Most SM readers are news junkies so by now, you’ve probably come across the latest Pew survey on International attitudes towards the US –

WASHINGTON – The United States’ popularity in many countries is lagging behind even communist China. The image of the United States slipped sharply in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, and two years later has shown few signs of rebounding in Western Europe or the Muslim world, an international poll found… In Britain, which prides itself on its “special relationship” with Washington, almost two-thirds of Britons, 65 percent, saw China favorably, compared with 55 percent who held a positive view of the United States.

I guess many Brits prefer China’s real live gulags to our merely figurative ones. Our ever-polite neighbors to the north had the following 3 word view of Americans –

Rude, greedy and violent

Well then. Personally, I don’t read too much into these sorts of polls and they reinforce my view that much of Global Politics basically boils down to one big high school with America being the richest kid on the block.

And we all know how everyone in High School felt about that kid.

In fact, it’s even worse – we’re not just the rich kid (GNP) but also the quarterback (military), prettiest / most popular (Hollywood) and possibly the overly industrious, know-it-all Eagle Scout (Silicon Valley / Religion / Patriotism / Wide-Eyed Optimism) all rolled into one. Talk about a combo that would make the chess team, literature club, & “trench-coat mafia” seethe.

That’s not to say we don’t occasionally screw things up in a “careless” Daisy Buchanan sort of way, it’s just that it’s hard to imagine a world where this measure ever becomes / remains positive for long regardless of our behavior. (Although, in supremely High School-esque fashion, experiencing a 9/11 does appear to replenish global good will).

In the end, this particular global test doesn’t feel very falsifiable. BUT, there is one wrinkle here that’s actually pretty surprising / interesting – preceptions of the US in India – Continue reading →

(via Amit Varma / India Uncut) This just makes me want to scream. An OpEd in the Times of India discusses the trials and tribulations that met a promising higher ed venture in India. Like most stories, it starts with the best of intentions –

Two years ago, I met a distinguished friend in Delhi, who is the president of a prestigious American university that has produced several Nobel laureates. He loves India and he told me with some pride that India is increasingly perceived as a future knowledge capital of the world. He thought he would contribute to this future by setting up a branch campus here so that Indians could acquire his university’s degree at a fourth of the cost in America. I was delighted. Here’s a chance for a world-class education for our young, I thought.

And like many such endeavors, he ran smack into other (formerly) well-intentioned bureaucrats who are now glued in place by ossified political structures. The natural laws of bureaucracy and public-choice kick in –

Two years later I heard this tale of woe. His university’s application to the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) for an equivalence certificate went unanswered despite three reminders. Their meeting with the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) resulted in the demand for a huge bribe. Their efforts with the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Ministry entangled them in miles of red tape. “[AICTE] will decide our fees, student intake, and even the size of our buildings, and prosecute us like criminals for non-compliance. Even if we get their approval, it’s only for a year, and meanwhile the courts could overturn things.”

And the university’s response? Atlas shrugged –

…India is a hopeless cause and he has decided to set up a campus in China.

Sigh. On the plus side, I suppose the Indian higher ed establishment will be safe from neo-colonial exploitation & Race To The Bottom outsourcing. Continue reading →

If reading Vinod’s update on the tale of Mukhtaran Mai got you fired up, I’ve got the raita for what ails you. Heed this post, DC-area mutineers– a real live brown uprising is going down TOMORROW:

Please join NAPAWF-DC and ANAA for a rally
THURSDAY, June 23rd at 4:30 PM

EMBASSY OF PAKISTAN-WASHINGTON DC
3517 International Court, NW
Washington DC, 20008

Can’t this woman ever get just treatment? It’s nice that Condi got involved, but I’m a St. Thomas Christian to the bone– until Mukhtaran bibi is in this country, speaking freely, I won’t believe the Pakistani Government’s position that she has “permission” to travel. It’s unbelievable that we have to remind them not to be stupid about this in the first place (PR disaster much?).

