When nobody understands

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The Economist

lingos.jpgThink of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this year in her native Alaska, at 89. She was the last person who knew the language of the Eyak people as a mother-tongue. Or imagine Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974-he was the last native speaker of Manx, similar to Irish and Scots Gaelic. Both these people had the comfort of being surrounded, some of the time, by enthusiasts who knew something precious was vanishing and tried to record and learn whatever they could of a vanishing tongue. In remote parts of the world, dozens more people are on the point of taking to their graves a system of communication that will never be recorded or reconstructed.

Does it matter? Plenty of languages-among them Akkadian, Etruscan, Tangut and Chibcha-have gone the way of the dodo, without causing much trouble to posterity. Should anyone lose sleep over the fact that many tongues-from Manchu (spoken in China) to Hua (Botswana) and Gwich’in (Alaska)-are in danger of suffering a similar fate?

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Change, or more of the same?

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From Pravda. Ru

voteforchange.gifIn a recent article for the Miami Herald, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts discussed two “still-classified” government memos that not only revealed how the United States government, under George W. Bush, authorized and engaged in the use of torture, but also how Bush himself blatantly lied to the American people about this reality.

The memos, written in 2003 and 2004, were designed to alleviate the concerns of then-CIA director George Tenet that agents might be criminally prosecuted for torturing “high value” terrorism suspects. Yet two years later, George W. Bush was telling the American people, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it-and I will not authorize it.”

Pitts made two other compelling points in this article. The first was that the corporate-controlled media largely ignored the revelations in these memos, a development that, while disturbing, is certainly not surprising given the plethora of so-called “news” channels that favor sensationalism and superficiality over substance.

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The killing fields

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What are we doing in Afghanistan? A superb new history shows how successive invaders have tried, and failed, to bring order to the country through force

By John Sweeney*

afgh.jpgButcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan.
By David Loyn. Hutchinson

The Duke of Wellington was a cantankerous reactionary but he knew a thing or two about Afghanistan: “a small army would be annihilated and a large one starved”. On 13 January 1842, a sharp-eyed sentry in Jalalabad saw the more-dead-than-alive figure of the British army surgeon Dr William Brydon crossing the plain, struggling to stay on his pony. He had a bad head wound and was bleeding from the hand. When eventually the pony was taken into a stable, it lay down and died.

Roughly 16,000 British troops and camp followers hadn’t made it from Kabul - one of the most terrible defeats of British military might in the 19th century, commemorated in Lady Elizabeth Butler’s painting Remnants of an Army. Brydon was the sole survivor. The massacre of Lord Elphinstone’s army prompted a series of revenge attacks by the British, which developed into wars. In 1849, 1850 and 1851, huge numbers of British troops swarmed into Afghanistan, butchered and then bolted. And still the Afghans fought back.

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A short history of modern finance

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The 2008 crash has been blamed on cheap money, Asian savings and greedy bankers. For many people, deregulation is the prime suspect.

The Economist

house_of_cards.jpgLink by link

The autumn of 2008 marks the end of an era. After a generation of standing ever further back from the business of finance, governments have been forced to step in to rescue banking systems and the markets. In America, the bulwark of free enterprise, and in Britain, the pioneer of privatisation, financial firms have had to accept rescue and part-ownership by the state. As well as partial nationalisation, the price will doubtless be stricter regulation of the financial industry. To invert Karl Marx, investment bankers may have nothing to gain but their chains.

The idea that the markets have ever been completely unregulated is a myth: just ask any firm that has to deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in America or its British equivalent, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). And cheap money and Asian savings also played a starring role in the credit boom. But the intellectual tide of the past 30 years has unquestionably been in favour of the primacy of markets and against regulation. Why was that so?

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From the fourth century BC, words our leaders should heed

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By Robert Fisk

spartans-copy.jpgThucydides’ account of the Spartan war contains a dark and chilling relevance: Let us now praise famous men. And after yet another US presidential candidates’ debate of awesome sterility - not to mention their shameless refusal to tackle the real, bloody issues that confront America - I’m referring principally to one of the first journalists to understand war and, so far as he could, to check his sources: Thucydides.

If only our masters would turn to his account of the Peloponnesian conflict they might even see their own faces - and their hideous mistakes - in the mirror of his prose. I have to admit that I was inspired to reread the great man’s fourth-century BC tract by Professor David Rovie of the Auckland University of Technology, who startled a weary Fisk in New Zealand a few weeks ago by pointing out that Thucydides’ work contained all the lessons we need to learn about war, human rights, the treatment of prisoners, the cowardice of politicians, and the cold-hearted decisions of nation states.

