Assault on Democracy

Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west. He has basked in the renowned scholar's praise for Venezuela's socialist revolution and echoed his denunciations of US imperialism.

Venezuela's president, who hasrevealed that he has had surgery in Cuba to remove a cancerous tumour, turned one of Chomsky's books into an overnight bestseller after brandishing it during a UN speech. He hosted Chomsky in Caracas with smiles and pomp. Earlier this year Chávez even suggested Washington make Chomsky the US ambassador to Venezuela.
The president may be about to have second thoughts about that, because his favourite intellectual has now turned his guns on Chávez.
Speaking to the Observer last week, Chomsky has accused the socialist leader of amassing too much power and of making an "assault" on Venezuela's democracy.
"Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, such as fighting world war two, is an assault on democracy. You can debate whether [Venezuela's] circumstances require it: internal circumstances and the external threat of attack, that's a legitimate debate. But my own judgment in that debate is that it does not."
Chomsky, a linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke on the eve of publishing an open letter  that accuses Venezuela's authorities of "cruelty" in the case of a jailed judge.
The self-described libertarian socialist says the plight of María Lourdes Afiuni is a "glaring exception" in a time of worldwide cries for freedom. He urges Chávez to release her in "a gesture of clemency" for the sake of justice and human rights.
Chomsky reveals he has lobbied Venezuela's government behind the scenes since late last year after being approached by the Carr centre for human rights policy at Harvard University. Afiuni earned Chávez's ire in December 2009 by freeing Eligio Cedeño, a prominent banker facing corruption charges. Cedeño promptly fled the country.
In a televised broadcast the president, who had taken a close interest in the case, called the judge a criminal and demanded she be jailed for 30 years. "That judge has to pay for what she has done."
Afiuni, 47, a single mother with cancer, spent just over a year in jail, where she was assaulted by other prisoners. In January, authorities softened her confinement to house arrest pending trial for corruption, which she denies.
"Judge Afiuni has suffered enough," states Chomsky's letter. "She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free."
Amnesty International and the European parliament, among others, have condemned the judge's treatment but the intervention of a scholar considered a friend of the Bolivarian revolution, which is named after the hero of Venezuelan independence, Simón Bolívar, is likely to sting even more.
Speaking from his home in Boston, Chomsky said Chávez, who has been in power for 12 years, appeared to have intimidated the judicial system. "I'm sceptical that [Afiuni] could receive a fair trial. It's striking that, as far as I understand, other judges have not come out in support of her … that suggests an atmosphere of intimidation."
He also faulted Chávez for adopting enabling powers to circumvent the national assembly. "Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo [authoritarianism] and it has to be guarded against. Whether it's over too far in that direction in Venezuela I'm not sure, but I think perhaps it is. A trend has developed towards the centralisation of power in the executive which I don't think is a healthy development."
Chomsky expressed concern over Chávez's cancer and wished the president a full and prompt recovery.
Chomsky's book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance became a publishing sensation after Chávez waved a copy during a UN address in 2006 famous for his denunciation of President George W Bush as a devil.
Its author remains fiercely critical of the US, which he said had tortured Bradley Manning, alleged source of the diplomatic cables exposed by WikiLeaks, and continued to wage a "vicious, unremitting" campaign against Venezuela.
The Chávez government deserved credit for sharply reducing poverty and for its policies of promoting self-governing communities and Latin American unity, Chomsky said. "It's hard to judge how successful they are, but if they are successful they would be seeds of a better world."
Leonardo Vivas, co-ordinator of Latin American initiatives at the Carr Centre, said that Afiuni's case was the most prominent example of the erosion of justice in several Latin American countries. The centre hoped that Caracas would now heed Chomsky.
"He is one of the most important public intellectuals in the US and is respected by the Venezuelan government."
The decision to lobby publicly was taken because quiet diplomacy had limits, said Vivas.
Chávez, who is convalescing in Cuba, has a reputation for lashing back at criticism, raising the risk that the Afiuni initative could backfire.
"That could happen," said Vivas. "But that would mean recognition of the problem."








Chomsky's letter


Judge María Lourdes Afiuni has suffered enough
With this public letter I want to express my open support of the liberty of judge María Lourdes Afiuni, detained in Venezuela since December 2009. In November of last year I was informed of her situation by the Latin American initiative of the Carr Centre for human rights policy at Harvard University. Ever since, I have been directly involved in mediation efforts with the Venezuelan government, with the purpose of releasing her from prison through a gesture of clemency by President Chávez.
Judge Afiuni had my sympathy and solidarity from the very beginning. The way she was detained, the inadequate conditions of her imprisonment, the degrading treatment she suffered in the Instituto Nacional de Orientación Femenina, the dramatic erosion of her health and the cruelty displayed against her, all duly documented, left me greatly worried about her physical and psychological wellbeing, as well as about her personal safety.
Those reasons motivated me in December 2010 to address, jointly with the Carr Centre, a petition for an official pardon from the president in the context of the yearly presidential amnesties.
In January I received with relief the news that Venezuela's attorney general had suggested house arrest for judge Afiuni given her fragile health condition, which ended up with emergency surgery. Being in her house with her family and with adequate medical attention has been without doubt a significant improvement of her situation.
However, judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free, not only due to her physical and psychological health conditions, but in conformance with the human dignity the Bolivarian revolution presents as a goal. In times of worldwide cries for freedom, the detention of María Lourdes Afiuni stands out as a glaring exception that should be remedied quickly, for the sake of justice and human rights generally and for affirming an honourable role for Venezuela in these struggles.
For the above reasons I want Venezuelans to be aware of my total solidarity with judge Afiuni, while I affirm my unwavering commitment with the efforts advanced by the Carr Centre in Harvard University to release her from imprisonment. At the same time, I shall keep high hopes that President Chávez will consider a humanitarian act that will end the judge's detention.
@Guardian
Pic : Maria Lourdes Afiuni

Libya Updates

• Coalition aircraft attacked vessels which were preventing aid reaching Misrata yesterday, sinking four and beaching another. The attacks have allowed two ships to deliver humanitarian aid. However a rebel spokesman said that Gaddafi's forces killed 18 civilians in Misrata on Tuesday, and that troops are still shelling and fighting skirmishes with rebels.