Rallying might interest you for other reasons too, as a member of NAPAWF reminded me earlier this evening, when I mentioned the Secretary of State’s intervention

It doesnÂ’t mean anything beyond that she got her passport back. Globally, wherever there is injustice against Asian women and girls there is injustice against all of us.

Remember how you felt the first time you read this story? And how your gut clenched again when we covered the inexcusable punishment meted out to a woman who had been raped by her father-in-law and then ordered to marry him after “purification”? Some of you almost cheered when other groups intervened, when a higher authority decreed that her rapist might actually qualify for the death penalty. That’s because justice feels good. Let’s get Mukhtaran Mai some, shall we?

I know what you are thinking…”4:30 in the afternoon? There’s no way I can make it…” Of course you can. I’m told that this event should go on for a few hours. Any other excuses, objections or obstacles?

Look. This woman was assaulted repeatedly in public and then put through the worst judicial roller coaster I’ve ever followed. She can’t express herself. You can. Continue reading →

A happy development in the on-going saga of Mukhtar Mai – the US Government has stepped in to ensure Ms. Mai’s passage outside of the country –

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice secured a personal pledge from Pakistan that gang-rape victim Mukhtaran Mai will be allowed to visit the United States, officials said Tuesday. The State Department revealed Rice’s personal intervention in the now famous case, after The New York Times reported that the Pakistani government still had Mai’s passport, despite lifting a ban on her travelling last week. …State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the issue was raised last Thursday by Rice, in a telephone call with Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri. “Secretary Rice made it clear that Mrs. Mai was welcome to come to the United States at any time and that we were looking to the government of Pakistan to ensure that she was free to travel whenever she wanted,” he said. “The government of Pakistan has committed itself to that and therefore it is our expectation that should Mrs Mai want to travel, to come to the United States, there will be no obstacles presented to her to do so,” Ereli said.

Of course, the Pakistani’s felt obliged to make a face-saving “no, we’re really in charge” statement –

Top Pakistani officials maintained there had been no US pressure in the case of Mai, who was ordered gang raped by a tribal council in 2002, and emerged as a cause celebre for international human rights campaigners.

(Previous SM coverage here). Continue reading →

The FBI has revealed one facet of its antiterrorism strategy by its handling of the high school girl deported (‘voluntarily returned’ under duress) to Bangladesh. They’re finding neoreligious Muslim kids, those who turn to religion as a way of rebelling against their more liberal parents. They’re zeroing in on those who listen to radicals like Omar Bakri Mohammed, an infamous North London imam.

Up to this point, I agree with their strategy. Here’s where I think they go wrong: they’re deporting them under any pretext without distinguishing between actual extremists and those who are just rebellious teens.

From childhood, Tashnuba embraced religion with a kind of rebellion. By 10 she was praying five times a day – and reproaching her more secular father, a salesman of cheap watches. At 12, Tashnuba even explored Christianity. But at 14, she adopted a full Islamic veil… Her parents… rejected… an arranged marriage to an American Muslim man… When Latif suggested an elopement to Michigan, Tashnuba impulsively agreed…

… she had repeatedly tuned to sermons broadcast daily by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammed… What mainly drew the agent’s eye, the girl said, were papers from an extra-help class for home-schooled girls that Tashnuba had joined to prepare for exams. On one page was a diagram highlighting the word “suicide” – her notes on a class discussion about why religions oppose it, she said…

Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen – allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings. [NYT]

The most interesting part about this story is that the FBI agent who gets credit for the takedown of a confused 16-year-old is herself familiar with the North London fundies. Thirty-seven-year-old Foria Younis was raised a British Muslim:

Armed with her knowledge of three continents, and fluent in Punjabi and Urdu, she flies the globe with FBI teams… Younis won’t go into specific details of her work, which is often undercover, but admits to travelling to “South Asia” on missions, and to co-operating with officers from Scotland Yard. Flanked by an FBI press officer, she is allowed to confirm she has been involved in the arrests of several Islamic extremists…