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Re: The McBama Burlesque

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By Hanna Jaeckel

mccain-obama-spinning1.jpgI am sorry not to have gotten to this great article until this morning Anwaar. I have been teaching myself “international economics”, and it was a crash course of a 3-weeks duration. International Finance is nothing by comparison.

God I feel jaded and cynical!! If the premises for your article were correct, then I would have sent it to the NY Times “guest editor”, but I don’t see it, the way that you do. The US’ use for Pakistan is limited - and the partnership in the “wa’ on terra’” is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Just as the “wa’ on terra’” is as phony as a three-dollar bill. That “war” is nothing but an excuse to attack every … any … sovereign country at will, using that as an excuse to;

1) steal the countries’, currently declared to be harboring “terists”, natural resources, if they have any interest for USA, Inc. by means of any threadbare excuse, repetitive lies and absurd accusations;

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The killing of Anna Politkovskaya

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By *Sara Hall

annapolitkovskaya003.jpgThe murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October 2006 has been remembered all over the world during the last week. Amnesty International believes that Politkovskaya was killed because of her work as a journalist. The trial of three men accused of her murder is set to start on 15 October in a Moscow military court.

Politkovskaya was relentless in her efforts to draw the world’s attention to the suffering of the people in Chechnya. Her reports were crucial in bringing about the first ever prosecution against a Russian police officer, guilty of serious human rights violations. While working in the area she was put in a pit in the ground by Russian forces and subjected to abuse and humiliation.

She was included in the Top 50 Heroes of our time compiled by the New Statesman in May 2006.

Her books, which have been translated into English, highlight atrocities in Chechnya, criticise Vladimir Putin’s presidency and the general stifling of civil liberties by Russia’s secret service, the Federal Security Service (FSB). She frequently spoke about theses issues to audiences worldwide.

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Guided by an invisible hand

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By Joseph Stiglitz*

global_crisis.jpgThe bank meltdown marks a turning point in our thinking about how the world works writes the Nobel Laureate. In some ways this is the biggest crisis in 80 years.

Make no mistake: we are witnessing the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. In some ways it is worse than the Great Depression, because the latter did not involve these very complicated instruments - the derivatives that Warren Buffett has referred to as financial weapons of mass destruction; and we did not have anything close to the magnitude of today’s cross-border finance.

The events of these weeks will be to market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism. Last month in the United States almost 160,000 jobs were shed - making more than three-quarters of a million this year. My guess is that things will get considerably worse. I have been predicting this for some time, and so far, unfortunately, I have been right.

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The McBama Burlesque

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By Anwaar Hussain

mccain-obama-spinning.jpgPakistan, may the Heavens look kindly upon this blighted country once again, has become a central theme in the gross theatrical entertainment being put up by the McCain and Obama duo on almost daily basis. They spar endlessly with each other on all issues except Pakistan. Before any one can reach the letter k in Pakistan in the duo’s presence, both men scramble in unison to throw a blizzard of punches at this unfortunate country. Couched in comic skits and short turns they dole out in the name of national debate, both try to outdo each other in taking potshots at Pakistan. So much for showing some respect to the most grievously injured country, not to mention the most allied of allies, in their global ‘War on Terror’.

That the two Presidential hopefuls need to tone down their rhetoric, for Pakistan is going to figure rather prominently in the future life of one of them, is the least that one can suggest.

They must understand Pakistan’s tremendous importance to the United States. More than ever, and more than any other country, America’s national security depends on the success, security, and stability of Pakistan. It is the world’s third most populous Muslim state. It is a nuclear power and is located in a strategically vital neighborhood of India, Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian Regions and China. And now, thanks to America’s Empire dreams, from being a frontline state it has progressed to become the very battleground in the ‘Global War on Terror’.

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US Culture Derails Girl Math Whizzes

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ScienceDaily Oct. 10, 2008

maths.jpgA culture of neglect and, at some age levels, outright social ostracism, is derailing a generation of students, especially girls, deemed the very best in mathematics, according to a new study.

In a report published Oct. 10 in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, a comprehensive analysis of decades of data on students identified as having profound ability in math describes a culturally constricted pipeline that puts American leadership in the mathematical sciences and related fields at risk.

According to the report, many girls with extremely high aptitude for math exist, but they are rarely identified in the U.S. because they veer from a career trajectory in the mathematical sciences due to the low respect American culture places on math, systemic flaws in the U.S. public school education system, and a lack of role models.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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