How are going to convince kids who grow up playing God games that their paradigm is wrong?
Indonesia's miraculous 'free' democracy (KISHORE MAHBUBANI, 9/23/08, Japan Times)
Modern miracles do happen. Ten years ago, as the Asian financial crisis savaged Indonesia's economy, many experts predicted that the country would become unstable, if not splinter. Instead, Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic country, has emerged as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the Muslim world. [...]Curiously, while many Americans and Europeans want moderate Muslim voices to succeed in Indonesia (and Southeast Asia), they often undermine moderates with policies that are perceived as anti-Islamic.
America's stance on military aid to Indonesia is but one example. For several years, some members of the U.S. Senate have maintained a punitive policy toward Indonesia by cutting off military assistance and curtailing Indonesian military training in the U.S. These punitive policies are self-defeating.
In recent years, the Indonesian military has provided a model for other Third World military forces on how to accept a transition to a full democracy. There are no threats of a coup d'etat, and senior generals, such as Yudhoyono, who studied in American military colleges, returned to Indonesia as convinced democrats.
It is a tragedy that ignorance of how much Indonesia has changed is being allowed to endanger its democratic development — and its role as a beacon of freedom and hope in the Islamic world. It is to be hoped that Barack Obama, should he win America's presidency, will recall the tolerant Indonesia where he grew up, and shape policies toward it accordingly.
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Indonesia's anti-corruption heroes (Megawati Wijaya , 9/23/08, Asia Times)
Endemic corruption has long dragged on Indonesia's economic development and taken a heavy toll on foreign investor confidence. Indonesia ranked 143 out of 179 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2007 Corruption Perception Index, while the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy ranked Indonesia third, trailing only the Philippines and Thailand in a survey of Asia's most corrupt economies. Indonesia slipped two spots down to 129 in the World Bank's most recent "ease of doing business" survey.The quasi-independent KPK was established in late 2003 and tasked with restoring investor confidence in the rule of law by cleaning up the country's notoriously rampant graft levels. The 550-member body, which boasts 30 police, 25 prosecutors, 50 investigators and a special court, has unusually wide-ranging powers, ranging from naming corruption suspects, making arrests and summoning political office holders and high-ranking officials to testify in cases.
The KPK also has the authority to take over cases that have stalled with the police or state prosecutor's office and can ask the president to suspend officials under investigation to facilitate prosecution and access their personal bank accounts. Under Azhar's nine-month tenure, the KPK has captured the national imagination through its pursuit of some of the country's most powerful political figures.
Since December, the body has recovered over Rp 400 billion of pilfered state funds. Last month it even launched a preliminary investigation into the judiciary's alleged misuse of court fees.
Former Clinton staffers jump to McCain (Cherelle Kantey, 9/21/08, First Read)
"Obama really doesn't have the experience,” said Miguel Lausell, senior national political advisor to Hillary Clinton. “We don't know what he's going to be doing. We don't really know where he's coming from, and that's the big difference."Luchy Secaira, former Sen. Hillary Clinton Delegate-at-Large, said that
stance on women’s issues is all talk and no action. Secaira said that Obama’s rhetoric on the Equal Pay Act is not backed up with hiring practices in his Senate office. [...]“The Hispanic community has nothing to fear, because they know John McCain,” Secaira added. “He has fought against his own party on behalf of the Hispanic community and was an integral part in trying to bring forth comprehensive immigration reform.”
Lausell also expressed disappointment that Obama overlooked Clinton as a choice for a vice-presidential running mate, saying this decision was a deal breaker for Hispanic voters who wanted to see her on the ticket.
Nick Faldo's big gamble misfires as US regain Ryder Cup at a canter (Lawrence Donegan, 9/22/08, The Guardian)
"It was a matter of fractions, " the losing captain said afterwards. "But congratulations to Paul. The Americans were just that bit better than us this week."They were indeed, especially the likes of Anthony Kim, who was handed the dual task of facing Sergio García in the opening singles match and whipping the crowd into even greater paroxysms of patriotic fervour . He performed both tasks admirably, handing the Spaniard a 5&4 defeat and making the ebullient Boo Weekley - whose antics have been a signature of the week - look like a wallflower with self-esteem issues.