• Britain has expelled five pro-Gaddafi Libyan diplomats from London, the foreign secretary, William Hague said. He added that a UK diplomat, Christopher Prentice, had met Libyan rebel leaders in Benghazi on Monday and Tuesday.
• Rebels have been forced to retreat from the oil town of Ras Lanuf after Gaddafi's forces attacked the city. Reports suggested Nato planes flew over the zone where the heaviest fighting was under way, with explosions heard, however the revolutionaries were still forced back in their 4x4s

Turkey Figure

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey seems on a path to win his third election in a row, having effectively neutered a once-all-powerful military.
Arriving at a template that effectively integrates Islam, democracy and vibrant economics has been a near-impossible dream for Middle East reformers stretching back decades. To a large extent, Egypt’s inability to accommodate these three themes lies at the root of its current plight.
But no country in the region has come closer to accomplishing this trick, warts and all, than Turkey. As a result, diplomats and analysts have begun to present the still-incomplete Turkish experiment as a possible road map for Egypt.
“Turkey is the envy of the Arab world,” said Hugh Pope, project director for the Turkish office of the International Crisis Group. “It has moved to a robust democracy, has a genuinely elected leader who seems to speak for the popular mood, has products that are popular from Afghanistan to Morocco — including dozens of sitcoms dubbed into Arabic that are on TV sets everywhere — and an economy that is worth about half of the whole Arab world put together.”
The idea is not new. President Obama’s first trip as president to a Muslim country was to Turkey in April 2009, and he hailed its progress as a Middle East model. (His visit there preceded his better-remembered speech in Cairo by two months.)
Since then, the already wide distance separating these countries has grown. Turkey’s economy and its internationally competitive companies are expanding at a relentless pace. Meanwhile, its mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seems on a path to win his third election in a row, having effectively neutered a once-all-powerful military apparatus long seen as the guardian of secularism in the country.
It has not always been this way.
Indeed, when Hosni Mubarak came to power in Egypt in October 1981, after the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat, Turkey was still being governed by its army, which one year earlier intervened to impose a sense of order on the country’s fractious political scene.
But while Mr. Mubarak, a military man himself, banked upon authoritarian rule, paying only lip service to democratic institutions and running rigged elections, the general behind the Turkish coup, Kenan Evren, moved to withdraw from politics. The constitution he imposed left the military considerable scope to meddle in political affairs, but it allowed civilian institutions to bloom.
On the economic front Egypt maintained state control, with many restrictions on foreign trade and domestic competition. By contrast, Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union, has opened up its economy and unleashed a dynamic private sector.
Today, with similarly sized populations of about 80 million, Turkey has an economy that is nearly four times the size of Egypt’s.
Its recent growth spurt has been driven by Mr. Erdogan, who came to power in 2003 and focused first on reducing deficits and bringing down inflation. Only after he demonstrated success in raising living standards did he feel confident enough to overcome opposition from the determinedly secular army and the cosmopolitan elite in Istanbul by introducing elements of Islam into Turkish public life.
He has been rewarded with broad popular support at home — demonstrated in September when Mr. Erdogan easily won a referendum that further diluted the military’s powers — and growing influence abroad.
In responding to the Egypt crisis, President Obama telephoned Prime Minister Erdogan twice in six days to discuss the unfolding events, and administration officials say they have been keeping in close contact with their Turkish counterparts at all levels.
“There’s no question that Turkey can play a role,” one administration official said. The official, speaking on grounds of anonymity, noted that Mr. Erdogan and Turkish leaders had publicly called for Mr. Mubarak to listen to what the protesters on the streets of Cairo had been saying — words that might have heartened democracy advocates in the Muslim world.
Turkey’s ability to thrive as a predominantly Muslim country that maintains diplomatic relations — though chilly — with Israel is one that American officials would like to see other Muslim nations develop.
But it is also true that actions taken by the Erdogan government against the Turkish news media have been a cause for some concern, a point made recently by the new American ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who was ambassador to Egypt from 2005 to 2008.
With the Egyptian military likely to play the role of political guarantor in any transition from Mr. Mubarak’s rule, analysts suggest that Turkey might serve as a model for introducing new political parties, writing a constitution from scratch and ultimately stepping aside and letting the democratic process play out (as uncomfortable as that might be) — all of which the Turkish military has done since the 1980 coup.
“The military did not overplay its hand in Turkey,” said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mr. Cagaptay also said that even though Mr. Erdogan had made gains in pushing his Islamist agenda, the military served as an effective restraint.
“The relative moderation of Islamic parties in Turkey is due to the military,” he said.
There are still substantial differences between the countries. For the Turkish military, its organizing philosophy has always been preserving the secularist traditions that Turkey’s post-World War I founder, Kemal Ataturk, set in place. In Egypt, while the Muslim Brotherhood has been officially banned, the army has been seen more as the defender of the authoritarian status quo rather than secularism itself.
How the military in Egypt deals with the Muslim Brotherhood — by far the most powerful civic force in the country — will be crucial in determining the country’s political future.
Can it, as was the case in Turkey, encourage the formation of competing political parties? And can it encourage the moderate elements of the Muslim Brotherhood to come to the fore rather than its more militant factions?
Turkey may have a more direct role to play on that front. Mr. Erdogan’s party has already established ties to the Muslim Brotherhood — a result of Mr. Erdogan’s long and successful campaign to present himself as a dominant and increasingly anti-Israeli voice in the Middle East.
According to research by Dore Gold at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, three members of the Muslim Brotherhood — two of whom serve in the Egyptian Parliament — were on the Turkish-sponsored ship that was attacked by Israeli forces on its way to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip in May.
“There is a great deal of ideological compatibility between the A.K.P. and the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Mr. Gold, a former top adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, referring to Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. “This is something to watch carefully.”
Perhaps, but in the end that could be a plus rather than a minus.
For all his Islamist sympathies, Mr. Erdogan is at root a pragmatist. As a young firebrand he was jailed for his antisecular rhetoric but now, after working within Turkey’s democratic framework rather than outside it, he is recognized as perhaps the Middle East’s most influential figure.

