch the Iraq war on false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connection with al-Qaida, America lost its moral bearing and purpose.

I remember joining a demonstration on March 28, 2003, in San Francisco, a week after the war began. About 2,000 Americans from all walks of life gathered to denounce the war - Quakers, Franciscan nuns and monks, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and many others. Those who spoke, including one of America’s foremost Islamic scholars, Hamza Yusuf, explained how this was not a war of Islam versus the West but of America waging an unjust, preemptive war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Recently, the Nobel economist Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote that President Bush’s response to the attacks “compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.” Truer words have rarely been written.

A conservative estimate puts America’s bill for fighting the two wars to at least $3.3 trillion, of which about $2 trillion accounts for the Iraq war. To put this in perspective, for every dollar that al-Qaida spent to pull off the Sept. 11 attacks, the cost to the United States has been an astonishing $6.6 million!

The deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, the erosion of values, and the staggering amount of money wasted, constitute one of the darkest chapters in U.S. history. How did values erode? Through repression of civil liberties, partisan definition of patriotism (“last refuge of the scoundrel”), wiretapping of American citizens, surveillance without judicial approval, torture, indefinite imprisonment, docile media acting as presidential mouthpiece, extraordinary rendition, and so on.

On this tenth anniversary of that infamous day, the question is: Did the 9/11 attacks make America weak? The attacks did not, but America’s overreaction and imperial overreach did. It is a lesson America can never afford to ignore.

Libya's Glorious Dawn

2011-08-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

Four decades of darkness is finally surrendering to a glorious dawn in Libya. A ragtag band of rebels transformed itself into a fighting force in a mere six months and overran Moammar Gadhafi's last stronghold around Tripoli. Although pockets of resistance remain and snipers loyal to Gadhafi still abound, the swiftness with which the rebels captured most of the capital, coming as it did in the holy month of Ramadan, will surely become the stuff of legend one day. For now, however, freedom lovers everywhere can rejoice that a tyrant has fallen. A song of Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) sums up what captive Libyans must be feeling: "Morning has broken, like the first morning. Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird."

Moammar Gadhafi's fall is more momentous than that of Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian army saw the handwriting on the wall when Tahrir Square erupted with the unflinching resolve of ordinary Egyptians and so wisely acceded to most of their demands. The Nile revolution was peaceful. Not so the Libyan revolution. Gadhafi and his goons made sure of that. The dictator vowed to fight to the last drop of his blood to defend his throne. Of course it was the blood of his loyalists that he was willing to shed, not his or his sons'.

But as the rebels organized themselves and reclaimed their land inch by inch, aided by NATO bombing, naval blockade and American aerial surveillance, the tide began to turn. Gadhafi's initial roar dissolved into a pathetic whimper. When caught, he will most likely face justice at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Such will increasingly be the fate of despots. Such will be the inevitable fate of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

The transformation of Muslim Middle East, though still incomplete, is perhaps the most significant event of the twenty-first century. Its effect will define the course of history in ways that are beyond the comprehension of even the most astute observers. But few signposts can be discerned:

1. Dictatorship in all its forms and manifestations, even the ones under the guise of democracy, is doomed. People who cowered in fear have discovered freedom from fear, a discovery that has gone viral around the world. Today’s invincible autocrat is tomorrow’s cowering prisoner. "A man can be destroyed,” wrote Hemingway, “but not defeated." The architects of the Arab revolution have proven this with their blood.

2. People in power can no longer use religion for political ends, at least not with the ease they were able to in the past. It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims killed since the Second World War have died at the hands of other Muslims. Invoking bogus threats to torture dissidents and perpetuate dynastic power will no longer work. A significant corollary of this is that more and more Muslims, particularly in the Middle East, will demand the separation of mosque and state.

3. Israel will be forced to confront reality and coexist with Palestinians in a two-state solution. The Muslim Middle East will go through yet more convulsions - tribal and sectarian conflicts will probably raise their ugly heads - before the democratic rule of law, transparency, accountability and enlightened governance take hold. When that happens, and it surely will, Israel will have to recognize that it is a part of the Middle East and not an outpost of "Western Civilization" transplanted in the middle of an alien and backward region. Likewise, extremist organizations from both sides will be marginalized as the benefits of good governance and the moral high ground become evident. In September, Palestinians will seek statehood at the United Nations. The United States will dutifully cast its veto. Such myopic policies will be much harder to justify in the transformed political landscape of the Middle East. In the coming months, the United States will recognize, as it has never recognized before, that “business as usual” in the Middle East will be too detrimental to its interests to be sustainable.

It is not just in the Middle East where the wind of change is blowing. People are rising up everywhere against corruption, injustice and state-sponsored violence. Consider how Anna Hazare, a little-known 74-year-old ascetic and Gandhi-disciple has catalyzed Indians to launch massive protests against corruption in the "world's largest democracy." We are witnessing such scenes everyday, aided by social media, and feel empowered to take our own stand against injustice and oppression.

The world’s epicenter of courage and commitment is now at the Green Square of Tripoli, newly and appropriately renamed Martyrs’ Square. Libyans are determined to rebuild their shattered nation on their own terms. They have made possible what was unthinkable only six months ago. Even though their dawn is tinged with the red of blood, there is no doubt that their land will soon be bathed in the bright sunshine of freedom.

Justice for Syrians

2011-08-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

Self-restraint and God-consciousness are the essence of fasting for Muslims in Ramadan, a month in which thirst and hunger can become a source of salvation for the believer. As one of the five pillars of Islam, fasting is mandatory for the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the ruler and the ruled.

Given this, Muslims and indeed, people of conscience everywhere, are trying to fathom the brutality and the bloodshed occurring in Syria now, in which a regime is waging an all-out war against its own people.

On the eve of Ramadan this year, tanks and troops of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad besieged the city of Hama, killing more than 200 people. The son seems determined to repeat what the father – Hafez al-Assad – did in 1982 when his military killed at least 10,000 people in that city in crushing a revolt.

The anti-government uprising began on March 18 when Syrians, emboldened by the Arab Spring, took to the streets to denounce the four decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. The Damascus regime first tried to blame foreign conspirators. When that didn’t work, it began fanning the flames of religious and ethnic conflicts. The sectarian plot fizzled as well when it became clear that members of all religious, ethnic groups and clans – Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds, Shias – were united in ousting Assad and his cronies. Protesters calling for national unity held up banners that read, “We are all Syrians and together we demand the ousting of the regime.”

Zagloul, a Syrian-American and a Silicon Valley executive, has just returned from a two-month trip to Damascus. I asked him about the mix of protesters in Syria. “I saw no sectarian divide,” he confirmed. “People from all walks of life and every ethnic background are participating.” He is hopeful that by the end of Ramadan, some dramatic changes for the better will occur in Syria. But he also knows that the situation is dire and the future uncertain.

Dictators resorting to “business as usual” have been helpless against the onrushing tsunami of Internet activism. Live videos and descriptions of the violence in Syria can be found on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media outlets.

Yet the truth is that the forces of Bashar Assad, led primarily by his two ruthless brothers, Maher and Rifaat, are killing with impunity Syrians in Hama, Homs, Deir al-Zour, Damascus and other cities. They are apparently convinced that international outrage against their atrocities will be no more than lip service. Protesters in the flashpoint city of Hama carried poignant banners that read “Your silence is killing us!”

But activity is beginning to replace passivity. Gulf Arab States – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – have called for stronger sanctions against the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain have recalled their ambassadors from Syria. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has demanded that Bashar Assad “stop the killing machine and end the bloodshed.”

One can argue that the Gulf States are not paragons of freedom themselves and so their call for reform in Syria smacks of hypocrisy. But that would be the wrong stand to take at this juncture when Syrians are dying by the thousands. We must not give in to political or ideological considerations and support any step to stop Assad’s killing machine.

Feras is a marketing consultant in Silicon Valley. He is following the ominous developments in the country of his birth with mounting anxiety. “I have an 85-year-old aunt in Hama,” he told me. “She has never stepped out of her home in the last ten years. But she was forced to flee with her two daughters to a border town when troops began their indiscriminate shelling. On hundred and forty-five of them were packed into a single bus.”

Although Feras has known of Assad’s campaign of terror, the “Ramadan Massacre” has shocked him. “All he cares about is power and his preference for bullets over basic rights.” But Feras is convinced that Syrians have reached a point of no return. “They have nothing to lose. They will win their freedom or they will die. Let’s pray it is the former.”

Feras fervently hopes that the United States, Europe and Middle-Eastern countries will freeze Syria’s assets, just as they did Libya’s. “But the situation is much more complicated in Syria, so NATO-led bombing, as in Libya, is not an option at this time. What will work is international pressure and isolation of the Assad regime.” He is in contact with sources inside Syria. “Every Friday after the Jumah prayers, and after the nightly Ramadan prayers, people gather to plan and organize protests. It is spreading all over, to Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and other cities.”

“Is there a unified opposition party?”

“Syrians have not known freedom for several decades. In Egypt, in spite of the authoritarian regimes, people had well-formed opposition groups with a history of organized protests. Not so in Syria, and so the logistics and the coordination will take some time. But it will happen.”

Human rights groups calculate that over 2,000 Syrians have been killed so far since the pro-democracy demonstrations began in March, not including those who have been tortured but somehow managed to survive. The United Nations Security Council has issued a toothless statement condemning the use of force against civilians but without any threat of sanctions. It also urges “all sides to act with restraint,” as if the protesters are equally to blame for the deaths.

The Council must impose tough sanctions against Syria and lay the groundwork for a war crimes investigation on Assad and his goons for the International Criminal Court in Hague. Likewise, the United States, the European Union, Turkey and the countries that consume Syrian oil – Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands – must step up pressure on Assad. He has lost all legitimacy and he must go. As Feras put it, “Nothing less will be acceptable to Syrians, particularly after the Ramadan Massacre.”

Nesbo's Norway

2011-07-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

An extremist decides that multiculturalism is diluting Norway’s “pure” race and undermining its Christian character and so goes on a rampage. He belongs to a small group of fascists who cannot escape from the prison of Norway’s past and wreaks vengeance on those he considers responsible for selling his country’s soul to the unwashed hordes of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants.

Is this a description of the 32-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik who took the lives of at least 92 people in Oslo and in the island of Utoya?

No, it is the description of the antagonist in Norway’s bestselling writer Jo Nesbo’s 2000 thriller, The Redbreast.

Sometimes the true state of a country is reflected more in the fiction of its perceptive writers than in the facts of its textbooks. Norway is a progressive country that often hosts weighty international conferences, the Oslo Accord of 1993 between Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel being one. Any threat of terrorism in that Nordic country is attributed to “Islamic extremists” and “radical Islam,” simply because it is the easy thing to do. A 2011 report on terrorism concluded that “the far-right and the far-left extremist communities do not represent a serious threat to Norwegian security.”

Don’t these pundits read their fellow Norwegian Jo Nesbo’s books? Can’t they at least allow for the possibility of lethal currents of extremism flowing beneath the placid surface of its seemingly peaceful society?

Harry Hole, the protagonist in Nesbo’s thrillers at one point asks, “what is it with our country?” The cerebral detective is frustrated by the vicious racism he encounters among officers in Oslo’s premier police academy and among obtuse politicians, and his inability to do anything about it.

Now Anders Romarheim, a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies says, “It was international jihadism we feared. What we have now is more painful in terms of a re-evaluation of ourselves.”

When news broke of the horrific killings in Oslo and Utoya, some in the media immediately floated possible links to Muslim extremist organizations, just as they did during the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995. After 9/11, this became so ingrained that we shuddered at the occurrence of mayhem anywhere, reflexively thinking that Muslims were responsible and thanking God when that turned out to be false.

I felt an enormous relief when Mehtab Afsar, the Secretary-General of the Islamic Council of Norway said, “This is our homeland, this is my homeland. I condemn these attacks, and the Islamic Council of Norway condemns these attacks, whoever is behind them.”

It is estimated that there are anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 Muslims in Norway, about 2% of a population of 5 million. They are mostly Pakistanis, Filipinos, Albanians, Somalis, Turks and Moroccans. Right-wing organizations regularly post virulent and hysterical articles with titles such as “Is Norway Becoming Muslim?” and “Norway is Under Attack by Islam!” Like extremists everywhere, they are in the minority but because of their singular focus on hate and violence, they can cause damage vastly out of proportion to their numbers.

The majority of Norwegians reject the homegrown terrorists and their nihilistic agenda but where they were indifferent to their shadowy presence before, they will now have to be particularly vigilant.

I do not support the labeling of Anders Breivik as a Christian fundamentalist. He is a fundamentalist, a fanatic, a racist, a brother to fundamentalists, fanatics and racists of all persuasions everywhere. That’s who he is and that’s how he must be viewed, and that’s how the Norwegian court must judge him when he stands trial for the cold-blooded murders.

There is too much violence in the world today and no society, culture or nation is exempt from it, as John Nebo’s complex thrillers emphasize. It lies dormant until it suddenly explodes and then horror and shock numb us, forcing us to reevaluate our easy opinions.

For Norwegians who have lost their children to Breivik’s carnage, we offer our prayers and condolences. The sunshine has gone out of their lives and although time is supposed to heal everything, it can rarely heal the anguish of parents who have lost their loved ones to the violence of madmen. Still, we say to them, “We are with you in your sorrow. May peace and acceptance find their way into your hearts and may your children find eternal peace in the presence of their Creator.”

Songs of Rabindranath Tagore

2011-07-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

In the charming, leafy town of Pleasanton in Northern California, Bengali-speaking Bay Area residents and their guests recently celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). There were discussions and documentaries on his life and writings by scholars and professors as well plays and dance dramas (snippets from Shyama, Chitrangada, Chandalika), but for me the draw were the songs. We listen to 'Rabindra Sangeet' all the time but the pleasure of listening to live performances in America is rare. You don't miss the chance when the opportunity arrives.

I came to listen to two of today's leading exponents of Tagore songs. One is from Bangladesh (population 190 million) and the other from West Bengal (population 90 million). As long as there is a single person left in the world whose mother tongue is Bengali, Tagore songs will continue to be sung and listened to. With 250 million and growing, there is no danger of Rabindra Sangeet disappearing anytime soon.

In the program over a recent weekend, the prelude to the main events contained many Tagore songs by local artists as well. I was stunned by their quality. One in particular (Mitali Bhawmik) sang some of the more intricate Tagore songs ('Ananda Dhara Bohiche Bhubane', to name one) with such panache that we rose as one to applaud her. We listened to two songs sung in a modern 'fusion' style by young women to appeal to today's youngsters. The first was a duet: "Ay Tobe Shohochori Hate Hate Dhori Dhori." The other was "Pran Chay Chokkhu Na Chai." The rousing renditions, accompanied by some nifty dance moves, showed how Tagore's music could translate to a contemporary context without losing its magical appeal.

Finally, on Saturday night, Rizwana Choudhury Bonya of Bangladesh took the stage. "Those of you who are from West Bengal where Rabindranath was born (capital - Kolkata) inherited the poet and his creations," she began before presenting us with a bouquet of Tagore songs. "Those of us who are from Bangladesh had to earn Rabindranath." As someone born in Bangladesh, I thought that was as succinct a statement as one could make about the two Banglas.

The songbird then began to sing, opening with "Ogo Tomar Chokkhu Diye." In no time we were transported to a magical world of love and devotion. The inimitable words and lyrics of Rabindranath came alive in her mesmerizing voice. She began with "Ogo Tomar Chokkhu Diye" and chose a combination of familiar and not-so-familiar songs, although the audience began clamoring for the familiar ones midway through the program. "Chinno Patar Bhasahai Toroni Eka Eka Kori Khela" was one of them. She had the audience singing two songs with her: "Jodi Tor Dak Shune Kao Na Ashe" and "Shokhi, Bhabona Kahare Bole." Audience participation is a way to keep the legacy of Tagore alive at the grassroots. She ended with "Kichui To Holona." If you want a glimpse into Tagore's genius, consider that Rabindranath composed this haunting song when he was only 20. The pathos is heartbreaking.

The thing with Rabindra-Sangeet is that anyone can sing them, or at least several of them, but it takes an artist of rare talent to sing them well and elevate them to works of art. Trained in Shanti Niketan under the late great Kanika Bannerjee, she has become the epitome of Tagore songs, the touchstone by which other Tagore singers are measured. When her program ended two hours later, we knew we had just been rewarded with an unforgettable experience.

The following night, it was Srikanata Acharya's turn. This Kolkata artist is known for his versatility. He is as much at home with Tagore songs as with modern Bengali songs. In this, he seems to be following in the footsteps of the late Hemanta Mukherjee who dominated the Bengali music scene for almost half-a-century. Srikanta paid homage to all the artists of the past who brought Tagore's music to the masses, artists such Pankaj Mallick, Shanti Dev Ghosh, Hemanta Mukherjee, Kanika Bannerjee, Suchitra Mitra, Dwijen Mukherjee and Debabrata Biswas. He forgot to mention Chinmoy Chatterjee, an unintentional oversight surely, considering that he frequently sings many Tagore songs ("Prem Eshechillo Nisshobdo Charane," "Tumi Shondhar Meghmala," "Mon Je Bole Chini Chini") often associated with Chinmoy.

Srikanta has a full and expressive voice that helps him interpret Tagore songs with the fluidity they deserve. He introduced many of the songs with recollections by those who were with Rabindranath at the moment of their creation. These included "Jete Jete Ekla Pothe Niveche Mor Bati," and "Gram Chara Oi Rangamatir Poth," among others. He sang until almost midnight and we savored every moment. I have heard him on CDs and YouTube but a live performance where you see and listen to the artist is an unforgettable experience.

Rabindranath had himself observed that even if all his poems, essays, novels, short stories and dance dramas were forgotten, he would still probably be remembered for his songs. How true! And of his songs, he made this supremely democratic statement: "Don't ask who I am presenting my songs to. They lie in the dust by the roadside for anyone to pick up and honor."

And so we do, so we do.

Literature's Enigmatic Encounter: Tagore and Ocampo

2011-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

In September of 1924, Rabindranath Tagore received an invitation to attend Peru’s commemorative centennial celebration. A hundred years before, led by Simon Bolivar, Peru had defeated Spanish Colonial forces to become an independent nation. Peruvians wanted the Bengali Nobel Laureate to participate in the festivities marking the historical event.

Tagore, 63, had recently returned to India from an exhausting four month trip to China and Japan. He needed rest but with wanderlust in his blood, the poet found the invitation from Peru irresistible. With family members and friends to give him company part of the way, Tagore sailed on the ship Haruna-Maru from Colombo for Europe. The Diary of the Westbound Traveler is a work from this period, along with several poems he composed on the Haruna-Maru.

From France, with Leonard Elmhirst as his secretary, Tagore boarded the Andes bound for Argentina. He had met the idealistic Elmhirst in the United States in 1920. Moved by Tagore’s vision of rural development, Elmhirst had raised money from wealthy American patrons and came to Shantiniketan the following year to organize Rabindranath's village projects.

Tagore fell ill on the Andes within a few days and became bedridden. But the poems kept flowing from his pen – “Stranger,” “Absent-Minded,” “Hope,” “Wind,” “Dream,” “Sea,” and many others. After three weeks at sea, on November 6, the ship docked at Buenos Aires. Flu had severely weakened the poet; further traveling was out of question. Without prolonged rest he would be risking his life, doctors told him. Reluctantly, he had to give up on the invitation from Peru.

