The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A very difficult, complex book.  While it is billed as darkly humourous, I find the humour better described as painful.

Change from the Bottom Up

Inspiration and action from people organizing to change their own lives (Saul Alinsky would be so thrilled!) with minimal intervention from do-gooding expats from the developed world patting themselves on the back and adding notches to their fell-good wrist bands.  Listen to a discussion of this topic on KUOW when Steve Scher hosted Celine D'Cruz of Shack/Slum Dwellers International.  The number of reports these days on the ineffectiveness of so many NGOs in the work they are purportedly doing, the huge sums of money being frittered away, is appalling. 

Headlines and Why Words Matter

A headline in the NYT on Saturday 15 January reads:  
Belarus Accuses Poland, Germany of Takeover Plot 
Having just finished reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, I am immediately reminded of Stalin's same accusations, the results of which were the famines of Ukraine (where multi-millions of people died), the murders of hundred of thousands of people who were Poles, Belarussians, Ukrainians, and Jews.  Stalin said what he wanted to say, regardless of truth and reality. People were too afraid and/or brainwashed  to contradict him.
Currently reading The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson and on page 153 in the paperback edition, one of the characters is talking about anti-Semitism and where that leads: "Soon it would be full-blown Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism.  There was nowhere for them to go.  They were indestructible, non-biodegradable.  They waited in the great rubbish tip that was the human heart."  On page 156, another character continues "The trigger isn't the violence in Gaza.  The trigger, in so far as they need a trigger-and many don't-is the violent, partial, inflammatory reporting of it. The trigger is the inciting word."

Parents and Children

Recent tragedies in our world have given parents pause to think about children and children pause to think about parents.  Here is President Obama reflecting, as parent and as Mourner in Chief, on the shooting of Christina Taylor Green in Tuscan, Arizona.  And her father was able, somehow, to gather his thoughts.  And the parents of the alleged murderer.

Last week, Shehrbano Taseer wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times on the assassination of his father, Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab. 

Saad Hariri insists on investigating the assassination of his father, Rafiq Hariri: Hezbollah, as potential guilty party, walks out; Lebanese government falls.

And what of the parents of  Mohammed Bouazizi?  No one has reported on them.

Personification of Evil

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder

The author creates an interesting,useful,and important paradigm shift in how we should think about, consider, and learn from the lives and deaths of over 14 million humans at the hands of Stalin and Hitler and the people they lead, in a geographic region called The Bloodlands.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
See reviews in the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times.

Happy New Year

Space Needle, Seattle: Showering in the New Year 2011. Photo by Joshua Trujillo

May humans treat each other with greater respect in the coming year.

The Rise of Stalinist Tactics in Russia

Three articles today in The New York Times raises red flags (no pun intended!) about Russia and its "legal system":  enough to raise the hairs on my neck.
The first one is about the friend and colleague Oleg Orlov, of murdered human rights activist Natalia Estimirova.  It has taken sixteen months for the trial to begin..and who is now accused and on trial?  Not the accused murderer.  "The authorities had charged Mr. Orlov with defamation because he had publicly pointed the finger at the man he believed was responsible for the murder: the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya. If convicted, Mr. Orlov could face as many as three years in prison."

The second article is about a jury being dismissed by the judge before it could deliver its verdict.  Jurors felt pressure, some were approached by police.  The quote I love the best is:  “Thank God such a juror did not deliver a verdict, a juror who felt he was under pressure,” Ms. Usacheva added. “Decisions involving the fate of another person cannot be made under the influence of fear or any other emotion.” This sounds like the rationals invented by Stalin where black is white if he says so and tortured logic regarding the means justifying the ends..read Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.

The third article is about the rearrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky upon his release from seven years in prison for opposing Putin.  "[T]he Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement accusing other countries of trying to interfere with a domestic judicial matter."  This is also a tactic used by Stalin:  accuse its own citizens of treason by invoking international conspiracies.

The New Colonialism

Relationships between politicians and their constituents and politicians and other nations get stranger by the day.  On 21 December, there was an article in the New York Times about farmers in Mali  being told by their own politicians that after the rainy season they would no longer be able to farm on their land or live in their villages.  And why?  The Malian government has leased out this land to.......Colonel Qadaffi!  So, now we have, not only resource rape by the Chinese, but actual land being taken by foreign governments...by agreement, not force; these are:   "neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations." What a way to take over a nation without doing battle.  This is not the first instance of its kind, check out the article to see what land is being taken, by whom, and for what purpose.  What a sorry state of affairs.