by : Landon Thomas Jr.

The Fault Line of Democracy

China may have invented the first printing press in 593 and published the first woodblock-printed newspaper, Kaiyuan Za Bao, in Beijing in 713. But in 2010 it wants to curb the newest information innovation led by Google.
To avoid censorship, Google has moved its search engine to Hong Kong and may leave China altogether after hackers, hidden for deniability somewhere deep within the Communist bureaucracy, breached Google’s proprietary systems and pieced together the e-mail exchanges of Chinese dissidents in order to trace their social networks.
Clearly a clash is shaping up that pits the raucous free-for-all of the Internet against China’s long-standing Confucian proclivity for order, respect for authority and a conformist notion of social harmony.
As they try to rebalance a relationship in which China still largely depends on American consumption of its exports and the United States largely relies on China’s purchase of U.S. Treasury debt, these tightly tethered partners in prosperity will only intensify their interaction in the coming decade. Inevitably, as the geo-civilizational plates push up against one another and produce tremors, might the cultural equivalent of subduction take place? Might, for example, more appreciation for freedom of expression shift Eastward and a greater appreciation of governing in the common interest and long-term perspective shift Westward?
To be sure, there is much cultural history under the bridge of today’s interdependence that contributes to the tectonic pace of convergence. China’s ancient “Warring States” period ended with a commitment to unified territorial integrity and stability that led to a modern focus on political control and social harmony. The path to peace after the West’s religious wars led to the opposite ideals: tolerance and diversity. In the Confucian tradition, China has relied on ethics, including obligations of the ruler to the ruled, and education to keep its institutions responsive, fair and honest. The West has relied on the check of democracy.
Nonetheless, as the political philosopher Daniel A. Bell proposes, some common ground can be envisaged along the fault lines.
Counterintuitive as it may sound to the Western ear, China may be more open to fundamental political reform than the United States. Since the rule of law in America is based upon the notion that the state itself is constrained by a body of pre-existing law that is sovereign, any thought of rewriting the Constitution is anathema.
In China, however, some intellectuals point out that Communist Party theory posits that the current system is the “primary stage of socialism,” meaning that it is a transitional phase to a higher and more superior form of socialism. The economic foundation will change with broader prosperity, and thus the legal and political superstructure must also change.
That has led some contemporary Confucian scholars to argue that new institutions for the higher stage of development should be designed based on indigenous sources of legitimacy from within the Chinese experience — meritocratic knowledge of the governing class, the people and tradition.
Mr. Bell, who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing, has taken these ideas a bit further. He envisions a meritocratic upper house whose members are chosen not by election, but examination; an elected national democratic legislature that advises the upper house on “preferences;” direct elections up to the provincial level, and freedom of the press. The “symbolic leader of the state” would be chosen from among the most august members of the meritocratic house.
Such a formulation and others similar to it — about which there is a rich debate across China today — sticks to the Confucian idea of meritocratic government mitigated by popular accountability, but not completely ruled by it. This seems precisely the kind of non-Western political modernization we will see as China adopts its own form of democracy.
China desperately needs such a system of accountability to stem the arbitrariness, corruption and cronyism that have accompanied the primary stage of socialism. Yet such an approach as put forth by Mr. Bell seems likely to also maintain stability in a way that parliamentary democracy of the West might not, and thus would be an acceptable course of change in China.
Paradoxically, while Chinese intellectuals seek to expand democratic accountability as the poor become more educated and prosperous, the U.S. has the opposite problem: Too much short-term focus by the citizens of the prosperous consumer democracies is undermining long-term sustainability.
Thus, while institutional innovation in China might focus on a truly empowered — yet checked — elected house, the U.S. would benefit from the type of long-term deliberation offered by bodies such as a meritocratic upper house and some entity with the responsibility for continuity of governance that stands as a unifying symbol in an ever more diverse society.
During the first round of globalization at the turn of the 20th Century, Sun Yat Sen tried to blend the institutions of Western democracy with Confucian meritocracy. Perhaps today, as the “rise of the rest” challenges Western dominance, the political imagination may again be open to new ideas. This time, it won’t be just Western ideas flowing East, but Eastern ideas flowing West as well.


by : Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels

A Literary Engagement

I just reviewed archive of Prospect magazine.I came across an astonishing article full of heartfelt admiration for literature.This holds a scintillating clue to Mario Vargas Llosa's deserved stand as a Noble laureate.