The year 1914 was one of the darkest in Victoria Ocampo's life. Two years before, at the age of twenty two, she had married the man of her dream, anticipating a life of respect and love and free from dogma and prejudice. She had reasons to dream, for in Monaco Estrada she thought she had found a sensitive, handsome young man who considered her an equal and approved of her passion for literature and art. Although born into wealth and privilege, she was not immune to the prevailing social custom where women were treated as chattels, a legacy of Spanish Colonialism that was sustained and supported by Argentina's Catholic Church. For a woman yearning to break free from male injustice meant social ostracism and disgrace. The strong willed and impulsive Victoria had felt like a captive even in her parents’ home. Life with Estrada promised freedom and creativity.

Barely had her honeymoon begun when Victoria’s dream was shattered, for the man of her dream turned out to be as just as tyrannical and chauvinistic. She had traded one form of captivity with another. For over a decade Victoria would live through this loveless and sometimes violent marriage, fearful of hurting her parents, until finally one day she summoned the courage to obtain a legal separation.

In 1914, however, she had begun to despair of life. With no one to turn to and none in whom to confide her sorrow, she came across a copy of André Gide’s French translation of Gitanjali, a collection of poems by a Bengali poet named Rabindranath Tagore who had won the Nobel Prize for literature the year before. The depth and beauty of what she read stunned Victoria. The ray of hope emanating from those poems pierced the darkness around her. The spiritual energy in such lines as

... Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it
Into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel
that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe ...

lifted her above her personal tragedy. In the illuminating biography, Victoria Ocampo Against the Wind and the Tide, the author Doris Meyer quotes Victoria many years later to describe the effect Tagore's poetry had on her:

"I remember the moment and the exact spot where this took place. I was leaning against a white marble fireplace in a room upholstered in light gray silk. The house no longer exists. Neither do those I was afraid of hurting, or those who were hurting me. Nor does the poet who was bringing me the gift of tears, as not even the closest friend would have been able to do. The images which now live only in my memory will cease to exist together with it, as easily, as irrevocably as all that has preceded them into nothingness.

But the Gitanjali over which I was weeping will remain. "

Not knowing who he was and separated by barriers of language and culture, Tagore nonetheless became her spiritual companion. She had found hope, a reason for living.

That Tagore would pass through Buenos Aires on his way to Peru became known in Argentina in September of 1924. The possibility of meeting in person the poet who had saved her a decade earlier from mental and spiritual abyss could be a momentous event in her life. In preparation, she began reading as much of Tagore's translated works as possible. She had help, for in one of those mysterious ways in which an artist can touch the souls of receptive readers in distant shores, Tagoré had become a major literary figure in South America at the time, due mostly to the translations of his work in Spanish by a remarkable literary couple named Juan Ramón and Zenobia Camprubi, who translated twenty-two books by Tagore between 1914 and 1922. The translations also influenced other major literary figures, including José Ortega y Gassett, a leading Spanish intellectual of the time, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda in Chile, and Octavio Paz in Mexico.

When the Andes arrived at Buenos Aires on November 6, no one was more prepared to receive Tagore on Argentinean soil than Victoria Ocampo.

Complete rest in Buenos Aires upon embarkation, the doctors had advised Tagore, but where? Victoria was quick to seize the opportunity. Renting a villa named “Miralrio” (River View) in the suburb of San Isidro, not far from the Villa Ocampo where she lived, and selling a diamond tiara as payment, Victoria offered its peace and solitude to Tagore and Elmhirst. Gratefully they accepted. Victoria’s own household staff was to care for Tagore but she was too shy and awestruck to reside in the rented villa herself.

For two months, Tagore convalesced at San Isidro, his home away from home. The villa was situated on the bank of the River Plate and the view from its balcony was spectacular. In Victoria’s own words:

I had instinctively led Tagore to that balcony immediately upon his entering Miralrio, certain that if he was to take anything away on leaving it, it would be this: the memory of the landscape that would meet his eyes morning and evening, with its changing light. That landscape was the only gift worthy of him.

The flowing river and the lush trees and flowers of San Isidro healed Tagore’s body and nourished his spirit. The three of them, Tagore, Victoria, and Elmhirst, took long walks along the bank of the Plate. In Victoria, Rabindranath saw a woman of uncommon beauty and kindness, whose intelligence, sensitivity and spiritual yearning left the deepest impression in the poet. He was thirty years older than her; the odes he wrote to her "Guest," "Fear," and "Last Spring", to name only three were suffused with tenderness and poignancy. Yet there was also a certain tension between the three, as suggested by Elmhirst in a letter written to his fiancée in England:

Our hostess (V.O.) was quite – next to the poet himself – the most difficult person I ever came across … Besides having a keen intellectual understanding of his books, she was in love with him – but instead of being content to build a friendship on the basis of intellect, she was in a hurry to establish the kind of proprietary right over him which he absolutely would not brook … she was a bundle of prides, intellectual, aristocratic, and physical, against which, and their ferocious hold upon her nature, she was constantly at war. For her, then, I was either bridge or barrier, obstacle or convenience as occasion turned out …

During the Tagore birth centenary in 1961 in India, Victoria herself wrote of her relationship with Tagore: “Little by little he partially tamed the young animal, by turns wild and docile, who did not sleep, dog-like, on the floor outside his door, simply because it was not done.”

After two months at San Isidro, Tagore began to feel restless. Driven by an imaginary sense of duty that he was to regret later, he and Elmhirst left Buenos Aires on January 4, 1925 for Europe on board the Julio Cesaro, in staterooms arranged for them by Victoria. But Tagore could not forget her. Memory of Victoria continued to haunt and inspire him in his later years. He composed at least two songs around her: I know you, O maiden from a faraway land! Your dwelling is across the sea ... and On the green bank by the blue sea, I have seen the incomparable while passing by ... From the Julio Cesaro, he wrote to her: “… I believe that your love may help me in my fulfillment … I have lost most of my friends because they asked me for themselves, and when I said I was not free to offer myself, they thought I was proud. I have deeply suffered from this over and over again – and therefore I always feel nervous whenever a new gift of friendship comes in my way. But I accept my destiny and if you also accept it we shall forever remain friends.” And on the eve of his death in 1941, sixteen years after bidding farewell to Victoria in Buenos Aires, he wrote:

"How I wish I could once again find my way to that foreign land where waits for me the message of love! The dreams of yesterday will wing their way back and, fluttering softly, build their nest anew. Sweet memories will restore to the lute its lost melody ... Her language I knew not, but what her eyes said will forever remain eloquent in its anguish. "

Neither could she forget him. Tagore had invited her to visit him in India but time and distance proved insurmountable. Nevertheless, she corresponded regularly with him, meeting him once more in Paris in 1930 where she organized an exhibit to introduce to the art world Tagore’s unusual drawings and sketches she had discovered at San Isidro. She followed India's struggle for independence with keen interest, exchanging lively ideas with him about how to expel the British Raj from the subcontinent. Through it all, she always gratefully acknowledged his deep, steadying influence on her.

Victoria Ocampo went on to become a leader in the movement to secure women’s rights in her country and emerged as a star in the literary circles of Latin America. As an ardent feminist she was clearly ahead of her time. As essayist translator, her work has been compared to the leading twentieth century women of letters. In 1931 she founded the Spanish literary magazine Sur (South). As its editor, guiding spirit and financial backer, she transformed it into the foremost magazine of its kind in Latin America. Through its pages, she launched the career of Jorgé Luis Borges and introduced to her countrymen such writers as Gabriela Mistral, T. S. Eliot, Octavio Paz, André Gide, Aldous Huxley, Albert Camus and many others. By publishing neglected writers and taking on unpopular subjects, her name became synonymous with literary integrity and freedom of thought. She was jailed in 1953 for lashing out against the regime of Juan Peron. International pressure forced the dictator to release her from prison after twenty six days. In 1977 she was elected to the Argentine Academy of Letters, the first woman to be accorded the honor.

The reputation of Argentina’s “Queen of Letters” has grown steadily since her death in 1979 at the age of 88. It is likely that Victoria Ocampo will be remembered long after another Argentine, Eva Peron, has become a footnote in that country’s history.

Tagore composed sixty one poems on his voyage to and from South America in 1924, including twenty six in Argentina that are considered among the most lyrical and evocative of his poems. To these were added sixteen more that he had composed earlier that year and the collection was published as Puravi, which means ‘Easterner’ and is also the name of an evening raga in Indian classical music. To whom did Tagore dedicate Purabi? To “Vijaya,” the Bengali name he chose for the woman “who filled my days abroad with grace and beauty,” Victoria.

Two Movies

2011-06-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

You have to have the patience of a tree to enjoy “The Tree of Life.” That’s the problem in this enigmatic and “cosmic” movie. Normally we don’t go to the theater to test our patience; we go mostly to have a good time. It can be a thriller, a comedy, a tragedy, a whatever, as long as it engages and surprises us, makes us laugh or maybe even cry.

But “The Tree of Life” that won the Palme d’Or Prize this year, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t quite fit any category. It is too arty for its own good and the viewer is left wondering if director Terrence Malick isn’t trying too hard to impress with big ideas.

The story itself is actually quite moving. It follows the ups and downs – mostly downs - of the O’Brien family in the small town of Waco, Texas, in the 1950s. The father (Brad Pitt) is a stern and humorless patriarch who looks down on his three sons because he feels they do not measure up to him. They are not macho enough, intelligent enough and gifted enough. He is, of course, tragically oblivious of his own fundamental failings. The mother (Jessica Chastain) clings to the idea that love alone can conquer all and tries to bring a sense of normalcy to her children’s upbringing with grace and sweetness. When the middle child dies, she looses her poise. “Lord, why? Where were you? Who are we to you? Answer me?” her character asks in whispered voice-overs.

While life at home for the three kids is a fearful drill of taking orders from the father (“Don’t call me dad, call me father”), outside is an idyllic world of grass and sky and stream and meadows and friends. These impressionistic snippets are redolent of universal childhood and Malick captures them with sensitivity. What makes them also poignant is the tension at home.

At the ritualistic family dinner, one of the children cannot take the father’s overbearing behavior anymore and asks him to “keep quiet.” “What did you say?” screams the father. He grabs the child and locks him in a room. “You have turned my children against me,” he shouts at his wife. “You undermine everything I try to do.” The hunter is defending himself by claiming to be the hunted!

The wife has had enough. She retaliates by pushing him away. He immobilizes her with a viselike grip and releases her only when convinced that the last ounce of her resistance has sipped away.

But the father is not a one-dimensional character. He has the capacity for tenderness, even if not realized. As he prepares to play the piano one day, his middle son begins to strum on a guitar in the porch. The father hesitates, shocked by the musical gift of his son, and refrains from playing until the son has finished strumming. What makes the scene heartbreaking is the father’s inability to express his love and admiration. He simply cannot bring himself to say, “Son, that was lovely. Play for me more.”

All this would have made a touching, growing-up story of childhood, sadness, tragedy and ultimate redemption but Malick sandwiches it between heavy symbolism and metaphors that seem to take up the bulk of the movie’s 2 ¼ hours. We are treated to an interminable stretch of the creation of the universe, volcanoes, waves, dinosaurs, planets, asteroids and everything in between, just in case you miss the point that the director deals with heavy-duty ideas of chance, life, morality and mortality. The cinematography is gorgeous (I kept thinking it was the movie version of the great photographer Ernst Haas’s book, The Creation), but what’s the point? Just get on with the story, I wanted to tell Malick, and let us decide what to make of the impenetrable, big questions of life.

I will still recommend this movie because it shows what a father ought not to do to be a good father. Although “The Tree of Life” is a period piece from mid-20^th century, it is shocking how many fathers in our days are still stuck in that mindset. Fatherhood is fraught with tension, indifference, arrogance and often, downright cruelty. With Father’s Day coming up this Sunday, “The Tree of Life” is a movie a father should give as a gift to himself, to become the antithesis of the character portrayed by Brad Pitt.

“Midnight in Paris” is a delightful ode to the Jazz Age Paris of the 1920s when heavyweights of literature, painting, movies and music took up residence in the City of Light. It is Woody Allen’s most imaginative work to-date and connects the past to the present to put our preoccupation with money and fame in context. Unlike Allen’s recent movies, heavy with ambiguity and symbolism and the dark currents flowing in the human heart, “Midnight” is a beguiling movie to savor for its romance, charm and humor.

Gil is a disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter (Owen Wilson) who travels from Southern California to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) with the idea of settling down there. He is fed up with Hollywood. He has no desire writing scripts on-demand by tyrannical conglomerates. He wants to put the finishing touches to a novel that he dreams will set the literary world on fire when published. He wants this to happen in the artistic center of the Universe - Paris.

His fiancée, of course, has other ideas. Inez is as materialistic as they come, an epitome of conspicuous consumption. Ditto her parents who are also visiting Paris. The clash of the couple’s opposing life-view must be resolved, but how?

Walking back to his hotel alone one night, Gil loses his way in the alleys of Paris. At the stroke of midnight, a magical kind of taxi pulls up as he sits exhausted by the pavement. Its passengers invite him to join them. He is hesitant but buoyed by their enthusiasm, gets in. He is brought to a soiree where he runs into … Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway. He has traveled across time and arrived at the Paris of 1920s!

The seamless way in which Allen does this is itself magical. As the midnight encounters continue on subsequent nights, Gil meets Picasso, Gertrude Stein (who promises to review his manuscript), Matisse, Salvador Dali, T.S. Eliot, Luis Bunuel, Man Ray and many others. Allen leavens the story with parodies of these famous characters. His parody of Hemingway, clipped sentences and all (“No subject is terrible if the story is true and if the prose is clean and honest”), is particularly hilarious.

Stein approves of Gil’s novel and that decides the issue for him. He will settle in Paris to pursue his literary muse. Inez throws a fit but only for a few minutes. She adjusts, the quintessential material girl, and banishes Gil from her life.

The movie ends on a happy note, though, and you find making a mental note to yourself: “I am going to have to see this movie one more time.”

Apple's Ascendance

2011-06-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

For Steve Jobs, each Apple product - iPod, iPhone, iPad, iAnyThing - must not only be a marvel of technology but also a work of art. This confluence of function, design, aesthetics, software and hardware has captivated consumers around the globe and transformed Apple into the most valuable technology company in the world.

At the recent Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, the visionary chiel of Apple unveiled another service – iCloud - that is likely to increase the company's lead over competition.

After some failed attempts, Apple has perfected the technology to eliminate the need for manually synchronizing content to smart devices. iCloud will allow users to store content - music, photos, backups, contacts, calendars, email and ebooks - on Apple’s remote servers (“cloud”) and have it automatically pushed to their iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac or PC via WiFi.

iCloud is free. Each user gets 5GB of free storage, more than plenty for most consumers. More storage will require an annual subscription.

The term “automatically” is a critical differentiator. Apple users will not need to manually upload content to iCloud; it will happen, well, automatically. This is where Apple leapfrogs over its competitors. Both Amazon and Google have announced their own cloud services but they require manual uploading, a boring and time-consuming process that looks primitive compared to Apple’s.

The only “restriction” for iCloud to work seamlessly is that the devices will have to belong to the Apple ecosystem, that is, all the ‘i’ devices across the Apple universe. The company has ensured it by integrating iCloud technology into its operating systems – the iOS for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and the Mac OS for its laptop and desktop computers. All Apple devices will be able to “talk” to the cloud. Users will be able to move content to and from the cloud no matter where they are, as if they are communicating with their local hard drives. iCloud will also automatically backup all your mobile devices.

Will this lock current and future users into Apple products? Steve Jobs certainly hopes so. iCloud will become available in September with the release of iOS 5.

What does iCloud do to the current state of consumer technology? It profoundly disrupts it. As Jobs said: “We’re going to demote PC and Mac to just be a device. We’re going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.” The Post-PC world is upon us.

One company that Apple has completely overshadowed is Microsoft. Every time Apple releases a product or a service, Microsoft comes across as a plodding behemoth and a weak imitator. When Apple launched its wildly successful iPod in 2001, Microsoft followed with Zune in 2006 but withdrew it from the market in 2010. It was a no-contest: Zune was inferior to iPod in every way. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it took Microsoft 3 years before releasing a competitive product, Windows Phone 7. But the Microsoft phone is a distant third after the iPhone and Google’s Android phones. Microsoft’s purchase of Skype in May for $8.5 billion has left many industry analysts scratching their heads.

In May of 2010, Apple surpassed Microsoft as the world’s biggest technology company based on market value, after Apple almost went out of business in 1990. Apple now has a market value of about $320 billion, more than the combined value of Microsoft ($200 billion) and Intel ($115 billion)! The only other company in the world that has a greater market value is ExxonMobil ($390 billion), the oil company. Industry experts are speculating that Apple may overtake ExxonMobil in the near future.

While for the last 10 years, Microsoft stock has been stuck at about $25 a share, Apple’s stock soared from $11 a share in 2001 to its current value of $330, a rise of over 3000%!

The bulk of Microsoft’s revenue continues to be generated by its two cash cows, the Windows operating system and the Office suite. But as the digital hub moves from the PC to the cloud, and as the iPad relentlessly cuts into the sale of Windows PCs, the top technology company of the ‘80s and the ‘90s appears to be six or seven steps behind Apple.

There is no one with the vision and business acumen of Steve Jobs at Microsoft. Bill Gates, his closest competitor, left Microsoft in 2008, and while the current CEO Steve Ballmer is a talented manager, he is no Bill Gates and certainly no Steve Jobs. Recently, when a respected money manager asked Steve Ballmer to step down and pass on the torch to someone else, Microsoft stock immediately went up. Microsoft sorely needs a new vision and a new style of thinking at the top to regain the glory of its yesteryears.

Apple is on a roll. How long can this last? Just as empires rise and fall, so do technology companies. Today’s colossus is tomorrow’s also-ran. Yet Jobs seems to have found a way to keep reinventing Apple. He is currently battling pancreatic cancer but the vision he has laid out for his company and the creativity he has unleashed among his engineers will probably help Apple continue its dominance in mindshare and market share for several years to come.

As our gadgets become smarter and smarter, do we run the risk of becoming dumber and dumber? After all, if our smart devices can do our work for us and even think for us, what is left for us to do other than to scroll screens and push buttons for titillation and entertainment? Sure, we can create documents and post opinions and search databases and look up references and be connected to each other and to the cloud 24x7, but will our creativity be sucked out of us in that mode of mostly passive consumption? Smart devices may give us instant access to the world’s storehouse of knowledge but unless we set aside time for reflection and assimilation, it is difficult to see how intelligent gadgets can help produce a Fermi or a Tagore.

Justice in an Imperfect World

2011-05-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

In a perfect world, justice delayed is indeed justice denied, but we live in an imperfect world and, therefore, justice delayed sometimes has to be considered as justice served.

Such is the case with Serbian commander Ratko Mladic, architect of the slaughter of 8,000 children, women and men in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995. Sixteen years after committing genocide and crimes against humanity, Mladic was arrested in Serbia on May 26 and now awaits extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Srebrenica has become synonymous with mass murder and ethnic cleansing, comparable in intensity to Nazi atrocities against the Jews during World War II. Together with Radovan Karadzic, currently awaiting his own trial for crimes against humanity, Mladic demanded that his troops use rape as a weapon of war. The siege of Sarajevo that the two orchestrated lasted from 1992-1995 and took the lives of an estimated 10,000 Roman Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims. The cruelty was unrelenting, the savagery unmatched.

Mladic was driven by a sense of himself as a savior of his people and as the avenger of historical events that took place almost two centuries ago when Ottoman Turks ruled what is now Serbia. The death of his 23-year-old daughter by suicide in 1994 only increased his thirst for revenge.

Mladic’s arrest, and that of Karadzic in July 2008, sends a strong signal to the world’s despots that their days are numbered, that the long arm of international law will eventually flush them out from any dirty corner of the world they may be hiding in, and bring them to justice.

This is particularly important for Arab tyrants who, for decades, have been torturing and imprisoning their people at will while looting the national treasury for supporting their sybaritic lifestyles.

