Police have learned that often the person who is most certain about what he witnessed can be faulty in his recollection of key details. However, his attitude of certainty (e.g., "I'm positive the fleeing suspect was well over 6 feet tall") can cause other witnesses to reorder their recollection to jibe with his -- even if their initial recollection greatly conflicts with his account.
The reordering phenomenon also played a significant role in a series of events in Orleans, France in 1969 that sociologists refer to as "the Orleans Rumor." Humankind owes a great debt to the French team of sociologists headed by Edgar Morin, which painstakingly reconstructed and analyzed the events.
The tragedy is that what they learned is still not part of common knowledge. Thus, entire societies are bound to continue to fall prey to a blip in the human brain -- or at least a blip in intuitive reasoning -- that has probably been the cause of many mass tragedies down through history. So while the events that occurred in Orleans seem utterly bizarre in the telling, they are by no means an isolated phenomenon.
A group of schoolgirls started a rumor that young women were being kidnapped from clothing boutiques in Orleans. Under ordinary circumstances the rumor would have been quashed by the simple fact that no kidnappings of young women or anyone else had been reported to the police. But the rumor converged with an unusual set of circumstances:
> A period of great uncertainty about the future and fear in France about an upcoming election and the Soviet threat,
> fears that the miniskirt and other newly fashionable female attire (e.g., jeans) signaled a moral decline,
> fears that the new boutiques, which sold ready-made clothing (a new thing in France; dressmakers had always made female clothing), were contributing to the moral decline,
> pervasive anti-Semitism in the town, and
> common knowledge that Jews owned the clothing stores in question.
If the schoolgirls had placed the rumor of kidnappings in say, restaurants or parks, the Orleans Rumor would have died a quick death. But the children unwittingly gave locus to all the fear and uncertainty by placing the kidnappings in clothing stores. Thus, the rumor took off like a rocket.
We haven't gotten to the bizarre part yet but here I must pause to caution the reader that what happened in Orleans was not an instance of mass hysteria, which is a panic reaction.
What happened in Orleans is that every type of pseudo-logic known to humans was applied to fleshing out the rumor in the attempt to explain why and how the kidnappings were taking place. The residents of Orleans were caught up in a curious inverse of the panic reaction, which foregoes "thinking." They attempted to wrest a sense of order out of uncertainty by giving it a coherence.
A complex edifice of 'data' completely unsupported by facts was constructed, with each person who passed along the rumor adding more data, until everyone had --
(a) a satisfying explanation as to how people could be kidnapped in broad daylight in public places without anyone noticing it;
(b) knowledge of how the kidnap victims could be spirited out of Orleans without anyone noticing.
The President of the Jewish Committee of Orleans unwittingly added to the edifice when he sarcastically observed that clearly the victims were spirited away by submarine.
Indeed, there is suggestion that the schoolgirls who started the rumor did so as a sarcastic jibe at their scandalized parents and teachers because of their shopping for miniskirts at the boutiques.
Once the townspeople had figured out that the kidnap victims were drugged by means of hypodermic needles in shoes they tried on in the boutiques or drugged in the store dressing rooms, then spirited out of trap doors in the dressing rooms, taken through subterranean passages then transported via submarine to be sold into slavery, they demanded to know what the police were doing to stop the kidnappings.
Attempts by the police to explain that there were no kidnappings only added to the edifice. Thus, the police became part of the kidnapping ring. That meant the townspeople also had to figure out how the police worked with the kidnappers, what their 'cut' of the slavery profits was, and so on.
What separates the Orleans Rumor phenomenon from simple rumor-mongering is the elaborate belief system it generates and the fact that every attempt to deny the rumor only reinforces it by adding to it. Every denial becomes data that makes more bricks for the edifice.
In Orleans cool heads began to prevail with the realization that a very dangerous situation was building. Civic and church leaders joined with the police to deny the rumor and the schoolgirls confessed to their prank. And after the election was held, which relieved much uncertainty, people came forward to admit that they had imagined details and passed them on.
Here the reordering phenomenon emerged; people realized that after hearing the rumor they had reordered their recollection of situations to fit with the rumor (e.g., not recalling seeing a young woman again after she had entered a dressing room at a boutique).
And with the restoration of sounder reasoning supported by facts, the townspeople confronted the anti-Semitism that helped fuel the rumor.
The bad news is that the majority could not consider abandoning the edifice until the high level of uncertainty had been reduced, which in this case happened after the election results.
Thus, once the Orleans Rumor phenomenon gets underway, it seems virtually impossible to stop it by staying within its circuit. Indeed, as I pointed out, all attempts from within the circuit to break it only reinforce it.
This said, a striking feature of the Orleans Rumor is that the police unwittingly made things worse by attempting to counter the rumor with a recitation of statistics and other trappings of authoritative persuasion.
Readers who are students of tyrannies, and who studied the account of Stanley Milgram's research (linked in my Parrots of Heaven essay) might find much food for thought in the above observation. The Orleans Rumor makes it clear that only up to a certain point does the power of governing authority have the upper hand.
Once a certain threshold is crossed, the governing authority quickly becomes the victim and in real danger of attack from the masses. One has but to think of Mussolini's body dragged through the streets and French royalty marched to the guillotine to appreciate that tyrannies live in fear of that threshold.
While the type of events that occurred in Orleans has been isolated and studied as a distinct phenomenon only very recently in history, certainly all governing bodies down through time have been aware of the potentially deadly power of rumor directed against the state.
In 2003 I cited the Orleans Rumor to explain why all recitation of facts had failed to convince large numbers of people in Europe that neither the US government nor the Israeli government, nor those governments working together, had conspired to bring about 9/11. I pointed out that the same basic situations that fed the Orleans Rumor were present in Europe after the 9/11 attack.
Here I recall a piece of advice given by a friend on the NYPD. He told me that many people have a tendency not to look back if they think they're being followed on the street. He said that encourages the perpetrator to the idea that the intended victim is afraid to put up a fight.
He added, "Always stop, look and listen if you think you're being followed. Turn around and confront the footsteps in the dark."
I'd say that's good advice for governments as well as individuals.
My description of the Orleans Rumor is based on an account of the research by Edgar Morin et al in How Real is Real? by Paul Watzlawick, Vintage Books USA; 1977. Dr. Watzlawick is is one of the world's leading theoreticians in Communication Theory and Radical Constructivism.
How Real is Real is still one of the best introductions to communications theory for the general reader and a huge help for news followers/analysts trying to sift fact from disinformation and propaganda. Watzlawick illustrates complex themes via fascinating anecdotes; the book is a model of clear communication.
********
Tuesday, July 19
Bill and Ted vs Kaiser Soze: does freedom from stochastic reasoning give an edge against the devil?
On reviewing my achives for July I got a start when I saw the entry for July 6, which of course was a day before what's now known as "7/7" -- the date of the London massacre. For readers who missed Marc Schulman's letter I republish it below. This time I supply an answer to his question.
"Pundita:
I'm curious about something. Ever since I was a teen-ager, I've been absolutely fascinated by the 1930s. While I've read numerous books on the subject, I still can't understand how the western democracies could allow Hitler to have his way in Europe. After all, he made no secret of his ambitions and intentions -- they were all in Mein Kampf.
Yes, there are plenty of explanations, such as perceiving Nazi Germany as the bulwark against communism. Be that as it may, the blindness of Europe's statesmen (with the notable exception of Churchill) remains incomprehensible to me.
My knowledge of the 1930s is the prism through which I view our current situation. Like Hitler, bin Laden and his ilk have made it crystal clear, in their spoken words and writings, that they seek the destruction of Western civilization.
And, as in the 1930s, numerous statesmen (again in Europe!) and millions of ordinary citizens have chosen to bury their heads in the sand, notwithstanding 9/11. Further, the United Nations is as ineffective and toothless now as the League of Nations was then.
The parallels between now and that sorry decade seem so obvious to me that I am again finding it to be impossible to truly understand those who do not see what I see and instead are irate because [America's] behavior is less than perfect.
So here's my question: is your prism the same as mine and, if not, what is it?"
Dear Marc:
Our prism is not the same. Yet when I received your letter I wrote a reply that tried to look at the situation from your prism and I answered from that view. I'm used to doing that sort of thing; it's automatic with me -- it's the consultant's way.
I was about to send the reply then I thought, 'This guy has been haunted by the situation and era he wrote about; he's given a great deal of thought to it over many years. He's asking you on a personal level what you really think.' So then I couldn't send the reply. I gave up for a time, simply published your letter and asked others to comment.
The really interesting thing about the storyline for the film, The Usual Suspects, is that came it to the author in almost a random or accidental way -- or maybe serendipitous is the best word. Anyhow, he didn't start out to write a study of evil. He was just casting around for a good story, and he looked at his surroundings, and in the manner of the stunning end of the story, he picked up the idea from things he saw at the time.
But this made the film no less a work of art. What you're left with, after the shock wears off and you've had time to think about it, is whether the story Verbal told about Kaiser Soze is true. If so, that would make evil comprehensible. Because everything else he told was a distortion or a lie the question is left hanging in the air.
I once witnessed an assassination attempt on a revered public figure. It happened in full view of thousands of people. I was sitting not three yards from where it happened. A man jumped out of the seated throng -- a completely unremarkable man -- and began squeezing the life out of the intended victim.
There were several strong men sitting not even a foot from where it happened, men who would have given their life without a thought to save the public figure. They didn't make a move to intervene, even though they were looking straight at the death battle.
It flashed into my mind, "Maybe they think the man's hugging him." I screamed a warning but the scream did not emerge. I tried to jump up to help the victim. I was unable to move my limbs. The more I struggled to scream and move my limbs, the more I was overcome by a feeling of lassitude, a desire to close my eyes and sleep.
I had never lacked physical courage. My mind raced frantically, trying to find a way to overcome the lassitude. The words of a friend on the NYPD flashed to mind from a long time before: "If you're ever attacked don't yell help, yell fire."
Summoning every iota of willpower I had, and every bit of compassion I could muster, I screamed at the struggling victim, whose face was contorted with agony and revulsion, "Don't hit him!"
It came out more of a squeak than a scream, but it was as if a spell had been broken. I was able to move my limbs again, but the men sitting nearby suddenly leaped into action. It took five of them -- all around 6' tall -- to peel off the attacker, who was maybe 90 pounds and 4'9. It took 12 strong men to wrestle and half-carry the thrashing attacker out of the auditorium. Meanwhile, the event continued as if nothing had happened.
I was so shaken by the incident that all I could do at first was sit there shivering. Finally I turned to the woman sitting next to me and commented, "My God! Did you see what happened!"
The woman asked mildly what had happened. Startled, I described what had taken place. No, she hadn't seen the incident. "I must have dozed off for a time."
I turned to the person behind me and put the same question. No, had no recollection of anything like that happening.
After the event I went from person to person in the dispersing crowd, asking the same question with a growing sense of horror and disbelief. One person mentioned seeing what looked to be someone with an epileptic seizure carried out of the auditorium but no, he had not seen any disturbance around the public figure, no attack.
Finally I found a friend, Alexandra, who'd entered the event late and stood at the back of the auditorium. After pouring out the story I added, "I'm almost beginning to doubt the incident happened. Understand I'm not hearing contradictory accounts of what I saw happen. I'm hearing that people saw nothing happen."
She replied thoughtfully, "Perhaps it was just one of those moments when everyone was looking the other way."
Her observation set me to shivering again. It hit that my struggle to regain my physical functions, which had seemed to drag on for hours, probably occurred in a matter of a few seconds. The entire incident could have been just one moment in time.
Without telling me, Alex, who was a sharp-witted Oxford graduate, decided to investigate my story. The next day she dropped in to say hello to an Indian official in the ashram's administration she was on chatting terms with. She was circumspect on the theory that if there had been an attack the official wouldn't want to acknowledge it. In the middle of talking about the weather she casually asked what had happened to the man who'd attacked Baba the day before in the Poornachandra.
Surprised, the official studied her for a moment then replied, "Do not trouble yourself about that man, madam. The most one can ever do with evil is give it a good thrashing and send it on its way."
The little band of young St. Petersburg intellectuals and artists that George Gurdjieff guided through the Russian revolution to Georgia and eventual safety in France understood so little about the rigors of the journey at the onset that the women set off in high heels.
Russia had descended into chaos, into madness. One day the Red army would be in control, the next day the White. Both sides had descended into savagery. The group that Gurdjieff wended through the horrors didn't know there was no going back, that things in Russia would not return to normal. Gurdjieff knew, and he knew of the fresh horrors to come.
Gurdjieff had been raised at the intersection of the modern and ancient worlds; he'd been exposed to many languages, many peoples from incredibly diverse backgrounds. And he'd been exposed to much horror. If I recall he was half Armenian; anyhow, it's said he became a member of the Armenian underground after a series of massacres carried out on the Armenians.
The extraordinary experiences of his youth, his extraordinary journeys to find and study with 'remarkable men,' coupled with his intelligence, allowed him to see many things that were quite invisible to most others.
This led him to the idea that humans exist in a state of sleep that only the most arduous training can overcome. He dedicated much of his life to finding ways to shake people out of habitual thinking patterns that he believed reinforced the tendency to sleep.
But he came to a pessimistic view, or perhaps a very pragmatic one: that the river of daily life, the demands of the socialization process and fitting into society, make it impossible for all but a very few to awaken from a mental state he considered sleep.
Is the kind of evil I witnessed a blind, almost mechanical force? A byproduct of processes, as with carbon monoxide? I don't know, any more than I can guess the answer to the question left hanging by The Usual Suspects. I do know from experience that evil has a way of convincing us that we can't win, thereby landing us in a mental trap.
It's been observed by researchers that humans are natural odds players, even though we're pretty lousy at intuiting how the law of chance actually works. We have a tendency to fight hardest if we think we have a chance at victory -- the High Noon phenomenon. If people think they're up against something too big for them, they tend to mentally shut down although I won't go so far as to call it literal sleep, as Gurdjieff did.
By the time I landed in that auditorium, I'd been in so many scrapes that I didn't think in terms of winning and losing. I'd learned to act with no hope about outcome. If my reverse psychology ploy hadn't worked to unfreeze my limbs, I would have tried to think up something else. And something else and something else....
That means I don't entirely agree with the person who advised Nicks. I'd say the most we can ever do with evil is just keep trying to keep our wits about us. Hey, it's something to do while waiting for God, or the gods, or saints, or Ancestors, or angels, or Whatnots, or all of 'em to put down their newspaper and notice some fool humans are in a tight bind again.
But that's just my experience, my temperament. Others, provided they managed to see what was going on, might have spent the time praying rather than struggling to think up a way to outsmart the devil. I guess that makes me a fool, or maybe even an idiot. Indeed, I've always felt a great kinship with the idiots in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (I & II).
Of course outwitting death is not the same as outwitting evil. So we are left with the ponderous question: Would Bill and Ted be a match for Kaiser Soze? My money's on yes. Provided the idiots remembered to hedge with prayer.
(For more on the strange incident recounted in this essay and the themes under discussion see the July 20 post, The Orleans Rumor and footsteps in the dark.)
"Pundita:
I'm curious about something. Ever since I was a teen-ager, I've been absolutely fascinated by the 1930s. While I've read numerous books on the subject, I still can't understand how the western democracies could allow Hitler to have his way in Europe. After all, he made no secret of his ambitions and intentions -- they were all in Mein Kampf.
Yes, there are plenty of explanations, such as perceiving Nazi Germany as the bulwark against communism. Be that as it may, the blindness of Europe's statesmen (with the notable exception of Churchill) remains incomprehensible to me.
My knowledge of the 1930s is the prism through which I view our current situation. Like Hitler, bin Laden and his ilk have made it crystal clear, in their spoken words and writings, that they seek the destruction of Western civilization.
And, as in the 1930s, numerous statesmen (again in Europe!) and millions of ordinary citizens have chosen to bury their heads in the sand, notwithstanding 9/11. Further, the United Nations is as ineffective and toothless now as the League of Nations was then.
The parallels between now and that sorry decade seem so obvious to me that I am again finding it to be impossible to truly understand those who do not see what I see and instead are irate because [America's] behavior is less than perfect.
So here's my question: is your prism the same as mine and, if not, what is it?"
Dear Marc:
Our prism is not the same. Yet when I received your letter I wrote a reply that tried to look at the situation from your prism and I answered from that view. I'm used to doing that sort of thing; it's automatic with me -- it's the consultant's way.
I was about to send the reply then I thought, 'This guy has been haunted by the situation and era he wrote about; he's given a great deal of thought to it over many years. He's asking you on a personal level what you really think.' So then I couldn't send the reply. I gave up for a time, simply published your letter and asked others to comment.