Pedram

My vocation as a writer grew out of the idea that literature does not exist in a closed artistic sphere but embraces a larger moral and civic universe. This is what has motivated everything I have written. It is also, alas, now turning me into a dinosaur in trousers, surrounded by computers.

Statistics tell us that never before have so many books been published and sold. The trouble is that hardly anybody I come across believes any longer that literature serves any great purpose beyond alleviating boredom on the bus or the underground, or has any higher ambition beyond being transformed into telly- or cine-scripts. Literature has gone for light. That is why critics such as George Steiner have come to believe that literature is already dead, and how novelists such as VS Naipaul have come to proclaim that they will not write another novel because the genre now fills them with disgust.

But amid this pessimism about literature, we should remember that many people still fear the writer. Look at the criminal clique which governs Nigeria and executed Ken Saro-Wiwa; at those who persecuted Taslima Nasreen in Bangladesh; at the imams who declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie; at the Muslim fundamentalists in Algeria who have cut the throats of dozens of journalists, writers and thespians; at those in Cairo who financed the attack which could have cost the life of Naguib Mahfouz; and at all those regimes in North Korea, Cuba, China, Laos, Burma and elsewhere where censorship prevails and prisons are full of writers.

So in those countries which are supposed to be cultivated—and which are the most free and democratic—literature is becoming a hobby without real value, while in those countries where freedom is restricted, literature is considered dangerous, the vehicle of subversive ideas. Novelists and poets in free countries, who view their profession with disillusionment, should open their eyes to this vast part of the globe which is not yet free. It might give them courage.

I have an old-fashioned view: I believe that literature must address itself to the problems of its time. An author must write with the conviction that what he is writing can help others become more free, more sensitive, more clear-sighted; yet without the self-righteous illusion of many intellectuals that their work helps contain violence, reduce injustice or promote liberty. I have erred too often myself, and I have seen too many writers I admired err—even put their talents at the service of ideological lies and state crimes—to delude myself. But without ceasing to be entertaining, literature should immerse itself in the life of the streets, in the unravelling of history, as it did in the best of times. This is the only way in which a writer can help his contemporaries and save literature from the flimsy state to which it sometimes seems condemned.

If the only point of literature is to entertain, then it cannot compete with the fictions pouring out of our screens, large or small. An illusion made of words requires the reader’s active participation, an effort of the imagination and sometimes, in modern literature, complex feats of memory, association and creativity. Television and cinema audiences are exempt from all this by virtue of the images. This makes them lazy and increasingly allergic to intellectually challenging entertainment.

I say this without animosity towards the audiovisual media; indeed, I am a self-confessed cinema addict—I see two or three films a week—and also enjoy a good television programme. But from personal experience, I have to say that all the great films I have enjoyed have not helped me understand the labyrinth of human psychology as well as the novels of Dostoevsky, or helped reveal the mechanisms of society as the novels of Tolstoy and Balzac, or charted the peaks and chasms of experience like Mann, Faulkner, Kafka, Joyce or Proust.

Screen fiction is intense on account of its immediacy and ephemeral in terms of effect: it captivates us and then releases us almost instantly. Literary fiction holds us captive for life. To say that the works of the authors I have mentioned are entertaining would be to insult them. For, while they are usually read in a state of high excitement, the most important effect of a good book is in the aftermath, its ability to fire memory over time. The afterglow is still alive within me because without the books I have read, I would not be who I am, for better or worse, nor would I believe what I believe, with all the doubts and certainties that keep me going. Those books shaped me, changed me, made me. And they still keep on changing me, in step with the life I measure them against. In those books I learned that the world is in bad shape and that it will always be so-which is no reason to refrain from doing whatever we can to keep it from getting worse. They taught me that in all our diversity of cultures, races and beliefs, as fellow actors in the human comedy, we deserve equal respect. They also taught me why we so rarely get it. There is nothing like good literature to help us detect the roots of the cruelty human beings can unleash.

Without a committed literature it will become even more difficult to contain all those outbreaks of war, genocide, ethnic and religious strife, refugee displacement and terrorist activity, which threaten to multiply and which have already smashed the hopes raised by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The stupor with which the EU witnessed the Balkan tragedy—200,000 dead and ethnic cleansing now legitimised by elections—provides dramatic evidence for the need to rouse the lethargic collective will from the complacency which holds it down. Removing blindfolds, expressing indignation in the face of injustice and demonstrating that there is room for hope under the most trying circumstances, are all things literature has been good at, even though it has occasionally been mistaken in its targets and defended the indefensible.

The written word has a special responsibility to do these things because it is better at telling the truth than any audiovisual medium. These media are by their nature condemned to skate over the surface of things and are much more constrained in their freedom of expression. The phenomenal sophistication with which news bulletins can nowadays transport us to the epicentre of events on all five continents has turned us all into voyeurs and the whole world into one vast theatre, or more precisely into a movie. Audiovisual information—so transient, so striking and so superficial—makes us see history as fiction, distancing us by concealing the causes and context behind the sequence of events that are so vividly portrayed. This condemns us to a state of passive acceptance, moral insensibility and psychological inertia similar to that inspired by television fiction and other programmes whose only purpose is to entertain.

That is a perfectly legitimate state to be in, we all like to escape from reality; indeed, that is one of the functions of literature. But making the present unreal, turning actual history into fiction has the effect of demobilising the citizen, making him or her feel exempt from any civic responsibility, encouraging the conviction that it is beyond anyone’s reach to intervene in a history whose screenplay is already written. Along this path we may well slide into a world where there are no citizens, only spectators, a world where, although formal democracy may be preserved, we will be resigned to the kind of lethargy dictatorships aspire to establish.