Hometown favourite Kenny Perry, who defeated Henrik Stenson 3&2 despite having an injured shoulder, was another who contributed hugely to the red, white and blue cause, while the Ryder Cup rookie Hunter Mahan was the team's highest points contributor, with three and a half.
But while captain Azinger was handing out the campaign medals, captain Faldo was no doubt preparing himself for the firing squad. Europe's main man has never been one for self doubt but surely even he will have cause to question some of his own decisions, in private at least. As for the public inquisition, it can safely be said the prosecution file will land on his desk with a hefty thud.
In fairness to Faldo, his most controversial move since being appointed to lead the European team this week turned out to be his best. Ian Poulter's 3&2 victory over Steve Stricker yesterday earned the Englishman his fourth point of the match (out of five) and confirmed him as the highest points winner on either side. It was one last, wonderful effort from a player who has silenced his doubters once and for all, but it was also one that served to highlight the folly of his mentor's thinking.
"This week is all about the team, not the individual, so I am very, very disappointed," said Poulter, who might have made a world of difference if he had been allowed to strut his stuff - six birdies in 16 holes - earlier in the day.
Instead Faldo, whose team faced a overnight deficit of two points, staked everything on the belief that his best players would retain the trophy by winning down the stretch. Azinger gambled, too, hoping best players would secure an early victory, and for long spells during a compelling afternoon found himself straddling that painful divide between ecstasy and agony.
Pelosi Gives Thumbs Down to Bailout Proposal (The Page, 9/21/08)
Obama: No 'blank check' for Wall Street (Athena Jones, 9/21/08, First Read)
While saying that circumstances required decisive action and a bipartisan solution, because "your jobs, your savings, your economic security, your house" are at risk, the senator did not offer his explicit support for a plan that his campaign says he is still reviewing closely.
Financial markets across the globe rocketed upwards on news of the Bush/Paulson plan, so Democrats think there's political hay to be made in opposing this surge too? They're handing Republicans the blank check to beat them over the head with.
Palin draws largest crowd yet for GOP ()Jonathan Martin, 9/21/08, Politico)
Mike Tucker, a local fire marshal, estimated 60,000. But reporters on the ground, including AP's Brendan Farrington and my colleague Ken Vogel, would only say "tens of thousands," suggesting the marshal's estimate was on the high side. The St. Pete Times's Adam Smith had another fire official in the crowd say it was about 25,000.Regardless, the size of the crowd underscores just how enthused conservatives are for Palin and the sort of buzz she's still able to drive nearing a month after her introduction as John McCain's running mate.
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In California,'Palin factor' sparks fear among Dems, joy among GOP (Joe Garofoli, September 21, 2008, SF Chronicle)
Post-convention swing state polls are tipping toward Sen. John McCain, the TV pundits are waxing about "The Palin Factor," and Sen. Barack Obama's California supporters are freaking out about a race Democrats were uncommonly confident about only a month ago.Conversely, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's addition to the GOP ticket jolted Northern California Republicans out of what one described as their "Underground Railroad" existence in one of the nation's most liberal regions. Ever since her speech to the Republican National Convention on Sept. 3, party officials say volunteers have been contacting California GOP offices in numbers unseen since Ronald Reagan was on the ballot for the White House.
Historic train's passage through San Clemente is a real toot (FRED SWEGLES, 9/21/08, OC Register)
A passenger train steeped in history chugged through San Clemente shortly after 9 a.m. today, pulled by former Santa Fe Locomotive 3751, the last steam locomotive to haul a scheduled commercial passenger train along the Los Angeles/San Diego route, in 1953."It was very special," said Ron Geisel, a San Clemente resident who watched from the pier. "It reminded me of the old days. It was very special to see something of the past come out of the past. I think they should run it more often."
The 3751, dating back to 1927, retired in 1953 and now is owned by the San Bernardino Railroad Historical Society. It passed through San Clemente on June 1 on a private excursion sponsored by the Central Coast Railway Club and the Pacific Locomotive Association.
Today was different. In June, the steam engine was hauling mostly Amtrak passenger cars. Today it hauled two dozen vintage passenger cars dating from the 1920s through the 1950s.