The really interesting thing about the storyline for the film, The Usual Suspects, is that came it to the author in almost a random or accidental way -- or maybe serendipitous is the best word. Anyhow, he didn't start out to write a study of evil. He was just casting around for a good story, and he looked at his surroundings, and in the manner of the stunning end of the story, he picked up the idea from things he saw at the time.
But this made the film no less a work of art. What you're left with, after the shock wears off and you've had time to think about it, is whether the story Verbal told about Kaiser Soze is true. If so, that would make evil comprehensible. Because everything else he told was a distortion or a lie the question is left hanging in the air.
I once witnessed an assassination attempt on a revered public figure. It happened in full view of thousands of people. I was sitting not three yards from where it happened. A man jumped out of the seated throng -- a completely unremarkable man -- and began squeezing the life out of the intended victim.
There were several strong men sitting not even a foot from where it happened, men who would have given their life without a thought to save the public figure. They didn't make a move to intervene, even though they were looking straight at the death battle.
It flashed into my mind, "Maybe they think the man's hugging him." I screamed a warning but the scream did not emerge. I tried to jump up to help the victim. I was unable to move my limbs. The more I struggled to scream and move my limbs, the more I was overcome by a feeling of lassitude, a desire to close my eyes and sleep.
I had never lacked physical courage. My mind raced frantically, trying to find a way to overcome the lassitude. The words of a friend on the NYPD flashed to mind from a long time before: "If you're ever attacked don't yell help, yell fire."
Summoning every iota of willpower I had, and every bit of compassion I could muster, I screamed at the struggling victim, whose face was contorted with agony and revulsion, "Don't hit him!"
It came out more of a squeak than a scream, but it was as if a spell had been broken. I was able to move my limbs again, but the men sitting nearby suddenly leaped into action. It took five of them -- all around 6' tall -- to peel off the attacker, who was maybe 90 pounds and 4'9. It took 12 strong men to wrestle and half-carry the thrashing attacker out of the auditorium. Meanwhile, the event continued as if nothing had happened.
I was so shaken by the incident that all I could do at first was sit there shivering. Finally I turned to the woman sitting next to me and commented, "My God! Did you see what happened!"
The woman asked mildly what had happened. Startled, I described what had taken place. No, she hadn't seen the incident. "I must have dozed off for a time."
I turned to the person behind me and put the same question. No, had no recollection of anything like that happening.
After the event I went from person to person in the dispersing crowd, asking the same question with a growing sense of horror and disbelief. One person mentioned seeing what looked to be someone with an epileptic seizure carried out of the auditorium but no, he had not seen any disturbance around the public figure, no attack.
Finally I found a friend, Alexandra, who'd entered the event late and stood at the back of the auditorium. After pouring out the story I added, "I'm almost beginning to doubt the incident happened. Understand I'm not hearing contradictory accounts of what I saw happen. I'm hearing that people saw nothing happen."
She replied thoughtfully, "Perhaps it was just one of those moments when everyone was looking the other way."
Her observation set me to shivering again. It hit that my struggle to regain my physical functions, which had seemed to drag on for hours, probably occurred in a matter of a few seconds. The entire incident could have been just one moment in time.
Without telling me, Alex, who was a sharp-witted Oxford graduate, decided to investigate my story. The next day she dropped in to say hello to an Indian official in the ashram's administration she was on chatting terms with. She was circumspect on the theory that if there had been an attack the official wouldn't want to acknowledge it. In the middle of talking about the weather she casually asked what had happened to the man who'd attacked Baba the day before in the Poornachandra.
Surprised, the official studied her for a moment then replied, "Do not trouble yourself about that man, madam. The most one can ever do with evil is give it a good thrashing and send it on its way."
The little band of young St. Petersburg intellectuals and artists that George Gurdjieff guided through the Russian revolution to Georgia and eventual safety in France understood so little about the rigors of the journey at the onset that the women set off in high heels.
Russia had descended into chaos, into madness. One day the Red army would be in control, the next day the White. Both sides had descended into savagery. The group that Gurdjieff wended through the horrors didn't know there was no going back, that things in Russia would not return to normal. Gurdjieff knew, and he knew of the fresh horrors to come.
Gurdjieff had been raised at the intersection of the modern and ancient worlds; he'd been exposed to many languages, many peoples from incredibly diverse backgrounds. And he'd been exposed to much horror. If I recall he was half Armenian; anyhow, it's said he became a member of the Armenian underground after a series of massacres carried out on the Armenians.
The extraordinary experiences of his youth, his extraordinary journeys to find and study with 'remarkable men,' coupled with his intelligence, allowed him to see many things that were quite invisible to most others.
This led him to the idea that humans exist in a state of sleep that only the most arduous training can overcome. He dedicated much of his life to finding ways to shake people out of habitual thinking patterns that he believed reinforced the tendency to sleep.
But he came to a pessimistic view, or perhaps a very pragmatic one: that the river of daily life, the demands of the socialization process and fitting into society, make it impossible for all but a very few to awaken from a mental state he considered sleep.
Is the kind of evil I witnessed a blind, almost mechanical force? A byproduct of processes, as with carbon monoxide? I don't know, any more than I can guess the answer to the question left hanging by The Usual Suspects. I do know from experience that evil has a way of convincing us that we can't win, thereby landing us in a mental trap.
It's been observed by researchers that humans are natural odds players, even though we're pretty lousy at intuiting how the law of chance actually works. We have a tendency to fight hardest if we think we have a chance at victory -- the High Noon phenomenon. If people think they're up against something too big for them, they tend to mentally shut down although I won't go so far as to call it literal sleep, as Gurdjieff did.
By the time I landed in that auditorium, I'd been in so many scrapes that I didn't think in terms of winning and losing. I'd learned to act with no hope about outcome. If my reverse psychology ploy hadn't worked to unfreeze my limbs, I would have tried to think up something else. And something else and something else....
That means I don't entirely agree with the person who advised Nicks. I'd say the most we can ever do with evil is just keep trying to keep our wits about us. Hey, it's something to do while waiting for God, or the gods, or saints, or Ancestors, or angels, or Whatnots, or all of 'em to put down their newspaper and notice some fool humans are in a tight bind again.
But that's just my experience, my temperament. Others, provided they managed to see what was going on, might have spent the time praying rather than struggling to think up a way to outsmart the devil. I guess that makes me a fool, or maybe even an idiot. Indeed, I've always felt a great kinship with the idiots in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (I & II).
Of course outwitting death is not the same as outwitting evil. So we are left with the ponderous question: Would Bill and Ted be a match for Kaiser Soze? My money's on yes. Provided the idiots remembered to hedge with prayer.
(For more on the strange incident recounted in this essay and the themes under discussion see the July 20 post, The Orleans Rumor and footsteps in the dark.)
Monday, July 18
Democracy and ICT revisited, and China uses communications technology to help Mugabe suppress democracy in Zimbabwe
I received the following letter from Beth (at Beth's Contradictory Brain blog) in response to the Fire up the cell phone... post.
I immediately sent a reply that was somewhat critical of what I considered to be her naive or at least very limited understanding of development issues. But after rereading her letter and yesterday I realized that I had looked at the task of spreading democracy solely from the viewpoint of rural development and specifically from the angle of development bank projects. Thus, the dour warnings in my essay. (Perhaps a reason for Barber's dour warnings, as well!) I now think I over-applied Dey's arguments, which were purely concerned with rural development.
So with hindsight I think that in general Beth's comments point up a flaw in my argument. They also serve as a good warning to check against over-reliance on one's knowledge base while studying an unfamiliar situation.
I'd say her comments underscore that this is not a perfect world; the best technological means for spreading/supporting genuine democracy are not affordable or technologically feasible in many instances. Yet while "half a bridge is better than none" can make for really bad development loan policy, I think Beth's point is that many small half measures to spread democracy can add up to big returns.
Also included in this post is a letter from "Liz" in response to the same essay; her comments about ICT are more technical but also very interesting as applied to democracy and information flow; she points up how this flow can work against democracy as much as support it. I support the last point with grim news from Zimbabwe.
"Howdy!
Regarding the comments by Atanu Dey you quoted:
"Basic functional literacy is a prerequisite to pretty much anything that one does. The use of high-tech depends on literacy and therefore if the population is illiterate, even gifting them with free hardware will not make a difference. The pre-condition for bridging the digital divide is therefore the bridging of the literacy divide. ...I grant that illiterate idiots can use a cell phone, but that is not what I would call the effective use of high technology."
I'm not so sure about this. The examples from North Korea show (at least to me) that even the basic technology of a cell phone allows the people in NK access to conversations with people outside NK, which in turns allows them a glimpse into life outside a strictly controlled country. And even that small glimpse can start a chain of change. I would never argue that literacy shouldn't be a top priority goal, just that it might not be as necessary as is being argued.
Re your comments:
"The literates control the information flow."
I again think conversations between people limit this -- especially if technology makes conversations easier to have among many people, literate or not. [...]
"As the African cell phone story indicates, ICT is critical to helping the rural poor stay connected about issues such as market conditions for their produce. But you don't want to assume that kind of connectivity automatically translates to more informed participation in the political process."
But why assume it doesn't?
"Pundita suspects that a lot of outmoded computers -- sold for a song by companies eager to dump them -- will find their way into the world's rural villages."
Probably so. One of my favorite parts of the North Korea story was the old VCR's making their way to NK and the people soaking up the soap operas. It's not as lofty as our classic American film idea,* but whatever helps oppressed people see (in this case literally) that there are much better alternatives, I think is a good thing.
Beth in the Midwest
* In an earlier published email exchange, Beth and I had discussed showing films about America's hardship days to peoples who were struggling to get their democracies off the ground.
* * * * *
Re: cellphones, democracy and information flow
Pundita,
Good points re the DPRK [North Korea] and cellphone signals from the north as well as the south (could we get some floating platforms offshore east and west? A little power management does wonderful things for signal dispersion...).
However, there are two major caveats to remember about cellphones and information dissemination:
1. It's a tool like any other -- anyone can use an axe, for purposes which suit his needs. When it's a big enough threat, the threatened government may well respond in kind, with misinformation. Likewise, a threatened government can always jam/overpower a bootleg signal -- it is, after all, radio waves -- unless we want to engage in a "hot" info war, which I doubt at this point.
In a similar vein, Wretchard mentioned at Belmont Club (about a year ago, maybe)that jihadi camp followers/wannabes passed decapitation videos around via their cellphone multimedia services (report from the London Times -- by the time I tried to track it back, the archives weren't accessible to me, but I'll take Wretchard's word that he saw the report).
2. Text messages use the voice system (typically) while data connections use a separate-but-connected data network which (typically) is supported by a set of servers providing web pages customized for very small screens, etc., and which is connected to regular data networks including the Internet (depending on national and carrier connectivity).
Text messages are stored on servers in the voice system (just ask the boys in Aruba, or Paris Hilton) -- and may be retrieved later. Data networking may be filtered and and/or tracked for billing purposes. Billing, of course, is the sine qua non for the telephony world, because they charge by the call/time/bytes -- and the ability to bill more granularly (more for some bytes than others, depending on where the bytes came from -- think premium services) and to restrict access to certain sites on some accounts (a business wireless connection can access corporate sites and partner sites, but not sports sites) are both currently available.
Tracking and storage, accessible to the oppressing government, or to another government in opposition (implying treason, if it leaks and you're caught) are not trivial matters.
All that said, the simple availability of another channel of information dissemination is a force multiplier -- permutations of information paths become a larger set, and it becomes much more complex to block them all.
But don't expect too much out of cellphone systems -- simple voice connectivity outside the immediate control of the oppressing government is a great help. Asian cellphones are often much smaller than the "candy bar" models we see in the US (Nokia, e.g.) or even a typical American clamshell model. And smaller is easier to conceal....
"Liz"
* * * * *
Pundita comments: Re your remark that the oppressing government can always jam the signals -- this is just what the Zimbabwe government has done with help from China. What the following report does not mention is that not only did the government receive jamming equipment from China but the PLA (China's military) flew Zimbabwean military to China for training on how to use the signal jammers. This training came in handy for suppressing news about the dis-homing of an estimated 300,000 Zimbabweans.
For latest news on the situation in Zimbabwe also visit SW Radio Africa.
For background on the dis-homing, see the Christian Science Monitor report Systematic Cleansing in Zimbabwe.
I immediately sent a reply that was somewhat critical of what I considered to be her naive or at least very limited understanding of development issues. But after rereading her letter and yesterday I realized that I had looked at the task of spreading democracy solely from the viewpoint of rural development and specifically from the angle of development bank projects. Thus, the dour warnings in my essay. (Perhaps a reason for Barber's dour warnings, as well!) I now think I over-applied Dey's arguments, which were purely concerned with rural development.
So with hindsight I think that in general Beth's comments point up a flaw in my argument. They also serve as a good warning to check against over-reliance on one's knowledge base while studying an unfamiliar situation.
I'd say her comments underscore that this is not a perfect world; the best technological means for spreading/supporting genuine democracy are not affordable or technologically feasible in many instances. Yet while "half a bridge is better than none" can make for really bad development loan policy, I think Beth's point is that many small half measures to spread democracy can add up to big returns.
Also included in this post is a letter from "Liz" in response to the same essay; her comments about ICT are more technical but also very interesting as applied to democracy and information flow; she points up how this flow can work against democracy as much as support it. I support the last point with grim news from Zimbabwe.
"Howdy!
Regarding the comments by Atanu Dey you quoted:
"Basic functional literacy is a prerequisite to pretty much anything that one does. The use of high-tech depends on literacy and therefore if the population is illiterate, even gifting them with free hardware will not make a difference. The pre-condition for bridging the digital divide is therefore the bridging of the literacy divide. ...I grant that illiterate idiots can use a cell phone, but that is not what I would call the effective use of high technology."
I'm not so sure about this. The examples from North Korea show (at least to me) that even the basic technology of a cell phone allows the people in NK access to conversations with people outside NK, which in turns allows them a glimpse into life outside a strictly controlled country. And even that small glimpse can start a chain of change. I would never argue that literacy shouldn't be a top priority goal, just that it might not be as necessary as is being argued.
Re your comments:
"The literates control the information flow."
I again think conversations between people limit this -- especially if technology makes conversations easier to have among many people, literate or not. [...]
"As the African cell phone story indicates, ICT is critical to helping the rural poor stay connected about issues such as market conditions for their produce. But you don't want to assume that kind of connectivity automatically translates to more informed participation in the political process."
But why assume it doesn't?
"Pundita suspects that a lot of outmoded computers -- sold for a song by companies eager to dump them -- will find their way into the world's rural villages."
Probably so. One of my favorite parts of the North Korea story was the old VCR's making their way to NK and the people soaking up the soap operas. It's not as lofty as our classic American film idea,* but whatever helps oppressed people see (in this case literally) that there are much better alternatives, I think is a good thing.
Beth in the Midwest
* In an earlier published email exchange, Beth and I had discussed showing films about America's hardship days to peoples who were struggling to get their democracies off the ground.
* * * * *
Re: cellphones, democracy and information flow
Pundita,
Good points re the DPRK [North Korea] and cellphone signals from the north as well as the south (could we get some floating platforms offshore east and west? A little power management does wonderful things for signal dispersion...).
However, there are two major caveats to remember about cellphones and information dissemination:
1. It's a tool like any other -- anyone can use an axe, for purposes which suit his needs. When it's a big enough threat, the threatened government may well respond in kind, with misinformation. Likewise, a threatened government can always jam/overpower a bootleg signal -- it is, after all, radio waves -- unless we want to engage in a "hot" info war, which I doubt at this point.
In a similar vein, Wretchard mentioned at Belmont Club (about a year ago, maybe)that jihadi camp followers/wannabes passed decapitation videos around via their cellphone multimedia services (report from the London Times -- by the time I tried to track it back, the archives weren't accessible to me, but I'll take Wretchard's word that he saw the report).
2. Text messages use the voice system (typically) while data connections use a separate-but-connected data network which (typically) is supported by a set of servers providing web pages customized for very small screens, etc., and which is connected to regular data networks including the Internet (depending on national and carrier connectivity).
Text messages are stored on servers in the voice system (just ask the boys in Aruba, or Paris Hilton) -- and may be retrieved later. Data networking may be filtered and and/or tracked for billing purposes. Billing, of course, is the sine qua non for the telephony world, because they charge by the call/time/bytes -- and the ability to bill more granularly (more for some bytes than others, depending on where the bytes came from -- think premium services) and to restrict access to certain sites on some accounts (a business wireless connection can access corporate sites and partner sites, but not sports sites) are both currently available.