Words, words, and more words!

Interesting story on NPR about "Google's book-scanning project. The company has converted approximately 15 million books so far into electronic documents. That's about 15 percent of all books ever published. It includes books published in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew."  The authors of the project found they are able to track word usage through time and note cultural changes as words decline or increase in usage.  They are hoping others will derive pleasure and usefulness as they browse the data base:  apparently, it is a real time "waster".

Journalists under attack again in Russia

A proposed highway through one of the last oak forests in the Moscow region has met with resistance by environmentalists.  Medvedev actually postponed a decision on the project last August because of public outcry.  He has now authorised the building of this highway.  According to an AP and NYT article in the Seattle Times, highway projects are a major source of bribery and corruption. Evidence of this comes in the form of violence against journalists merely reporting "on the topic [who] have been brutally beaten, their skulls cracked and limbs broken. Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin was the most recent victim — hit some 50 times by two thugs in a stomach-turning attack last month that was caught on a security camera and outraged the nation."
Amnesty International is urging protection for Russian journalists. United Nations Human Rights committee urges more protection for journalists in areas of armed conflict: given the number of journalists killed in Russia, they might as well be working in an area of armed conflict and seek help under the International Covenant for the Protection of Journalists.

To the End of the Land by David Grossman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a book!  Just the sheer writing and planning of it must have required the writing of five stories of the three main characters and two smaller characters.  Beautiful writing; I think a reviewer mentioned that Grossman has written the best insight into a female character (by a male writer) since Reynolds Price wrote Kate Vaiden....and I would add Wallace Stegner's women in Crossing to Safety.
Such a poignant story of people and place: Israel.

Finally................

some good news about the Roma

Gifts of Knowledge

There are many gifts that last a lifetime and more.  Gifts of education.  Gifts of reading.  Gifts of leisure time in which to read.  Gifts to support readers and writers.  Make a gift, small or large, to an educational institution you care about, in your area or elsewhere. Give the gift of a loan to a parent working to educate her child.  Buy a subscription to a journal or newspaper whose mission is to provide information responsibly to people who think and care.  Buy a book:  support a small publisher, a writer, a bookshop.

Look in your own 'backyard', check out the places and people in the world you care about.   Here is my list of favourite places to offer some support:
KIVA.....one of my criteria for who I make a loan to is if they are needing to support their children's education.  And, you can do this with a loan of $25!
American Indian College Fund (AICF).......they do a fabulous job of providing scholarships and educational support to Native American Indians heading to college or university.
Whit Press...a wonderful small non-profit press devoted to providing an
"oasis to nurture and promote the rich diversity of literary work from women writers, writers from ethnic, social, and economic minorities, young writers, and first-time authors."
Elliot Bay Book Company..and independent book store devoted to readers and writers
London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books
University of Washington.....the home of active minds.  The University makes a great effort to provide scholarships to those in need: " Each year the University of Washington awards over $240 million in financial aid to over 60% of our undergraduate students"; alumni and donors go to great lengths to support these scholarship funds.
Umuzi Photo Club....their mission is "To empower learners from developing communities in South Africa with the skill of photography while promoting artistic self-expression and critical thinking as means for raising social awareness"
Seattle Public Library Foundation...publicly funded institutions also rely on private donations

So, these are a few of my favourite things, please support yours.

Employment in Syria

The current debacle that is wikileaks and the cables quoted regarding Syria, reminded me of the sad state of affairs that is the job market in Syria.  Syria is, nominally, a socialist state.  The government has nationalised any successful sector of the economy, resulting in the usual consequences of such actions: inefficiencies, shoddy work, high unemployment among males.  All successful business people take their money out of the country, returning for the minimal amount of time to maintain residency so that they can use cheap labour and make more money to send out of the country.  They avoid paying taxes at all costs.  The only guaranteed employment is in the military, service in which is compulsory.  Bright young men avoid military service as long as possible by earning certificates in as many occupations as they can (foreign languages, etc).  Syrians are highly entrepreneurial and open small shops in the souks, small businesses such as car repair, charcoal making, sheepskin tanning, farming, tourist support,  taxi driving, bureaucrats, as well as highly skilled artisans, etc.  Below are some photos of people working very hard to earn a living in a country where doing it is very difficult.