A Spy Confesses, and Still Some Weep for the Rosenbergs (SAM ROBERTS, 9/21/08, NY Times)
You could choose to ignore, or somehow explain away, the Hitler-Stalin pact, or be wedded to the original Port Huron Statement instead of the “compromised second draft,” but if you seriously considered yourself fiercely loyal to the far left, you believed that the Rosenbergs were not guilty of espionage. At least you said you did.For more than 50 years, defending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was an article of faith for most committed American leftists. That the couple was framed — by officials intent on stoking anti-Soviet fervor and embarrassed by counterespionage lapses that allowed Russian moles to infiltrate the government — was at the core of a worldview of Communism, the Korean War and the ensuing cold war, and an enduring cultural divide stoked by McCarthyism.
Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm (DEXTER FILKINS, 9/21/08, NY Times)
By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.
When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?
There are plenty of reasons why this peace may only amount to a cease-fire, fragile and reversible. The “surge” of American troops is over. The Iraqis are moving to take their country back, yet they wonder what might happen when the Americans’ restraining presence is gone. The Awakening, a poetic name for paying former Sunni insurgents not to kill Americans or Iraqis, could fall apart, just as the Shiite Mahdi Army could reanimate itself as quickly as it disappeared. Politics in Iraq remains frozen in sectarian stalemate; the country’s leaders cannot even agree to set a date for provincial elections, which might hand power to groups that never had it before. The mountain of oil money, piled ever higher by record oil prices, may become another reason to spill blood.
But if this is not peace, it is not war, either — at least not the war I knew. When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.
And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm.
Gorbachev reflects on what went wrong: He says the West kicked Russia when it was down. (Trudy Rubin, 9/21/08, Philadelphia Inquirer)
He recalled the amazing days when he, as Soviet leader, gave the green light for Eastern Europe to choose its own future and Germany to reunite. Then, he said, there seemed a chance of getting rid of NATO as well as the communist Warsaw Pact. He repeated his plea, made since the 1990s, for a common security organization for all Europe.Instead, he said, we see a "new struggle for spheres of influence" between NATO and Russia. He recalled the words of the first secretary general of NATO in the late 1940s, about the purpose of the transatlantic organization: "To Keep America in, keep Germany down and keep Russia out."
Of course, neither "Old Europe" nor, more so, the "New Europe" of ex-communist nations trusts Russian intentions sufficiently to want to dissolve NATO or to break security links with Washington. That mistrust has intensified because of the extensive Russian invasion of Georgia, even among Europeans who believe Georgia brought its troubles on itself.
But Gorbachev reflects an understandable Russian anger that the West betrayed promises it made to him in the early 1990s. "America took advantage of the breakup of the Soviet Union," he said with emotion, "and [it] rejected decisions taken and signed by the United States.
"Secretary [of State James] Baker said that NATO would not move to the East. Where is NATO today?" He referred to NATO's decision to invite former East European countries into its ranks and the pending decision about whether to admit Georgia and Ukraine.
U.S.-India nuclear bond? (William Hawkins, September 21, 2008, Washington Times)
Passage of the agreement with India would be a positive contrast to the U.S. cancellation of a nuclear deal with Russia on Sept. 8. The Russian deal would have allowed Moscow to establish a lucrative business in the import and storage of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world.Given Russia's ties to rogue regimes like Iran, and questions about security at its existing nuclear sites, making it a global center for nuclear fuel storage seemed like a bad idea from its inception. The deal got a deservedly cool reception when sent to Congress for approval in May. Russia's invasion of Georgia led President George W. Bush to pull the agreement.
Joe Biden: The Forgotten Man (Ruben Navarrette, 9/21/08, Real Clear Politics)
Have you noticed the little orange cones surrounding a certain ill-fated vice presidential candidate?When a presidential nominee chooses a running mate as a gimmick, not to accentuate his strengths but to mask his weaknesses, he is asking for trouble. And when that running mate becomes a laughingstock and a liability, it doesn't just hurt the ticket but also reflects poorly on the person who did the choosing because it shows he bungled a major decision. And since the candidate is not likely to choose again, the best he can do is to keep his running mate under wraps and hope there are no more gaffes.