Tracking and storage, accessible to the oppressing government, or to another government in opposition (implying treason, if it leaks and you're caught) are not trivial matters.
All that said, the simple availability of another channel of information dissemination is a force multiplier -- permutations of information paths become a larger set, and it becomes much more complex to block them all.
But don't expect too much out of cellphone systems -- simple voice connectivity outside the immediate control of the oppressing government is a great help. Asian cellphones are often much smaller than the "candy bar" models we see in the US (Nokia, e.g.) or even a typical American clamshell model. And smaller is easier to conceal....
"Liz"
* * * * *
Pundita comments: Re your remark that the oppressing government can always jam the signals -- this is just what the Zimbabwe government has done with help from China. What the following report does not mention is that not only did the government receive jamming equipment from China but the PLA (China's military) flew Zimbabwean military to China for training on how to use the signal jammers. This training came in handy for suppressing news about the dis-homing of an estimated 300,000 Zimbabweans.
Although government has denied jamming SW Radio Africa’s broadcasts, investigations have revealed that the jamming appears to emanate from Thornhill in Gweru, using Chinese equipment.For the rest of the report, which includes instructions on how to get around the jamming, see The Zimbabwean.
It appears three jammers are being used to jam the three short wave frequencies used by SW Radio Africa. One kHz tone is used to jam the broadcasts; and is continued till the transmitters become too hot; then ‘noise’ is used to avoid over driving the jamming transmitters. The BBC Monitoring Services also confirmed the jamming saying “the interfering signals were present only for the period of the SW Radio Africa programming”.
Zimbabwe’s Media Monitoring Programme has condemned in the strongest terms this latest deliberate assault on freedom of expression.
“This act of sabotage against SW Radio Africa’s broadcasts, particularly in the run up to the March 2005 general elections, is a cynical attempt to deny the public their right to access information sources of their choice. It also demonstrates a blatant intolerance for the free flow of information, which is the cornerstone of every participatory democracy,” it said. [...]
For latest news on the situation in Zimbabwe also visit SW Radio Africa.
For background on the dis-homing, see the Christian Science Monitor report Systematic Cleansing in Zimbabwe.
Sunday, July 17
Life in a dog pack: lessons for dog owners and people who need more structure in their life
Dear Pundita:
You wrote: "Notice how people who are owned by a dog always conceive of it in democratic terms; i.e., 'I'm a member of a dog pack'."
That's quite true but I'm actually a member of a dog pack. As I noted in the first post of my series Life in a dog pack:
"When you have one dog the dog becomes a member of your family. When you have two dogs the dogs become members of your family. But when you have three or more dogs you have become a member of a dog pack.
Dog packs live by rules. The maintenance of order and keeping to a routine are very high values. And that order and routine pertains to you just as much as it does to the other dogs."
The canine members of our pack are:
Qila
Jenny
Tally
Mira
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye
* * * * *
Pundita's comment: Dave's engaging stories gently remind that dogs are not toys, nor are the adult ones four-legged versions of human toddlers. Man's best friend is a hard worker who needs responsibility to stay happy and off anti-depressants.
The commitment of time that Dave and his wife have given to the canine members of their family can't always be matched but it's an ideal all dog owners should strive for.
You wrote: "Notice how people who are owned by a dog always conceive of it in democratic terms; i.e., 'I'm a member of a dog pack'."
That's quite true but I'm actually a member of a dog pack. As I noted in the first post of my series Life in a dog pack:
"When you have one dog the dog becomes a member of your family. When you have two dogs the dogs become members of your family. But when you have three or more dogs you have become a member of a dog pack.
Dog packs live by rules. The maintenance of order and keeping to a routine are very high values. And that order and routine pertains to you just as much as it does to the other dogs."
The canine members of our pack are:
Qila
Jenny
Tally
Mira
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye
* * * * *
Pundita's comment: Dave's engaging stories gently remind that dogs are not toys, nor are the adult ones four-legged versions of human toddlers. Man's best friend is a hard worker who needs responsibility to stay happy and off anti-depressants.
The commitment of time that Dave and his wife have given to the canine members of their family can't always be matched but it's an ideal all dog owners should strive for.
Strike up the band: Pundita talks about Canada
50 Terror Groups Believed to Be in Canada
By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 4 via Yahoo News (Hat tip: Winds of War briefing):
I don't want any letters about the French and the Quebec Problem. I understand if you start down the road that al Qaeda and other terror groups will hook up with Canadians of French ancestry who want to break off from Canada, if they haven't done so already.
But it is past time to confront where pandering to the ethnic background of a nation's citizens leads. It leads to balkanization. It leads to the weakening of national laws. It leads to the weakening of the concepts of democracy and nationhood. It leads to abandoning the concept of citizenship. From there, it's a hop and skip back to the era that saw human tribes living in the trees.
Do you think our ancestors clawed their way of the trees, battled their way out of the caves, poured oceans of their blood into creating civilization, to see their descendants return to square one?
Get it straight: the way is forward not back. If the immigrants to your country and those of French ancestry have only the haziest grasp of the concept of "citizenship," it is your responsibility to educate them.
Nothing about humanity's achievements is written in stone. Nothing is guaranteed about what we've achieved via nationhood, which made possible liberal democracy. These are processes, which must be constantly tended to, if they are not to vanish.
However, snapping at the Canadians about pandering to the ethhic background of their citizens is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. We have done a great deal of pandering right here in the USA. As to where this has led, consider the following quotes from a report by Rachel Ehrenfeld and Shawn Macomber published in October 2004 in Front Page Magazine.*
As to how Soros got his American citizenship while immigrants who gave up everything to come here patiently waited in line for many years, go ask the US Department of State. Yet the Soros Frankenstein and the foreign business interests he represents have simply taken advantage of the fact that many Americans are asleep at the wheel.
* The Soros-Kerry Nexus
By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 4 via Yahoo News (Hat tip: Winds of War briefing):
TORONTO - Though many view Canada as an unassuming neutral nation that has skirted terrorist attacks, it has suffered its share of aggression, and intelligence officials believe at least 50 terror groups now have some presence here.I do not know, and I am absolutely certain I do not want to know, whether Canadians are as confused as the British when it comes to the concepts of 'democracy' and 'the law of the land.' (See my earlier post today.) But if by chance Canadians have been encouraging their Muslim community to think of itself as Muslim first, Asian second and Canadian dead last, my message to Canadian readers is that you'd better reorder those priorities fast.
They are from Sri Lanka, Kurdistan and points between and include supporters of some of the best-known Mideast groups, including al-Qaida, authorities say.
Osama bin Laden named Canada one of five so-called Christian nations that should be targeted for acts of terror. The others, reaffirmed last year by his al-Qaida network, were the United States, Britain, Spain and Australia.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, [Canadian] counterpart of the CIA, said terrorist representatives are actively raising money, procuring weapons, "manipulating immigrant communities" and facilitating travel to and from the United States and other countries.
Besides al-Qaida, those groups include Islamic Jihad; Hezbollah and other Shiite groups; Hamas, the Palestinian Force 17, Egyptian Al Jihad and various other Sunni groups from across the Middle East, CSIS [(US) Center for Strategic and International Studies] said. [...]
I don't want any letters about the French and the Quebec Problem. I understand if you start down the road that al Qaeda and other terror groups will hook up with Canadians of French ancestry who want to break off from Canada, if they haven't done so already.
But it is past time to confront where pandering to the ethnic background of a nation's citizens leads. It leads to balkanization. It leads to the weakening of national laws. It leads to the weakening of the concepts of democracy and nationhood. It leads to abandoning the concept of citizenship. From there, it's a hop and skip back to the era that saw human tribes living in the trees.
Do you think our ancestors clawed their way of the trees, battled their way out of the caves, poured oceans of their blood into creating civilization, to see their descendants return to square one?
Get it straight: the way is forward not back. If the immigrants to your country and those of French ancestry have only the haziest grasp of the concept of "citizenship," it is your responsibility to educate them.
Nothing about humanity's achievements is written in stone. Nothing is guaranteed about what we've achieved via nationhood, which made possible liberal democracy. These are processes, which must be constantly tended to, if they are not to vanish.
However, snapping at the Canadians about pandering to the ethhic background of their citizens is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. We have done a great deal of pandering right here in the USA. As to where this has led, consider the following quotes from a report by Rachel Ehrenfeld and Shawn Macomber published in October 2004 in Front Page Magazine.*
[...] Long term, if Soros has his way, the United States won’t even remain territorially intact. He funds both the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, two groups that want to essentially eliminate America’s borders.Actually, it is George Soros who is an anachronism. His view that it's perfectly fine to break "the rules;" e.g., sovereign laws, in order to bring about regime change is part of the Cold War model that set in place one phony democractic government after another, with diastrous results for genuine democracy. Now it's a new day, much to Soros' confusion. Of course he can always try to sell his services to Beijing.
In a much hailed 1997 speech to the National Council of La Raza, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said that he “proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory” enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important a very important part of this.
OSI has likewise contributed $65,000 to the Malcolm X Grassroots movement, which wants to establish an all-black homeland in the Southeastern United States, from South Carolina to Louisiana. It would be communist, of course.
“Most disturbing, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s website lionizes a group of ‘political prisoners,’ all of whom were convicted of killing policemen,” writes FrontPage Magazine editor Ben Johnson. “Sundiata Acoli, Robert Seth Hayes, Jalil Muntaquin, Herman Bell and Russell Maroon Shoats were all radical black revolutionaries, serving with the Black Panthers and/or Black Liberation Army.”
These murders, according to the group’s website, were perfectly acceptable: “In 1970, along with 5 others, Maroon was accused of attacking a police station, which resulted in an officer being killed. This attack was said to have been carried out in response to the rampant police brutality in the Black community.”
Soros has funded legal defense for illegal immigrants, helping them to stay in the country and…stay on welfare, too. His Emma Lazarus Fund (named after the poet whose words grace the Statue of Liberty) was initiated after Soros became infuriated with a new federal law restricting food stamps and Supplemental Security Income Benefits to non-citizens. Soros called this modest roadblock in the way of the expansion of the bloated welfare state as “a clear-cut case of injustice.”
In September 2003 Soros was invited to speak at one of the State Department’s Open Forums, where he laid out his hyper-internationalist aspirations for American society, including his proposed “modification of the concept of sovereignty” which is needed because “sovereignty is basically somewhat anachronistic.”
As to how Soros got his American citizenship while immigrants who gave up everything to come here patiently waited in line for many years, go ask the US Department of State. Yet the Soros Frankenstein and the foreign business interests he represents have simply taken advantage of the fact that many Americans are asleep at the wheel.
* The Soros-Kerry Nexus
United Kingdom and Sharia: British confusion about a fundamental aspect of democracy and nationhood
I deleted the following paragraph from my essay about the Pentagon's New Map because it was not central to my point, and yet was important enough to merit a separate blog, particularly in light of the 7/7 London massacre. The paragraph generated an exchange with a reader from England, which I also publish here.
"While the British have not yet devolved to the body paint-and-feathers level of human social organization, they now have only the most tenuous grasp of the concept of a nation-state. If you think I'm pulling your leg -- Britain recognizes two bodies of law, British and Sharia. That is why polygamy among Muslims living in Britain is legal. Thus, technically, if a fatwa was issued in accordance with Sharia law, the London bombings massacre was not illegal in Britain. Nobody write Pundita in horror to tell me no no that's not true. Yes yes it is true; it's just that the British are clearly unaware that a nation run according to two sets of law is a contradiction in terms. Body paint and feathers are not far behind."
"Dear Pundita:
Sharia has no standing in statute or common law that I am aware of. For instance, the status under sharia of the (still standing) fatwa against Salman Rushdie would not protect anyone attempting to carry it out from prosecution by the Crown.
Though there is a worrying tendency for courts to be "understanding" of foreign residents familial and property arrangements arrived at under their home states legal systems, this does not apply to citizens. Polygamous relationships have the legal status of cohabitees (i.e. not even common law, rather than civil marriage.)
Judgements made by sharia "lawyers" do have a limited standing; that of voluntary arbitration between consenting parties. So long as the parties remain free to dissent from the process or any outcome thereof, and resort to law, this has limited implications. Jewish law is regarded on the same basis.
See:
The Reception of Muslim Family Law in Western Liberal States
author: Pascale Fournier
for: The Canadian Council of Muslim Women
http://www.ccmw.com/Position%
20Papers/Pascale%20paper.doc.
Though in a way Britain does recognise two bodies of law: technically there's no such thing as British Law, there's either Scottish or English (and Northern Irish if you're talking UK rather than GB). [...]
Regards,
John in Worcestershire"
Dear John:
I hope you realize I was stretching a point to pound one home but it does seem that many British Muslims are under the impression that Britain legally recognizes Sharia. I will dig up a reference to support this statement as soon as enough caffeine courses through my veins. For now, a Times (UK) poll taken after 9/11 revealed that 80% of Britain's Muslims consider themselves Muslims first and British second. That situation must be changed "yesterday."
* * * * *
John replies:
"You're spot-on about the need to assert the overriding claims of the British nation-state to the primary loyalty of its citizens. If the recent appalling events have any upside, it would be if a shift of public consensus and government policy takes place. There are some signs this may happen, but not near enough to be happy.
For one worrying item about "integrating" Sharia, have a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point
/special/islam/3198285.stm
John in Worcestershire"
* * * * * *
Pundita comments:
I pulled the following blurbs from an old issue of British Muslims Monthly Survey. (March 1996 Vol. IV, No. 3). Americans trying to understand the decline of European/Anglo societies might want to spend time someday browsing back copies of the journal.
Even if that were the case, however, clearly many British Muslims do not draw the distinction between a liberal democracy's tolerance for religious sensibilities and the law of the land.
The lack of clarity on the issue has definitely extended to British governing, social welfare and policing authorities, which is why the Muslim practice of female genital mutilation has been tolerated for so long by these authorities.
The same lack of clarity would be evident if British welfare agencies give financial aid to children born of multiple female "cohabitees" residing in the same domicile with one father whose name is recorded on the birth certificate for all children born to the cohabitees; i.e., wives under Muslim law.
To put all this another way, British government has long been crystal clear on the fact that they have done everything possible to encourage Muslims to the belief that Britain is governed by two [radically] different sets of law.
The point of my criticism directed at the British is that such encouragement could not have happened unless the majority of British were very unclear on the meaning of "a nation." Thus, my jibe about body paint and feathers.
If the British are unclear, well, that is not a violation of international law. My warning is directed to the US government and to thinkers such as Thomas Barnett who are trying to modernize US defense/foreign policy.
There is much talk about bringing Western values to those who live in non-democratic countries. It seems to me that getting clear on these values needs to start in the West -- including right here in the USA. One could make out a good case that US tax-funded educational efforts would have the best results if they were directed to our oldest NATO allies and the US public school system.
What the British don't seem to grasp is that there is nothing democratic about the Muslim faith -- indeed, about any faith. Thus, one simply cannot have a modern democratic nation if religious precepts are tacitly given precedence over national law. On paper, we should strive to obey the moral precepts of our religion. Yet this observation, when translated by a national governing authority into an unclear reading of the law of the land, is a slippery slope that weakens and even destroys civilization.
That is why today, in Britain -- the bastion of civilized ideals -- ritual human sacrifice is carried out by followers of an African faith. This is sacrifice of children who have been kidnapped and shipped to Britain for the express purpose of being tortured to death for a religious ritual.
Of course the British authorities consider this a crime. But once you establish a climate of moral parity between national law and religious law, it becomes extremely hard for the government to argue against religious practices that conflict with national law.
That is the corner into which British society has painted itself.
You might also wish to read Mark Silverberg's summary of the Islamization of Europe, which unhappily he terms "Eurabia." However, all the facts Silverberg cites overlook the point I strive to make in my earlier reply. To observe that the Europeans (including Anglos) bent over backwards to accommodate the Muslims because of the 1970s oil embargo avoids asking how such bending could include abandoning (or ignoring) of fundamental principles undergirding modern democratic government!
This is a vital issue, which seems to have been ignored or suppressed by Europeans in the push to establish and extend the European Union.
Silverberg also tends overlook (as does Bat Ye'or) that it is Muslims -- often with no linguistic or no (or little) cultural ties to the Arabs, whatever their DNA -- that have made such an impact on Europe during the past three decades.
The Muslim immigrants from many lands are being conditioned by Muslim radicals to think of themselves first and foremost as part of a transcendent "Muslim Nation" whose laws supersede all international laws and all national laws -- and to act according to that belief. That, rather than Arab ancestry, is the central issue.
Nevertheless, Mark Silverberg's piece is a valuable overview and compendium of facts, so I provide the link here: The Coming of Eurabia.