The Tunisian dictator Ben Ali fled the country when his people rose in revolt against him in January this year. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and his sons were arrested in April for corruption, crimes and using deadly violence against protesters.

As long as the rule of law, and not vengeance, dictates the fate of these modern-day pharaohs, there is reason for optimism, although much remains to be done in a region where hereditary monarchy and oligarchy seems to have become the norm.

Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi has been killing Libyans with impunity since he seized power in 1969. He has never tolerated the slightest dissent and deployed spies and secret police to subjugate his people. Since the uprising against him in February, he has killed thousands of Libyans with the help of mercenaries. He has gone into hiding as NATO targets him and his sycophants in and around Tripoli. International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo is seeking arrest warrants against Gadhafi, his son Saif al-Islam and spy chief Abdullah al-Sensussi for crimes against humanity.

In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh refuses to bow to people’s will, adamantly clinging to power that he has held for 32 years. Hundreds of Yemenis have been killed and undoubtedly more will die in the coming days.

The situation is grimmest in Syria where Bashar Assad has let loose shadowy, mafia-style gunmen to kill protesters. The gunmen openly shoot people they think are a danger to Assad’s regime. They confiscate and grab whatever they like, be it cars, houses, or even women. So far, Assad’s loyalists and security forces have killed over 1,000 Syrians.

The similarity between Assad and Mladic is frightening. When the Syrian uprising began in March in the southern city of Dar’a, Assad ordered his troops to lay siege to the city, as Mladic did in Sarajevo, shutting off electricity, water and telephones. The army arrested schoolchildren who scrawled ant-government graffiti on walls and imprisoned hundreds of young men simply because of their age. There's also precedent in the family. Hafez Assad, Bashar Assad's father, laid siege to the city of Hama in 1982 and killed some twenty thousand Syrians as the world stood silently by.

Luis-Moreno Ocampo must urgently seek arrest warrants also against Bashar Assad and his brother Maher Assad, head of the elite Republican Guard. His troops continue to fire indiscriminately on peaceful protesters and funeral marchers in Syrian cities.

What these despots never anticipated was the reach of social media. Confronted with Twitter, Facebook and the likes, they appear frustrated even as the killing goes on. When government-appointed goons fire on protesters, the image is instantly broadcast across the globe. When a prisoner is tortured, the act is caught on camera and becomes instant news.

A young, web-savvy generation has found in technology an enabler that aids their revolution. They have lost their fear. There is no stopping them now as they fight and die for freedom and justice.

Generals and dictators who commit genocide against their perceived enemies or their own people cannot escape justice. It may take decades or it may take months, but they will have to account for what they have done and pay the price in courts of law. That is the new reality.

Rabindranath Tagore

2011-05-08T10:37:00.001-07:00

Today is the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali poet whose protean genius enthralls millions of Bengali-speaking people to this day. That he has been largely forgotten in the West after he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for Gitanjali (Song-Offerings) is a cause for sorrow, for his poems and songs remain a timeless source of inspiration.

When Tagore was born in Kolkata, India, the American Civil War had just begun. Leo Tolstoy was reaching the heights of his powers as a novelist. James Clerk Maxwell had published his electromagnetic equations. The world was in the throes of a dramatic transformation. Tagore's contributions to literature and the vision he articulated for a world where tyranny had no place and freedom was everyone's birthright hastened this transformation.

Tagore went on to create a body of work greater in scope and power than Gitanjali, His true genius bloomed after he won the Nobel Prize, a fact unique in the history of literature.

A significant amount of Tagore's work is infused with a vision of greatness he saw possible in his native land, a confluence of civilizations due to Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Skihs, Jains, Paris, Christians, Mongols, Dravidians and Aryans. India, as he saw it, was greater than the sum of its parts, a vision that continues to challenge India of today.

Britain in Tagore's time ruled India with an iron hand. But the rulers were becoming nervous. A young activist named Mohandas Gandhi had returned from South Africa in 1915 to lead the nationalist movement. becoming a proponent of Satyagraha (eagerness for truth, otherwise known as passive resistance) to British rule. Although Tagore and Gandhi differed on methods by which to achieve independence, both believed fervently in regenerating their people people by curbing their communal instincts. Both believed that India's hope lay in forging unity among people of different races and religions.

Politics did not interest Rabindranath but that did not keep him from boldly opposing British tyranny.
When government troops led by English officers opened fire on a political gathering in Amritsar in 1919, killing 379 Indians and wounding scores of others, Tagore renounced the knighthood England had bestowed on him four years earlier. As a poet, he felt it was the strongest statement he could make to draw world attention to the crime.

It cost him friendships in the literary circles of Europe and popularity even in America, but he
considered this act one of the high points of his life. It was also during this time that he composed some of his most powerful poems against tyranny and injustice. "Question" is a poem that stirs deep emotions in its impassioned plea for understanding sorrow and tragedy in a world meant to be just and filled with grace.

When Gandhi was imprisoned without trial in 1932, he condemned it. In a letter to England's Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, he warned that the British were closing the door on peaceful negotiations with India.

Tagore was self-taught. Attempts by his parents to educate him in schools completely failed. Young Rabindranath found conventional classrooms suffocating. In 1901, he founded an experimental school at Shantiniketan (Abode of Peace) near Kolkata, free from traditional restrictions. Classes were held in open air and joy in learning was the priority.

By 1921, the school had evolved into Vishwa-Bharati (World) University where students from all over India came to study. Tagore saw in it a model of his vision, of an India greater than the sum of its parts. It is a testimony to Tagore's ideal that funding for the University came from both Hindus and Muslims. A frequent visitor to Shantiniketan was a young politician named Jawaharlal Nehru, whose only daughter, Indira Gandhi, was then a student at the World University.

Tagore did not live long enough to see the end of the British Raj and the partition of the sub-continent along religious lines in 1947, He died six years earlier, still nurturing vision of a harmonious India, as riots were flaring.

In "The Religion of Men," a set of lectures delivered at Oxford in 1930, Tagore said: "Freedom in the mere sense of independence has no content, and therefore no meaning. Perfect freedom lies in a harmony of relationship."

From Jalabad to Abbottabad and Back

2011-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

The distance from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to Abbottabad, Pakistan, is 158.9 miles, or approximately 160 miles. Let's say that half of this distance lies in Afghanistan and half in Pakistan.

This means that the four AH-60 Black Hawk stealth choppers (if published reports are to be believed) that the SEAL commandos used to kill Osama Bin Laden flew for half of 320 miles, that is, 160 miles round trip inside Pakistan.

Typical speed of these choppers range from 140-160 mph. Using the lower limit as the average speed of the choppers over mountainous terrain at night implies that they flew in Pakistan's airspace for just over an hour. Add 40 minutes to that for the operation itself, an additional 10 minutes to destroy the damaged helicopter, and the total time the commandos spent in Pakistan amounts to no more than 2 hours.

Did U.S. forces jam Pakistani radars? Who knows, but the fact is that 2 hours is too long for a country not to be aware that its airspace has been violated. Pakistan's intelligence service and the army probably were complicit in the operation. If so, that was a good thing. After all, if Pakistani forces killed bin Laden or got into a confrontation with the commandos in the terrorist's compound, it would have been disastrous for the Muslim nation.

All's well that ends well. The terrorist mastermind has been eliminated. Al-Qaida has received a debilitating blow. The world is safer. And Muslims can go about toppling dictators in the Middle East for tyranny to end, freedom to triumph and an Arab renaissance to begin.

On the Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Justice must be served because, unlike revenge, justice is a moral imperative. Without justice, there can be no peace, no progress and no closure.

With the commando raid in Abbottabad that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, there is now a sense of closure, not just for the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks but for Muslims as well. The violent ideology of bin Laden and al-Qaida held Muslims captive for a decade and created existential difficulties for them. With the demise of the terrorist mastermind, Muslims, especially American Muslims, heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Tahir Anwar, the Imam of the South Bay Islamic Association of San Jose, California, struggled with words to express his relief. “It is actually beyond relief,” he said. “Beside killing thousands of innocent people, Bin Laden damaged our religion and society. Other than a few extremists, his message of violence never resonated with Muslims. He was a marginal figure who inflicted tremendous suffering on people. I am happy that the head of the snake has been cut-off and there is now one less evil person on earth.”

The Quran is clear on the question of justice. “O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor, for Allah can best protect both.” (4:135)

Dr. Rajabally, a frequent speaker in Islamic conferences who also runs a shelter for abused Muslim women and victims of domestic violence in the San Francisco Bay Area, hopes for two developments to occur in the wake of bin Laden’s death. First, that the recruitment of the vulnerable to fanatical causes around the globe will stop and second, that the U.S. government will treat American-Muslims as an ally in the fight against terrorists and not subject them to racial profiling and similar indignities. “Islam is for justice,” said Rajabally. “Bin Laden committed injustice on a global scale. He gave Islam and Muslims a bad name. He treated Muslims who did not agree with his violent methods – the overwhelming majority of Muslims – as his number one enemy. We are grateful that justice has been finally served.”

Bin Laden was no martyr. He created a personality cult out of his feral fantasy and unbounded egotism, even as America helped create the monster that he became. Many impressionable young Muslims unfortunately fell under his sway only to undermine their faith and waste their lives. Bin Laden preached an ideology of violence in the name of Islam that was rooted not in theology but in ruthless political ambition.

The Arab Spring that is currently transforming the Middle East is proof of how insignificant bin Laden had become. One could argue that he still wielded some influence among the Arabs but after the Tunisian uprising, he became completely irrelevant. While he tried to channel Muslim anger against U.S. foreign policy for his own political hegemony, the revolutions by Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis and Syrians are signs that Muslims are taking responsibility for their own condition instead of blaming others for it. In that context, ideologues like bin Laden lose all credibility.

American-Muslims were heartened by President Obama when he said “… the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam … Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al-Qaida has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

In spite of these considerations, I must confess to being disturbed by the raucous celebration that broke out when bin Laden’s death was announced. How can the death of a human being, no matter how vile, be a cause for celebration and exultation? What should have been a somber occasion turned into a festival with street-dancing and fist-pumping. There is something morally repulsive and spiritually eroding in taking pleasure in the death of a human being.

With the bin Laden "event" behind him, Barack Obama has all but ensured a second-term for himself as president of the United States. Unless something goes horribly awry, and this president has proved extraordinarily lucky in everything he has done so far to make that possibility remote, look for Obama to deliver his second inaugural speech in January of 2013.

Now that bin Laden is dead, America must get out of Afghanistan and Iraq fast. Unlike George Bush, Barack Obama can claim that the mission has indeed been accomplished. There is no need to linger in those countries anymore. What should have been a war on ideas after 9/11 became two viciously polarizing wars of death and destruction, costing thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Only in withdrawal can come the ultimate closure.

2011-04-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wael Ghonim is the 30-year-old revolutionary who helped harness the power of social media to mobilize Egyptians and hasten the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.

Addressing Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area on a recent visit, Ghonim reflected on his experience and on the unfinished revolutions currently sweeping the Arab Middle East.

“While a small fraction of Egyptians was living the good life, most Egyptians were living without dignity for decades,” said Ghonim, currently on leave as a Google Middle East marketing manager. “That’s what finally forced the Tahrir Square revolution on 25th January. For years, Mubarak and his family and cronies kept stealing the country’s assets while torturing dissidents. Many Egyptians were surviving by eating out of street-corner trash.”

But Ghonim’s message was one of hope and optimism. He believes that the new Egypt will be fundamentally different from the old. But it will require patience, vigilance and more sacrifice, because the battle for a life of dignity and freedom for Egyptians is far from over.

“We need to shock the world one more times,” he said, “by showing that the fall of a dictator can be followed by a government of transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Even if it takes Egypt 2-3 years to succeed, it will send a strong signal to dictators and oppressors everywhere that they can be overthrown by people power.”

The striking thing about the Tahrir revolution was that there was no hero and no leader to lead the masses. Egyptians led themselves. “People often look to leaders to tell them what to do. If the recent events in Egypt have taught us anything, it is that we don’t need leaders for revolutions to succeed.”

In Tahrir Square, Ghonim did not see anyone engaging in self-promotion. Young Egyptians used the Web to harness the wisdom of the people, even as Mubarak’s regime tried to block Internet access. Physicians treated the wounded. Volunteers cleaned the streets. People kept vigil against government goons. Women fed the hungry and cared for the sick. Christians and Muslims joined hands. There was a unity of purpose.

Until the revolution, Egyptians were fatalistic. They were resigned to the Mubarak clan ruling Egypt forever. It all changed in January when, inspired by Tunisians, Egyptians threw away the yoke of fear and took charge of their own destiny.

There is now the urgent need for Muslims in the West to help Egypt move forward. One way, suggested Ghonim. would be for us to sponsor rural areas. “Economy is the priority now. If a laborer, farmer or taxi-driver begins to feel that the revolution has not brought any change to his life, if he still has difficulty feeding his family, he will say, ‘This has done nothing for me. We might as well go back to the old way.’ If you can teach, contribute money, donate useful and usable tools, offer healthcare, if you can help modernize 10-15 Egyptian rural villages through focused effort, that will make a big difference.”

Tourism is another area where Muslims can contribute. There will be fairs and celebrations throughout Egypt in June. Ghonim appealed to Muslims to visit Egypt in the summer and see firsthand the country’s transformation. It is the kind of economic stimulus Egypt urgently needs. One out of 9 Egyptians depends on tourism for livelihood. Over 1 million Egyptians have lost their jobs during the revolution. “We cannot let the unemployed channel their frustration into anti-revolutionary activities.”

To Washington, Ghonim had this to say: You have to align your interest with your values. Dictators dangled stability in front of you while denying people their rights and freedom. You went along with this. Unless there is a fundamental change in your policy, you will lose us. There are signs that changes are occurring but they have to be long-term and based on respect and justice.

“I believe in people, not governments,” said Ghonim. Governments don’t want to change but people do. The Internet is a powerful catalyst for change and people must learn to leverage its tools to bring about the changes they seek.

The military may yet complicate the transition to democracy in Egypt. As the young activist sees it, as long as people are engaged, are not distracted by frivolous pursuits or consumed by partisan politics, those in power will have to respond to the wishes of the people. Otherwise the leaders will turn into tyrants and society will atrophy.

It is important for people to take responsibility instead of waiting to be told what to do, Ghonim said. “Many of you asked me how you can help Egypt and other countries. I have given you some ideas but you can use the Internet to figure this out yourself. Do your homework. Don’t ask for guidelines. I am just 1 of 10 million Egyptians. I don’t consider myself a leader. I don’t believe I have done anything remarkable. It’s the people, all of us, united by a common purpose, who made the revolution possible. We have a long way to go but what we have shown is that each one of us can be an agent for change.”

While Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis and others have been brave, the bravest so far, according to Ghonim, have been the ragtag Libyan rebels. Without heavy weapons and with hardly any training, they have taken on the army of a mad and ruthless despot and gaining ground every day, inch by inch.

Ghonim is not motivated by revenge or retribution but he is insistent that the main perpetrators responsible for Egypt’s economic, political and social decline be brought to justice, starting with Hosni Mubarak. “We have to set an example so that future leaders will think twice before abusing the law and doing whatever they please.”

Ghonim asked Muslims not to suffer from “conference syndrome.” This is where Muslims attend well-meaning seminars and conferences, listen to speakers flush with oratorical exuberance, feel inspired, then go home and … do nothing. “Let’s reduce the volume of talk and increase the amount of action. We don’t have to tolerate tyranny and we don’t have to wait for leaders. We can change our own conditions if we have the courage to believe in ourselves.”

Libyan-Americans Urge U.S. to Recognize Libyan Opposition

2011-04-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

Libyan-Americans are urging President Obama to recognize the Libyan opposition's National Council as the legitimate representative of Libyans. “I don’t know why our government is dragging its feet,” asks Faraj in frustration. “France, Italy and Qatar have recognized the rebels. Why not America?”

Faraj is an electronics engineer in Silicon Valley, California. He came to America as a student from Libya in 1978. After graduation, he couldn’t return home because of threats on his life by Muammar Gadhafi’s security squad. He had been outspoken in denouncing the dictator.

“Libya used to be a peaceful, prosperous country,” said Faraj. “But now it's probably the most backward country in the world.”

As an example, he cites a visit to Libya by Shaikh Zaid of United Arab Emirates in the early ‘70s. While touring a hospital, the Shaikh exclaimed, “I wish we had a hospital like this in the Emirates! We and Saudi Arabia are 20 years behind Libya!”

"Now the fact is Libya is 40 years behind UAE and Saudi Arabia!"

So what explains this descent?

“One word: Gadhafi. He controls all the oil money. In the 40+ years of his rule, Libya earned trillions of oil dollars nut hardly any of it went into building infrastructure or schools or hospitals. Gadhafi distributed wealth to his family, relatives and cronies and created a police state. He put his sons in charge of security. Libyans were forced to accept his dictatorship. Those who didn’t, he killed them or jailed them.”

Faraj described how Gadhafi sent hit squads to Rome, Paris, London, even to the United States, to kill Libyans who opposed him from abroad. “When he took over power in the 1969 coup, Gadhafi made it clear that Libyans must support him if they expected to live. Otherwise, he would kill them or imprison and torture them. No in-between.”

Other Libyan-Americans in the Bay Area agree with Faraj. “Libyans will absolutely not accept either Gadhafi or his sons remaining in Libya,” said Mufta, also an engineer. “They must leave, or they will be captured and put on trial.”

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Yusuf, a student who was born here, grew up in Libya, and returned to the United States a decade ago. “Benghazi is the capital of Free Libya. It’s terrible that people are dying in Misrata, Ajdabiya and other cities but Gadhafi’s days are numbered. He has killed his own people. He has committed crimes against humanity. He will be called to account, God willing.”

Yusuf doesn’t like the "rebel" label. “Rebel has a negative connotation. Those fighting Gadhafi are freedom fighters. They are the pro-democracy force in Libya.”

Faraj has family in Libya. His cousin was among the first killed in February when Gadhafi’s snipers from rooftops began shooting at people as they streamed out of mosques after Friday’s congregational prayers.

What about Gadhafi’s boast that he will not leave Libya and die fighting if it comes to that?

“Gadhafi is a coward,” said Faraj. “When he sees rebels advancing on Tripoli, he will try to flee with his family.”

Many Western analysts and pundits are predicting that if Gadhafi falls, Libya will degenerate into a civil war because of the “tribes with flags” that comprise the country.

Mufta seethes with anger at this analysis. “Yes, Libya has many tribes but it’s not as if they don’t have a national identity. They are united in putting Libya above tribal affiliations. After decades of Gadhafi’s oppression and misrule, it will take time to undo the damage and work out a national agenda but it will happen. Western analysts are wrong and arrogant to think we cannot bring about and sustain democracy on our own.”

The ragtag Libyan rebels have proven to the bravest among Arabs fighting to rid their countries of tyrants. Without training or weapons, they have taken on a regular army. They have suffered heavy casualties from indiscriminate shelling by Gadhafi’s forces (two foreign journalists – Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros - have also been killed) but they are holding their own. They have even driven back Gadhafi’s forces from Misrata in recent fighting.

What can hasten Gadhafi’s downfall?

Faraj and Mufta identify two urgent issues. “First, the United States should immediately recognize the National Council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. Second, give the rebels the heavy weapons they need so it’s a level playing field. They can finish the job themselves.”

Ducks of the Same Feather

2011-04-21T21:23:00.001-07:00

There's an anguished piece by Timothy Egan in The New York Times about the similarity between Donald Trump, the current front-runner Republican presidential candidate, and Italy's sybaritic prime minister Sylvio Berusconi. If you can overlook shades of their toupees, you will find that they are ducks of the same feather.