Of course, the running mate I'm speaking of is Joe Biden.
Bush: 'Warrior for... democratic values' (Mark Silva, 9/21/08, The Swamp)
President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a couple of leaders with Harvard credentials on their resumes, met for dinner at the White House last night, a multi-course affair featuring rib-eye and punctuated with vintage wines.Uribe, in an exchange of toasts before dinner, praised Bush as 'this warrior for the well-being of the democratic values'' and "one great leader in the fight for the well-being of democracies.''
It's telling, however, that one of the best allies whom Bush has courted in South America represents a nation with which the U.S. Congress will not ratify a free-trade agreement.
Race helps, hinders Obama, polls show (DAVID PAUL KUHN, 9/21/08, Politico)
Excluding Obama’s fleeting downturn following the Republican convention, though, the Gallup Poll’s authoritative weekly survey summaries have generally measured the Democrat with about 34 to 38 percent of the backing of white men, about the standard level of support for a Democratic candidate since 1980. Among white women his support has ranged from a split with McCain to slightly behind—also fairly normative for a Democratic candidate.“If Obama’s support among whites is essentially the same as Al Gore’s support among whites, and better than Walter Mondale’s and Michael Dukakis’s success among whites, then its hard to ascribe his deficit among whites to his race,” Langer said.
Campaigns Beef Up Economic Teams in Face of Crisis (Jonathan Weisman, 9/21/08, Washington Post)
Former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin found an urgent conference call request waiting for him as his plane arrived in New York from Europe at 9:45 that night. Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker was on a Manhattan street, talking on his cellphone and hustling to find a land line. Former Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers joined in, as did former Clinton White House economist Laura Tyson. Barbra Streisand would go on as scheduled at the Obama event in Los Angeles, but in Manhattan, other events had seized the attention of the Democrat's campaign.
Image via WikipediaRadiohead: Live In Concert (Bob Boilen, 9/05/08, NPR: All Songs Considered)
When I think of the best concerts I've seen, I always flash back to Pink Floyd in early 1972. Almost two years before the band released what would become Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd performed the entire suite of songs to the amazement of us all. We'd never heard any of the songs (then titled Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics), and with its quadrophonic sound, it remains the most massive musical surprise I've experienced.Radiohead's show at the Santa Barbara Bowl came as close for musicianship and creativity as any show I've seen in 37 years. I've seen a lot of shows.
These guys write great songs, and sometimes you can even sing along to them, but what they do better than any band is create a sonic adventure — a soundscape which, at its best, stretches time and allows the mind to wander and rejuvenate. I think of it as resetting the synapses. Creativity breeds creativity. When the music was over, I felt unboxed and changed and pretty darn happy. Drugs are overrated; music is underrated.
Set List
Reckoner
Optimistic
There There
15 Step
All I Need
Nude
Talk Show Host
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The Gloaming
Morning Bell
National Anthem
Faust Arp
No Surprises
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
The Bends
Karma Police
Bodysnatchers
First Encore
Cymbal Rush
House of Cards
Paranoid Android
Go Slowly
Everything in Its Right Place
Second Encore
Videotape
Lucky
Idioteque
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Inspired Poulter takes fight to energised US (Bill Elliott, 9/21/08, The Observer)
After a close, combative and always compelling afternoon of fourball matches so close that three of the four went to the final hole, the match is now delicately poised. Europe went into yesterday three points adrift of the US. Now they are closer. Two points. Is it close enough? It may be but, realistically, it will take a monumental effort to overcome this US team and this crowd.Whatever else is true of this 37th Ryder Cup it can now safely be said that the years of total European domination are over for a while. The Americans, ritually humiliated whenever they played the match this century, may no longer be studded with legendary names but the new generation have proved already this week that, mostly, they are made of the right stuff. Pumped up by the crowd, many thousands of Louisville lips yelling their encouragement, and focused on the victory that has been sought since the dust finally settled on the embarrassment that had been Brookline in 1999, Paul Azinger's players are on their way to showing that the sum of the parts is more relevant than the individual components.