"While the British have not yet devolved to the body paint-and-feathers level of human social organization, they now have only the most tenuous grasp of the concept of a nation-state. If you think I'm pulling your leg -- Britain recognizes two bodies of law, British and Sharia. That is why polygamy among Muslims living in Britain is legal. Thus, technically, if a fatwa was issued in accordance with Sharia law, the London bombings massacre was not illegal in Britain. Nobody write Pundita in horror to tell me no no that's not true. Yes yes it is true; it's just that the British are clearly unaware that a nation run according to two sets of law is a contradiction in terms. Body paint and feathers are not far behind."
"Dear Pundita:
Sharia has no standing in statute or common law that I am aware of. For instance, the status under sharia of the (still standing) fatwa against Salman Rushdie would not protect anyone attempting to carry it out from prosecution by the Crown.
Though there is a worrying tendency for courts to be "understanding" of foreign residents familial and property arrangements arrived at under their home states legal systems, this does not apply to citizens. Polygamous relationships have the legal status of cohabitees (i.e. not even common law, rather than civil marriage.)
Judgements made by sharia "lawyers" do have a limited standing; that of voluntary arbitration between consenting parties. So long as the parties remain free to dissent from the process or any outcome thereof, and resort to law, this has limited implications. Jewish law is regarded on the same basis.
See:
The Reception of Muslim Family Law in Western Liberal States
author: Pascale Fournier
for: The Canadian Council of Muslim Women
http://www.ccmw.com/Position%
20Papers/Pascale%20paper.doc.
Though in a way Britain does recognise two bodies of law: technically there's no such thing as British Law, there's either Scottish or English (and Northern Irish if you're talking UK rather than GB). [...]
Regards,
John in Worcestershire"
Dear John:
I hope you realize I was stretching a point to pound one home but it does seem that many British Muslims are under the impression that Britain legally recognizes Sharia. I will dig up a reference to support this statement as soon as enough caffeine courses through my veins. For now, a Times (UK) poll taken after 9/11 revealed that 80% of Britain's Muslims consider themselves Muslims first and British second. That situation must be changed "yesterday."
* * * * *
John replies:
"You're spot-on about the need to assert the overriding claims of the British nation-state to the primary loyalty of its citizens. If the recent appalling events have any upside, it would be if a shift of public consensus and government policy takes place. There are some signs this may happen, but not near enough to be happy.
For one worrying item about "integrating" Sharia, have a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point
/special/islam/3198285.stm
John in Worcestershire"
* * * * * *
Pundita comments:
I pulled the following blurbs from an old issue of British Muslims Monthly Survey. (March 1996 Vol. IV, No. 3). Americans trying to understand the decline of European/Anglo societies might want to spend time someday browsing back copies of the journal.
Rushdie fatwa statementIt might be that the full British press reports quoted in the blurbs make it clear that the "Muslim Parliament" has no legal governing status in Britain and that "Islamic Law" in Britain cannot contravene Scottish and English (and Northern Ireland) law.
The fatwa, or religious decision, issued against Salman Rushdie by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 remains in force, according to Dr Kalim Siddiqui of the Muslim Parliament (The Times, 30.03.96). The relevant section of Dr Siddiqui’s press released speech said:
"The Muslim Parliament was conceived in the heat of the conflict generated by the insult and abuse heaped upon Islam in The Satanic Verses. The fatwa of the late Imam Khomeini, sentencing Salman Rushdie to death...was and remains an order that must be carried out" (Yorkshire Evening Post, 30.03.96). [...]
Multiple marriage
When Medi Siadatan’s third wife, Sarah, gave birth to their daughter Ayesha in Kidderminster Hospital, his two other wives, Stefania and Cinzia were there to help her (Wolverhampton Express & Star, 04.03.96). This is the fifth child born to the family. Mr Siadatan is not committing any offence because the women are not married to him under British law, but under Islamic law (Daily Mail, 07.03.96).[...]
Even if that were the case, however, clearly many British Muslims do not draw the distinction between a liberal democracy's tolerance for religious sensibilities and the law of the land.
The lack of clarity on the issue has definitely extended to British governing, social welfare and policing authorities, which is why the Muslim practice of female genital mutilation has been tolerated for so long by these authorities.
The same lack of clarity would be evident if British welfare agencies give financial aid to children born of multiple female "cohabitees" residing in the same domicile with one father whose name is recorded on the birth certificate for all children born to the cohabitees; i.e., wives under Muslim law.
To put all this another way, British government has long been crystal clear on the fact that they have done everything possible to encourage Muslims to the belief that Britain is governed by two [radically] different sets of law.
The point of my criticism directed at the British is that such encouragement could not have happened unless the majority of British were very unclear on the meaning of "a nation." Thus, my jibe about body paint and feathers.
If the British are unclear, well, that is not a violation of international law. My warning is directed to the US government and to thinkers such as Thomas Barnett who are trying to modernize US defense/foreign policy.
There is much talk about bringing Western values to those who live in non-democratic countries. It seems to me that getting clear on these values needs to start in the West -- including right here in the USA. One could make out a good case that US tax-funded educational efforts would have the best results if they were directed to our oldest NATO allies and the US public school system.
What the British don't seem to grasp is that there is nothing democratic about the Muslim faith -- indeed, about any faith. Thus, one simply cannot have a modern democratic nation if religious precepts are tacitly given precedence over national law. On paper, we should strive to obey the moral precepts of our religion. Yet this observation, when translated by a national governing authority into an unclear reading of the law of the land, is a slippery slope that weakens and even destroys civilization.
That is why today, in Britain -- the bastion of civilized ideals -- ritual human sacrifice is carried out by followers of an African faith. This is sacrifice of children who have been kidnapped and shipped to Britain for the express purpose of being tortured to death for a religious ritual.
Of course the British authorities consider this a crime. But once you establish a climate of moral parity between national law and religious law, it becomes extremely hard for the government to argue against religious practices that conflict with national law.
That is the corner into which British society has painted itself.
You might also wish to read Mark Silverberg's summary of the Islamization of Europe, which unhappily he terms "Eurabia." However, all the facts Silverberg cites overlook the point I strive to make in my earlier reply. To observe that the Europeans (including Anglos) bent over backwards to accommodate the Muslims because of the 1970s oil embargo avoids asking how such bending could include abandoning (or ignoring) of fundamental principles undergirding modern democratic government!
This is a vital issue, which seems to have been ignored or suppressed by Europeans in the push to establish and extend the European Union.
Silverberg also tends overlook (as does Bat Ye'or) that it is Muslims -- often with no linguistic or no (or little) cultural ties to the Arabs, whatever their DNA -- that have made such an impact on Europe during the past three decades.
The Muslim immigrants from many lands are being conditioned by Muslim radicals to think of themselves first and foremost as part of a transcendent "Muslim Nation" whose laws supersede all international laws and all national laws -- and to act according to that belief. That, rather than Arab ancestry, is the central issue.
Nevertheless, Mark Silverberg's piece is a valuable overview and compendium of facts, so I provide the link here: The Coming of Eurabia.
Friday, July 15
While you're at it, take out the garbage
(Note: Don't miss the upcoming Pundita essay, "How to blame everyone for your problems except yourself." Pundita gives handy tips for how to shift blame, evade personal responsibility and find endless excuses!)
This post is in response to two readers, one from the Middle East and one from South Asia, who asked that I not publish their letters and who had essentially the same question.
Pundita does not hate the Europeans; I don't have an ax to grind with them. What I have is a deep understanding of the devastating psychological effect of European colonialism on the Europeans and the peoples they ruled, and how this continues to warp thinking on both sides.
Enter the Americans. The American government was traumatized by Anwar Sadat's assassination. After that, they virtually retreated behind enclave walls in the Middle East. This situation only got more entrenched after Lebanon. The American government allowed post-colonial governments to guide how they should interact with the peoples of the Middle East.
Add to this the State Department's 'clientitis' -- the tendency to pander to the European NATO allies and the Gulf Oil Arabs. Add to this American academia, which had such an influence in Washington for decades, was long dominated by European views. What do you get when you put together the walking wounded and the blind? Crummy US policy in the Middle East.
So Pundita has taken the position of a Dutch Aunt. This to wise up readers about situations that are very important to policy but which fly under the radar of American perceptions. I've discussed Sahibism, the Pasha and Enclave mentality, Going Native, the Oriental Stranger syndrome and how tribal and clan thinking affects societies in 'old world' countries.
And in several essays I've conveyed almost a parody of the "American-style" way of dealing with situations. This is to pound home that Americans must learn to rely on their own instincts, their own experience and history rather than the guidance of European gurus. The frank talk to an Iranian expat reader in Still waiting for Pasha is an example of Pundita at her most American style.
To put this another way: Americans have a good recollection of the slavery experience and conquering 'indigenous' peoples in this land because we never stopped talking about it. But none of this is living under the experience of colonial rule.
The earliest settlers from Europe suffered under that experience but they got rid of the colonial masters, and so long ago that we stopped talking about it. It passed from our cultural referents. Thus, few modern Americans who didn't immigrate here from a post-colonial land can understand that experience in their gut, where it needs to be understood.
My position is don't try to understand by listening to the Europeans. The French went on and on about their experience in Algeria to explain why they were against the US invasion of Iraq. Hello, we're not the French.
Americans need to learn to just 'be yourself' in dealings with peoples who lived under Western colonialism and still carry the psychological baggage that went with it. Americans should take cheer from the thought that they can't do any worse than the Europeans did. A big advantage Americans have is that we are free of the complex dependency relationship and guilt that still influence European attitudes toward Africans and Middle Easterners in particular.
And don't allow academics and well-meaning Europeans to terrorize us into thinking we require a scholarly grasp of the situation in the Middle East before we can formulate a correct approach.
How much scholarship does it require, to grasp that you're dealing with a bunch of slicks when they pour mega-billions into nuke weapons programs while their people go hungry?
So how much do you need to know about the history of that part of the world to know what you're dealing with? How much of the Persian language do you need to master in order to call a spade a spade?
We also need to keep in mind that for the first time America is mounting a serious challenge to British and French influence in the region. The French in particular are very jealous, very possessive, of their special role in the Middle East. And they have diverted criticism of their colonial era by encouraging anti-American views. Yet when you look at the mess they made you have to wonder how big a masochistic streak the Middle Easterners have, to keep turning to the French for advice.
To understand look to your own experience. There is the kid who does a great job of mowing your lawn but half the time he doesn't show up. So you end up with the kid who does a lousy job but at least he gets to your house every week like clockwork during the summer.
In the same manner the Americans are considered very successful so we must know something but we're also considered undependable. We swoop in and swoop out, and you just never know how long we'll be around. So don't rock the boat because you can't assume the Americans will be at your back.
On the other hand the French, and the British, are always there. So no matter how crummy their advice has been, no matter how much mess their policies have made, at least you know they'll always answer the phone.
This said, our greatest adversary in the Middle East and other post-colonial lands isn't the Europeans -- or the terror sponsoring regimes. It's the Pasha mentality, which has a cancerous effect on a society.
The Pasha mindset boils down to thinking that you climb the ladder of success by getting others to do everything for you. Many Americans would be amazed if they knew the extent of that mindset in post-colonial countries. It's because servant labor remained so cheap.
I have sat and listened to women whose families are not well off, but whose dinner conversation revolves around the hard day they had ordering the servants around. It's the culture. Living under colonial rule supported and encouraged it; it was reinforcement for the Pasha mindset.
This translates to a very passive attitude that one doesn't find in say, Japan or China, where hard labor is lionized. Their attitude makes for a healthy competitive response when they see a successful society. They say, "I can have that too if I work hard enough."
Whereas in Pasha cultures they say, "These people from a successful society can serve us."
What drove many Americans up a wall after the Iraqi insurgency got underway was TV footage of Iraqis complaining that they couldn't go outside their house because of the violence. I knew Americans who yelled at the TV, "Then get off your butt and fight!"
The irony is that the terrorists have the same complaint. "We work, we slave to blow up Americans and the lazy bums ask us to take out the garbage while we're at it."
It's not laziness. It's the Pasha mindset. It's the real reason the Jewish settlers were looked down on in that part of the world. Only peasants find nothing to sneer at about a life of hard physical labor.
As to where the Middle Easterners got the 'peasant' idea, go ask the French. It's said they resent America's superpower status. What they resent is that a land of peasants became history's most successful nation.
The French and other Westerners who were heavily invested in the colonial enterprise need to get over it. They need to put their sins in context to the sweep of history and the march of civilization. A lot of those old-world tribes would have killed each other off without the intervention of the Western colonizers.
If not for the British there would be no House of Saud; the Turks had already started genocide against that tribe when the British stepped in. All you have to do is read the Old Testament to see that war, genocide and slave-taking were the way of life in oldest parts of the world by the time the Greeks showed up.
My advice to get over it goes double for peoples with the Pasha mindset who lived under Western colonial rule. One of Gadhafi's sons spent time in China. He returned to Libya and told his father, Pop those Chinese know how to work; our people have to change their ways.
That's right. Yet you can't move forward unless you turn your head in the forward direction.
.
This post is in response to two readers, one from the Middle East and one from South Asia, who asked that I not publish their letters and who had essentially the same question.
Pundita does not hate the Europeans; I don't have an ax to grind with them. What I have is a deep understanding of the devastating psychological effect of European colonialism on the Europeans and the peoples they ruled, and how this continues to warp thinking on both sides.
Enter the Americans. The American government was traumatized by Anwar Sadat's assassination. After that, they virtually retreated behind enclave walls in the Middle East. This situation only got more entrenched after Lebanon. The American government allowed post-colonial governments to guide how they should interact with the peoples of the Middle East.
Add to this the State Department's 'clientitis' -- the tendency to pander to the European NATO allies and the Gulf Oil Arabs. Add to this American academia, which had such an influence in Washington for decades, was long dominated by European views. What do you get when you put together the walking wounded and the blind? Crummy US policy in the Middle East.
So Pundita has taken the position of a Dutch Aunt. This to wise up readers about situations that are very important to policy but which fly under the radar of American perceptions. I've discussed Sahibism, the Pasha and Enclave mentality, Going Native, the Oriental Stranger syndrome and how tribal and clan thinking affects societies in 'old world' countries.
And in several essays I've conveyed almost a parody of the "American-style" way of dealing with situations. This is to pound home that Americans must learn to rely on their own instincts, their own experience and history rather than the guidance of European gurus. The frank talk to an Iranian expat reader in Still waiting for Pasha is an example of Pundita at her most American style.
To put this another way: Americans have a good recollection of the slavery experience and conquering 'indigenous' peoples in this land because we never stopped talking about it. But none of this is living under the experience of colonial rule.
The earliest settlers from Europe suffered under that experience but they got rid of the colonial masters, and so long ago that we stopped talking about it. It passed from our cultural referents. Thus, few modern Americans who didn't immigrate here from a post-colonial land can understand that experience in their gut, where it needs to be understood.
My position is don't try to understand by listening to the Europeans. The French went on and on about their experience in Algeria to explain why they were against the US invasion of Iraq. Hello, we're not the French.
Americans need to learn to just 'be yourself' in dealings with peoples who lived under Western colonialism and still carry the psychological baggage that went with it. Americans should take cheer from the thought that they can't do any worse than the Europeans did. A big advantage Americans have is that we are free of the complex dependency relationship and guilt that still influence European attitudes toward Africans and Middle Easterners in particular.
And don't allow academics and well-meaning Europeans to terrorize us into thinking we require a scholarly grasp of the situation in the Middle East before we can formulate a correct approach.
How much scholarship does it require, to grasp that you're dealing with a bunch of slicks when they pour mega-billions into nuke weapons programs while their people go hungry?
So how much do you need to know about the history of that part of the world to know what you're dealing with? How much of the Persian language do you need to master in order to call a spade a spade?
We also need to keep in mind that for the first time America is mounting a serious challenge to British and French influence in the region. The French in particular are very jealous, very possessive, of their special role in the Middle East. And they have diverted criticism of their colonial era by encouraging anti-American views. Yet when you look at the mess they made you have to wonder how big a masochistic streak the Middle Easterners have, to keep turning to the French for advice.
To understand look to your own experience. There is the kid who does a great job of mowing your lawn but half the time he doesn't show up. So you end up with the kid who does a lousy job but at least he gets to your house every week like clockwork during the summer.
In the same manner the Americans are considered very successful so we must know something but we're also considered undependable. We swoop in and swoop out, and you just never know how long we'll be around. So don't rock the boat because you can't assume the Americans will be at your back.