The other big problem with the audiovisual medium is the extremely high cost of production. This hangs unavoidably over every producer’s choice of subject matter and over the way to tell the story. The hunger for success is not a manifestation of a filmmaker’s vanity, it is the prerequisite for any opportunity to make a film (or the next film). The conformity of the audiovisual medium arises not just from the need to reach the widest possible audience, it also results from the fact that as mass media with an immediate impact on huge sectors of public opinion, television and the cinema are more controlled by the state than any other media, even in the most liberal of countries. Not that they are explicitly censored, although that can happen; rather they are under surveillance, regulated and guided. They are discouraged from tackling certain issues and encouraged to be merely entertaining.

This is the cause of literature’s responsibility. Freedom is precious, but no country can be assured that it will last unless it is exercised and defended. Literature, which owes its life to freedom, helps us to understand that freedom does not come out of a clear blue sky; it is a choice, a conviction, a train of thought that needs to be constantly enriched and tested. Literature can also make us understand that democracy is the best means we have invented to prevent war; Kant’s thesis is even more true today than when he wrote it. For at least a century now, wars have always been waged between dictatorships, or by totalitarian regimes against democracies. It is almost unknown for two democratic countries to wage war. There can be no clearer lesson. For free countries, the best way to promote peace is to promote democracy.

A writer who is engaged does not need to abandon his adventures with the imagination or experimentations with language; he does not need to abandon risk; nor does he need to give up laughing or playing, because his duty to entertain need not be incompatible with his social responsibility. To amuse, enchant, dazzle-that is what the great poems, the great tragedies, the great novels and essays have always done. No idea or character in literature can last if it does not fascinate us, like a rabbit from a magician’s hat.

During his years in exile in France, while Europe was threatened by the advance of Nazism, Walter Benjamin devoted himself to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He wrote a book about him which he did not finish, but the fragments he left are read with fascination. Why Baudelaire? Why choose this subject during such a time? When we read Benjamin, we discover that Les Fleurs du Mal contained answers to such questions as how urban civilisation would develop and the plight of the individual in mass societies. The image of Benjamin poring over Baudelaire, while the circle of oppression which cost him his life closed in on him, is a moving one. At the same time the philosopher Karl Popper, in exile on the other side of the world, in New Zealand, began to learn ancient Greek and immerse himself in Plato in order to make his own contribution to the fight against totalitarianism. A crucial book emerged: The Open Society and its Enemies. Benjamin and Popper, the Marxist and the liberal, two engaged and original figures inside big currents of thought that they renewed, illustrate that it is possible, through writing, to oppose adversity. They show that dinosaurs can work through difficult times-and remain useful.

Mario Vargas Llosa

About Tea Party

It was an interesting article published yesterday clarifying the identity of under the spotlight Tea Party,how it spawned and who particularly it is canvassing for.Slight amendments were made in the original article.
Pedram


In an unruly, unpredictable and chaotic election year, no group has asserted its presence and demanded to be heard more forcefully than the tea party. The grass-roots movement that was spawned with a rant has gone on to upend the existing political order, reshaping the debate in Washington, defeating a number of prominent lawmakers and elevating a fresh cast of conservative stars.

But a new Washington Post canvass of hundreds of local tea party groups reveals a different sort of organization, one that is not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the political process.
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Seventy percent of the grass-roots groups said they have not participated in any political campaigning this year. As a whole, they have no official candidate slates, have not rallied behind any particular national leader, have little money on hand, and remain ambivalent about their goals and the political process in general.
"We're not wanting to be a third party," said Matt Ney, 55, the owner of a Pilates studio and a founder of the Pearland Tea Party Patriots in Pearland, Tex. "We're not wanting to endorse individual candidates ever. What we're trying to do is be activists by pushing a conservative idea."
The group, with 25 active members, meets to discuss policies and listen to speakers, Ney said. "We provide opportunities for like-minded people to get together," he said.
The local groups stand in contrast to - and, in their minds, apart from - a handful of large national groups that claim the tea party label. Most of those outfits, including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Express, are headed by longtime political players who have used their resources and know-how to help elect a number of candidates.
The findings suggest that the breadth of the tea party may be inflated. The Atlanta-based Tea Party Patriots, for example, says it has a listing of more than 2,300 local groups, but The Post was unable to identify anywhere near that many, despite help from the organization and independent research In all, The Post identified more than 1,400 possible groups and was able to verify and reach 647 of them. Each answered a lengthy questionnaire about their beliefs, members and goals. The Post tried calling the others as many as six times. It is unclear whether they are just hard to reach or don't exist.
Mark Meckler, a founding member of the Tea Party Patriots, said: "When a group lists themselves on our Web site, that's a group. That group could be one person, it could be 10 people, it could come in and out of existence - we don't know. We have groups that I know are 15,000 people, and I have groups that I know are five people."
'We can't always agree'
There is little agreement among the leaders of various groups about what issue the tea party should be most concerned about. In fact, few saw themselves as part of a coordinated effort.
The most common responses were concerns about spending and limiting the size of government, but together those were named by less than half the groups. Social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights, did not register as concerns.
If anything tied the groups together, it was what motivated their members to participate. Virtually all said that economic concerns were a factor, and nearly as many cited a general mistrust of government. Opposition to President Obama and Democratic policies was a big factor, but only slightly more so than dissatisfaction with mainstream Republican leaders.Eleven percent said that Obama's race, religion or ethnic background was either a "very important" or "somewhat important" factor in the support their group has received.While the tea party groups may lack a unifying direction or vision at the moment, the results show that they are ripe for action. A remarkable 86 percent of local leaders said most of their members are new to political activity, suggesting that they could be turned into a potent grass-roots force heading into the 2012 elections.
Of course, their general lack of interest in politics also suggests that they could just as easily recede, particularly if the economy improves.
The tea party's biggest successes this year have come only after one of a handful of well-funded national groups swooped in to mobilize local support. In upset victories in Alaska and Delaware, for instance, the Sacramento-based Tea Party Express spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising for Republican Senate candidates Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell, respectively.
Other national groups, such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, have also built organizations and spent millions of dollars on advertising, high-profile bus tours or other direct campaign tactics. Some of the local group leaders may find such tactics distasteful. Fifty-seven percent said they want to operate as a network of independent entities. And many organizers said the lack of coordination and the independence of the groups are what drew them to the movement, even if it is a liability when it comes to turning their beliefs into action.
"It's both an advantage and a disadvantage," said Joe Lisante, 43, a family doctor and a founder of Miami County Liberty, a group near Dayton, Ohio.
"If you're an opponent of the tea party, we're not an easy target," he said. "Some of the groups want to take on prayer in school. Some of them want to take on voter education. Some want to be endorsing candidates. But there is no particular person, at least in the state of Ohio, who is the president of the tea party; it just doesn't exist. That's a disadvantage for us because we can't move quickly on things. We can't always agree."