Both have embarrassed their nations with vulgarity and stupidity. Yet the public cannot seem to have enough of them. Everyday brings fresh evidence that this duo should be fired immediately and sent into exile in a remote, inhospitable island to plant turnips and practice stand-up comedy on each other. But they march on, feeding on the insatiable desire of a certain section of the public looking for their daily fix of outrageous behavior and buffoonery.

Try to digest this fact: 47 percent of Republican voters believe that President Obama was not born in the United States. That's today's statistics, not last year's or the year before. If you are about to throw up, don't blame it on a bad hair day.

The Birther department is expanding, the newest addition to the faculty being that paragon of propriety, Mr. Charlie Sheen. If this were a big joke, like the one Joaquin Phoenix pulled on the David Letterman show, we could laugh a little and return to our daily grind, but it is not. It is a serious trend suggesting that the nation hasn't really advanced 150 years after the civil war.

Since publicity hounds seem to be ruling the republic, we may see more outrageous 'movements' coming our way. The thing to do would be to hold firm and not despair. On their own, these movements are likely to die a fast and natural death as people finally awake to reason and common sense and reject their architects as idiots and charlatans.

The Long and Winding Trail

2011-04-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

We parked the car at the foot of the hills. As soon as we stepped out, a flock of finches flew out of the rosemary bushes and disappeared into the evergreen pear trees. Within moments they reappeared and alighted on the bushes, giving us a view of their yellow breasts and reddish heads and charming us with their playfulness. Against the backdrop of the green hills, they represented the stirring life of spring.

We took to the long and winding trail, savoring each step in the wilderness. The sun peeked from behind the clouds and a misty rain fell as well, but soon it was clear and a light breeze blew, rippling the grass in the meadow. The trail was lined with miner's lettuce, monkey flowers and thistles. Coastal oaks sprouting fresh leaves and laurel and olive trees spread their seductive shadows away from the trail.

Just ahead, we saw a group of wild turkeys meandering along the trail. As we approached, they vanished into the thickets. An eagle, then another and yet another, flew over the trees into the open sky, drifting laterally and then circling and drifting again.

When we came to the familiar opening, we saw the two oak trees within whose encircling leaves we had stood so many times before, listening to the birds. Today, we just looked at them and felt their presence suffuse us. They had grown even more beautiful in all the months that we did not visit but we told ourselves they were glad to see us too. A jay perched on a fallen laurel looked down at the sloping meadow that merged into another trail by which the creek flowed. We moved on.

The wind had picked up speed and the tall grasses rippled with conviction. Wildflowers were everywhere, sorrels and lupines and clovers and a few we didn't know the names of. At one point we stopped to marvel at the grace of the green hills resting against a calm sky. From the undergrowth came bird songs of infinite variety, pure music of earth and sky.

We had never hiked this far up the trail, always resting at the eucalyptus grove from which we could see the valley and the city stretching away in all directions. But we were determined to reach the summit of the skyway trail today. We should have brought some water but the air was cool and the thirst did not pose any challenge. Besides, the creek was not far away, if it came to that ...

We flushed a flock of doves from the underbrush, feeling guilty and thrilled at the same time. Finches, sparrows, jays kept up their twitter nonstop. There had been warnings of wild animal sightings, particularly mountain lions, but the fear only added to our adventure. We came in peace for mankind; that's what we would tell the wild animal were we to encounter one .Surely it would understand and leave us alone.

We were now approaching the end of the trail and soon enough we were there, tired and sweating but also exhilarated.

Along with the regular wildflowers, we were surprised to find many daffodils, tossing and turning just as the famous English poet had come upon them long ago and immortalized them in the poem that we had memorized in our childhood. Must be due to pollination. We didn't see why anyone would plant daffodils here. But then, there is no dearth of lovable eccentrics in this part of the world.

We sat on the worn bench and took in the view. After a while, huge bees began to buzz us, the air thick with them. We had trespassed into their territory. A dove cooed and a jay shrieked. But we had seen what we wanted to see and began tracing our way back.

Near the end of the trail, we met two elderly couples tending to their vegetable patches.

"What are you growing?"

"Oh, just some cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, squash, peppers and mint."

"Wow, that will cut down on your grocery bill!"

Laughter all around.

The finchess were still there. This time, they stayed in the rosemary bushes, frolicking and singing with abandon.

Female Mystery Writers

2011-04-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

Kate Atkinson is among the finest mystery writers in the world today. She spins stories that grip readers with their intricate psychological plots. Her prose is brilliant. In a single sentence she can sum up a lifetime of anger or bliss that lesser writers may take chapters to convey.

I have been a fan ever since I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum some years ago. The imagination with which she conjures up the thoughts of her characters and weaves them into her tale of loneliness, bravery, mystery and happiness against impossible odds is breathtaking. Her characters are so believable I expect to run into them at work, in the park or at bus stops.

It's going to be downhill for her after Behind the Scenes, I told myself. I just didn't see how she could follow it up with more richly-imagined books.

Yet she did! In Case Histories, One Good Turn, and When Will There Be Good News?, Miss Atkinson kept me enthralled with mysteries filled with such suspense that I realized I was reading an authentic successor to Agatha Christie, the original "Queen of Mystery" and the best-selling author of all time. Atkinson's intelligence is palpable on every page. Nothing is forced or contrived. The point of view of each character flows naturally and mingles seamlessly with other points of views. The dialogues are natural and concise, just the way real people talk.

Her latest, Started Early, Took My Dog, is the best yet from this brilliant storyteller. Don't be fooled by the whimsical title. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize she chooses her titles as carefully as she imagines her stories.

Tracy Waterhouse makes an impulsive 'buy' from a deranged woman at a London Mall. It's a transaction that turns her life upside down. A horrifying murder of a woman brings a sinister cloud to the sunny sky of what she imagines will be her new life. Complications arise when the reluctant detective Jackson Brodie wonders about a doppelganger tracing his move as he tries to comfort a dog that he had saved from a cruel owner. Corrupt police officials try to cover their misdeeds but the truth haunts them, particularly one named Barry whose moral quandary is fast catching up with him.

All the elements of a can't-put-down thriller are there in Started Early but what really makes it a standout is the lyrical quality of the writing. Each sentence is a surprise, each turn of phrase delightfully inventive. And to think, it all begins when an adopted woman calls Brodie from New Zealand, requesting him to trace her biological parents.

Atkinson's closest competitor is the Irish writer Tana French. French's three books - In The Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place - are standouts as well. Her atmospheric invocation of place and memories and unfulfilled lives is unparalleled. Frank Mackey, once among Dublin's finest but now scraping out a living as a tough and cynical private eye, is a character impossible not to root for. He is after the truth and will go to any length to uncover it, no matter where the chips may fall.

If there is one thing French lacks, it is her inability to surprise when the 'whodunit' is revealed. The reader expects to be shocked but I found that I could predict the murderer fairly easily. This was particularly true in Faithful Place. But her writing is so persuasive that you are happy to overlook this flaw.

Among Scandinavian mystery writers, Karin Fossum of Norway is unique. She also writes psychological thrillers and her amiable police inspector Konrad Sejer is the lovable and persistent uncle we all know. Fossum reached her peak with the remarkable The Indian Bride but her other books are not as satisfying. She strives for subtlety but in the process has become somewhat predictable.

Another English writer who made a splash with her debut thriller, Raven Black, is Ann Cleeves. Ms. Cleeves has planned a quartet of thrillers based on the Shetland Island off the coats of Scotland. Raven Black, the first, is absolutely riveting. I couldn’t put it down until I read it to the end in one sitting.

Magnus Tait is a dimwit who can be surprisingly perceptive in the way he channels his thoughts. Two pretty girls unexpectedly drop in on him on New Year’s Eve as he nurses his loneliness. He has been lonely since his mother passed away, his only friend. The island is haunted by the disappearance of a little girl some years back. Fear and anger grip the Shetlanders as one of the girls who visited Magnus is found dead the next morning. Inspector Jimmy Perez has to sift through conflicting evidences to catch the killer. Perez? Isn’t that a Spanish name? What’s a man with a Spanish name doing in a sub-arctic Scottish island? Is Magnus as dumb as he appears to be? As the story proceeds, the island’s past comes into focus through the fog, and there is hardly anything idyllic about it.

No question about it, Raven Black is a winner, a worthy recipient of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Unfortunately the second book in Ms. Cleeves’s quartet, White Nights, is a letdown. It is plodding and repetitive. It lacks bite. Inspector Perez already seems like an old man. You want him to pick up the pace but he just, well, plods along.

No matter how talented, it is often difficult for a writer to follow up a bravura performance with another. Here’s hoping that Ms. Cleeves will regain her footing with at least one of the two remaining thrillers she plans to write.

Kate Atkinson is a master of the genre, as are Tara French, Karin Fossum, and perhaps Ann Cleeves. Of the four, Atkinson gives the most pleasure because of the way she uses language to reveal the dark thoughts of her characters. That she also can hold you in suspense until the very end make her a rare talent indeed.

No Cruelty, Please!

2011-04-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

Three years into my marriage, I informed my wife one morning that I was renouncing the materialistic life and moving to a commune in Oregon.

Her expression did not change. As she poured milk into her bowl of cereal, she looked at the wall clock and said, "You are late for work."

I knew this would be difficult. I sighed and told her I was serious. "In six months, I will be moving to an Ashram at the foot of the Himalayas."

"Wow, a jet-set hippie!" She almost choking on her cereal.

I pointed to the suitcase that I had packed the night before. "Look," I said, "the best thing would be for you to come with me but I am not sure you will want to. Life in a commune is hard. Sharing everything and all."

"Oh yeah, I hear they share everything," she said.

She was referring, obviously, to drug and sex.

"It's not what you think," I replied.

"You are late for work," she repeated.

"Look, I am sure we will be together again. It's just that I need to find myself. I have had it with this consumer life. It has nothing to do with you. If anything, it's only because of you that I didn't leave earlier."

Her eyes narrowed. "If this is a joke, it's a very bad one," she said menacingly.

I knew it would come to this. After all, how do you leave your wife just like that to connect with your inner mojo?

Seeing the tears in my eyes, she flinched. For the first time since our surreal conversation, she looked at me with what I thought was anger and fear.

"Have you lost your mind? Are you crazy? What am I supposed to do here alone?"

"I have made arrangements," I said. "You don't have to worry about mortgage and the bills. I will explain everything."

"You are not serious, are you?"

The first wave of desperation was beginning to hit the tranquil shore of her mind.

"I am. This is destiny. You will be okay. I can see both of us in the Ashram one day. Trust me, you will not regret it."

Suddenly, I saw a spoon flying in my direction. I ducked. Barely in time.

"Hey," she said fiercely, "cut the nonsense. If you don't feel like going to work, don't. Call in sick."

"I am not sick. And I will be leaving in about 15 minutes. I want to go over some details with you."

Fear began to fill her face. She kept staring at me intently.

"For God's sake, stop it," she finally said. "If there is something wrong in our marriage, if I have done anything to upset you, just tell me. I am sure I - we - can work it out." Tears were welling up in her eyes.

"No, no, you have done nothing wrong. You have been an angel. I couldn't have asked for a better wife. But that's not what this is about! A month ago I saw a dream. I saw myself in an Ashram. I saw the same dream three nights in a row. After the third night, I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to leave everything behind and go away. My only hope is that you will be with me again one day as we seek nirvana together."

"Really? Did you bother to ask me even once if I wanted to come to the commune with you?"

"No, I did not. There's a reason. I saw in my dream that unless I left you behind, I would never get you back. You know how it goes, give up to get back. Think of this as the test of our love."

"Are you writing a novel or something?" There was sarcasm in her voice.

"I really have to go," I said. "I have written down everything. Can we just sit for a few minutes to go over the details?" My voice betrayed my desperation. I sat down and began to sob.

"What am I going to do alone?" she wailed. "How can you do something like this to me? Life is not a movie, you know! You can't just take off like that! Let's talk this over. Call your friends. Discuss it with them. See what they have to say!"

"But that's the point. I have to leave quietly. No one must know. That's what I was instructed to do in my dream."

"Shut up about your dream, you idiot!" she screamed. She was trembling and crying. "Oh God, this can't be happening! I didn't do anything to deserve this!" She looked at me with murder in her eyes.

I tried to pacify her. She sprang away from me as if I were a leper. "I want to go back home," she said. "I want to go back to Chittagong. I don't want to stay here. Go to hell and find yourself. I want to go back to my parents."

"That cannot be," I said emphatically.

She became hysterical. I tried to calm her down. I sprinkled cold water on her head. I gave her ice-water to drink. I begged her to stop screaming. "What will the neighbors think?" I asked.

When nothing seemed to work, I used my only remaining option.

"It's April Fools', silly," I whispered in her ears.

She didn't understand what I was saying, so I had to repeat myself several times until it finally sank in.

I had to atone for my unpardonable act. After she had regained her self-control, we left immediately for Las Vegas where we enjoyed a show by her favorite entertainer, Tom Jones.

But it took her several years to start treating me like a normal human being. Every now and then, at home or at a party, I would catch her looking at me. It was clear what she was thinking. "This guy is a lunatic, a moron. How did I ever end up with him?"

Moral of the story: By all means, pull an April Fools' on your loved one but make sure it is free from cruelty.

The Summit of Cricket

2011-03-31T22:52:00.001-07:00

In a hundred years from now, cricket will be the main sport in America. (Don't think so? Just wait, if you can!) Until then, however, we cricket fans will have to be satisfied with ESPN's web coverage and a few pay-per-views. The baseball season has just started. The National Hockey League is gearing up for the Stanley Cup playoffs in a few weeks. NBA is in full swing. With so much going on, trying to convince an American to take an interest in the 2011 One-Day International (ODI) World Cup Cricket that began in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in mid-February is like trying to interest a Sumo wrestler to take up ballet.

For cricket fans, the final game is just hours away, and speculations over who will reach cricket summit are burning up the digital bandwidth. It will be played between India and Sri Lanka. India won its semi-final match against Pakistan (the eternal rivals - think Brazil vs. Argentina in soccer) but it was more a case of Pakistan losing than India winning. Sri Lanka beat New Zealand in the other semi-final to no one's surprise.

Most fans are convinced Sri Lanka will wear the crown on the strength of their convincing wins throughout the tournament. I am picking India, though, for three reasons.

First, the luck factor. India hasn't really played to its potential, and yet they are in the finals. Luck has been with them all along, and it will be with them when they take the field in Mumbai on Saturday.

Second, two billion Indians have waited for 28 years for this moment. Their combined longing will be difficult to overcome by Sri Lanka. Call it mind over matter, or more appropriately, will over wicket, but it's India's time to shine in the spotlight. Sri Lanka, after all, won the cup in 1996, while cricket-crazy India has never reached this summit. Surely such injustice cannot continue.

Finally, it is Sachin Tendulkar's last World Cup. In case you don't know who Tendulkar is, think Roger Federer, Michael Jordan and Mario Lemieux all rolled into one. The Indian superstar has scored ninety-nine centuries. Just one more, and he will have accomplished the unimaginable, a century of centuries. Tendulkar may not reach this milestone against Sri Lanka in the final but he most likely will, before he retires. What is more important, though, is that he holds the World Cup trophy once in his career. Besides, the final will be played in his hometown of Mumbai. Could anyone have written a better script?

For India, it comes down to one word: Destiny. They will be the 2011 World Cup Cricket champions.

Gadhafi's last Days

2011-03-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, Libyan rebels are coming under fierce ground attacks by Gadhafi's mercenaries and are being forced to regroup. But make no mistake, Gadhafi's end is near. His foreign minister, the poetically named Moussa Koussa, along with other high-ranking officials, have defected. Morale is low in Tripoli and the tyrant has stopped appearing in public.

President Obama has authorized covert operations in Libya. Americans are meeting with rebels to assess their needs and train them in the use of modern weapons. They are also collecting intelligence to pinpoint the locations of the mercenaries. Time will tell, but the president has articulated a vision of American foreign policy in his address to the nation on Libya that future historians will probably cite more often than anything else he has said so far.

It is true," Obama said, "that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right. In this particular country - Libya -, at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence ... To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and - more profoundly - our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

Libyan immigrants from around the world are rushing to their homeland to fight against Gadhafi's forces. As Jon Lee Anderson reports in The New Yorker, "Ibrahim is fifty-seven. He lives in Chicago, and turned over his auto-body shop and car wash to a friend so he could come and fight. He has made his life in the United States, but it was his duty as a Libyan to help get rid of Gadhafi, the monster." Despite all the finger pointing and internal squabbling, the allied forces - NATO, U.S., France, Britain, Qatar - are uniting under a common goal: Use all available and practical means to oust Gadhafi. The sooner this blot on civilization is gone, the better off the Libyans, and the world, will be.

Obama and Libya

2011-03-26T20:38:00.001-07:00

President Obama is catching flack from both the left and the right for his aggressive support of Libyan rebels. This can only mean that he is doing the right thing. Cynics are questioning whether or not the President has averted a humanitarian disaster in Benghazi. Can anyone doubt that Gadhafi's mercenaries would have begun a bloodbath in that city if the rebels were forced to flee? Bob Herbert of New York Times (in his last column for the paper) asked how the U.S. could justify spending so much money for a war in Libya when hundreds of thousands of Americans were out of work. Michael Kinsley, writing in LA Times, could see no justification for U.S. intervention in Libya.

The answer is best summarized by a Libyan rebel: "The Americans and the British and the French have come to us in our hour of need," he said. "We now know who our friends are." This political capital will alone justify the U.S. stand when history is written about Libya's democratic transformation and the benefits that flowed from it for the world in general and the Middle East in particular.

Those questioning Obama's decision are guilty of shortsightedness. They cannot see the forest for the trees. If blood flowed freely in Benghazi, the Arab Spring could have degenerated into the Arab winter of despair. In the long term, this would have been a catastrophic lost opportunity for the U.S and the world. Hope for a transformation in the region would have vanished like a mirage.

As it is, the rebels are now forcing the mercenaries to retreat from Benghazi. A prolonged civil war may yet ensue, and there maybe a period of violent upheavals. But after 42 years of Gadhafi's cruel despotism, it can take a few months for Libyans to shrug off their tribal differences to forge a new era of transparency and liberty.

Obama's clarity on Libya did not arrive on the wings of inspiration and insight. It came about from the persuasive case that Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, a national security aide haunted by the massacre of Bosnian Muslims, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made for U.S. intervention. The President often comes across as prudent to the point of indifference. His daring seems to be confined to his rhetoric. When it is time for action, he vacillates or takes far too long to make up his mind.

But Obama is also what one would call lucky. In the end, and just in the nick of time too, he does the right thing. It has a lot to do with the kind of people he listens to and the advice he seeks. Luck has a symbiotic relationship with humility. These are Obama's intangible qualities. They can be far more useful for a president than bravado and "The Buck Stops Here" mentality.

A victory for the rebels in Libya is now a distinct possibility, thanks to the support that the U.S., the British and the French are providing. While war rages in Libya, Syrians, Yemenis and Jordanians are also dying as they take to the streets against their respective dictatorial governments. But there is no stopping the revolution. After decades of despair and fatalism, Arabs have been stirred by hope. They are now heir to Patrick Henry whose famous cry during the U.S. War of Independence in 1775 resonate in the 21st century: "Give Me liberty or Give Me Death."

Spring Rain

2011-03-24T21:25:00.001-07:00

Since the official arrival of spring on Saturday, March 19, the rain has been coming down hard on Santa Clara Valley. This hill, this valley, never seemed so lush green. I exaggerate, of course. Every time we get plentiful rain in spring, and there have been many such years in the last two decades between droughts, these hills and valleys become as verdant as the imagination allows.