On the other hand the French, and the British, are always there. So no matter how crummy their advice has been, no matter how much mess their policies have made, at least you know they'll always answer the phone.
This said, our greatest adversary in the Middle East and other post-colonial lands isn't the Europeans -- or the terror sponsoring regimes. It's the Pasha mentality, which has a cancerous effect on a society.
The Pasha mindset boils down to thinking that you climb the ladder of success by getting others to do everything for you. Many Americans would be amazed if they knew the extent of that mindset in post-colonial countries. It's because servant labor remained so cheap.
I have sat and listened to women whose families are not well off, but whose dinner conversation revolves around the hard day they had ordering the servants around. It's the culture. Living under colonial rule supported and encouraged it; it was reinforcement for the Pasha mindset.
This translates to a very passive attitude that one doesn't find in say, Japan or China, where hard labor is lionized. Their attitude makes for a healthy competitive response when they see a successful society. They say, "I can have that too if I work hard enough."
Whereas in Pasha cultures they say, "These people from a successful society can serve us."
What drove many Americans up a wall after the Iraqi insurgency got underway was TV footage of Iraqis complaining that they couldn't go outside their house because of the violence. I knew Americans who yelled at the TV, "Then get off your butt and fight!"
The irony is that the terrorists have the same complaint. "We work, we slave to blow up Americans and the lazy bums ask us to take out the garbage while we're at it."
It's not laziness. It's the Pasha mindset. It's the real reason the Jewish settlers were looked down on in that part of the world. Only peasants find nothing to sneer at about a life of hard physical labor.
As to where the Middle Easterners got the 'peasant' idea, go ask the French. It's said they resent America's superpower status. What they resent is that a land of peasants became history's most successful nation.
The French and other Westerners who were heavily invested in the colonial enterprise need to get over it. They need to put their sins in context to the sweep of history and the march of civilization. A lot of those old-world tribes would have killed each other off without the intervention of the Western colonizers.
If not for the British there would be no House of Saud; the Turks had already started genocide against that tribe when the British stepped in. All you have to do is read the Old Testament to see that war, genocide and slave-taking were the way of life in oldest parts of the world by the time the Greeks showed up.
My advice to get over it goes double for peoples with the Pasha mindset who lived under Western colonial rule. One of Gadhafi's sons spent time in China. He returned to Libya and told his father, Pop those Chinese know how to work; our people have to change their ways.
That's right. Yet you can't move forward unless you turn your head in the forward direction.
.
Thursday, July 14
Pentagon's New Map: Struggling toward a modern American defense policy
In late June Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye sent me his critique of Thomas M. Barnett's Pentagon's New Map. The book is an elaboration of Barnett's 2003 article of the same name for Esquire Magazine.
I promised Dave I'd find time to study his critique and make comments about Barnett's thesis. I did this in the manner of promising myself I would organize my closets and file cabinets.
Much of Dave's discussion, which is made from great familiarity with Barnett's New Map, is outside my understanding. However, I have enough acquaintance with Barnett's Core-Seam-Gap model to be struck by Dave's comments about connectivity; I find he makes excellent points. My problem is with the entire model, which I consider a train wreck. Yet the basic concept underlying the model is sound.
Dr Barnett has taken the view that the US military cannot compartmentalize when it comes to analyzing enemy threats. He's saying that one can't confine threat analysis to another country's military and weapons arsenal. And one can't confine a study of US weakness to analyzing US reliance on strategic resources such as petroleum.
Thus, Barnett is making a serious attempt to modernize US defense policy, which has not undergone any fundamental updating since the concept of establishing US naval superiority in order to be ready to meet threats before they come to US shores. This is because US defense policy got swallowed up by the Cold War and the attendant NATO policy.
Barnett is attempting to think in holistic terms about US defense -- to look at all broad types of possible threats within the paradigm of military response. I have not read Barnett's book but my understanding is that Barnett has long argued that a country's economy must be factored into US threat analysis.
I interject that I am sure this argument has made Barnett hugely unpopular with economists, who defend their turf with the zeal of -- well, the Zealots. An easy way in Washington to get darts thrown at your picture is to step outside your scholarly or wonkish bounds. That observation goes double for military types who step a micron over the Battlefield Defense line in their analysis.
And the same deep suspicion holds true in reverse: From within the Pentagon there is a band that zealously guards the sacred cow of American democracy, which is that the US military must carefully confine itself to purely military matters.
Thus any common-sense observation that matters beyond armaments and troop deployments can have a military implication tends to be viewed from certain quarters in the Pentagon as a Trotskyite plot meant to weaken the fabric of American society.
Luckily (or perhaps through design) Barnett has escaped tar and feathers because of his sexy model: the Core, the Seam and Non-Integrating Gap. Because there is not one department of the US military that cannot find argument for budget requests by referencing the model, it has its supporters at the Pentagon.
Thus, Pundita's conundrum when it comes to discussing Barnett's ideas. Until receiving Dave's post, I dealt with the impasse by taking an executive decision not to discuss the ideas, except to repeat the honest assessment that came flying out of my mouth the first time I encountered Barnett's model:
Pundita's outburst placed America and Arctic penguins in the Non-Integrating Gap, and all those countries that know about the workings of the World Bank in the Core.
(The Seam would be West European countries, which were the recipient of early Bank loans, but which today have only a hazy idea of how Bank policies have affected the 'underdeveloped' world.)
However, Pundita belongs to the radical school of thought that maintains the United States of America is currently engaged in a hot war. Thus, my answer to many defense-related questions is, "Whatever makes CENTCOM happy."
The Pentagon was forced into a very complex war after the US military and the CIA spent years hamstrung by the US Department of State, the Congress, the White House, and the US news media. Whatever helps the US military fight the war from that far behind, Pundita is all for it.
This said, I think that by organizing his thesis around the Core-Gap-Seam model, Barnett has leaped over groundwork that is required to make sense of the model and address its inadequacies.
Here I might be unfair to Barnett's earlier writings, which I have not read, and his book, which I've not read. However, I venture that Dr. Barnett and his disciples need to lay groundwork by:
> Clearly arguing that the enduring doctrine of US defense (US naval superiority=keeping the enemy from US shores) needs fundamental revision.
> Clearly articulating the issue of the control that the civilian academia gained over US defense policy after WW2 and how this works against coherent defense policy.
> Clearly explaining the need for the military to develop a defense paradigm that includes threats generally excluded from military analysis.
Now here all good Barnett disciples will ask, "What means that word 'clearly'?"
Clearly means:
> No arcane language that can only be intuited by scholars specializing in the history of secret societies or World War Two code breaking.
> No attempts at creating an algebra.
> No more listening to radio signals from outer space for inspiration on how to frame a concept in writing.
> Remembering that in Washington it all comes down to budget, which means learning to write one syllable dumbed-down abstracts that even a senator with no military experience can comprehend.
Thomas Barnett made an intelligent, bold move by taking his case straight to the public via Esquire magazine. Yet his thesis has gotten bogged down partly because of the arcane language and references attached to it. This has prevented people from a variety of fields from examining the model. And it has cut off whatever public support he might have gotten for his thesis, to the extent he articulated it in the Esquire article.
Once the groundwork is laid, then is the time to conjure a working hypothesis, in the form of a tentative model for how a holistic defense policy might look.
In one sentence, Barnett's current model divides the world into countries in various stages of integration with the WTO-democratic paradigm -- the Core countries representing the most integrated. Yet this paradigm is highly illusory, even mythic, in key aspects. Here are but a few examples to explain the mythic aspect:
> The United States is the biggest transit area for transnational organized crime syndicates, with the European Union coming in around second. Why? Open borders; a great deal of freedom; EU integration making checkpoints, different passports, etc. unnecessary across a large body of land, and so on.
As to how much foreign exchange from crime related industries is washed through the EU and the US, and how much the respective banking systems depend on it -- what we know for certain is "a great deal."
> The governing party in France is so corrupt that as soon as Jacques Chirac leaves office he most probably will face criminal charges.
> England does not have a free press -- any publication deemed an affront to the British royal family can be censored by the government. Those Americans who think Britons can get around the law by importing censored publications are unaware that Britain does not provide anywhere near the protection of free speech that is found in the USA.
Britain is known as the "libel capital of the world." Even foreign authors whose books are ordered over the Internet for reading by the British are a target for a libel suit launched in Britain. A recent suit brought against Rachel Enrenfeld for examining a connection between terror funding and a Saudi national underscores Britain's affront to the US First Amendment. Dr. Enrhenfeld was sued in Britain (and the case found in favor of the plaintiff) because less than 30 copies of the book in question were ordered on the Internet for reading in Britain.
That's enough examples to get across that Barnett's idea of "Core" countries rests on shaky criteria, if one is trying to identify nations that make up the 'least threat' to the USA and each other.
I would consider Britain's approach to dealing with Arafat and Tehran, and terrorists in general, to be a considerable security threat to the US. As I would consider the post-invasion conduct of the British military in southern Iraq, which saw the British insisting that anyone coming across the border from Iran should not be challenged.
The Israeli military was so upset with the situation -- and with the US military for going along with it -- that at one point they said to hell with it, might as well break up the country because it's now overrun with terrorists. The Iraqi Governing Council was equally upset with the situation.
For that reason and many others that have come to light during the past decade, Washington, and evidentially Dr. Barnett, are still in the grip of the "He Ain't Heavy He's My Ally" school of defense thinking. Or what Pundita calls the Thelma and Louise school.
In summary, Barnett's model needs considerable refinement -- as in going back to the drawing board and starting over again. Yet to repeat, the thinking that led to the model is on the right track.
.
I promised Dave I'd find time to study his critique and make comments about Barnett's thesis. I did this in the manner of promising myself I would organize my closets and file cabinets.
Much of Dave's discussion, which is made from great familiarity with Barnett's New Map, is outside my understanding. However, I have enough acquaintance with Barnett's Core-Seam-Gap model to be struck by Dave's comments about connectivity; I find he makes excellent points. My problem is with the entire model, which I consider a train wreck. Yet the basic concept underlying the model is sound.
Dr Barnett has taken the view that the US military cannot compartmentalize when it comes to analyzing enemy threats. He's saying that one can't confine threat analysis to another country's military and weapons arsenal. And one can't confine a study of US weakness to analyzing US reliance on strategic resources such as petroleum.
Thus, Barnett is making a serious attempt to modernize US defense policy, which has not undergone any fundamental updating since the concept of establishing US naval superiority in order to be ready to meet threats before they come to US shores. This is because US defense policy got swallowed up by the Cold War and the attendant NATO policy.
Barnett is attempting to think in holistic terms about US defense -- to look at all broad types of possible threats within the paradigm of military response. I have not read Barnett's book but my understanding is that Barnett has long argued that a country's economy must be factored into US threat analysis.
I interject that I am sure this argument has made Barnett hugely unpopular with economists, who defend their turf with the zeal of -- well, the Zealots. An easy way in Washington to get darts thrown at your picture is to step outside your scholarly or wonkish bounds. That observation goes double for military types who step a micron over the Battlefield Defense line in their analysis.
And the same deep suspicion holds true in reverse: From within the Pentagon there is a band that zealously guards the sacred cow of American democracy, which is that the US military must carefully confine itself to purely military matters.
Thus any common-sense observation that matters beyond armaments and troop deployments can have a military implication tends to be viewed from certain quarters in the Pentagon as a Trotskyite plot meant to weaken the fabric of American society.
Luckily (or perhaps through design) Barnett has escaped tar and feathers because of his sexy model: the Core, the Seam and Non-Integrating Gap. Because there is not one department of the US military that cannot find argument for budget requests by referencing the model, it has its supporters at the Pentagon.
Thus, Pundita's conundrum when it comes to discussing Barnett's ideas. Until receiving Dave's post, I dealt with the impasse by taking an executive decision not to discuss the ideas, except to repeat the honest assessment that came flying out of my mouth the first time I encountered Barnett's model:
Pundita's outburst placed America and Arctic penguins in the Non-Integrating Gap, and all those countries that know about the workings of the World Bank in the Core.
(The Seam would be West European countries, which were the recipient of early Bank loans, but which today have only a hazy idea of how Bank policies have affected the 'underdeveloped' world.)
However, Pundita belongs to the radical school of thought that maintains the United States of America is currently engaged in a hot war. Thus, my answer to many defense-related questions is, "Whatever makes CENTCOM happy."
The Pentagon was forced into a very complex war after the US military and the CIA spent years hamstrung by the US Department of State, the Congress, the White House, and the US news media. Whatever helps the US military fight the war from that far behind, Pundita is all for it.
This said, I think that by organizing his thesis around the Core-Gap-Seam model, Barnett has leaped over groundwork that is required to make sense of the model and address its inadequacies.
Here I might be unfair to Barnett's earlier writings, which I have not read, and his book, which I've not read. However, I venture that Dr. Barnett and his disciples need to lay groundwork by:
> Clearly arguing that the enduring doctrine of US defense (US naval superiority=keeping the enemy from US shores) needs fundamental revision.
> Clearly articulating the issue of the control that the civilian academia gained over US defense policy after WW2 and how this works against coherent defense policy.
> Clearly explaining the need for the military to develop a defense paradigm that includes threats generally excluded from military analysis.
Now here all good Barnett disciples will ask, "What means that word 'clearly'?"
Clearly means:
> No arcane language that can only be intuited by scholars specializing in the history of secret societies or World War Two code breaking.
> No attempts at creating an algebra.
> No more listening to radio signals from outer space for inspiration on how to frame a concept in writing.
> Remembering that in Washington it all comes down to budget, which means learning to write one syllable dumbed-down abstracts that even a senator with no military experience can comprehend.
Thomas Barnett made an intelligent, bold move by taking his case straight to the public via Esquire magazine. Yet his thesis has gotten bogged down partly because of the arcane language and references attached to it. This has prevented people from a variety of fields from examining the model. And it has cut off whatever public support he might have gotten for his thesis, to the extent he articulated it in the Esquire article.
Once the groundwork is laid, then is the time to conjure a working hypothesis, in the form of a tentative model for how a holistic defense policy might look.
In one sentence, Barnett's current model divides the world into countries in various stages of integration with the WTO-democratic paradigm -- the Core countries representing the most integrated. Yet this paradigm is highly illusory, even mythic, in key aspects. Here are but a few examples to explain the mythic aspect:
> The United States is the biggest transit area for transnational organized crime syndicates, with the European Union coming in around second. Why? Open borders; a great deal of freedom; EU integration making checkpoints, different passports, etc. unnecessary across a large body of land, and so on.
As to how much foreign exchange from crime related industries is washed through the EU and the US, and how much the respective banking systems depend on it -- what we know for certain is "a great deal."
> The governing party in France is so corrupt that as soon as Jacques Chirac leaves office he most probably will face criminal charges.
> England does not have a free press -- any publication deemed an affront to the British royal family can be censored by the government. Those Americans who think Britons can get around the law by importing censored publications are unaware that Britain does not provide anywhere near the protection of free speech that is found in the USA.
Britain is known as the "libel capital of the world." Even foreign authors whose books are ordered over the Internet for reading by the British are a target for a libel suit launched in Britain. A recent suit brought against Rachel Enrenfeld for examining a connection between terror funding and a Saudi national underscores Britain's affront to the US First Amendment. Dr. Enrhenfeld was sued in Britain (and the case found in favor of the plaintiff) because less than 30 copies of the book in question were ordered on the Internet for reading in Britain.
That's enough examples to get across that Barnett's idea of "Core" countries rests on shaky criteria, if one is trying to identify nations that make up the 'least threat' to the USA and each other.
I would consider Britain's approach to dealing with Arafat and Tehran, and terrorists in general, to be a considerable security threat to the US. As I would consider the post-invasion conduct of the British military in southern Iraq, which saw the British insisting that anyone coming across the border from Iran should not be challenged.
The Israeli military was so upset with the situation -- and with the US military for going along with it -- that at one point they said to hell with it, might as well break up the country because it's now overrun with terrorists. The Iraqi Governing Council was equally upset with the situation.
For that reason and many others that have come to light during the past decade, Washington, and evidentially Dr. Barnett, are still in the grip of the "He Ain't Heavy He's My Ally" school of defense thinking. Or what Pundita calls the Thelma and Louise school.
In summary, Barnett's model needs considerable refinement -- as in going back to the drawing board and starting over again. Yet to repeat, the thinking that led to the model is on the right track.
.
Wednesday, July 13
Dial 311: Getting unstuck from the intersection of government incompetence and the Mass Age
The US government has embarked on a long-range policy to promote genuine democracy in regions of the world that have no history with it -- and in the rural areas at least, only the most tenuous acquaintance with Western values. This policy will outlast the Bush administration.