Many of the groups that were interviewed claim hundreds of members and some boast thousands, but most said they have fewer than 50. A number of them appear to be limited to family or friends - the Northern Connecticut Patriots, for instance, counts seven members; the Southeast Wyoming Tea Party Patriots has one.
Jeff Lafferty, a landscaper in Cheyenne, Wyo., said he formed the Southeast Wyoming Tea Party Patriots in April after growing increasingly concerned about such federal actions as the bank bailouts and the stimulus bill. But Lafferty attracted just one person to his only meeting, in part because a 9/12 Project tea party group in Cheyenne was already active, he said. Moreover, he said he has since grown disillusioned with the movement and the signs that some of its members are motivated by racism against Obama. Not only is his group no longer functioning, he said, but it "never was."
Donna Riner, 52, a medical practice manager, founded the five-member San Carlos Tea Party, in San Diego, which has met just once. "I just invited friends and family members," Riner said. "I wanted them to know what the tea party represents. It's about smaller government and less taxes. I wanted them to go on the national lists and join and give money to some of the big groups that support the people I believe in."
The tea party has been accused of racism by its political opponents after comments from some prominent members and signs at several major rallies this year that attacked Obama for either his race or the false belief that he is a Muslim. At rallies, for instances, organizers have kicked out questionable members and have sought to project a more tolerant image.
But the interviews found that Obama's race is, in fact, important in more than one in 10 tea party groups. Andy Stevens, 68, a video producer and a founder of the Tea Party Patriots in Anacortes, Wash., said he described Obama's race and and religion as "somewhat important" to members of his group because they remain troubled by what they see as the president's un-American and un-Christian behaviors.
In Stevens's view, those include Obama's "socialist" policies and intentional failure to mention "the creator" when talking about inalienable rights.
"There are questions that don't get answered, like citizenship and his birth certificate," Stevens said. "I don't know why questions keep popping up all the time. If something is irrefutable, the questions wouldn't keep popping up."
The groups clearly do not identify with any particular national leaders, an indication that there is no tea party front-runner to take on Obama in 2012. When asked to name a national leader who best represents their views, more than a third of the groups said "no one."
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) received the most mentions, with 14 percent, followed by talk-show host Glenn Beck with 7 percent and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R) with 6 percent.
One question remains: If most tea party groups don't engage in political campaigning, what exactly do they do?
Lisante, from Miami County, Ohio, said his meetings generally start with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a prayer, and then a speaker and a skit - the most recent was about the bank bailout. (Lisante said it was very funny.) The point, he said, is not to organize political action but to educate members and encourage them to become active on their own.
"Basically, we say: 'Listen, guys: You can no longer be the one who doesn't vote,' " Lisante said. " 'If you want to have an impact, you've got to show up.' "


@WashingtonPost 

به یک دوست سمپادی

یکی از دوستان در بحبوحه ی انتخابات سال پیش  در واکنش به عضویت من
 مبارزه با سواستفاده از کودکان               NGO     در یک

پیغامی را با این مضمون فرستاده بودکه تو هم تو این اوضاع حوصله داری  و به چه مسایل احتمالا پست و کم ارزشی 

        مشغولی؟

راستش من اون موقع جوابی ندادم ولی روش فکر کردم و به این نتیجه جالب رسیدم که خودکامگی چقدر در

تار وپود افکار ما تنیده شده.

چقدر نا بخردانه به حریم خصوصی آدم تجاوز میشه و از آن مهم تراینکه تو را مواخذه میکنند که "چرا مثل من فکر نمی کنی؟""
  
چرآ دغدغه های من دغدغه هایتو نیست؟
                   
با این دوست قدیمی اختلاف فکری جدی دارم چون به دموکراسی جور دیگری نگاه می کنم

البته  برای من این هیجانات تند ملموس است اما یادمان باشد در شرایطی که نیازهای پایه ای سرکوب شده در زمینه قرار دارند سخت بتوان همه ی غلیان ها را به حساب گرایش عقلانی دموکراسی خواهانه گذاشت
برای من دموکراسی  حاصل رشد فکری وپرورش اندیشه ی تساهل و تسامح است 
برای من دموکراسی  یعنی احترام به همنوع صرفنظر از دین مذهب قومیت یا ثروت
برای من دموکراسی یعنی به رسمیت شناختن و حق زیست قایل  شدن برای اقلیت

North Korean leader promotes son, sister in advance of party conference

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il promoted his son and his sister to top military positions in the hours before the country's largest political conference in 30 years, demonstrating anew his reliance on family bloodlines to protect his reclusive regime.