Today was particularly wet. Strong winds accompanied the rain that fell in gray, slanted slabs, flooding roads and fields. I walked across one of these fields to the creek near my home. It was swollen with brown, rushing water that looked like a small river in its own right. The oaks, sycamores and cottonwoods that lined its banks swayed with wind and dimpled the creek with drops. The ancient sound of water against rock filling the woods is the gift of a day like this. You listen to this music, the music of earth and sky and forest, and feel peace enter your body and soul.

Gulls and geese flew in formation across a barren sky. I heard birds chirping in the upper reaches of the trees but couldn't see any. A calla lily and several stands of cattails moved to and fro as the creek flowed past them toward the sea. I could see cows moving briskly on the hills through the gap in the trees. It was is if they were unsure of where to graze, since the grass looked so tempting everywhere. It was a comical bovine sight.

The forecast calls for more rain in the coming days. You can almost sense the wildflowers preparing to shoot forth from inside the earth when rain ends. Poppies, lupines, sorrels, soon they will sprout by the roadside and on meadows and forest floors. I don't miss the sun. We will have plenty of it soon enough as the long days of summer approach. Now is the time for rain, when the sounds of the world fall away and all the silences we have known since childhood weave enchanting stories of love and longing.

A Tale of Two Tragedies

2011-03-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

The horrifying images coming out of Japan have assumed a surreal quality. Is this what apocalypse looks like? Is this what the future holds for us, this chain reaction of earthquake to tsunami to nuclear meltdown to indescribable human suffering? We pray for the victims, collect donations for them, visit local Japanese centers to hold candlelight vigils, yet our efforts seem so minuscule! No matter how hard we try to use our empathy-deepened imagination, we cannot fathom the pain of survivors still searching for their loved ones beneath debris and along windswept shore.

Concern about the safety of nuclear energy is now on everyone's mind. Is nuclear energy worth it? If we abandon it, won't our dependence on fossil fuel increase even more? We have not figured out a way to dispose of the deadly radioactive waste materials and spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors. The United States currently has 70,000 tons of it, and nowhere to put it!

Nuclear energy will never be 100% safe. If you believe exponents of nuclear energy claiming so, I have a bridge I would like to sell to you. Germany has already decided to phase away its reactorss but it is unlikely that other countries will, or can, follow suit. There is too much at stake here, political and economic. Nuclear energy is economically not competitive. A nuclear plant can cost $5 billion or more and the price of producing nuclear energy is about 30 percent higher than that of coal or gas.

Japan will learn from its experience and recover but unless we curb our voracious appetite for energy, we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences of a nuclear disaster next time a tsunami invades a coastal city.

While Japan copes with its monumental tragedy, another one is unfolding in Libya. The tyrant Gadhafi has been holding Libyans hostage for decades. When the people finally rose in revolt, he began slaughtering them with his tanks, artillery, planes and foreign mercenaries. Now that the United States, France and Britain have begun bombarding Gadhafi's forces - and not a moment too soon - the rebels have regained their hope and are counter-attacking. They will ultimately prevail but Libya is likely to go through a long period of civil unrest and bitter in-fighting. Many more Libyans will die but that seems to be the price people pay when a cruel and sociopathic dictator like Gadhafi, who made the world unsafe for democracy, falls.

Self-driving Cars and Stricken Nuclear Reactors

2011-03-19T21:04:00.001-07:00

How to cool the stricken nuclear reactors at Fukushima has become the most daunting challenge for Japan's nuclear engineers. I have not read any report about robots doing at least part of the dangerous work. Instead, many Japanese workers and technicians have sacrificed their safety, and perhaps their lives, by spraying the reactors with water from close quarters while also trying to restore power.

Robots are clearly not technologically advanced enough to perform these functions. Otherwise they would have surely been employed by now. What about Google's self-driving cars? Could these vehicles, loaded with lasers and sensors, become Robots 2.0 and taught to perform these dangerous tasks? There could be an entirely separate category of such cars developed for ensuring the safety of nuclear reactors when hit with natural or man-made disasters.

Far-fetched? I don't see why. The alternative is death for humans. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention and the elixir of entrepreneurs. There will always be risks associated with nuclear reactors. The probability of partial or full meltdowns can never be zero, since what is beyond man's expectations is what is normal for nature. Besides, as the Japanese physicist Torahiko Terada wrote with such clairvoyance in 1934, "The more civilization progresses, the greater the violence of nature's wrath."

But if the risks can be reduced from their current level by even a small fraction, that will be bona fide progress. Small, unmanned super-intelligent cars that can take corrective actions inside stricken reactors can save lives and prevent nuclear disasters from spiralling into apocalypses. Is it not an idea at least worth looking into?

Gadhafi's Last, Desperate Stand

2011-03-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

In an unjust world, sometimes even the hint of might can make right.

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhahi and foreign mercenaries went on a killing spree in Libya as they advanced on poorly-equipped rebels. For days, Libyan freedom-fighters were asking the West to only level the fighting field. As the West dithered, Libyans children, women and men died by the hundreds. The murderous maniac of Libya was bent on killing his countrymen to preserve his power.

Finally, some action! The UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of Western military forces to halt the massacre of Libyans.

Immediately, Gadhafi's foreign minister announced a cease-fire.

But it has turned out to be a ruse. Gadhafi's troops are still killing Libyans on sight and in house-to-house searches in the rebel-held city of Misrata. They have attacked ambulances and hospitals and shelled mosques and schools. Nothing is off-limit to these psychopaths. Gadhafi's intention is to capture Benghazi with tanks and artillery, supported by aerial bombing.

The West, led by the United States, Britain and France, must not be deceived by Gadhafi's tricks. He must be stopped before he can advance any further and consolidate his gains. In his heart, he must know that his long reign of terror will soon be over. "I will take as many as I can with me" seems to be his mindset. Yet, when the prospect of death is imminent, don't be surprised if he slinks away like a thief into the night.

Countries that voted in favor of the UN resolution, mainly the U.S., Britain and France, must take military action immediately. (A beneficial consequence maybe that it will give the rulers of Yemen and Bahrain also the pause. Government forces and mercenaries are indiscriminately killing protesters there.) Once Gadhafi is convinced that the resolution has teeth behind it, he will plot his next move, which is to escape from Libya. Justice will eventually catch up with him but for now, the urgent course of action is to strengthen the confidence of the rebels with some decisive military action. They can take over after that.

Concern Over Nuclear Radiation Leak in Japan

2011-03-12T21:22:00.000-08:00

The Devastation in Japan caused by the earthquake and the tsunami defies imagination. To the loss of lives, displacement of people and damages to property and infrastructure, the possibility of radiation leak from an explosion in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (about 150 miles north of Tokyo) has added a sinister dimension. If exposed to lethal ionizing radiation, and the Japanese have a visceral reaction to it from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effect of this natural disaster can take decades to heal.

Of course, it is only human nature to consider the darkest possibilities in the wake of something as catastrophic as this. Japanese engineers and experts are crippling the affected nuclear reactors by flooding them with seawater to minimize any radiation leak. Japan is better off anyway without these aging reactors that sit atop the “Ring of Fire,” the earthquake hotbed along the Pacific Rim.

Dr. C. S. Karim, a nuclear physicist, explains the radiation leak: “Japan has six reactors of the Boiling Water type (BWR) at the Daiichi plant and five at Daini. Any reactor has multiple systems that can shut down nuclear chain reaction during emergencies. The technical term is SCRAM. This is what ought to happen during earthquakes and tsunamis and other extreme natural events. Unfortunately, the speed and force with which these events can occur may not allow enough time for SCRAM to go into effect. In any case, the residual heat inside the reactor core continues for days, starting from seconds after the nuclear chain reaction ceases.

“The Emergency Core Cooling System is provided to take care of cooling during this period. As a backup to electricity, which may not have been available after the tsunami, there are other procedures such as immediate injection of borated water from an accumulator. The problem arises when there is damage to the reactor cooling system. Pipes in the system may be broken due to strong vibrations from an earthquake. Then, even if there is coolant available and pumps are operating, the water may not reach the reactor core to remove the residual heat.

“Any reactor design uses a concept called ‘defense in depth,’ that is, providing multiple barriers between the source of radiation and the environment. Most of the radiation is contained in the nuclear fuel element, comprising Uranium Oxide pellets shrouded in Zircaloy cladding.

“The reactor cooling system has two loops. Heat that is carried by water from the reactor core is transferred indirectly to another cooling loop. Steam, thus produced, flows through the turbine to produce electricity. If, as the reports are suggesting, there were explosions inside the reactor, they could have been due to the loss of coolant.”

Radiation dosage is measured in rem, short for "roentgen equivalent in man." It measures the amount of radiation that produces a specific amount of damage to living issues. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for instance, people received a dose of rems at the instant of the explosions, then more from the surroundings and from fallout when the "mushroom" descended to earth. Doses above 100 rems can cause nausea, vomiting and headache. Doses of 300 rems can cause hair loss and more sever internal damages. 50% of people exposed to 450 rems die while 800 rems are always fatal.

We do not yet know the exact level of radiation leak in northeastern Japan, other than that some leaks have occurred. The effect may turn out to be harmless to humans and other living species. Then again, it may not. What is clear is that, as life returns to normal, the Japanese will undoubtedly question the safety of their nuclear plants and perhaps even demand that the government either close most of them or make them more fail-safe. No advances in nuclear engineering and reactor design can match the ferocious power unleashed when tectonic plates shift violently beneath our feet or beneath our oceans.

Nature's Fury Overpowers Japan

2011-03-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

There is something ruthlessly democratic about nature's fury. Rich and poor nations alike are reduced to their knees when she strikes.

The 8.9 earthquake and the resulting tsunami has left thousands dead in Japan's coastal regions. Signs of devastation - dead bodies, stunned survivors, fire, submerged cars like toys - are coming at us from all directions.

Our complacency is shaken to the core. Everyday we hear of innovations and discoveries, the monuments to man's ingenuity, and we bask in the wonder of it all. Then a primal force overturns what we call normal. We feel the terror and sense how helpless we are.

Natural calamities are occurring with more frequency and fury these days. Global warming has unleashed extremes. Fire and ice mingle to create horror and suffering, leaving us edgy. Is it coming our way, we ask? Already the Pacific tsunami has reached coastal California. The Crescent City harbor in Northern California has been wrecked, boats battered and freeways flooded.

Everything is connected, we learn in ecology 101. They certainly are. The flutter of a butterfly's wing can spawn a gale. The ferocious energy of wind on water can travel thousands of miles to snatch a family picnicking on a sun-splashed shore.

Sometimes we lose sight of our limitations. Sometimes hubris clouds our vision and we suffer from dangerous delusions. There is a balance that underlies the cosmos. When it is disturbed, through arrogance or negligence or plain foolishness, there is a terrible price to pay. The value of humility - perhaps that is what nature has been trying to teach us all along.

Moment of Truth for Libya and Libyans

2011-03-07T19:45:00.001-08:00

Can Libyans free their country from the claws of Moammar Gadhafi, or will they need outside help?

As the country sinks into a protracted civil war and civilian casualties mount, the question gains momentum. The more time Gadhafi gets, the more he can consolidate his power to kill and spread his reign of terror.

The ideal solution would be for Libyans to vanquish Gadhafi but life is rarely ideal. President Obama is mulling some sort of military intervention, as President Bill Clinton did before sending the warplanes to Sarajevo and save many Bosnians from butchery.

At the very least, enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya would boost the morale of the rebels who are fighting to hold on to every inch of the territory under their sway. Even a small victory by Gadhafi, aided by mercenaries, emboldens the dictator to commit greater acts of savagery.

The mass and indiscriminate killing in Libya cannot continue. Gadhafi must be held accountable for his crimes. Once he falls, the horror stories will tumble out and we will wonder yet again how humans can be so inhuman.

Evil will be with us until the end. When the established order is about to be overthrown - because people have had enough and they can take it no longer - those in power lash out with all their might. That's when genocide occurs. That is what we are witnessing in Libya now. At some point, Libyan rebels will have to be supplied with arms so that they can fight on equal terms with Gadhafi's well-equipped army and air force.

There are those who claim that Gadhafi is a benevolent dictator who has kept his people happy by meeting their basic needs. They question why Libyans are revolting. What they forget is that people want to be free. They want the freedom to exercise their creativity instead of living on favors bestowed from above. They want to start their own businesses and build their own institutions, instead of being told what is good for them and how they should conduct their lives. They are fed up with the offsprings of their leaders looting the treasury to host multi-million dollar bashes in Paris and Las Vegas. It's their money and they want to use it for their country and society. They want to harness the power of the Internet to boost their economy and connect with the world.

Gadhafi's fall is bound to bring about changes in Yemen, Sudan, Oman, Syria. All these countries will struggle to regain their footing once the dictators and the oligarchs disappear but that's expected. There will be chaos and, in a tribal society like Libya's, the chaos may continue for months. But ultimately, freedom and democracy will usher in a new era of hope and peace and an economy that engages all citizens, not just the chosen and arbitrary few. Those who died for this transformation will be remembered as true martyrs by their grateful nations.

Gadhafi Unleashes War on His Own People

2011-02-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

Col. Moammar Gadhafi has been ruling Libya for 42 years, ever since the 27-year-old army captain seized power from King Idris in a 1969 coup. Just think about it! The same person in charge of a country for over four decades! Even if he were a benign and progressive leader, it would still be an outrage because that long a reign inevitably brings about political stagnation and economic sterility. Unless there is a change in leadership every five years or less, a society loses its dynamism and national atrophy sets in. The catastrophe is magnified manifold considering that, far from being a benign and progressive leader, Gadhafi is a despot whose eccentric behavior masks a diabolical mindset.

Inspired by Tunisians and Egyptians, Libyans have now risen in revolt and, in response, Gadhafi has unleashed his army and air force on the protesters. Tripoli and Benghazi, the two major cities, are aflame. The autocrat has flown in foreign mercenaries who are killing Libyans indiscriminately. Close to 300 are already reported dead and hospitals have run out of supplies to treat the wounded.

Ali Aujali, Libya's ambassador to the U.S., broke with Col. Gadhafi on Monday and called for him to step down. The deputy head of Libya's delegation to the United Nations said he had stopped taking orders from the government and is asking the international community to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya's airspace so it couldn't bring in more mercenaries.

Other Libyan embassies are also deserting Gadhafi. Libyan diplomats around the world, including Libya’s ambassadors to Tunisia, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia, said they had resigned to protest the murderous crackdown on unarmed civilians and mourners by Gadhafi's warplanes, soldiers and mercenaries.

Also on Monday, two Libyan Air Force pilots defected, taking their Mirage jet fighters to Malta and seeking political asylum in the small Mediterranean nation. The pilots said they had escaped to Malta after refusing orders to bomb protesters in Benghazi. Meanwhile, there are reports of many soldiers and policemen throwing in their lot with the protesters.

Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi declared on TV that "we will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." He didn't specify against whom, though. That would have been embarrassing because he was referring to the Libyans themselves.

Of all the dictators in the Middle East, Gadhafi appears to the most dangerous and delusional, even more so than Hosni Mubarak. "I will not leave Libya," he asserted today. That's what tyrants say when their fall is imminent. He also threatened to kill the protesters, and his goons armed with machetes and machine guns are conducting a house by house search in Tripoli to carry out his order. "I will fight on to the last drop of my blood," the dictator ranted in his second televised speech. He is, however, safely cocooned in his palace while his hired mercenaries do his bidding.

Fossilized Arab regimes that thrived in a culture of defeat and paranoia are on their way out. The Arab street is aggressively waking up to the truth that freedom is a birthright and victimhood is not destiny. The change in the Arab psyche is irreversible.

The U.S., the U.N., the EU, and other nations must exert diplomatic pressure and, if necessary, apply force, to stop the Libyan madman from slaughtering his own people. Gadhafi can still get out of town with his corrupt clan but time is running out. A trial for crimes against humanity should commence immediately against the colonel, for what is taking place in Libya now is nothing less than genocide.

An Intelligent Thriller

2011-02-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

"Intelligent Thriller" has become an oxymoron these days. Movies that claim to be thrillers aren't intelligent, and those that are intelligent (rare) aren't thrillers.

So it was a pleasure to watch "Unknown" starring Liam Neeson, the superdad/dude of 2008's Taken, who pulls off yet another masterful performance in an intricate plot that pits ruthless agricultural-industrial-complex (Monsanto & co?) against a lone botanist's breakthrough crop.

Botanist Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) arrives in Berlin with his wife to present a paper at a biotechnology summit. It is snowing and people are scurrying for warmth. The couple arrives at their hotel in a cab, and as Mrs. Harris (January Jones) checks in, Harris realizes that he has left his briefcase containing the material for his talk at the airport. He grabs a taxi and tries to rush back to the airport to retrieve it.

These first few minutes of the movie are all the serenity you will get. The rest is a wild ride (literally, and the three car chases are alone worth the price of the movie) of amnesia, doppelganger, intrigue, mystery and murder. Along the way, you see how a former Stasi officer accepts the inevitable with a resigned fatalism and how immigrants who give their blood and sweat to keep Berlin humming are blamed for all the ills of the city.

The more the layers are peeled away, the more Harris appears unknown to himself. Who am I really? What's my past? Have I been here before? What's at stake? Who is calling the shots, and why?

One may be tempted to compare it to the "Bourne" franchise but "Unknown" is more satisfying in the stylish and suspenseful way it gathers the loose ends together and brings the story to a more plausible conclusion. There is terror in the icy coolness of the killers (Frank Langella in particular) that is balanced by the love of ordinary human beings (especially Diane Kruger) toward one another. In the few places where the story veers toward the improbable, I found the willing suspension of disbelief an easy antidote.

Liam Neeson is both tough and tender, although his perfect enunciation can sometimes dilute the effect of mayhem about to ensue. "Unknown" is a known quantity in that it delivers both intelligence and suspense in roughly equal measures. The only mystery is: Why can't we have more movies like this?

Rain, Rain, Come Again

2011-02-19T19:16:00.000-08:00

For the last five days, we have been getting rain aplenty from a storm that swept in from Alaska to the San Francisco Bay Area. While rain and sun play hide-and-seek during the afternoons, the nights are filled the sound of continuous downpour, a tap-tap-tap that haunts and mesmerizes. The clouds parted one night just so to reveal a full moon and a tremulous Orion, and I also noticed that the bare ash trees were beginning to leaf.

We needed this rain, or else a drought this summer would have been inevitable. The hills were already turning brown toward the end of January but now they are a wet green, punctuated by the yellow of mustard flowers.

Reading the local paper, though, would give you the idea that somehow the rain is interfering with the essence of the Golden State. "Oh, February, must we go through this again?" wailed the San Jose Mercury News. And what if we didn't go though this? What would a drought do to a state already hobbling financially from slashed budgets and cut services? The rain offers a glimmer of hope but sun worshippers cannot see beyond their stupid pleasures and so moan and whine.

Driving on Hwy 280, I saw the first rainbow of the season, a perfectly poised arc over downtown San Jose. Its deep colors stood out against the dark, rain-soaked clouds but what was breathtaking was the white of the gulls flying languorously in the sun-dappled sky. The palette of white, black, red and blue was a gift of the rain that motorists zooming by seemed to have no use for.

Taking the Bascom Street exit, I found the tall palm trees lining the ramp bathed in a magical golden light. It is impossible to capture with words or with photographs the ineffable beauty of this light. Next moment, clouds covered the sun and the elusive light was gone.

There is snow atop Mount Hamilton. The alpine scene will no doubt inspire many San Joseans to head for the slopes soon, perhaps to Lake Tahoe and Ski Valleys nearby.