Yesterday I reported that Atanu Dey had written about the difficulty of trying to leapfrog the evolutionary process of rural development in poor countries. What the US government envisions is leapfrogging the evolutionary process of democracy in Western countries.
When people speak of the success stories of Germany and Japan, they tend to overlook that Germany and Japan were Westernized, advanced industrial nations at the start of World War Two. So while genuine democracy was not in their history, it was relatively easy for the United States to transpose the basic US democratic model onto those conquered nations after the war. And of course, those countries were under US martial law during the transition period.
Now we're trying something that's never been tried before, which is to transpose mature, genuine democracy to nations where there is very little "infrastructure" in place to support genuine democracy.
Is this is a fool's quest? Absolutely not, if you believe in human potential; if you consider that a nation's greatest resource is its people. It is no cause for surprise that if given half a chance and guidelines on how to 'do' democracy, peoples the world figure out the ropes very quickly.
What's not easy to figure out is how to efficiently and humanely govern megapopulations in this highly complex era. For that, you need a big and very sophisticated knowledge base because the logistics of serving megapopulations are mind-boggling. If you've ever seen a traffic control center for even a medium-sized city, you get a hint of the complexity of making modern society work smoothly.
When things break down in a modern industrialized democracy, the voters demand a fix and get at least an approximation. When the same happens in a nascent democracy in a developing country, the knee-jerk tendency of their governments is to suppress the demands. Part of this suppression is inevitably a sacrifice of the democratic process.
To put this another way, the first victim of gross government incompetence in a nascent democracy is the democratic process. That, rather than revolutionary or anarchist political movements, is today the greatest obstacle to transposing genuine democracy to nations with little or no history of that form of government.
To understand this, remember that the flip side of happy free people casting their votes is hopping mad free people asking their elected officials why the hell nothing works.
The latter experience is very traumatic for governments that were always used to solving citizen complaints by throwing the citizens in jail. And which don't have a clue about how to manage the logistics of serving megapopulations.
Many such governments are not rich enough to do what the Saudis and other Gulf oil governments do when they don't have a clue, which is pick up the phone and ask Bechtel to fix it for them.
Bechtel and other Western companies like them build entire cities, entire transit systems, and so on. But if you can't write $20 billion checks without fainting dead away then you have a problem. Particularly if development and commercial banks are acting childish and demanding you start paying on the last $5 billion they lent you before they'll send back the project engineers to analyze your problem.
So it's not just a matter of plopping in democratic government. If you want the democracy to take root, you need strategies for helping a new democracy deal with the logistics of governing in the Mass Age. The strategies do not come cheap but their most important component, which is knowledge transfer, is not out of any central government's reach. That's provided they clean up the worst corruption and go after the biggest tax cheats.
In many cases, the revenue these governments waste in trying to cover up a problem is more than adequate for solving the problem or at least throwing together a quick fix -- provided they have expert knowledge on how to do the fix. Once you have the fix in place, you can kick the can down the road for the next elected officials to deal with. The democratic way.
Now where do you get the expert knowledge from? Ideally from a database published on the Internet, of the kind that serves scientists, attorneys and medical doctors who, from anywhere in the globe where there's computer access, can look up case studies.
A similar database needs to be created (or pulled together from existing databases) for government workers seeking cutting-edge solutions to municipal and interstate problems. Worldwide, there are millions of retired engineers and government workers who between them have solved just about any municipal works or infrastructure problem you can think of. The task is to get that knowledge base somehow organized and integrated and online. Or at least cross-referenced.
I'll bet there are thousands of computer sites that are essentially message boards for engineers who share information about problems they've solved. So, create a directory of those sites and send it gift-wrapped to every young democratic government.
The other side of the database coin is "Dial 311." If governments can't quickly isolate patterns that suggest trouble in municipalities, they can't deal with the trouble until the works completely break down. So, zeroing in on problems before they reach the breakdown stage is more than half the battle for modern government.
How do you zero in? In the USA, every city has a non-emergency police phone number that takes citizen complaints about everything from excessive noise to traffic jams to a broken fire hydrant.
One day some bright soul said, "Hey! You know all these complaints? If we plugged them into a software program, they could yield patterns that if studied would be an early warning about breakdowns in municipal systems."
The dream has gotten off the ground with 311 technology. The 311 number is set up along the lines of 911 but it's for requests for city services. It's still early days but in 2002 an outbreak of West Nile virus in Chicago gave a spectacular illustration of the utility of the 311 concept.
After 22 Chicago residents had died from the disease, public health officials got the idea to review 311 records for requests to remove dead crows, which are known carriers of West Nile. They cross-matched the caller complaints with neighborhoods were residents had died from the virus. They found that the West Nile virus outbreaks were localized in the neighborhoods where the dead crows had been reported.
That was how the city government learned the hard way that seemingly random resident complaints about even the smallest discomfits of city life can reveal a pattern that if addressed quickly can save lives and millions of tax dollars.
Time magazine, which reported on the 311 technology in an article titled, The Magic Number, noted, “311 has become a direct line into the urban consciousness -- a way of harnessing the collective needs of an entire population to make a city work better. That is urban reform at its most elegant.”
Time's observation barely addresses the implications. The 311 technology is making it a reality for large populations in democracies to bring their knowledge base directly to the government for the betterment of the society.
The technology reverses the trend that has been building for more than a century, which has seen a relatively small number of government workers in charge of handling the problems of megapopulations.
This said, the key to connecting citizens with government in the Mass Age is not 311 on its own. As the EMA website notes:
Before Paul Wolfowitz took up his duties as World Bank President, the scuttlebutt was that the Bank was reviewing their sins under the Wolfensohn "Small and scattered is beautiful" approach to lending to Third World countries. This view considers that the Bank should return to its strength, which is lending for infrastructure projects.
I think that returning to the fire from the frying pan is not the way for the largest development banks -- particularly if the institutions want to encourage democratic reforms, more efficient governments, and help governments deal with vertical corruption* in government bureaucracies. The way is to set up means for citizens in the poorest countries to directly help their governments manage their societies, which today are at great distance from central government.
US government aid and development policy, including the Millennium Challenge Account, should also pay attention to the vital connection between 311 technology and encouraging democratic government. While micro-projects such as helping banks modernize are based on sound thinking, the focus of US tax dollars for aid to developing nations should be to help citizens in the poorest countries connect directly with their local and federal bureaucracies.
None of this is a pipe dream and all of it can be accomplished quickly, if enough people confront the bald fact that government incompetence is the greatest obstacle to making democracy work in the developing world.
I realize that's a scandalous idea to people who can only think about government in terms of political and economic philosophy. It might get Pundita labeled a wild-eyed anarchist. But the truth is that gross incompetence at the government level and democracy are not supposed to go hand-in-hand. This is on the theory that the collective wisdom represented by the electorate is better at solving problems than a relative handful of elected and appointed officials.
This is not to denigrate representative democracy, which is perfectly fine for setting long-range agendas for how to spend tax money. But in the daily grind of life -- the grind that sees potholes, dead crows, electrical outages and broken fire hydrants -- people expect government to work. If it doesn't, they won't hesitate to reject the philosophy that informs their method of government.
* See To the ramparts, fellow billionaires! Save Russian democracy! for a link to a discussion about vertical corruption.
Yesterday I reported that Atanu Dey had written about the difficulty of trying to leapfrog the evolutionary process of rural development in poor countries. What the US government envisions is leapfrogging the evolutionary process of democracy in Western countries.
When people speak of the success stories of Germany and Japan, they tend to overlook that Germany and Japan were Westernized, advanced industrial nations at the start of World War Two. So while genuine democracy was not in their history, it was relatively easy for the United States to transpose the basic US democratic model onto those conquered nations after the war. And of course, those countries were under US martial law during the transition period.
Now we're trying something that's never been tried before, which is to transpose mature, genuine democracy to nations where there is very little "infrastructure" in place to support genuine democracy.
Is this is a fool's quest? Absolutely not, if you believe in human potential; if you consider that a nation's greatest resource is its people. It is no cause for surprise that if given half a chance and guidelines on how to 'do' democracy, peoples the world figure out the ropes very quickly.
What's not easy to figure out is how to efficiently and humanely govern megapopulations in this highly complex era. For that, you need a big and very sophisticated knowledge base because the logistics of serving megapopulations are mind-boggling. If you've ever seen a traffic control center for even a medium-sized city, you get a hint of the complexity of making modern society work smoothly.
When things break down in a modern industrialized democracy, the voters demand a fix and get at least an approximation. When the same happens in a nascent democracy in a developing country, the knee-jerk tendency of their governments is to suppress the demands. Part of this suppression is inevitably a sacrifice of the democratic process.
To put this another way, the first victim of gross government incompetence in a nascent democracy is the democratic process. That, rather than revolutionary or anarchist political movements, is today the greatest obstacle to transposing genuine democracy to nations with little or no history of that form of government.
To understand this, remember that the flip side of happy free people casting their votes is hopping mad free people asking their elected officials why the hell nothing works.
The latter experience is very traumatic for governments that were always used to solving citizen complaints by throwing the citizens in jail. And which don't have a clue about how to manage the logistics of serving megapopulations.
Many such governments are not rich enough to do what the Saudis and other Gulf oil governments do when they don't have a clue, which is pick up the phone and ask Bechtel to fix it for them.
Bechtel and other Western companies like them build entire cities, entire transit systems, and so on. But if you can't write $20 billion checks without fainting dead away then you have a problem. Particularly if development and commercial banks are acting childish and demanding you start paying on the last $5 billion they lent you before they'll send back the project engineers to analyze your problem.
So it's not just a matter of plopping in democratic government. If you want the democracy to take root, you need strategies for helping a new democracy deal with the logistics of governing in the Mass Age. The strategies do not come cheap but their most important component, which is knowledge transfer, is not out of any central government's reach. That's provided they clean up the worst corruption and go after the biggest tax cheats.
In many cases, the revenue these governments waste in trying to cover up a problem is more than adequate for solving the problem or at least throwing together a quick fix -- provided they have expert knowledge on how to do the fix. Once you have the fix in place, you can kick the can down the road for the next elected officials to deal with. The democratic way.
Now where do you get the expert knowledge from? Ideally from a database published on the Internet, of the kind that serves scientists, attorneys and medical doctors who, from anywhere in the globe where there's computer access, can look up case studies.
A similar database needs to be created (or pulled together from existing databases) for government workers seeking cutting-edge solutions to municipal and interstate problems. Worldwide, there are millions of retired engineers and government workers who between them have solved just about any municipal works or infrastructure problem you can think of. The task is to get that knowledge base somehow organized and integrated and online. Or at least cross-referenced.
I'll bet there are thousands of computer sites that are essentially message boards for engineers who share information about problems they've solved. So, create a directory of those sites and send it gift-wrapped to every young democratic government.
The other side of the database coin is "Dial 311." If governments can't quickly isolate patterns that suggest trouble in municipalities, they can't deal with the trouble until the works completely break down. So, zeroing in on problems before they reach the breakdown stage is more than half the battle for modern government.
How do you zero in? In the USA, every city has a non-emergency police phone number that takes citizen complaints about everything from excessive noise to traffic jams to a broken fire hydrant.
One day some bright soul said, "Hey! You know all these complaints? If we plugged them into a software program, they could yield patterns that if studied would be an early warning about breakdowns in municipal systems."
The dream has gotten off the ground with 311 technology. The 311 number is set up along the lines of 911 but it's for requests for city services. It's still early days but in 2002 an outbreak of West Nile virus in Chicago gave a spectacular illustration of the utility of the 311 concept.
After 22 Chicago residents had died from the disease, public health officials got the idea to review 311 records for requests to remove dead crows, which are known carriers of West Nile. They cross-matched the caller complaints with neighborhoods were residents had died from the virus. They found that the West Nile virus outbreaks were localized in the neighborhoods where the dead crows had been reported.
That was how the city government learned the hard way that seemingly random resident complaints about even the smallest discomfits of city life can reveal a pattern that if addressed quickly can save lives and millions of tax dollars.
Time magazine, which reported on the 311 technology in an article titled, The Magic Number, noted, “311 has become a direct line into the urban consciousness -- a way of harnessing the collective needs of an entire population to make a city work better. That is urban reform at its most elegant.”
Time's observation barely addresses the implications. The 311 technology is making it a reality for large populations in democracies to bring their knowledge base directly to the government for the betterment of the society.
The technology reverses the trend that has been building for more than a century, which has seen a relatively small number of government workers in charge of handling the problems of megapopulations.
This said, the key to connecting citizens with government in the Mass Age is not 311 on its own. As the EMA website notes:
Outmoded service delivery models simply aren't equipped to deal with contemporary demands. As customer [citizen] expectations soar and resources shrink, many jurisdictions see 311 as the savior.Yet a means for citizens in emerging democracies to directly connect with their government via 311 technology is crucial. It is the key to helping governments at the local and federal levels to coordinate tax-funded programs and head off just the kind of breakdowns in government services that create citizen frustration with the democratic process.
The solution, however, is not about technology and 311 is more than just a telephone number. In fact, most cities already have the technological capacity to implement one-call service delivery. What they lack is an understanding of the organizational changes necessary to support the initiative and the “back-end” systems and processes to carry it out. Get it right and a call center with an accompanying Internet presence becomes a one-stop shop for customer inquiries, online payment options, work order status reports, and new work requests for every city department.
However, decision makers must grasp the implications of this approach before diving in head-first. Only then can government proceed to responsibly implement 311 in a way that leverages existing technology and invests in organizational and practice improvement.
By adopting best practices, standardizing operations and technology across departmental boundaries, and implementing the best available technology, the city can respond quickly to citizen requests, communicate better internally and externally, and reduce costs.
Before Paul Wolfowitz took up his duties as World Bank President, the scuttlebutt was that the Bank was reviewing their sins under the Wolfensohn "Small and scattered is beautiful" approach to lending to Third World countries. This view considers that the Bank should return to its strength, which is lending for infrastructure projects.
I think that returning to the fire from the frying pan is not the way for the largest development banks -- particularly if the institutions want to encourage democratic reforms, more efficient governments, and help governments deal with vertical corruption* in government bureaucracies. The way is to set up means for citizens in the poorest countries to directly help their governments manage their societies, which today are at great distance from central government.
US government aid and development policy, including the Millennium Challenge Account, should also pay attention to the vital connection between 311 technology and encouraging democratic government. While micro-projects such as helping banks modernize are based on sound thinking, the focus of US tax dollars for aid to developing nations should be to help citizens in the poorest countries connect directly with their local and federal bureaucracies.
None of this is a pipe dream and all of it can be accomplished quickly, if enough people confront the bald fact that government incompetence is the greatest obstacle to making democracy work in the developing world.
I realize that's a scandalous idea to people who can only think about government in terms of political and economic philosophy. It might get Pundita labeled a wild-eyed anarchist. But the truth is that gross incompetence at the government level and democracy are not supposed to go hand-in-hand. This is on the theory that the collective wisdom represented by the electorate is better at solving problems than a relative handful of elected and appointed officials.
This is not to denigrate representative democracy, which is perfectly fine for setting long-range agendas for how to spend tax money. But in the daily grind of life -- the grind that sees potholes, dead crows, electrical outages and broken fire hydrants -- people expect government to work. If it doesn't, they won't hesitate to reject the philosophy that informs their method of government.
* See To the ramparts, fellow billionaires! Save Russian democracy! for a link to a discussion about vertical corruption.
Tuesday, July 12
Dave Schuler defends!
One post up today (Fire up the cellphone...). Also, two readers responded to yesterday's Parrots of Heaven... post with good points, which I inserted along with my reply at the end of essay. And now, Pundita dives for the bunker while Dave defends against criticism I launched against him in the same essay...
"Dear Pundita:
Loved your Parrots of Heaven post!
It's not that I particularly admire academics, but I tend to be an integrative thinker--I try to hook ideas together in interesting ways. Ong's book came along LONG after I was in school or studying such things actively. I just happened
to stumble across it somewhere or other.
And about the furry friends. My twelve-times great-grandfather, who drafted the Swiss articles of confederation and is now the patron saint of Switzerland, is reputed to have lived in a cave with only a bear for companionship (after leaving his wife and 12 children).
If you've checked my archives you'll have learned that I'm a member of a dog pack. My constant companions are a group of quite wolfy dogs, one of whom is my familiar (or spirit guide). His name is Qila, Kendara's Spirit Guide, WSXM. "Qila" is Inuit for a shaman's familiar.
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye"
Pundita's whispered aside to the reader:
Notice how people who are owned by a dog always conceive of it in democratic terms; e.g., "I'm a member of a dog pack."
"Dear Pundita:
Loved your Parrots of Heaven post!