The elevation of Kim's son Kim Jong Eun to the rank of general verified his status as the Stalinist dictator's heir apparent.
But according to experts, it was the tapping of sister Kim Kyong Hui to a similar position that offered a glimpse into Kim Jong Il's strategy for protecting power as his health declines and his untested son emerges. To put it simply: He plans to rely on his family.
Politics is the Kim family business. Staying in business is the Kim family's latest challenge. Though the Kims have always used North Korea as an expansive family headquarters - "The entire bureaucracy is just a personal staff for Kim Jong Il," Seoul-based analyst Park Hyeong-jung said - experts on Tuesday noted that Kim Kyong Hui's new job reinforces the bloodline-over-party priority. She has no military experience, but she was made a four-star general.
"When things really get tough - when the leader gets ill - it's the family that starts to circle the wagons," said Ken Gause, an Alexandria-based analyst specializing in North Korean leadership.
"We've seen this in Iraq, in the last years of the Saddam regime. And that's the case here. It seems to me not an accident that the day before they make party appointments, they make the bloodline appointments," Gause said. "That is a clear signal to what's happening here: The Kim family is still in control."


Analysts in both Seoul and Washington offered mixed theories on the implications of Kim Kyong Hui's promotion, but several said they suspect that she will play a prominent caretaker role as her nephew learns about the top job and tries to convince Pyongyang's ruling party and military members that he is fit for it.
Even before Kim Kyong Hui received her new title, the father-to-son power transfer was a family job. Kim Kyong Hui's husband, National Defense Commission Vice Chairman Jang Song Taek, is widely viewed as a regent for Kim Jong Eun. He could also serve as an interim ruler if the Dear Leader dies or falls seriously ill before Kim Jong Eun has adapted to his designated role.
Kim Kyong Hui and Jang Song Taek have been married for 38 years, falling in love despite the objections of her father, the late Kim Il Sung. Some experts believe that Kim Kyong Hui was promoted to help legitimize her husband; she can act as a prominent link to the Kim blood, if ever Jang needs public support.
Others believe that Kim Kyong Hui was promoted, in fact, as a counterweight to her husband, checking him from growing too ambitious.
"By giving Kim Kyong Hui power, Kim Jong Eun's succession can be solidified," said Cheong Seong Chang, senior analyst at Seoul's Sejong Institute. "Even though she became a general, that is just a title and it does not mean she'll start controlling and ordering troops. But it would be a base for her to be involved in case of Kim Jong Il's death. She can use her title to persuade the elite power in the military to select Kim Jong Eun as the next leader."
Examining the inner workings of the world's most secretive state requires an element of guesswork, with information based on foreign intelligence, North Korean propaganda and rare accounts from high-level defectors. Accurate details about the workings of Kim's inner sanctum - and the lives of those within it - often do not trickle out until years later.


Most who analyze North Korea, though, believe that Kim Jong Il shares a fiercely close relationship with his sister, younger by four years. Raised primarily by distant family members and nannies, they spent their childhoods together.

In the past two years, Kim Kyong Hui, now 64, has emerged as Kim Jong Il's top companion on guidance tours. According to a recent essay by Yuriko Koike,Japan's former defense minister, Kim Jong Il once told the Central Committee of the Workers' Party that "Kim Kyong Hui is myself, the words of Kim Kyong Hui are my words, and instructions issued by Kim Kyong Hui are my instructions."
Kim Jong Il has also asked Kim Kyong Hui to do many things that sisters rarely do for brothers. She currently heads North Korea's light industry. She has previously been involved with aspects of North Korea's surveillance machine.
According to Gause, Kim Kyong Hui helped to establish a network of contacts in Europe - particularly Switzerland - that the family used to stash its private millions.
For several years during the mid-2000s, Kim Kyong Hui disappeared from public life. North Korea analysts, in a popular but unproven theory, often attribute her absence to a struggle with alcoholism
Since its founding in 1948, North Korea has occasionally created personality cults for its most important women - most notably for Kim Jong Suk, wife of Kim Il Sung, who was revered as the Sacred Mother of the Revolution, and often referred to as a general. Though North Korean political power remains male-dominated - as illustrated by the recent photos of dark-suited delegates arriving in Pyongyang for Tuesday's meeting - its regime cultivates what author B.R. Myers calls a "coddling mother" image, which can apply to both women and men.


In propaganda artwork, founder Kim Il Sung is bathed in pinkish hues, and children nuzzle his bosom. Propaganda has described Kim Jong Il as "more of a mother than all the mothers in the world."
Within the past decade, North Korean women have grown in status. In 2003, North Korea started drafting all-women military units.The percentage of women in the military has since increased, though accurate numbers are hard to find. Meanwhile, the private market economy is sustained largely by women, who operate food stalls while men maintain government-approved employment.
"That's led, generally, to a rise in status of women," Myers said in an interview. "They can be responsible for their own earnings and their own fate."
Though delegates met Tuesday as part of the rare party conference, North Korea revealed no further significant developments. A promised "major announcement" turned out to be the renomination of Kim Jong Il as head of the ruling party.
No matter the party leadership reshuffling that ensues, experts view the military promotions as a telling sign of Pyongyang's succession plans. The announcement of the promotions, carried by the state-run news agency, was the first time Kim Jong Eun's name ever appeared in a public North Korean report.
In contrast to his inexperienced son, Kim Jong Il worked for roughly a decade behind the scenes before emerging in the public as his own father's heir apparent.
Now, two years removed from a stroke and still dealing with myriad health problems, Kim Jong Il is rushing to reorganize his country so his family can retain power after his death.
"What we can say is, Kim Jong Il is putting his ducks in a row," said Jennifer Lind, a North Korea expert at Dartmouth College. "From the standpoint of this week's events, the regime has taken a step to make itself more stable. It's pretty clear that Kim Jong Il is gathering the people around him who are closest to him."