Tender and delicate pink plum blossoms absorb the rain and light up parks and pavements. After many years I see flocks of red-winged blackbirds darting between trees and empty fields. Their trills, oka-lee, oka-lee, is the music of meadows and streams and spring. It is the music of love and longing, and I feel a restlessness for long-lost joy and sorrow that only the rain can calm.

The Revolution Spreads

2011-02-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

Egypt-inspired protests against authoritarian regimes are spreading across the Middle East. In Iran, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen, young activists have also broken free of the shackles of fear and are challenging the legitimacy of their governments. Few have already fallen, particularly in Bahrain; more will die in the coming days. But the fight for freedom will continue, even though there will be inevitable setbacks.

In Egypt, after the heady days of Tahrir Square, the more difficult task of moving toward an open society has fractured the united front of young Egyptians. But this is the norm, not the exception. Post-revolutionary success is always followed by missteps and in-fighting. People and parties will stumble and fall but in the end, they will reach their democratic goals in the context of their culture.

Iranian leaders have vowed to crush the protesters, that is, kill them ruthlessly, to retain their stranglehold on power. It is amazing how tyrants across the world and across time remain the same. It is even more amazing the certainty with which they fall, as if they never existed.

A renaissance is coming to the Muslim world and no force can stop it. A flowering of science, astronomy, medicine and literature is long overdue from a people who led the world in these fields from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Much blood may flow before it happens but happen it will.

Euphoria in Egypt

2011-02-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

In just eighteen days, young Egyptians waged a peaceful revolution and brought down the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak and his failed police state. Inspired by Tunisians, empowered by social media and emboldened by a fierce yearning for freedom, they tore down the wall of fear and made Egypt free.

“I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see,” wrote Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) during a bleak moment in his life. How the Egyptian Nobel Laureate (Literature, 1988) would have exulted if he could see his people making history in Tahrir Square! They were extraordinary in every way, in their courage and discipline and the way they took control of their destiny without resorting to violence, even though Mubarak’s paid goons killed more than 300 of them.

The path to full democracy is long and arduous and there are many uncertainties along the way. The power, after all, has shifted to the Egyptian military. But the armed forces played a positive role in the people’s revolution and there is hope that there will soon be a lifting of the state of emergency, the dissolution of the illegitimate People's Assembly and Shura Council, the formation of an independent legal committee to amend the constitution, and the lifting of laws restricting political freedoms so that Egyptians can vote in a free and fair election.

But these uncertainties must not keep us from celebrating the extraordinary achievement of the Egyptians. They have lived in economic and political darkness for decades but in a matter of days, the light from their revolutionary flame raced across the globe and illumined us all. It is not only other Arab and Muslim countries suffering from corrupt governance and plutocracy that can take a cue from Egypt, but also countries like Myanmar and North Korea whose people have been languishing for decades as well. In our connected world, the transition from a Saffron revolution to a Jasmine revolution can occur in an instant.

I gained valuable insight into Egypt’s revolution from someone who was there in Tahrir Square during the fateful days. Suhaib Webb (http://www.suhaibwebb.com/), an American, is a Muslim scholar who spent seven years studying at Al-Azhar University. He saw firsthand how the young heroes of Tahrir Square transformed stagnant Egypt into a land of hope and possibilities almost overnight.

When Mubarak sent his thugs to terrorize the protesters and their families, including the Cairo neighborhood where Webb lived, he saw Egyptians - secular and religious, poor and middle-class - form cordons around homes and buildings to keep attackers at bay. Seeing how united they were, the thugs withdrew in less than a day.

Webb saw the young knights of Egypt, aimless and despondent only weeks ago and smoking marijuana on streets, transformed into fearless freedom fighters. They visited mosques to seek Allah’s help and vowed never to give up until Mubarak resigned. “We have recovered our honor and dignity,” they told him. “We have a sense of identity now. We have a purpose in life.” Web was reminded of the Quranic verse: Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in their hearts. (13:11)

Among Egyptians, Webb found a middle ground between secularism and fanaticism. They were determined to sacrifice themselves before they would even consider sacrificing or hurting others. They were committed to eradicating corruption, poverty and inequality from their society rather than to any grand ideology. The compassion he witnessed between Muslims and Christians moved him. A leading Coptic priest in Cairo asked his congregants to guard mosques during Friday Juma prayers. Likewise, an Imam asked Muslims to protect churches during Sunday services. Webb’s apartment sentry, a Christian, offered to defend him at any cost were he to run into any trouble.

Webb feels that Muslims, particularly American Muslims, should be grateful to Egyptians for the good name they brought to Islam through their non-violent revolution. In March, Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, plans to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. He claims that American Muslims are prone to violence and cannot be trusted. “Egyptian Muslims have taken the wind out of the sails of Islamophobes like King and the stalwarts of FOX News,” said Webb.

But what Suhaib Webb came to realize most strongly during the revolution was that we all have inner Hosni Mubaraks, tyrants within us who oppress our spouses, our children, parents, relatives and subordinates. These inner pharaohs destroy the soul as surely as pharaonic rulers destroy lives. We must defeat our inner demons if we want to change ourselves, because change without can come only from change within.

Although it will take years to put the Egyptian revolution in perspective, several lessons are already clear. Here are a few:

1. If history teaches us only one thing, it is that no one is indispensable. Tragedy occurs because those who deem themselves indispensable become immune to the lessons of history.

2. A revolution must be organic to succeed. Freedom and democracy cannot be exported or imposed by military might. Eight years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to spread “freedom and democracy” in the Middle East, the country is in ruins and the cost of the war has hit the $3 trillion dollar mark! In contrast, Egyptians brought about their transformation in less than three weeks, a peoples’ revolution that was of, by and for Egyptians.

3. The United States has to rethink its foreign policy. Investing in security at the expense of peoples’ right to govern themselves inevitably leads to disaster. As a columnist put it, America must define its foreign policy by the strength of its values, not by the value of its strength.

4. The days of dictators who suppress the will of the people – Neroes playing flutes while capitals like Tunis or Cairo burn - are numbered. An unforgiving future awaits them. Enslaved people have witnessed how the impossible can become possible when fear gives way to resolve and there is no longer any tolerance for suffering in silence.

5. The Web is woven into the fabric of modern life and the power of the social media to mobilize people transcends borders and nationalities. Although many young people are web-savvy, there are many more who cannot exploit the power of social media. They can post tweets and share anecdotes with their Facebook friends, but launching a campaign or organizing a demonstration eludes them. All it takes is some practice and a keen sense of trends, keywords and justice. There are hundreds of worthy local causes. Pick one - a fundraiser, a school event, a town-hall meeting - and try to do it over the Internet. You never know when history will beckon.

Protest Against Egypt's Dictator in San Francisco

2011-02-07T17:11:00.000-08:00

(2/5/11) Greg Lyons converted to Buddhism several years ago. He is in downtown San Francisco on a spring-like day to take part in the demonstration against Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. “Our intentions are important,” he says. “They are the seeds of reality.” He is optimistic that people power will prevail in Egypt after decades of dictatorship. “But change must come from within. If America tries to bring about the change that Egyptians are dying for, it will be a disaster. They must do it themselves.”

One reason why grassroots revolution is sweeping the Arab world is the enormous income gap between the rich and the poor. “Do you think that kind of class struggle can happen here in the U.S.?” I ask Greg.

“What do you mean can it happen here?” he asks back. “It’s already happening! Just look around you, a few blocks from here, and you can see how many Americans have become destitute. We have become one of the most unjust societies in the world.”

We chant slogans - 1,000 Americans strong - who have gathered at the United Nations Plaza. “Down, Down, Hosni Mubarak! Yasqut, Yasqut, Hosni Mubarak!”

Jack Kornfield also feels strongly that Egyptians must take control of their own destiny. The soft-spoken person becomes agitated when he talks about how the U.S. may undermine the aspirations of Egyptians. “U.S. has got to stay out. I am confident Egypt will find its own way. People on the streets of Cairo and other cities are smarter than the people in Washington.”

Hassan, an Egyptian, is a doctoral student in a California University. He is grateful to Tunisians for showing the way but believes that since Egypt is a bigger and more “critical country,” the revolution must succeed in his homeland for other Arab countries to emulate. He wants the new government to stop selling Egyptian land to foreign investors, as Mubarak’s government has been doing. “The king and his corrupt cronies fatten their pockets while the poor become poorer!”

“No justice, no peace,” exhorts an organizer from the makeshift dais, and we respond in unison.

Farida, a young Egyptian student, narrates how she tried to get her voter card in Cairo last November to vote in the parliamentary elections but was harassed and intimidated at every step of the way. An officer at the police station asked her, “Who are you going to vote for?” Emboldened by a friend who threatened to bring a lawyer, the officer quickly changed his tune and gave her the voting card. But many of her friends got the runaround for weeks until they gave up in frustration. (The election was, as usual, completely rigged by Mubarak and his minions.) These young people have never known anyone other than Mubarak as their ruler. They felt defeated, until they saw what happened in Tunisia. Everyone cheered when Farida said January 25 would be the most important day in the history of modern Egypt.

Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, women, men, babies in strollers and veterans in wheelchairs, the young, the old, Imams, Rabbis and Priests filled the Plaza. Colorful signs sprouted everywhere: “Stop U.S. Military Aid to Egypt,” “Buddhist, Jews in solidarity with the Muslim and Christian People of Egypt,” “Mubarak in De-Nile, Get Out!,” “Ali Baba is Gone. What about the Forty Thieves?” “DeNile Ain’t Just a River in Egypt,” “Dying for Something is Better than Living for Nothing,” and many more.

Maryam Bin Salah, a doctoral student from Tunisia asks in wonder: “Just two months ago, could you have dared to dream that two dictators would fall? Why are we ruled by trash in Arab countries? All our thinkers and scholars and engineers are either in exile or in prison. Why? Why are we treated so badly? We must rid our countries of dictators so our inventors and our best minds can return and rebuild our nations.”

Imam Abdul Aziz of Sacramento, an Egyptian, asks us to put pressure on the White House to make the right decision. “Just think,” he said, “the revolution is raging for the 12^th straight day. There is uncertainty, sure, but what is certain is that the brave people of Tunisia and Egypt have already prevailed. All supporters of democracy have prevailed. Even after Mubarak is forced to resign, people will remain in the streets until true democracy rules. We have a chance to become a developed country rather than remain frozen as a third world country.”

The Imam chokes with emotion but recovers: “I have a cousin, a young fellow, in Tahrir Square right now. He has never had an aim in life, frittering away his time in frivolous pursuits. I just spoke to him. He told me, ‘I will die for my country until we have democracy and rule of law.’ The revolution is changing hearts. Some are already swayed by the crocodile tears of Mubarak. ‘Give him a chance,’ they say. ‘The economy will be destroyed. Old people are not getting their pension. The sick are not getting their medicine.’ All I can say to them is: Shut up! We have been in prison for 30 years. The thugs have stolen $70 billion of our money that are now in the banks in Switzerland and France and England. Egyptians will stay on the streets until their demands are met!”

Tim Paulson, a labor union representative tells the gathering that Americans must learn from Egyptians “so we know how to secure our own rights here in America. We must remain vigilant until Egyptians can live their dreams. Mubarak is only four hours from Saudi Arabia. Enough is enough. Get out!”

A new slogan reverberates around the Plaza:
Ben Ali Yesterday, Mubarak Today, Qaddafi Tomorrow!

Mo, an activist with the Jewish Voice for Peace (http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/ - Israelis and Palestinians. Two people. One Future), told me: “It is not for presidents and kings to give people their freedom. Freedom is God’s gift to people. We must be united together.”

“Israel has expressed anxiety about democracy coming to Egypt. Why is that?” I ask. Mo sighs. “Because it is easy,” he says, “for Israel to engage in the politics of fear. Israel must act like a country in the Middle East and not as if it is a transplant of the West. It will be good for Israel if democracy comes to Arab countries.”

Mo wants the U.S. to do everything it can to let democracy bloom in the Middle East instead of promoting its candidates in the name of stability. “Jews and Muslims are not separate,” he said. “We are united by a common future.” He is sure that the last pharaoh will soon go. “Coddling dictators has been the U.S. policy. That has to change. All this talk about the Brotherhood coming to power is a tactic to create anxiety and undermine the revolution of the people.”

“O Mubarak can’t you see, Time to join Ben Ali.” The rhyming slogans are catchy and energizing and make us smile.

More people are pouring in. I realize with a shock that three hours have already passed. When stories and images of oppressed people breaking free from their oppressors grip us, time becomes inconsequential.

People sitting on the fences say that demonstrations, rallies and protest marches don’t change anything. What they don’t understand is that, at the very least, they change the participants in subtle and significant ways. Change without can come only from change within.

What Tunisians have achieved, and Egyptians are poised to achieve, is nothing short of miraculous. It’s still a long way to freedom and democracy but the first steps have been taken. The least we can do is show them, “We are with you, all the way!”

Mubarak Must Exit Now

2011-02-03T15:37:00.000-08:00

Hosni Mubarak is living proof that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Like Saddam Hussein, this pharaoh has vowed not to go gently into the night. His fate is similarly sealed.

Professional provocateurs deployed by Mubarak attacked peaceful protesters in Cairo and Alexandria with knives, razors and guns, and the first casualties of this revolution are beginning to mount. Reports coming out of Egypt tell the same story: The goons materialized seemingly out of nowhere in an orchestrated show of strength on behalf of their patron-in-chief, bent on derailing the democratic demands of the masses.

Meanwhile, pundits in America and Europe are already issuing dire warnings about the imminent collapse of the Egyptian economy. They don't seem to realize that Egyptians fighting for their rights don't care where the economy is heading at this critical juncture in their nation's history. They want to live like normal human beings. No sacrifice is too big to attain that goal. For over thirty years, Mubarak led them down the path of stasis. They have had enough. The status quo has to change. And, by God, it will, not when Mubarak chooses to step down, but now.

Ahmed, an American-Egyptian businessman from Fremont, California, is convinced that for Egypt to move forward, it must wean itself from American aid. The common people never see any benefit from the billions Egypt receives from the U.S.. "America dictates how Egypt uses the aid, which results in great business for America's weapons manufacturers," says Ahmed. "We have to put an end to that."

All the speculations about who will take over once Mubarak goes, and whether or not Egypt will be better or worse off then, is moot. Yes, there will be chaos, and yes, things may get worse before they get better. But that's the price Egyptians are willing to pay to overcome thirty years of wandering in the wilderness of despair. Reconstructing a nation after decades of misrule will take time. But the first order of business is to give the pharaoh the boot. Once the evil presence has left the scene, people will figure out a way to lift themselves from the darkness of despair into the sunshine of hope.

The world must unite behind Egyptians fighting for their rights, tactical and strategic considerations be damned. But it is Egyptians who must liberate themselves. Freedom will reign only if it comes from within. Long live the common people of Egypt yearning to breathe free.

Young Arabs Cross the Rubicon

2011-01-31T17:35:00.000-08:00

“I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.”

Those were the stirring words President Obama used at his Cairo speech in June of 2009. But eloquence and oratory cannot mask reality. As Egyptians rise is revolt against the kleptocracy of Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration is desperately trying to adjust its sails against the furious wind of change sweeping Egypt. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially praised Egypt’s “stability” under Mubarak but now that the Arabs have crossed Rubicon, she is using words like “restraint” and “reform” and urging “transition to a democratic regime.”

Why does the United States so often finds itself on the wrong side of history, at least initially? Why does it so easily settle for Faustian bargains with autocrats like Mubarak? For the Muslim world, in particular, America’s policy has been driven by an irrational combination of oil, Israel and Islamic terror. Mubarak used the bogeyman of “Islamic Jihadists” (Muslim brotherhood in his case) to convince America that keeping him in power was the only option, and so our government obliged him with $1.3b in military aid every year. Not just the tanks and the fighter planes, even the tear gas and the rubber bullets being used against Egyptians bear the label “Made in America.” Only the water in the water cannons presumably comes from the Nile. Is it any wonder that ordinary Egyptians do not quite look upon America as a beacon of freedom and democracy?

In his second State of the Union address on January 25, President Obama equated Tunisian revolution with freedom. “We saw,” he said, “that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful that the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

What a golden opportunity the President missed by not including Egypt in his address! Extolling the virtues of democracy, the President said, “… as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometime be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on earth. We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from.”

As my Egyptian friend Mustafa asked: “Does this mean that the United States reserves the right to experiment with democracy to enjoy its fruits, while Muslim puppets deny democracy to their people to cater to misguided American interests? This is nothing but arrogance and hypocrisy.”

American-Muslims, meanwhile, have thrown their full support behind Egyptians fighting unarmed for their freedom. During the Friday Khutbah in the largest mosque in California’s Silicon Valley, for instance, the Imam urged us to pray for their success in throwing out the pharaoh and preventing dynastic decadence. In solidarity with the Egyptian anger revolution, American Muslims have already demonstrated in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. More protest marches are planned.

During the Tunisian revolution, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his sycophants cut off Internet access, particularly access to Facebook. As reported by Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic, the Facebook security team at its headquarters in Silicon Valley discovered that Ammar, the nickname Tunisians have given to the authorities that censor the Internet, was trying to steal an entire country's worth of passwords. With the stolen passwords, Ammar was deleting Tunisians’ Facebook accounts!

After more than ten days of intensive investigation, Facebook's security team realized that Tunisia’s Internet service providers (ISP) were running a malicious piece of code that was recording users' login information when they went to sites like Facebook.

The security team coded a two-step response. First, all Tunisian requests for Facebook were routed to an https server. The https protocol encrypts the information sent across it (the “s” in “https” stands for “secure” or “secure sockets layer” (SSL), so it is not vulnerable to the keylogging strategy used by the Tunisian ISPs. The second technical solution was a "roadblock" for anyone who had logged out and then back in during the time when the Tunisian malicious code was running.

Facebook rolled out the new solutions to all of Tunisia five days after the company discovered what was happening, and access to the site was restored.

Hosni Mubarak also followed the path of his now-deposed fellow-dictator: He ordered the state-controlled ISPs to completely cut off Egypt’s Internet access. But Egyptians were not deterred. The air was charged with electricity and possibilities. The revolution had taken on a momentum of its own, and while Facebook and Twitter initially helped, Egyptians had already transcended the Internet.

Still, it is reasonable to expect that companies like Facebook will give special consideration to activists trying to overthrow repressive regimes. If the company wants to remain central to people's political aspirations, it has to come up with a powerful, long-term solution that can be activated at a moment’s notice when access to the site is denied by any country. From a hardware point of view, if dictators block Internet data pipes into their countries, perhaps multiple satellite connections as backups can be in place so that communication can continue uninterrupted in spite of latency issues.

However the technology evolves, the days of dictators who equate dissent with treason and oppress and torture their people are coming to an end. Muslim nations are beset by modern-day pharaohs. For the creativity of millions of Muslims to flower in freedom, the pharaohs will be overthrown, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. That is the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt.

In Solidarity with the Egyptian Anger Revolution

2011-01-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

American-Egyptians in the San Francisco Bay Area, supported by all the local Islamic organizations, have planned a protest march in San Francisco on Saturday, 29^th January, at the corner of Market and Montgomery, at 12 noon.

“We are all united behind Egyptians defying curfews and protesting the oppressive and illegitimate regime of Hosni Mubarak,” said a Silicon Valley engineer who migrated to the U.S from Alexandria a decade ago. “The Pharaoh must go.”

“I am so proud to see my countrymen finally throwing away their fear and taking on this brutal police state. For 30 years, Mubarak has kept us hostage. The poor have no food. The middle class is not doing any better. There is no peace for anyone. This must end,” said an Egyptian businessman from San Jose, who wishes he were in Tahir Square, Cairo, right now.