It's not that I particularly admire academics, but I tend to be an integrative thinker--I try to hook ideas together in interesting ways. Ong's book came along LONG after I was in school or studying such things actively. I just happened
to stumble across it somewhere or other.
And about the furry friends. My twelve-times great-grandfather, who drafted the Swiss articles of confederation and is now the patron saint of Switzerland, is reputed to have lived in a cave with only a bear for companionship (after leaving his wife and 12 children).
If you've checked my archives you'll have learned that I'm a member of a dog pack. My constant companions are a group of quite wolfy dogs, one of whom is my familiar (or spirit guide). His name is Qila, Kendara's Spirit Guide, WSXM. "Qila" is Inuit for a shaman's familiar.
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye"
Pundita's whispered aside to the reader:
Notice how people who are owned by a dog always conceive of it in democratic terms; e.g., "I'm a member of a dog pack."
Fire up the cell phone, gather round the radio: Not by any one way does democracy come to the rural developing world
June 28
Howdy, Pundita!
About technology and democracy, your essay mentioning Sumedh Mungee's post is great! Back in March after attending a screening of a documentary about North Korea I wrote this post, which talks about how cell phones are slowly helping to change perceptions of the government in North Korea. I found a post for you by Rebecca MacKinnon about cell phones and North Korea. If it's not the one I originally quoted it has most of the same information. I was reminded of it again in Mungee's post about computers not being automatically connected to the internet.
If I'm not mistaken cell phones are "always connected" if they have web access. I see a skipping of hardware, i.e., computers, to cell phones for information -- both receiving and sharing.
PS: Here's another interesting post on the same theme from Textually.
Beth in the Midwest.
Dear Beth:
Thank you for forwarding me your essay and the URLs. I love the Textually site; it's amazing to me how cell phones have evolved a huge global industry/culture -- like the Internet -- but in ways it would have been hard to imagine a decade ago.
Today, while stopping off at Textually, I learned to my astonishment that cell phones are being used as mosquito repellents! One company, SK Telecom, is "providing an anti-mosquito sound wave service to Southeast Asian nations including Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The service generates anti-mosquito sound waves ranging from 300Hz to 600Hz to repel mosquitoes within a range of one meter."
Provided the technology is available to support cell phones with Internet access I think your idea is great. Given the history of development banks helping the world's poorest, Pundita suspects that a lot of outmoded computers -- sold for a song by companies eager to dump them -- will find their way into the world's rural villages.
In essence you're asking, Why not start with the most advanced technologies if the idea is that connectivity promotes democracy? That's a good question. Cell phones are already transforming business in rural regions in African nations.* But note the discussion about literacy and IT connectivity in the Deesha (rural development) archive at Emergic:
Leapfrogging and Development -- Atanu Dey writes:
Leapfrogging is possible but mostly it is restricted to technologies. Unlike technology, you cannot leapfrog the various stages of development. A century ago, to be educated, one had to be literate and numerate. Same holds for today even though we have digital gizmos and computers.
Indeed, to be able to effectively use the products of high-technology, literacy is an absolute necessity. Functional skills required for using high-tech all involve the ability to read and reason. I grant that illiterate idiots can use a cell phone, but that is not what I would call the effective use of high technology.
The so-called "digital divide" cannot be bridged by simply installing lots of PCs in areas where they don’t exist and connecting them up to the internet. If the people are unable to use them, they serve no purpose other than to enrich the peddlers of hardware and software. Furthermore, there is the opportunity cost of spending limited resources on useless high-tech gizmos.
You cannot leapfrog development. It cannot be done at an individual level. And it cannot be done at a societal level. Although development paths may differ, the sequencing within a path cannot be radically altered because there are strict dependencies.
Basic functional literacy is a prerequisite to pretty much anything that one does. The use of high-tech depends on literacy and therefore if the population is illiterate, even gifting them with free hardware will not make a difference. The pre-condition for bridging the digital divide is therefore the bridging of the literacy divide."
Dey brings out an important point. Internet access, whether it's via the most sophisticated cell phones or "old-fashioned" computers, requires literacy. In many rural villages you might find one or two people who are literate. They read the daily or weekly newspaper delivery to others in the village. They also function as the scribe. Villagers who want to send letters or fill out government forms pay them a small amount of money or equivalent to do the writing.
So if you are thinking of ICT (information communications technology) in terms of promoting genuine democracy in the least developed regions, there is a caution. If you bring ICT into a village that has only a couple literate people you end up with another type of fiefdom. The literates control the information flow.
So instead of the political machines bringing bags of rice to the chief (who might not be literate) and saying, "You village is voting for X," you get the same bags delivered to the Village ICT Oracle with the words, "Inform your village they should vote for X."
Not to dump more bad news on you but Benjamin R. Barber, who has famously studied democracy for decades, has cautions about the idea that connectivity automatically equates to stronger democracy. In his wonderful blog about Africa, technology and the media, My Heart's in Accra, Ethan Zuckerman notes:
If an important goal for US policy is to spread genuine democracy, then development and aid policymakers should look at regions in terms of their literacy quotient and adjust the type of aid accordingly. Radio doesn't help increase literacy. But if oral communications about political issues do not accompany computerized voting machines in regions with low literacy you're still stuck with Fiefdom Democracy, which is a democracy stage show.
Now before throwing up your hands, consider America's development as a democracy. If you think of the ward heelers and union bosses delivering huge blocs of votes that were not exactly votes, you realize that the widescale genuine democratic voting process we enjoy today is a rather recent phenomenon.
So we had our own Fiefdom Democracy right here in the USA. And there are still charges of ballot stuffing and other illegal tactics after every big election, which indicates the democratic ideal has not yet been met even here in the bastion of democracy.
In other words, by any which way do peoples move toward self government. The idea is to keep moving, keep trying. The good news is that a great many people the world over are waking up to this.
But here we come to a snag, which is the greatest obstacle to young democracies. Nope, the obstacle ain't greedy despots or nasty tyrants. Nupe, it ain't the clan system or tribes that wish for the return of 5,000 BCE. It ain't the ruling classes or power-mad generals. It ain't poverty, AIDS, global warming, solar flares or transnational organized crime. And this is one we can't blame on The 900 Lazy Bastards or the World Bank. It's -- Pundita will tell tomorrow.
From a report at Mobile Africa:
Cell phones help African farmers trade crops
"I check the prices for the day on my phone and when it's a good price I sell," explained Daniel Mashva from his village in the remote northeast of South Africa. "I can even try to ask for a higher price if I see there are lots of buyers."
Mashva is one of around 100 farmers in Makuleke testing cell phone technology that gives small rural farmers access to national markets via the Internet, putting them on a footing with bigger players and boosting profits by at least 30 percent.
"Mainstream farmers have access to market information so they can negotiate better prices. This cell phone enables poor rural farmers to get that same information," said Mthobi Tyamzashe, from cell phone operator Vodacom.
Cell phone use has rocketed 100% in Africa since 2000, and the Makuleke scheme is one of many ways the technology is being used to tackle poverty.
Senegalese company Manobi, which operates on-line systems for businesses in the developing world, first launched the trading platform for farmers and fishermen in the west African nation. "It's a trading platform and a business space," said Daniel Annerose from Manobi. "Small Senegalese farmers even linked up with the French army (on the platform) last year and agreed to supply one of their ships when it docked in Dakar."
In Senegal, Manobi employees collect 80,000 data from 10 markets per day and get it on line within a few seconds, while in the more mature market of South Africa the company simply uploads existing information onto their system. Farmers can access the information on a web-based trading platform via Internet-enabled phones, or can request prices and make trades via SMS. [...]
Howdy, Pundita!
About technology and democracy, your essay mentioning Sumedh Mungee's post is great! Back in March after attending a screening of a documentary about North Korea I wrote this post, which talks about how cell phones are slowly helping to change perceptions of the government in North Korea. I found a post for you by Rebecca MacKinnon about cell phones and North Korea. If it's not the one I originally quoted it has most of the same information. I was reminded of it again in Mungee's post about computers not being automatically connected to the internet.
If I'm not mistaken cell phones are "always connected" if they have web access. I see a skipping of hardware, i.e., computers, to cell phones for information -- both receiving and sharing.
PS: Here's another interesting post on the same theme from Textually.
Beth in the Midwest.
Dear Beth:
Thank you for forwarding me your essay and the URLs. I love the Textually site; it's amazing to me how cell phones have evolved a huge global industry/culture -- like the Internet -- but in ways it would have been hard to imagine a decade ago.
Today, while stopping off at Textually, I learned to my astonishment that cell phones are being used as mosquito repellents! One company, SK Telecom, is "providing an anti-mosquito sound wave service to Southeast Asian nations including Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The service generates anti-mosquito sound waves ranging from 300Hz to 600Hz to repel mosquitoes within a range of one meter."
Provided the technology is available to support cell phones with Internet access I think your idea is great. Given the history of development banks helping the world's poorest, Pundita suspects that a lot of outmoded computers -- sold for a song by companies eager to dump them -- will find their way into the world's rural villages.
In essence you're asking, Why not start with the most advanced technologies if the idea is that connectivity promotes democracy? That's a good question. Cell phones are already transforming business in rural regions in African nations.* But note the discussion about literacy and IT connectivity in the Deesha (rural development) archive at Emergic:
Leapfrogging and Development -- Atanu Dey writes:
Leapfrogging is possible but mostly it is restricted to technologies. Unlike technology, you cannot leapfrog the various stages of development. A century ago, to be educated, one had to be literate and numerate. Same holds for today even though we have digital gizmos and computers.
Indeed, to be able to effectively use the products of high-technology, literacy is an absolute necessity. Functional skills required for using high-tech all involve the ability to read and reason. I grant that illiterate idiots can use a cell phone, but that is not what I would call the effective use of high technology.
The so-called "digital divide" cannot be bridged by simply installing lots of PCs in areas where they don’t exist and connecting them up to the internet. If the people are unable to use them, they serve no purpose other than to enrich the peddlers of hardware and software. Furthermore, there is the opportunity cost of spending limited resources on useless high-tech gizmos.
You cannot leapfrog development. It cannot be done at an individual level. And it cannot be done at a societal level. Although development paths may differ, the sequencing within a path cannot be radically altered because there are strict dependencies.
Basic functional literacy is a prerequisite to pretty much anything that one does. The use of high-tech depends on literacy and therefore if the population is illiterate, even gifting them with free hardware will not make a difference. The pre-condition for bridging the digital divide is therefore the bridging of the literacy divide."
Dey brings out an important point. Internet access, whether it's via the most sophisticated cell phones or "old-fashioned" computers, requires literacy. In many rural villages you might find one or two people who are literate. They read the daily or weekly newspaper delivery to others in the village. They also function as the scribe. Villagers who want to send letters or fill out government forms pay them a small amount of money or equivalent to do the writing.
So if you are thinking of ICT (information communications technology) in terms of promoting genuine democracy in the least developed regions, there is a caution. If you bring ICT into a village that has only a couple literate people you end up with another type of fiefdom. The literates control the information flow.
So instead of the political machines bringing bags of rice to the chief (who might not be literate) and saying, "You village is voting for X," you get the same bags delivered to the Village ICT Oracle with the words, "Inform your village they should vote for X."
Not to dump more bad news on you but Benjamin R. Barber, who has famously studied democracy for decades, has cautions about the idea that connectivity automatically equates to stronger democracy. In his wonderful blog about Africa, technology and the media, My Heart's in Accra, Ethan Zuckerman notes:
Barber puts forward three ways technologies might work to strengthen or weaken democracies: the Panglossian, Pandorian and Jeffersonian options.Zuckerman also reports on research by Mike Best that suggests Barber's pessimism is overdone.
In the Panglossian scenario, citizens are primarily consumers and they blindly respond to the ideas put forward by stronger actors -- most likely corporations, who keep them from political power by keeping them sufficiently entertained.
In the Pandorian model, information tools become Orwellian tools for obervation and liberating technologies become tools for repression.
Only in the most optimistic, Jeffersonian scenario do information tools reach their potential of allowing open, participatory democracy. (When Barber yelled at us a few weeks back, he seemed to be suggesting that the Internet was following the Panglossian path.) [...]
Mike has decided to test a theory put forth by Kedzie, that "multidirectional, reciprocal communication technology like email" are conducive to democracy.However, the success of Radio Ujjima, which mirrors the success of American talk radio at using an oral tradition to inform people about social/political issues, tends to shore Barber's cautions. As the African cell phone story indicates, ICT is critical to helping the rural poor stay connected about issues such as market conditions for their produce. But you don't want to assume that kind of connectivity automatically translates to more informed participation in the political process.
Kedzie argues that a 1% increase in this sort of network connectivity leads to a 4 point rise on a 100-point democratization scale (adapted from Freedom House's 7/14 point scale).
Analyzing correlations between changes in the Freedom House scale and other independent factors -- connectivity, schooling, per capita GDP, life expectancy -- Mike sees a strong correlation between connectivity and high levels of democratization. The correlation is stronger between connectivity and democratization than schooling or life expectancy -- only the GDP to democratization correlation is stronger. Controlling for GDP, Mike still sees a meaningful correlation between connectivity and democratization. [...]
If an important goal for US policy is to spread genuine democracy, then development and aid policymakers should look at regions in terms of their literacy quotient and adjust the type of aid accordingly. Radio doesn't help increase literacy. But if oral communications about political issues do not accompany computerized voting machines in regions with low literacy you're still stuck with Fiefdom Democracy, which is a democracy stage show.
Now before throwing up your hands, consider America's development as a democracy. If you think of the ward heelers and union bosses delivering huge blocs of votes that were not exactly votes, you realize that the widescale genuine democratic voting process we enjoy today is a rather recent phenomenon.
So we had our own Fiefdom Democracy right here in the USA. And there are still charges of ballot stuffing and other illegal tactics after every big election, which indicates the democratic ideal has not yet been met even here in the bastion of democracy.
In other words, by any which way do peoples move toward self government. The idea is to keep moving, keep trying. The good news is that a great many people the world over are waking up to this.
But here we come to a snag, which is the greatest obstacle to young democracies. Nope, the obstacle ain't greedy despots or nasty tyrants. Nupe, it ain't the clan system or tribes that wish for the return of 5,000 BCE. It ain't the ruling classes or power-mad generals. It ain't poverty, AIDS, global warming, solar flares or transnational organized crime. And this is one we can't blame on The 900 Lazy Bastards or the World Bank. It's -- Pundita will tell tomorrow.
From a report at Mobile Africa:
Cell phones help African farmers trade crops
"I check the prices for the day on my phone and when it's a good price I sell," explained Daniel Mashva from his village in the remote northeast of South Africa. "I can even try to ask for a higher price if I see there are lots of buyers."
Mashva is one of around 100 farmers in Makuleke testing cell phone technology that gives small rural farmers access to national markets via the Internet, putting them on a footing with bigger players and boosting profits by at least 30 percent.
"Mainstream farmers have access to market information so they can negotiate better prices. This cell phone enables poor rural farmers to get that same information," said Mthobi Tyamzashe, from cell phone operator Vodacom.
Cell phone use has rocketed 100% in Africa since 2000, and the Makuleke scheme is one of many ways the technology is being used to tackle poverty.
Senegalese company Manobi, which operates on-line systems for businesses in the developing world, first launched the trading platform for farmers and fishermen in the west African nation. "It's a trading platform and a business space," said Daniel Annerose from Manobi. "Small Senegalese farmers even linked up with the French army (on the platform) last year and agreed to supply one of their ships when it docked in Dakar."
In Senegal, Manobi employees collect 80,000 data from 10 markets per day and get it on line within a few seconds, while in the more mature market of South Africa the company simply uploads existing information onto their system. Farmers can access the information on a web-based trading platform via Internet-enabled phones, or can request prices and make trades via SMS. [...]
Monday, July 11
Setting free the Parrots of Heaven: How to talk democracy to minds that have only known despotic rule
"Dear Pundita:
Inspired (if that's the right word for it) by your Law of Leaving post I've written something you might want to take a look at: Orality and Iraq
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye"
Dear Dave:
To orient the reader, "orality" is a term coined by Reverend Walter J. Ong for his famous book Orality and Literacy, which you reference in your essay. Orality is another way of saying illiteracy or to be more precise, the kind of thinking that arises from illiteracy.
As to the list of orality characteristics your essay provides, and which I assume is a summary of Rev Ong's conclusions, I have noticed something quite odd about it. First we'll let the readers in on the discussion by asking them to glance through the nine items on the list:
"Orally-based thought and expression are:
1. Additive rather than subordinative. Complex constructions are avoided in favor of simple conjoining of ideas.
2. Aggregative rather than analytic. Standard expressions, stock phrases, and cliches are preferred over novel descriptions.