She knows that when she enters a Muslim household, even on a raid, the sight of her has an electrifying effect, especially on the women and girls of the home. In many households, women are “held hostage” by their men’s radicalism, she says… Britain has changed in 20 years, she says, especially the corner of the East End in which she grew up. “I grew up in a very South Asian community, so I didn’t get full exposure to all of what England had to offer…”

Instapundit reports that Amit Varma of India Uncut has a piece in the Asian Wall Street Journal today. For the benefit of non-subscribers, Varma has the full text available on his blog.

In his piece, Varma comes down pretty skeptically on India fabled market liberalization –

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to visit Washington in a few weeks, and editorialists and commentators have already started writing about the emerging economic power of India. New DelhiÂ’s decision to start liberalizing its economy in 1991 is touted as a seminal event in IndiaÂ’s history, the moment when it threw off the shackles of Fabian socialism and embraced free markets. It is the stuff of myth–and to a large extent, it is exactly that.

He cites a study which was undoubtedly inspired by a favorite book of mine – Hernando De Soto’s Mystery of Capital. Varma notes –

Entrepreneurs can expect to go through 11 steps to launch a business over 89 days on average, at a cost equal to 49.5% of gross national income per capita.” Contrast the figure of 89 days with two days for Australia, eight for Singapore and 24 for neighboring Pakistan. …In Bombay, for example, an urban land ceiling act and a rent-control act make it virtually impossible for poor migrants to rent or buy homes, and they are forced into extralegal housing. The vast shantytowns of Bombay–one of them, Dharavi, is the biggest slum in Asia–hold, by some estimates, more than $2 billion of dead capital.

Varma fingers the 2 usual suspects – Continue reading →

My favorite resident Desi @ the WSJ – Tunku Varadarajan – felt compelled to explain to his colleagues & readers the improbable desi performance at the Spelling Bee –

When an Indian-American 13-year-old won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last week–the fifth time in seven years in which a child from that ethnic group has won this stirringly absurd contest–my first reaction, naturally, was to ask why such a striking pattern of success has emerged. (Indians are 0.66% of the U.S. population.) …For millennia, India was a land where the poorest scholar was held in higher esteem than the richest businessman. This approach to life proved disastrous for modern India. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister and a Brahmin to his manicured fingertips, had such contempt for business (and for profits) that his economic policies condemned his people to two generations of stagnation. But Nehru would have approved of spelling bees. Indian pedagogy relies heavily on rote memorization–the result of a fusion of Victorian teaching methods imposed by the British and ancient Hindu practice, in which the guru (or teacher) imparted his learning to pupils via an oral tradition. (The Victorians, for their part, regarded correct spelling almost as a moral virtue, and certainly as a caste “signifier,” to use a clumsy anthropological term.) So the act of sitting down for months with dictionary on lap, chanting aloud the spellings of abstruse words and then committing them to memory probably taps into an atavistic stream coursing through the veins of Indian bee-children. A friend tells the story of how, in his childhood, he’d had an Indian boy home for a sleep-over. He awoke in the middle of the night to find his guest poring over the host family’s Random House dictionary. “I own an Oxford dictionary,” the boy had said, by way of bizarre, nocturnal explanation. “This American dictionary is so different!”

Heh, an interesting argument but, admittedly, only a partial explanation.

Nevertheless, I do whole-heartedly concur with Tunku that there’s a deeply inscribed Indian respect for purely mental and somewhat eccentric pursuits at the expense of more practical, physical ones. Many, many strands of desi philosophy & culture take a rather extreme position on the age-old Mind-Body problem. Long before Plato himself, Desi philosophers were advocating the basics of Platonic Forms and that it’s the physical which taints the mental ideal.

It’s pretty darn hard to envisage an activity more concerned with esoteric forms and less physical than a spelling bee. Continue reading →