Making charcoal near Serjilla

Tanning sheepskins

Taxis waiting for business at the bus depot

Small businesses at the border with Lebanon

Oud player in Aleppo

Deliveries to merchants in the souk, Aleppo

Recently written, and reviewed, books on China

In the current issue of The New York Review of Books, Christian Caryl has reviewed seven recently published books on China.  This review is a must-read for amateur Sinologists and/or those interested in what the Chinese government is doing.  After discussing the various interests and approaches of the authors, Caryl says
"From my own years in the region, I’m inclined to think that the experience of the other East Asian countries—which Deng privately regarded as practical models for what he wanted to do with his own—throws a great deal of light on where China is headed now. Consider, for a moment, the city of Shenzhen. Back in 1979, when the CCP decided to designate it as one of the first four “Special Economic Zones” in the country, Shenzhen was home to about 80,000 people, most of them fishermen or farmers. Today the place has a population of just under nine million, a bit more than New York City’s. The workforce that fills its countless factories is drawn from China’s immense “floating population” of migrant workers desperate to escape the poverty of rural life. Virtually everyone who lives in Shenzhen comes from somewhere else. And since all Shenzheners are outsiders, they tend to speak to each other in Mandarin Chinese rather than the Cantonese dialect that prevails in most of surrounding Guangdong Province and Hong Kong." There is no act of innocence or accident or incident by the Chinese government, only acts of calculation.

Another book of interest to China watchers is 
The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor.  A thought-provoking review by Slavoj Zizek can be read in the London Review of Books.

And now for something.....completely the same: The Chinese & Zambia

Coal miners in Zambia are complaining about work conditions, contract breaches, and other problems at mines run by a "private" Chinese company.  See this New York Times article.  For more information about the incident where the Chinese managers shot four workers, see this article in allAfrica.com.  For a larger discussion of Afro-Chinese increasingly icy labour relations, see this article.  And for reporting on whether China is a blessing or curse for Africa, click here.

Two Photographers: The Shame of Apartheid

During 2010 there have been exhibits of the work of two South African photographers who documented the humanity of those who suffered the evils of Apartheid.  Ernest Cole was black and David Goldblatt is white: two men of incredible talent telling the same stories through different eyes.

The New York Times reports today on "The largest retrospective of his [Cole's] work ever mounted is now on display at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, built in the neo-Classical style almost a century ago in an era when South Africa’s great mining fortunes were being made on the backs of black labor".

David Goldblatt's work was on exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York May-September 2010.

Russia & China: the more things change, the more they stay the same....

Whether it's human rights, freedom of the press, or free political expression, neither Russia nor China have the fortitude or political self confidence to allow any criticism by their own citizens.  In particular, journalists bear the brunt of this repression.  This week alone, there were reports out of both countries about courageous critics who have been confined to mental asylums (China); the brutal beating of a Russian newspaper editor; and a brutal beating of another journalist in Russia.   The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been investigating how to provide protection for journalists under international humanitarian laws, but this discussion has been more in the context of reporters in armed-conflict situations. The Committee to Protect Journalists is doing courageous work in this area:  Russia and China are not the only goons in this arena.  Please, please support their work: donate.

The Bushmen of Southern Africa

The survival of the Bushmen of Southern Africa has been under threat for generations.  However, the government of Botswana has behaved particularly egregiously as they promote tourism at the expense of the livelihood of the Bushmen.  For those in need of a primer on this topic, an article in Friday's New York Times is very helpful.

The Chinese in Europe......

So, the Chinese are no longer just mopping up resource production in Africa (see my earlier posts), investing in infrastructure building (with Chinese labour and supporting businesses) in developing economies inorder to ship these resources out of Africa and into China's factories, but now they are looking to Europe to do the same.  An article in today's New York Times describes how the Chinese no longer feel the need to disguise ulterior motives:
"Ultimately, analysts say, Beijing hopes to achieve not just more business for its own companies, but also greater influence over the economic policies set in the power corridors (my emphasis) of Brussels and Germany.
“They are indicating a willingness to stick their nose into Europe’s business,” said Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics".  Be sure to read this article very carefully.  Chatham House has another opinion, but sources quoted at the end of this paper tend to corroborate the NYT story.