Anwar, who has been in the U.S. for 25 years, is delirious with joy at what is taking place in Egypt. But he isn’t sure the military will desert Mubarak anytime soon, since he is one of them. “We haven’t reached the tipping point yet,” he said, “but this revolution will not fizzle. Egyptians have suffered for too long. Freedom will come soon, God willing.”

Egypt has taken a cue from Tunisia. Just as the Tunisian president Ben Ali was forced to flee Tunisia after Tunisian youth rose in revolt, they want the same fate for Mubarak.

Egyptians are calling on all freedom-loving people, including Americans from all walks of life, to join them in protesting the tyrannical government of Hosni Mubarak on Saturday in San Francisco. The Arabic words in the poster they are circulating for the Saturday March read, from the top, Ash Shabu (The People), Yuridu (Want), Isqatan Nizam (The Fall of the Government).

State of the Union Address and Community Colleges

2011-01-26T17:57:00.000-08:00

A significant part of President Obama’s Second State of the Union (SOTU) address dealt with education. Already flagged as the “education president,” Mr. Obama asserted that his “Race to the Top” program was superior to George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” because it is “more flexible and focused on what's best for our kids.” What do states have to do to qualify for the $4.3 billion fund in “Race to the Top”? They have to come up with "the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement.” If they can do that, “we'll show you the money," the President said.

Teacher quality and student achievements will define the future of education in America. But how are these being implemented, particularly in community colleges? Oratory and eloquence cannot mask reality. The recession has forced many colleges to cut classes and programs across the board and layoff teachers or force pay cuts. A grim and uncertain air hangs over these institutions.

“Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today's fast-changing economy, we are also revitalizing America's community colleges,” the President said. He gave some examples of successes but overall, educators agree that the revitalization of community colleges exists only in theory and not in practice.

All the educational reforms of the past several decades share one thing in common: meager results. A report issued by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at Cal State Sacramento, for example, documents abysmally low student transfer and completion rates at California’s community colleges. Of the students who started out with the intention of transferring to a University of California or Cal State school, just 23% had made the jump six years later. Transfer rates for Latino and black students were even worse. Only 14% of Latino students and 20% of African American students successfully made the move to a four-year college.

Clearly, community colleges are in dire need of revitalization. Giving pink slips to good teachers because they are younger and do not have tenure is the wrong way to go about it, however. Imposing outdated curricula on students that have no relevance to 21st-century skills is a prescription for failure. Community colleges routinely turn away qualified teachers because they do not hold this or that certificate, this or that equivalency, even though they have acquired a vast amount of useful knowledge in their fields through work and research. This is short-sighted and self-defeating.

While the government must do its share, community colleges themselves must also step up to the plate. They must get rid of arcane rules and regulations so that their classrooms can be filled with gifted teachers. When students interact with engaging and knowledgeable teachers, learning flourishes and doing big things becomes possible.

Of Chinese and American Mothers

2011-01-22T19:19:00.000-08:00

American media is abuzz with news of China these days. As President Barack Obama plays host to Chinese President Hu Jintao and both leaders agree to cooperate on various fronts, there is an undeniable undercurrent of unease and anxiety in America over China’s seemingly unstoppable ascendancy.

China’s economy is the envy of the world. In technology, particularly green technology, China’s progress has been astonishing. By testing a new generation of stealth fighters, China has informed the world that its military is keeping pace with its soaring geopolitical ambition.

But two recent “events” have compelled the attention of the average American even more than China’s material and military progress, increasing the anxiety level.

One was the result of an international study, released in December 2010, (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf) that looked at how students from 65 countries performed in reading, science and math. Traditional powerhouses have been Singapore, South Korea, Finland, Canada and Japan. But the clear winner in all three categories by a wide margin this time was Shanghai, China!

The United States? It came in 17^th in reading, 23^rd in science and 31^st in math.

As if to explain the phenomenon, the other “event” appeared in the form of an essay in The Wall Street Journal on January 8. Written by Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law school and titled, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” it was excerpted from her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

Chua’s thesis is as stark as it is uncompromising: Chinese mothers are superior to their Western counterparts because they demand the best of their children and drive them relentlessly until they are at the top. They know that “nothing is fun until you are good at it,” and that one becomes good at something only through hard work and discipline. Since “children on their own never want to work, it is crucial to override their preferences.” Chinese mothers override their children’s preferences routinely and ruthlessly until they have reached, and exceeded, their goals.

In Chua’s case, nothing less than an “A” in every subject (except gym and drama which she considered unimportant) was acceptable from her two daughters, Sophia and Louisa, starting when they were 6. “For example,” says Chua, “if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong … Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best.”

Chua never let her daughters watch TV or play video games. There were no sleepovers or extra-curricular activities or computers. Once, Sophia came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made her do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained the top spot.

7-year-old Louisa was having difficulty once mastering a particularly difficult piano piece. Chua made her practice almost to the breaking point, night and day. There were tears, screams, insults, threats to burn all the toys. “I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling.”

In the end, Louisa was able to give the perfect recital before an audience. Chua finds American parenting weak, aimless and half-hearted. American parents are too concerned about a child’s self-esteem. The child may be lazy and manipulative but hurt his tender feelings? Heavens, no! American parents are consumed by the present - what’s going on with their children’s education here and now - whereas Chinese parents groom their kids for the future, with all the attendant sacrifices, be it to become a math whiz or a musical prodigy.

The furor erupted immediately. Parents and pundits of America pounced on Chua’s claims with outrage, scorn, even mockery. A representative response came from Ayelet Waldman, a writer based in Berkeley, California.

Comparing her style with Chua’s point by point, Waldman pointed out that she resisted any attempt to impose the violin or the piano on her children. She encouraged sleepovers, watching TV, playing video games, the use of computers and the Internet. She is grateful if her children are satisfied with their efforts in tests, the score notwithstanding. She wants her kids to have fun while learning and acquire good social skills that come only from human interaction and never from books. She wants her kids to be happy, even though she knows that there is enough trauma in any home to make this as daunting as a perfect SAT score.

Waldman’s point is that most children eventually find their way, through failure as much as through success. Parents just have to trust them, guiding them with a firmness tempered by love. If a child is passionate about reading and loves books, even if she is dyslexic (as Waldman’s daughter was), she can overcome her handicap and come out of the experience surer of herself, “a more powerful and tenacious person.”

The danger here is to generalize and claim that this or that method of parenting is superior. There is no perfect parenting code because every parent has to learn on the fly, even if there is much in the tradition to fall back on. The right parenting skills lie somewhere between flexibility and firmness, between tough love and unquestioning love, between nature and nurture, between reining in and letting go, between, one may say, prose and poetry.

Every child, like every snowflake, is unique, and one size will never fit all. As Waldman puts it, “roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed. Amy Chua and I both understand that our job as mothers is to be the type of tigress that each of our different cubs needs.”

Amy Chua’s views on parenting style almost unleashed a clash of cultures, especially when a commentator pointed out that Asian-American girls aged 15 to 24 have above average rates of suicide. However, things have settled down somewhat and the consensus is that each culture brings something unique to the table when it comes to parenting. Those with open minds can pick up pointers from other cultures to add to their parenting skills.

Rudyard Kipling thought that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” but in this Age of the Internet, East and West meet everyday in the marketplace of ideas – including ideas about parenting - and both are enriched in the process.

Tunisia Shows the Way

2011-01-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

When the history of the downfall of Arab dictators is written – ten years, twenty years, even 50 years from now – one name will find an honored place in it: Mohammed Bouazizi of Tunisia.

The 26-year-old with a degree in computer science couldn’t find employment, a fate he shared with 200,000 fellow Tunisian graduates in a population of 10 million. Driven to despair, he tried to sell fruits and vegetables to make a living. The corrupt, repressive police arrested him for lack of a “license” to operate as a street vendor and repeatedly harassed and tortured him. Unable to cope with the indignity, he set himself on fire on Dec. 17, and died on Jan. 3.

The flame that consumed Bouazizi ignited a mass movement throughout the country as Tunisians gave vent to their pent-up feelings against the dictatorial regime of Zein el-Abidine Ben Ali.

For 23 years, Ben Ali and his family and cronies looted the treasury, building beachfront villas and taking a cut from every business while the young population (half of Tunisians are under 25) lived lives of deprivation. A ruthless network of enforcers and informers, drawn mostly from the ranks of the army and the police, kept the populace at bay.

But the self-immolation of Bouazizi changed the equation. Social networking sites, particularly Twitter, helped spread the word and the Jasmine revolution was underway.

The unthinkable happened, a first for the Arab world: Ben Ali and his entourage fled the country.

Tunisia has rarely been in the news in America. Occasionally we heard stories of how Ben Ali was our ally in the fight against terrorism and how Tunisia was a model of democracy. France was even more aggressive in propagating this lie because of its historical ties with the country.

The recent Wikileaks, however, revealed to the world what every Tunisian had known for years, that the regime of Ben Ali was corrupt and authoritarian beyond imagination.

But why did the U.S. go along with the status quo? For the same reasons that our country has gone along with gross human-rights violations in Arab countries: preference for sugarcoated stability to trumped-up threats of radical Islam.

All a dictator like Ben Ali had to do was dangle the specter of Muslim extremists taking over, and the United States turned to jelly. Consider how long some of the Arab dictators have been in power - Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, 42 years, Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, 33 years, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, 30 years – and ask yourself, “Is it that these countries have no worthier candidates than these aging autocrats who are already grooming their sons (never daughters!) to continue their dynastic decadence?”

The answer, of course, is no. But by running police states while keeping the United States happy with manufactured anti-terrorism crackdowns, the dictators continue to rule unchallenged. Thus, there are no new ideas in these countries, no innovations in education, science and technology, and no programs to meet people’s aspirations.

But the game is up. It may take years but business as usual in the Arab world has run its course. Could anyone predict only a few months back that an Arab dictator could be toppled by street riots and demonstrations? As Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

The U.S. is showing signs that it is finally beginning to read the handwriting on the wall. In a visit to Qatar this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Middle Eastern leaders that "in too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand … Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever. If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum. Extremist elements, terrorist groups and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there, appealing for allegiance and competing for influence. So this is a critical moment, and this is a test of leadership for all of us."

Lip service is easy. What is needed is action. Unless it aligns its foreign policy with its values instead of with political expediency, and starts recognizing the legitimate aspirations of the Arab populace, particularly the educated young, U.S. influence will dramatically shrink in the region.

There is no turning back. Tunisians have shown that they can write their own scripts. The Egyptians, Moroccans, Syrians, Jordanians and others have taken note. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech now has an Arab resonance and the “fierce urgency of now” has already begun to animate the Arab youth. Change is indeed afoot.

Healing a Disturbed Nation

2011-01-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

To turn a tragedy into a triumph of the human spirit takes intelligence, grace and eloquence. President Obama showed all these qualities in his moving tribute to the fallen and their families in Arizona, on Wednesday, January 12.

In giving us a summary of the lives of the six who died, he made the memorial service both personal and universal. In telling us the inspiring but also heartbreaking story of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, Obama transformed her brief life into a beacon for the nation.

In paying tributes to those who prevented more deaths by stopping the gunman, and the doctors and nurses who acted with urgency to tend to the wounded, the president said, "These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned - as it was on Saturday morning."

The President helped lift us from a paralyzing darkness into light. It was all from the heart. There was nothing political about it. He alerted us not to fall for partisan finger-pointing. "... at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

America needs to hear these words now. Poisonous rhetoric has seeped into every corner of the land and Americans are perilously close to becoming citizens of two distinct and divided Americas. We have to recognize our inevitable differences of opinion without demonizing those with whom we disagree.

"But what we can't do," the President said, "is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

Expanding the moral imagination and sharpening the instincts for empathy are, of course, easier said than done. Yet this is what we must do, and Obama was right to invoke these challenges on this somber occasion.

The President held up Taylor Green's short life as an example for us, her innocence, her aspirations, her love for America. "And in Christina...in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic. So deserving of our love. And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. Let's make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle."

President Obama gave a stirring speech in Arizona. There will always be evil in the world, but so will there be good as well. The good can, and will, triumph over evil, despite occasional setbacks. "The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives - to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud."

The President has regained the footing he seemed to have lost in recent times. He did this by transcending politics and pointing us toward a nobler vision of America. Let's hope he can build on it, matching words with action while inspiring us to reach for our better selves.

Easy Gun Breeds Violence

2011-01-10T19:20:00.000-08:00

A psychotic man walks casually into a gun store and buys a slick 9mm Glock automatic pistol. To ensure that his diabolical plot doesn't go awry, he also buys extra magazines loaded with ammunition. That way, he calculates, he can fire at least 20 rounds from a 30-round clip. By then, he will have comfortably mowed down his targets - any living, breathing human will do - and engrave his name next to the infamous assassins of the past.

22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner did just that, killing six people, including a bubbly third-grader, and critically injuring Arizona's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, his main target. The Congresswoman had called a community meeting in Tucson on January 8 to gauge the mood of her constituents. It was held in the open, a vivid display of democracy in action, until Loughner opened fire and splattered the sidewalks with blood.

Much will be written about what caused Loughner to trip. Menacing to begin with, he unnerved everyone around him in the community college where he was a student. Given his mental state, he must have found the toxic rhetoric of the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin music to his ears.

But ultimately it was one stark fact that made the difference between impotent rage and murderous realization: Buying a gun in Arizona, as in many other states, is as easy as buying milk.

If the NRA and the gun lobby, more correctly, the assassin lobby, is not checked and Congress does not pass laws to keep firearms out of the hands of citizens, particularly the deranged, America will continue to be periodically convulsed by the violence of madmen and psychopaths. There are about 85 guns per 100 Americans. Think of that 85% gun ownership for a moment, and see if you don't get the shivers! On the average, 80 Americans die from guns every day.

Unless we as a nation revisit the first two constitutional amendments and enact tougher gun-control laws, and acknowledge to ourselves that love of gun is an addiction just like the addiction to drugs or alcohol or sex, history will continue to repeat itself and more innocent blood will be splattered on our sidewalks and in our homes.

Muslims Must Protect Their Minorities

2011-01-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

What is happening to Muslims? In Egypt's Alexandria, Muslim terrorists killed 21 Coptic Christians on New year's Eve and wounded hundreds. This community has lived in Egypt for almost two thousand years and at 8 million, comprise 10 percent of Egypt's population. In Nigeria, a Muslim terrorist cult attacked several churches last year that left scores dead. In Iraq, a church was taken over by Muslim fanatics on October 31, 2010, that resulted in the killing of about fifty Christians. In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a Christian and a mother of five, faces a death sentence under the country's notorious blasphemy law. For daring to speak out against this law, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was gunned down by one of his bodyguards.

"My name is Ahmad and I'm a Muslim, but that's not important now," said a young Egyptian high-school student who had gathered spontaneously with a thousand other Egyptians in the Center of Cairo on the first of the year. He was holding the Quran in one hand, a crucifix in the other. "I've come to protest against what happened to our Christian brothers and to show that the religious communities in Egypt won't let themselves be divided."

Such sentiments are indeed being expressed by outraged Muslims at the deaths of minorities who have lived among them for centuries. Unfortunately, they are relatively few in number. Too many Muslims are either afraid or reluctant to speak out against atrocities committed by other Muslims. But let a non-Muslim mock Islam or attack mosques and suddenly these lambs turn into lions as they take to the streets condemning Western aggression and attacking Western interests.

We Muslims cannot continue with this hypocrisy and double-standards for long. We are the ones committing the ultimate blasphemy, through our silence and appeasement of Muslim fanatics. We see Western conspiracy at every corner but are blind to the elephant in the room, the terrorism by Muslims against Muslims and non-Muslims alike. We deny constantly that our cruelest enemies are from within our folds.

We cannot be good Muslims unless we are also good Christians and good Jews. That is what I understand by the reference to "People of the Book" in the Quran. Unless we commit to protecting the minorities living among us, we will be betraying the fundamental tenets of our faith. It is as simple as that. If Muslim minorities living in the West come under attack, can we really blame anyone but ourselves?

Eliminating Desire

2011-01-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

“Eliminating Desire” is the perplexing personal interest Mark Zuckerberg lists on his Facebook page. The Facebook founder has become an Internet icon as the number of users of his social network, already more than 550 million, approaches a billion. The company got tons of publicity when Zuckerberg was selected as TIME magazine’s 2010 person of the year. Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S. in the past year, a phenomenon unthinkable only a few months ago.

But back to that desire thing.

In an interview, Zuckerberg explained: “I just want to focus on what we’re doing … I think it would be very easy to get distracted and get caught up in short-term things or material things that don’t matter. The phrase is actually ‘Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.’”

Now, whether history will judge Facebook to have been a transformational or a frivolous innovation is unclear. But that intriguing, enigmatic sentence bears reflection: “Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.”

The idea of what matters and what doesn’t is, of course, unique to each of us, shaped by faith, culture, passion, inclination. To a technologist like Zuckerberg, connecting people across the globe in a seamless digital network is probably all that matters. Everything else is peripheral. To a scholar, seeking knowledge, and adding to it if possible, is paramount. To a writer, unlocking the mysteries of the human heart is the point. And so it goes.

But then, desires find a way of weaving themselves into our goals and the effect is to scatter focus, as a prism scatters light.

One such desire is more like distraction but it has become so overpowering in our times that it is indistinguishable from what we call addiction, which is desire running rampant. It is our constant need for digital stimuli, one of its chief architects being, ironically, Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iPhone, YouTube, Texting, Email – such are the mind and time-sucking vortex of the Web, and many of us plunge headlong into it from the moment we wake up until a few hours of nightly shut-eye. (What some of us would give to dispense with sleep if that were possible!) Work is now in our pockets, literally, keeping us in a 24x7 state of connection.

But this state of affairs is also what makes Zuckerberg’s statement all the more intriguing. Here is a 26-year-old billionaire who has the means to fulfill any desire that glides into his mind, yet he is singularly focused on his goal. And while his goal may be to create an even more seductive vortex, we must give him credit for resisting desires that afflict most of us – more stuff, more money, more vacation, more everything.

The summit of all desires is, of course, the desire for “things.” Very few of us resist the siren call of materialism. If my neighbor has a 50” TV, why, I must have the biggest HDTV in the market. If he drives a Cadillac, I must drive a Mercedes. If his home has eight rooms, mine must have at least twelve. And if there is no one in sight who can compete with me in possessions or power, does it mean that I can rest? No! Like a shark, I must be constantly moving, even if it means to remain at the same spot.

The unbridled acquisitive instinct that lies dormant when the means aren’t there but blooms instantly when they are, is what causes so much despair and heartbreak. Wise travelers inform us time and again of seeing people in distant lands, whom we regard as dwelling in adversity, who get more out of life’s simple joys – family, friendship (real, not virtual), community, nature – than affluent people living in mansions and surrounded by stuff but surviving on Prozac and therapy. Yet all of us who engage in materialism in one form or another know that the charm of new purchases - a car, a pair of shoes, a watch – wears down in days, until we get the next new “thing” in a deadening cycle of diminishing sensitivity.

So, how to eliminate desire for “all that doesn’t really matter”?

Sometimes it is forced on us, as the Great Recession did, and continues to do. Many Americans have discovered that giving away stuff – clothes, gadgets, cars – and living with less clutter makes life more meaningful. Millionaires have discovered that instead of fretting about the first million begetting the next, they can lead a more satisfying life on, say, $40,000 a year. (Americans living below the poverty line will consider that a sign of affluence). It is no wonder that the top word that we searched for in 2010, according to Merriam-Webster, was “austerity.”