@Washingtonpost                                                                                                               

Venezuela election loosens Chávez's grip on power

Opponents of Hugo Chavez today made major gains in legislative elections that could weaken the president's dominant power in Venezuela.
The opposition overturned Chávez's two-thirds majority in the national assembly, and claimed to have won most of the popular vote. If confirmed, the result would mark a milestone.
The Democratic Unity coalition won at least 60 of 165 seats in the assembly – well short of a majority but enough to end Chávez's ability to appoint judges and other officials and to push through major laws.
The opposition said it had won 52% of the popular vote, but that controversial changes in electoral rules favouring rural areas, where Chávez is popular, meant that support failed to translate into proportional seats.
Both sides claimed victory and momentum for the 2012 president election, in which Chávez will seek a third consecutive term. Turnout was 66%, high for a legislative election.
Chávez's allies took at least 94 seats. The president said via Twitter today that his PSUV party was the victor. "Well, my dear compatriots," he wrote, "it has been a great election day and we have obtained a solid victory: enough to continue deepening Bolivarian and democratic socialism. We need to continue strengthening the revolution!"
He did not address supporters from the balcony of Miraflores palace, a tradition from previous elections.
During the campaign, the former soldier said it was crucial to "demolish" the opposition and win at least 110 seats for the two-thirds majority required to continue to rubber-stamp his decisions.
Television pictures from the rival camps told their own story: PSUV supporters in red T-shirts looking uncertain, and opponents in yellow and blue T-shirts appearing upbeat.
Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, leader of the opposition coalition, said it had been a "marvellous" day but lambasted the national electoral council for an eight-hour delay before announcing the first, incomplete results at 2am local time to a tense country.
The council, which mostly comprises government loyalists, listed assembly winners but failed to immediately supply a breakdown of the nationwide popular vote. This is a crucial benchmark for Chávez, who declared the election a referendum on his rule.
"It will be a pyschological handicap for Chavistas if they get less than 50% of the vote," said Steve Ellner, a political analyst and author at the University of the East. "The opposition could then say: 'We are the majority.'"
Since sweeping to power in 1998, Chávez has cast his revolution as that of the poor majority against wealthy oligarchs. Two years ago, however, Caracas and other cities voted for opposition mayors and governors. Recession, inflation and crime played into the opposition's hands again this time.
The president's once-stellar approval ratings have tumbled but he remains the country's most popular politician, and he has a firm grip on all state institutions.
The assembly has acted as a rubber stamp since the opposition boycotted the last legislative election in 2005, giving Chávez free rein to push through radical legislation and appoint judges and members of the electoral council.
By securing more than 58 seats, the opposition can in theory exert influence over appointments and major new laws; if it clinches takes 67 – which seems possible – it could block the president's requests for temporary decree powers.
Aveledo, the opposition leader, warned the outgoing "moribund" pro-Chávez legislature against rushing out radical laws before the new assembly starts, in January 2011.

@Guardian
pic : Ramon Guilermo Aveledo

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Godfather's Marlon Brando,Forrest Gump's Tom Hanks, Scent of A Woman's Al Pacino,The Piano Teacher Isabelle Huppert, The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger and now Jack Nicholson in Milos Forman's masterpiece :

i got the whole story this way: a kind of border line personality guy is sent to mental institution with a nurse not far from dogmatic manner, in charge

Randle McMurphy (Nicholson) shows his discomfort and tries to break the routines;but he's not well supported by other patients;as it's shown McMurphy's demands are far ahead of other patients thoughts.But after a while he finds other patients' assistance,confronting the wards staff specially cotquean head-nurse...

The squence McMurphy broadcasts Baseball across the TV showing a serial( pretending to watch World Series on TV) This is the saddest scene i have ever seen;a five star Nicholson could make it a memorable and everlasting picture;a mixture of innocence and waggery;how fantastic !

I don't get the concept of the movie;i can make some assumptions;Forman shows the role of elite and genious people demolished in the cast of democracy,or regular bureaucracy

Another angle shows the head nurse didnt really respect the votes as they reach the quorom for watching baseball she refuses to accept the vote.Isn't it a similar story we have with some democracies.(how about Afganistan elections as a recent example.)

It also shows McMurphy as a loser :in the end ; he's not the one who can escape,he's the one who gets caught and sink deeper,brainwashed by harsh treatment ; it seems they blurred his sight offreedom;

eventhough he finds ample oppurtunity to run away he misses them because of his inconssistent manner based on hedonism,and sometime due to his sense of compassion for other patients.He could really find his way out of sanitarium in the interview with psychiatrist but he finds kind of entertainment living there playing a superior role . He's not a must be admitted type at the begining.

I haven't watched any other Forman's film but as i read in IMDB he's got obssessed with this rebellious type personalities .

Final Words : Jack Nicholson realy deserved Oscar prize,also; credit to Sydney Lassick

I give it a 9/10