But reflecting on life’s purpose can also have a salutary effect. What exactly do we want out of life? Is it to be the envy of our neighbors, the toast of our societies? Is it to dazzle others with our knowledge, to make lesser mortals tremble with our power? Is it to climb the greasy pole of success on the backs of others? All these desires have shallow roots, however worthy they may appear. Perhaps it will dawn on us, if we can be alone with our thoughts, that happiness often flows from outlasting our impulses.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone, said Thoreau. It is an insight we should put to use as we welcome a new year.

The Muslim scholar Al-Harith bin Asad al-Muhasibi (165 A.H – 243 A.H) left us with this instruction for achieving our dreams: “You will not achieve what you want unless you give up what you desire, and you will never achieve your dreams until you are patient with what you hate.”

Nurturing "A Beautiful Tree"

2010-12-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

“The Beautiful Tree” is a book that lays bare the bankruptcy of Western ideas about free primary education in developing countries.

Written by British educator James Tooley and supported by data from the field, it shows how the poor of the world are taking charge of their educational destiny, and how foreign money and governmental collusion threaten to undermine them.

Tooley’s odyssey began in Hyderabad, India, in 2000. A chance stroll through the old city’s teeming slums led him to dozens of makeshift schools where children of rickshaw pullers, street vendors, laborers and society’s assorted underclass were receiving their basic education. The teachers were animated and energetic, the students eager and curious, far more than what he saw in the government and elite schools in the city and its affluent suburbs.

Ignored by western aid agencies and harassed by government officials, a vast network of private schools in these low-income areas have been serving the poor for years. They are locally owned and funded, in contrast to the free public schools that receive copious financial aid from western donors and NGOs. Yet the poor send their children to these private schools, supporting them with fees from their meager income.

They made this conscious decision, Tooley found, because they had compared the public and private schools in their areas and found the education in the latter superior. They could see the transformational power of knowledge in their children as they moved through the grades, even though they had no education themselves.

Tooley’s discovery was as simple as it was profound: The poor chose self-reliance over dependency. They were the best agents of their change, from poverty to prosperity.

Guaranteed salaries in government schools meant that many teachers, beneficiaries of political patronage, rarely showed up for work, and when they did, spent much of their time sleeping or relaxing rather than teaching. “I don’t care whether students learn anything or not. I always collect my pay at the end of the month,” was how one teacher put it.

In contrast, teachers in the fee-charging private schools had to earn their wings every day, or else they were fired. Accountability, combined with a genuine desire to shape young minds, motivated these poorly-paid teachers to excel in their craft, reflected in the higher scores of private school students over their counterparts in government schools.

From numerous interactions with aid executives, public school officials and teachers, Tooley came to understand the philosophy guiding western donors and NGOs: The natives, many of them poor ignoramuses, don’t know what’s best for them. We do. We will fund the construction of schools, bring technology into classrooms, train teachers on western styles of teaching and make education free for all. Good salaries and incentives will ensure a large supply of locals who will buy into our ideas, implement them as directed and stifle any renegade educational movements.

But the private schools of Hyderabad thrived under the most challenging conditions imaginable. Operating as for-profit businesses, the owners provided philanthropy to destitute parents as needed, while holding teachers to the highest standards of behavior, punctuality and subject-mastery and evaluating them on the performance of their students. Tooley felt inspired simply by talking with school owners and teachers like Fazlur Rahman Khurrum, Mohammed Wajid, “Sajid-Sir,” and Maria. The success of their approach was evident in the lively and high-achieving students of their schools.

Was this phenomenon unique to the backstreets and alleys of Hyderabad, Tooley wondered, or was it prevalent elsewhere in the world as well?

For the next several years, Tooley traveled to slums, shantytowns and villages in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Somaliland, Zimbabwe and China. Though separated by language and culture, he found the same drive among the poor to educate their children in indigenous schools operating on shoe-string budgets rather than in free, government schools. The school owners were animated by the same ideas he found in Hyderabad: that a monopoly, as practiced by foreign-funded public schools, bred failure while a competitive educational model based on self-reliance and accountability ensured success.

In his investigation, Tooley uncovered facts that turned conventional wisdom on its head. One such was that the British brought education to the uneducated masses of the subcontinent. Yet data collected in India in early 19^th century showed that there were over 20,000 schools and colleges with over 160,000 students in just 20 districts alone, before the British imported their system. Students included the poorest and the most disadvantaged. Thomas Munro, governor of the Madras Presidency, had to acknowledge that this level of educational enrollment “is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant period.” Similar high-volume schooling was prevalent in Bengal, Bombay and the Punjab, as evident from one of the reports published in 1841 by the University of Kolkata, titled “State of Education in Bengal 1835-38.”

Citing these figures, Mahatma Gandhi said at Chatham House, London, on October 20, 1931, that “today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago … because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished.”<>

What was the beautiful tree Gandhi was referring to? It was the network of private schools, “closely interwoven with the habits of the people and the customs of the country,” throughout India that served students both poor and rich. Philip Hartog, a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, was in the audience when Gandhi made his assertion, and was incensed by it. He set out to prove Gandhi, who was imprisoned in 1932 on his return to India, wrong.

It is rich in irony that Tooley, an Englishman (he chose the title “The Beautiful Tree” for his book as homage to Gandhi), dissects Hartog’s arguments point by point almost seven decades later and proves that Gandhi was, in fact, right. Far from bringing education to India, as the British congratulated themselves on doing, they instead crowded out the already-flourishing private education system with their colonial system. Illiteracy increased as a consequence.

Tooley is particularly critical of Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), the architect of the public schooling system in existence in India today and across the developing world where the British wielded influence. Macaulay was openly dismissive of indigenous scholarship and installed a centralized system of “free” education, with mandatory paraphernalia for every school, buildings and so forth. As Gandhi wrote, “This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education.” Gandhi wished to return to a system of “private schools for the poor, funded mostly by fees and a little philanthropy.”

Whether it is the World Bank or Department for International Development (DfID), UNDP, Oxfam, UNESCO, UNICEF, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or well-meaning celebrities like Bono, Tooley believes that “development experts today, academics, aid agency officials, and the pop stars and actors and who encourage them, are modern day Macaulays.”

While they believe in the importance of education, they are also convinced that without their intervention, the poor will be doomed. Like Macaulay, they will not even admit to the possibility that the poor can meet their educational aspirations on their own. Macaulay thought there was only one way to educate Indians, and that was to install a uniform and centralized system that suited the British upper classes. The modern Macaulays hold the same view, that only publicly funded systems that serve Britain and America is also the solution, particularly for the poor, in developing countries. “My journey,” Tooley writes, “across Africa and India, and into history, leads me to believe that they are as mistaken today as Macaulay was then.”

Through inquiry and analysis, as opposed to theorizing and acting on received wisdom, Tooley has offered compelling evidence that the world’s poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves, a surer path to universal literacy and prosperity than the sterile ideas and practices of development experts.

Tooley’s observations point the way to a promising future for developing nations. They must find a way to unlock the potential of their poor citizens. It can be done if educational entrepreneurs like Fazlur Rahman Khurrum and Maria build self-sustaining schools in urban slums and villages and transform them into centers of excellence. Private schools for the poor will flourish as much in the cities of Bangladesh, say, as in Hyderabad, Gansu, Lagos and Nairobi if the product is quality education. Teachers don’t have to be certified; they only have to have a hunger for knowledge, a passion for teaching, and a desire to make a difference in the lives of their students.

An aspect of education missing in “The Beautiful Tree” is online learning, particularly mobile learning. If educational entrepreneurs can integrate the Web and mobile learning into their services, they can overcome the limitations of physical classrooms and the vagaries of weather. Given the existence of robust wireless infrastructures in countries like Bangladesh and the near-universal use of cell phones, mobile learning can be the catalyst for world-class education for the poor in developing countries. The world’s knowledge, after all, is now accessible to anyone with a browser and a thirsty mind.

Contrary to what development experts and aid agencies claim, it does not require a miracle to bring schooling to the earth’s poorest children. The poor are already doing it by using their own resources in a holistic network of children, parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs, with knowledge, performance and accountability as keys. Sir Bob Geldof, the activist who has dedicated his life to social justice and peace worldwide, said that development succeeds admirably when people ignore the advice of ‘the experts’ and find their own culturally appropriate model. This is exactly what the world’s poor are doing. They have found their model and it is working admirably for them.

If they really want to do some good in the world, development experts should learn from the private schools in the slums of cities like Hyderabad and Lagos and introduce those educational practices into their own “advanced educational systems.” They can then witness the miracle they have been waiting for.

Sachin Tendulkar, Cricket Genius

2010-12-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

What distinguishes remarkable sports figures from very good ones is their professional longevity, their sustained excellence.

Pele played in four world cup soccer tournaments (1958, 1962, 1966, 1970), in which he was the architect of Brazil's victory in the finals in two (1958, 1970). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played basketball from 1969-1989, won six NBA championships, a record six regular season MVP awards, and scored more points than any other player in league history (38,387).

India's Sachin Tendulkar has scored 50 Test centuries so far, and still has plenty of cricket left in him. His nearest rival is Ricky Ponting of Australia, with 39 centuries.

Starting as a wunderkind when he was only 16, the 37-year-old right-hander has scored most runs in cricket: 14,506 runs at an average of 56.88 in 175 Tests. That's also the most number of Tests anyone has played in the 5-day version of the game.

In One-Day Internationals (ODIs), he has tallied up 17,598 runs in 442 matches, at an average of 45.12. He has also scored 46 centuries and leads all other players with his ODI statistics as well. Is it possible to score a double century in an ODI? Yes, and Sachin did it in February of this year against South Africa. This record will probably remain as untouchable as Brian Lara's (West Indies) record of 400 not out in a 5-day Test against England in 2004.

For 21 years, Tendulkar has been enthralling spectators with his brilliance with the bat. When the flamboyance of youth threatened to desert him in his more mature years, he played with more deliberation and focus. The runs kept coming. In 2010, at the ripe old age of 37, he scored 7 centuries at an astounding average of 85 runs per innings and amassed more than 1,500 runs in 13 Tests.

Tendulkar has scored 11 centuries against Australia, nine against Sri Lanka, seven against England, six against South Africa, five against Bangladesh, four against New Zealand, three each against West Indies and Zimbabwe, and two against Pakistan.

The milestone that his fans worldwide are waiting for is "Century of Centuries." With 50 in Tests and 46 in ODIs, his ton statistics stands at 96. Only 4 more and he will have achieved something that no cricketer is likely to achieve, a total of hundred 100's in both versions of the game.

I have no doubt Tendulkar will score four more centuries, given his current form. As a fan, what I really hope he will be able to accomplish before he surrenders his bat is hit a triple-century (300 or more in an innings). So far, this feat has eluded him, although he has scored six double-centuries.

But is it records that keep the little maestro going? Not really. "I play for the love of the game," he said after his ton number 50. "If I were chasing records, I wouldn't have missed the one-day matches against New Zealand recently. I have to pace myself carefully ... It's about producing quality cricket."

Here's the incomparable Don Bradman on Tendulkar: "I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two ... his compactness, technique, stroke production ... it all seemed to gel."

Sachin Tendulkar is peerless. Jacques Kallis or Ricky Ponting may catch him in the number of Test centuries (long shot, though), but in terms of sheer brilliance sustained over two decades of cricket, Tendulkar has established himself as the Bradman of our times. "Sir Garfield Sobers" has a nice ring to it; so does Sir Sachin Tendulkar.

The Swallows of Summer

2010-12-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

A pair of swallows built their nest in the eaves above my garage in spring. I became aware of them in summer when their droppings began to stain the garage door and the driveway. Their comings and goings fascinated me and I felt no animosity toward them while cleaning up their mess.

One day my landscaper told me he could remove the nest with a powerful blast from a hose

"Oh no, I don't want want you to do that," I said, horrified at the prospect.

"You like cleaning poop?"

"well, I love birds, and if I have to clean their poop to enjoy them, I don't mind."

He looked at me strangely. The message was unmistakeable: Something was seriously wrong with me. We both laughed, however, and never talked about this anymore.

The swallows were a delight. Occasionally they would put on a show, particularly in the lingering dusk, wheeling and stitching the air with deft aerobics. Other swallows materialized and the flock would fly with sheer joy, rising, falling and rising again. Sweeping away the pair's detritus was the least I could do by way of thanks.

But now it is winter and my swallows are gone, lured by warmth somewhere in the south. The nest is empty but filled with memories of life lived with joy and freedom. Jibananda Das, a Bengali poet, compared the longing evoked by a bird's nest to the longing evoked by his lover as her sight alights on him. If you have never carefully looked at a nest, this metaphor will seem unconvincing to you. But of you have, love will stir in your heart as you recite the poet's "Banalata Sen."

It's raining today and a strong wind is blowing. The street is strewn with red and yellow leaves. They dance furiously in the wind, tracing blurry circles and ellipses, and then suddenly they race along the street in hundred-meter dashes. Some ravens flit from tree to tree. Suddenly the sun peeks from behind the clouds and just as suddenly, it is swallowed again, but not before I catch sight of a rainbow lighting up the green hills.

Will my swallows return in spring, not any pair but this pair? Probably not. Probably another pair will make the empty nest their own. I am ready to welcome them but the winter feels long and spring seems far away.

Save the Tigers

2010-11-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

To focus on the negative side of any issue is the specialty of journalists.

In a “Tiger Summit” at St. Petersburg, Russia, from November 22-24, concerned leaders met to discuss how to prevent the extinction of the big cats known for their fierce beauty and mythical powers.

But if you are to read the reports filed by journalists, the battle is already lost. Tigers are on their way out and we will be left only with stories by Rudyard Kipling and others about how these animals lived, loved and died.

The statistics is certainly grim. Only about 3,200 tigers remain in the wild. Compare that to the more than 100,000 that roamed the jungles a century ago. At this rate, tigers could be extinct by 2022.

The enemies are poachers and humanity’s relentless usurping of tiger habitats. Poachers can command anywhere from $11,000-$21,000 dollars for tiger skins. Bones can be sold for $1,000. These are prized particularly by the Chinese for their supposedly medicinal values and as aphrodisiacs.

The situation in India is particularly grim. The tiger population there has fallen to 1,411, from about 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002 and the 40,000 estimated to be roaming across India at the time of independence in 1947. Poachers use the porous border with Nepal to continue their trade with rich clients.

The government has cracked down hard on these thugs but industrial expansion and dams near protected reserves are also taking a heavy toll on the cats. A comprehensive plan to protect the habitats has recently gone into effect.

Bangladesh is home to about 400 Royal Bengal tigers in the Sunderban (beautiful forest), a unique mangrove ecosystem in the southern part of the country. The government is determined to protect and increase their numbers, a move supported by Bangladeshis. Other countries with tiger population include Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, and Indonesia.

While there are serious obstacles to protecting tigers from poaching and encroachments, a concerted effort by leaders of the “tiger countries” can overcome them. The “Tiger Summit” is a step in the right direction. The summit has approved a wide-ranging program to double the world's tiger population in the wild by 2022. It has also produced a declaration of commitment from government leaders of the 13 countries where these magnificent creatures dwell.

In 1794, the poet William Blake wrote:

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

It is easy to be discouraged in these cynical times but when it comes to preserving species threatened with extinction, we often heed our better angels. Tigers will continue to burn bright in the forests of the night. We will rise to the challenge of ensuring that these light are never dimmed.

"What You've Never Had, You Never Miss"

2010-11-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

An elderly couple from Canada gave away their $11.2 million lottery winnings to relatives and charities. Their justification: "What you've never had, you never miss."

Allen and Violet Large of Truro, Nova Scotia, have been married for 36 years. They are in their seventies and have everything they need in their retirement years. Violet was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and has been receiving chemotherapy at a hospital in Halifax.

Year ago when I lived in Halifax, I once drove through Truro. I still remember the sleepy town. The one thing that struck me about it was that not much happened there, and that's the way the few people I saw on the streets seemed to like it.

Allen & Violet distributed their money first to family and then to the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

You read something like this and you sit still to absorb it. Amid all the daily news of bloodbath and greed and ruthlessness, this couple did what perhaps only one in ten million would do. They could have taken exotic trips, bought all the toys they could indulge in, and spend their last years in pampered care and luxury. But no, they just gave it all away.

They unconsciously followed the wisdom in these lines: "I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show - let me not defer it nor neglect it - for I shall not pass this way again."

Good and kind people live among us, in big cities and small towns. Next time we hear of cruelty and selfishness, let's remember Violet and Allen Large and others like them and be grateful for the human grace that is as much a part of us as its opposite.

Put Keith Olbermann Back Where He Belongs

2010-11-05T18:58:00.001-07:00

MSNBC's suspension of the outspoken TV anchor Keith Olbermann is outrageous. The leading liberal voice of his time is the surest antidote to the toxic fumes that emanate nonstop from FOX and other right wing outlets.

What did Olbermann do to deserve this insult? He contributed a grand total of $2,400 to the campaigns of Representatives Rauj M. Grivalva and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and Attorney General Jack Conway of Kentucky!

For this sin, a sane voice has been stilled, at least for now.

MSNBC and its parent NBC News are answerable to NBC Universal. That's the problem with these corporations. The pompous idiots at the top think they know what's best for viewers, even though their only concern is money and profit. They will grab any chance to prove their moral superiority only because there is none. By suspending Olbermann they are trying to make the point that, for them, principles trump everything else. And what is the great principle they are trying to protect? That since a TV anchor's vision will be clouded if he we were to make political contributions, they must act as TV's virtuous gatekeepers. What anachronism! By the way, has anyone taught these geniuses the difference between causation and correlation?

All these honchos are now waiting for is a round of applause from coast to coast for their sanctimony.

Well, not only will no applause be forthcoming, these beacons of self-righteousness should brace for boos from every clear-thinking person in the country. The least they can do to salvage some honor from the situation is to immediately reinstate Keith Olbermann.

Obama Will Regain His Audacity

2010-11-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

The midterm election was a rude wake-up call for President Obama but it's not the end of the story. We have perhaps read only the first few chapters in a book of many chapters. The death of the Democratic agenda is greatly exaggerated.

Barack Obama has received his dose of humility just in time. Any longer and he would have put himself beyond rescue. All this talk of elitism, detachment, arrogance, 'I am right, you just don't get it' attitude is mostly true.

But what most Americans tend to overlook is Obama's enormous ability to rediscover himself. Anyone who has read his two autobiographical books know it. Why pundits are not using this trait in their judgment is odd. Perhaps it means that they haven't really read the books. Superficial perusal maybe but no serious study for clues to the president's character.

Since his election to the highest office in the land, Obama tried too hard to please his critics while neglecting his support base. He failed in the first and lost big time because of the second. Candidate Obama that young independents flocked to two years ago began to wonder who they really voted for, because the occupant of the White House certainly didn't resemble their hero, their hope.

The enthusiasm gap widened when Obama lost his sense of purpose and began courting the fat cats who gave us the financial crisis that destroyed millions of American families. Although blessed with a gift for words, the president couldn't explain healthcare or the stimulus or the financial reform in a way that common Americans could understand. Obama's packages were too little, although not too late.

The ultimate irony: A man borne on the wings of audacity suffered a failure of imagination.

But here's the thing: Obama can, and will, regain his audacity in support of his principles and in opposition to his implacable foes. It's in his genes.

Americans told him through their votes that they don't like his style and even the substance he has shown so far. They don't like the sense of superiority he exudes. They want a doer in these tough times but find in him an ivory-tower thinker with little or no appreciation of the difficulties they are facing. They want democrats to shed their timidity and boldly take on the Tea Party.

Obama will absorb these lessons in the days ahead and become candidate Obama again. He will recapture the magic by sheer force of will and reconnect with his constituency. He knows that this is the biggest challenge of his career. He will rise to it, not because of the prospect of a second term, but because he knows in his guts it is the right thing to do.