3. Redundant or "copious." Repetition is an aid to memorization.
4. Conservative or traditionalist. Knowledge is hard to come by and traditional ways should be conserved.
5. Close to the human lifeworld. Knowledge of skills is passed person-to-person rather than through manuals or books.
6. Agonistically toned. [confrontational]
7. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced. (Gaining knowledge is an empathetic and participatory process: don't expect objectivity.)
8. Homeostatic. Memories without relevance are discarded.
9. Situational rather than abstract. Objects are grouped pragmatically rather than in abstract categories."
I will exclude #5 in particular because illiterates have means other than oral of encoding information and passing it down; e.g., arts and crafts, but of course knowledge is harder to preserve and transmit without writing.
But I'd like you to look down the list and tell me if the majority of points could apply to the thinking of a group of literate peoples. What about Germans under Nazi rule? What about members of the Jim Jones cult? What about North Korea's ruling class? What about the Catholic priesthood in Spain during the Inquisition?
Dave, the list you provide does not identify exclusive characteristics of illiterate thinking patterns. It's a summary of psycho-epistemological traits that humans, both literate and illiterate, demonstrate when trained by a governing force to suppress reliance on the discursive aspect of intellect.
It's a list of what happens to the human mind when the state or other ruling force demands that indoctrination be the primary purpose of education.
I suspect I would find Reverend Ong's work on illiteracy to be a study in Western cultural bias, sloppy research and sweeping generalizations. Yet it seems he unwittingly isolates factors that typify the thinking of peoples conditioned to adopt a posture of unquestioning obedience to a governing authority. Whether they are literate or illiterate.
You noted in your essay, "This post is based on ideas that occurred to me nearly two years ago and I've been researching them ever since. The more I researched the more I realized that this was not a post or even a series of posts but a book and to do the topic justice I'd need to master skills that, themselves, would require years. That's simply not going to happen so I'm putting these ideas out there and what you see is what you get. Nearly everything in this post is disputed or controversial and a lot may be just plain wrong."
Have I taught you nothing? Or have you not noticed that my learned colleagues are furred and feathered? Pardon my being instructive but you have an irritating habit of linking very interesting results of your own cogitation with those of academics you admire. You should think about breaking the habit.
The advice* your essay gives to the Bush administration is sound, although I doubt it could be defended by any argument in Ong's work. However, it can be defended by an exercise of reason. Consider Peter Lavelle's Lost in Translation: A Russian Political Lexicon. The essay, which explains how differently Russians interpret abstract political terms dear to the hearts of Americans, is a crash course in how Americans can be sensible when talking to people of another culture -- particularly those who do not have a long history of democracy or are new to it. His points, by implication, support your advice.
My quibble is that your advice should not be limited to talking to Iraqis -- literate or illiterate. Americans must learn that the referents they carry around in their heads are not necessarily present in the heads of those who live outside America.
In this way we might avoid a replay of the situation that saw American soldiers helpfully putting up a sign in English, "Radioactive: Keep Out" outside the abandoned Iraqi al Tuwaitha facility, which was so radioactive Vladimir Putin had to call George Bush and warn, "For God's sake don't bomb anywhere near the place or you'll light up the entire Middle East and half of Central Asia!"
Yes, this is the same al Tuwaitha that Mohamed ElBaradei walked through blindfolded then reported to the IAEA, "Nuclear weapons grade stuff? We don't see no stuff."
But I digress -- or maybe not. The above sentence contains a cultural referent; specifically, a reference to the banditos in the classic American film, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Alfonso Bedoya's sneering retort ("Badges? We ain't got no badges.") has worked its way into the American culture, so that variations on the retort are code for a sardonic reference to any scoundrel blustering it out.
Yet outside North America virtually no one but a film buff would find anything but awful grammar in my reference to ElBaradei's rubber-stamp inspection of a nuclear facility. The Bedoya reference is highly abstract, as with many cultural referents.
That observation is the best argument for following your advice when Americans strike out to promote democracy.
Now to return to your two years of wandering in the desert with your idea. It would not require years more study and mastery of special skills to develop your advice into a handbook for how to talk with people who are living under, or emerging from, totalitarian or extremely authoritarian rule. It wouldn't need to be a scholarly work; businesslike bulleted points for Americans to remember would be just fine.
But for this, I venture you would need to de-couple from Ong's ideas about illiteracy and hook up with research in areas such as cultic behavior, brainwashing techniques, and similar topics.
If you are interested in this approach, I can suggest the best place to start: An account of what is the most horrifying behavioral experiment known to be conducted on American shores. The research is famously summarized in a 1970 Esquire magazine piece by Philip Meyer titled If Hitler Asked you to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You?.
For readers who don't know about Stanley Milgram's experiment, I'm tempted not to give anything away in order to preserve the full shock value, if you'll pardon the expression. But I will mention this much before you embark on the reading:
The kind of experiment Milgram conducted in the 1960s could not happen today; it's been banned from American science because it is unethical.
Yet it is an enormously valuable experiment because it explains, as no work of literature or account of war crimes can do, that unquestioning obedience to authority is rather easy to bring about, even without use of lethal force or brainwashing.
And the research conclusions are the starkest warning that once the critical reasoning faculty is suspended, even "good" people can abandon conscience and transform into fiends.
Once you've digested that, you might want to read (or reread) a 2004 Christian Science Monitor report by Owais Tohid titled Pakistan, US take on the madrassahs, which returns us to the grim warning in "Law of Leaving". And which points up the need for the advice you gave.
> Communicating effectively with the people and making freedom part of the prevailing wisdom in the society requires using modalities of communication that are meaningful to the people.
> Mr. Bush or his surrogates should speak directly to the Iraqi people frequently on radio or television.
> The speeches should be repetitive and should use stock phrases.
> The translation should actively employ constructions that have resonance in Arabic even at the expense of literal meaning.
> Abstractions e.g., freedom, democracy should be avoided in favor of concrete examples of the exercises of freedom and democracy.
> The speeches should be aggressive, energetic, and argumentative rather than conciliatory or temperate.
> Hardest of all, liberal democracy should be sold using an appeal to traditional values.
11:00 AM
"Pundita, after reading the Esquire article, Dave's advice strikes me as guidance for how NOT to talk to people who've known only despotic rule! He's advising to [use] repetition and other verbal postures that the researchers used on the hapless subjects in the experiment!
Lynn in Toronto"
Dear Lynn:
If you are opening communication with someone who is already 'programmed' (as in brainwashing, etc.), deprogramming initially requires very strong, unequivocal repetitive statements and essentially the same approach Dave suggests.
If you ask someone who has been programmed by a cult, "What do you think, you'll receive a recorded message in reply. So you first have to clearly establish your position.
This said, you've brought out an important point. There is a huge difference between teaching and 'sending a message.' Students should be encouraged to develop the discursive intellect and in general sweat out reasoning on their own instead of blindly relying on authority to tell them how to view information.
For all that, the teacher needs to encourage classroom dialogue and debate in a structured way -- and of course, encourage the students to ask questions of the teacher. And teen students should be introduced to the fun exercise of learning to spot the standard reasoning traps; i.e., pseudo-logics, and how to avoid them.
Thinking for oneself, like everything else, is a matter of learning the ropes then practice, practice, practice. The Socratic method -- which, I might add, is an oral teaching method -- is the key to teaching students to reason things through and check and re-check their assumptions and the assumptions of others.
All this should be done in a highly structured way so that the student retains respect for authority -- respect, not blind obedience.
12:10 UPDATE
"How interesting that your post today is at least a little bit about talking to Iraqis about democracy! I finally wrote last night about how I think it would be fun to help Iraqis (or anyone anywhere) to "get" this idea of democracy by using classic American movies and music and biographies and discussions of them. It would certainly help with those cultural references...
Beth in the Midwest"
Dear Beth:
Before the US invaded in Iraq, the #1 TV show in the country was Baywatch. Iraqis, and indeed the entire developing world, have a terrribly distorted idea of America. And they don't realize that this country was built by people very much like themselves. An "American Democracy Film Project" would be a great idea, if the movies show Americans struggling to make their democracy work and the difficult life that most experienced in building this country.
The project could include people from the local viewing audience explaining the storyline to the rest of the audience and describing the film characters in a way that connects with people in their own land.
It's really important for peoples in developing lands to understand how hard early Americans worked and how many mistakes they made while trying to build a strong democracy. People in other lands need to understand that if we can do it, anybody can do it. It just takes persistence and a lot of sweat -- and of course a good Constitution and a dedication to democratic government.
Also, American visitors to the poorest countries can help correct false impressions if their family came from humble beginnings. They can tuck photos of their family's hardscrabble days into their wallets and pull them out for viewing at the drop of a hat. And make good use of their time waiting in airports, bus and train stations to recount immigrant hardship tales told by their relatives. We can't expect the VOA and such to do all the work of telling people who we are.
Inspired (if that's the right word for it) by your Law of Leaving post I've written something you might want to take a look at: Orality and Iraq
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye"
Dear Dave:
To orient the reader, "orality" is a term coined by Reverend Walter J. Ong for his famous book Orality and Literacy, which you reference in your essay. Orality is another way of saying illiteracy or to be more precise, the kind of thinking that arises from illiteracy.
As to the list of orality characteristics your essay provides, and which I assume is a summary of Rev Ong's conclusions, I have noticed something quite odd about it. First we'll let the readers in on the discussion by asking them to glance through the nine items on the list:
"Orally-based thought and expression are:
1. Additive rather than subordinative. Complex constructions are avoided in favor of simple conjoining of ideas.
2. Aggregative rather than analytic. Standard expressions, stock phrases, and cliches are preferred over novel descriptions.
3. Redundant or "copious." Repetition is an aid to memorization.
4. Conservative or traditionalist. Knowledge is hard to come by and traditional ways should be conserved.
5. Close to the human lifeworld. Knowledge of skills is passed person-to-person rather than through manuals or books.
6. Agonistically toned. [confrontational]
7. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced. (Gaining knowledge is an empathetic and participatory process: don't expect objectivity.)
8. Homeostatic. Memories without relevance are discarded.
9. Situational rather than abstract. Objects are grouped pragmatically rather than in abstract categories."
I will exclude #5 in particular because illiterates have means other than oral of encoding information and passing it down; e.g., arts and crafts, but of course knowledge is harder to preserve and transmit without writing.
But I'd like you to look down the list and tell me if the majority of points could apply to the thinking of a group of literate peoples. What about Germans under Nazi rule? What about members of the Jim Jones cult? What about North Korea's ruling class? What about the Catholic priesthood in Spain during the Inquisition?
Dave, the list you provide does not identify exclusive characteristics of illiterate thinking patterns. It's a summary of psycho-epistemological traits that humans, both literate and illiterate, demonstrate when trained by a governing force to suppress reliance on the discursive aspect of intellect.
It's a list of what happens to the human mind when the state or other ruling force demands that indoctrination be the primary purpose of education.
I suspect I would find Reverend Ong's work on illiteracy to be a study in Western cultural bias, sloppy research and sweeping generalizations. Yet it seems he unwittingly isolates factors that typify the thinking of peoples conditioned to adopt a posture of unquestioning obedience to a governing authority. Whether they are literate or illiterate.
You noted in your essay, "This post is based on ideas that occurred to me nearly two years ago and I've been researching them ever since. The more I researched the more I realized that this was not a post or even a series of posts but a book and to do the topic justice I'd need to master skills that, themselves, would require years. That's simply not going to happen so I'm putting these ideas out there and what you see is what you get. Nearly everything in this post is disputed or controversial and a lot may be just plain wrong."
Have I taught you nothing? Or have you not noticed that my learned colleagues are furred and feathered? Pardon my being instructive but you have an irritating habit of linking very interesting results of your own cogitation with those of academics you admire. You should think about breaking the habit.
The advice* your essay gives to the Bush administration is sound, although I doubt it could be defended by any argument in Ong's work. However, it can be defended by an exercise of reason. Consider Peter Lavelle's Lost in Translation: A Russian Political Lexicon. The essay, which explains how differently Russians interpret abstract political terms dear to the hearts of Americans, is a crash course in how Americans can be sensible when talking to people of another culture -- particularly those who do not have a long history of democracy or are new to it. His points, by implication, support your advice.
My quibble is that your advice should not be limited to talking to Iraqis -- literate or illiterate. Americans must learn that the referents they carry around in their heads are not necessarily present in the heads of those who live outside America.
In this way we might avoid a replay of the situation that saw American soldiers helpfully putting up a sign in English, "Radioactive: Keep Out" outside the abandoned Iraqi al Tuwaitha facility, which was so radioactive Vladimir Putin had to call George Bush and warn, "For God's sake don't bomb anywhere near the place or you'll light up the entire Middle East and half of Central Asia!"
Yes, this is the same al Tuwaitha that Mohamed ElBaradei walked through blindfolded then reported to the IAEA, "Nuclear weapons grade stuff? We don't see no stuff."
But I digress -- or maybe not. The above sentence contains a cultural referent; specifically, a reference to the banditos in the classic American film, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Alfonso Bedoya's sneering retort ("Badges? We ain't got no badges.") has worked its way into the American culture, so that variations on the retort are code for a sardonic reference to any scoundrel blustering it out.
Yet outside North America virtually no one but a film buff would find anything but awful grammar in my reference to ElBaradei's rubber-stamp inspection of a nuclear facility. The Bedoya reference is highly abstract, as with many cultural referents.
That observation is the best argument for following your advice when Americans strike out to promote democracy.
Now to return to your two years of wandering in the desert with your idea. It would not require years more study and mastery of special skills to develop your advice into a handbook for how to talk with people who are living under, or emerging from, totalitarian or extremely authoritarian rule. It wouldn't need to be a scholarly work; businesslike bulleted points for Americans to remember would be just fine.
But for this, I venture you would need to de-couple from Ong's ideas about illiteracy and hook up with research in areas such as cultic behavior, brainwashing techniques, and similar topics.
If you are interested in this approach, I can suggest the best place to start: An account of what is the most horrifying behavioral experiment known to be conducted on American shores. The research is famously summarized in a 1970 Esquire magazine piece by Philip Meyer titled If Hitler Asked you to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You?.
For readers who don't know about Stanley Milgram's experiment, I'm tempted not to give anything away in order to preserve the full shock value, if you'll pardon the expression. But I will mention this much before you embark on the reading:
The kind of experiment Milgram conducted in the 1960s could not happen today; it's been banned from American science because it is unethical.
Yet it is an enormously valuable experiment because it explains, as no work of literature or account of war crimes can do, that unquestioning obedience to authority is rather easy to bring about, even without use of lethal force or brainwashing.
And the research conclusions are the starkest warning that once the critical reasoning faculty is suspended, even "good" people can abandon conscience and transform into fiends.
Once you've digested that, you might want to read (or reread) a 2004 Christian Science Monitor report by Owais Tohid titled Pakistan, US take on the madrassahs, which returns us to the grim warning in "Law of Leaving". And which points up the need for the advice you gave.
They sway as they recite the Koran under the glare of their teacher...who swings a tree branch in the direction of any pupil who errs.* Dave's advice, which I present in list fashion:
"These are parrots of heaven," says the young cleric..."We teach our students purely Islamic teachings to make them pure and ideal Muslims who will not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the cause of Islam."
> Communicating effectively with the people and making freedom part of the prevailing wisdom in the society requires using modalities of communication that are meaningful to the people.
> Mr. Bush or his surrogates should speak directly to the Iraqi people frequently on radio or television.
> The speeches should be repetitive and should use stock phrases.
> The translation should actively employ constructions that have resonance in Arabic even at the expense of literal meaning.
> Abstractions e.g., freedom, democracy should be avoided in favor of concrete examples of the exercises of freedom and democracy.
> The speeches should be aggressive, energetic, and argumentative rather than conciliatory or temperate.
> Hardest of all, liberal democracy should be sold using an appeal to traditional values.
11:00 AM
"Pundita, after reading the Esquire article, Dave's advice strikes me as guidance for how NOT to talk to people who've known only despotic rule! He's advising to [use] repetition and other verbal postures that the researchers used on the hapless subjects in the experiment!
Lynn in Toronto"
Dear Lynn:
If you are opening communication with someone who is already 'programmed' (as in brainwashing, etc.), deprogramming initially requires very strong, unequivocal repetitive statements and essentially the same approach Dave suggests.
If you ask someone who has been programmed by a cult, "What do you think, you'll receive a recorded message in reply. So you first have to clearly establish your position.
This said, you've brought out an important point. There is a huge difference between teaching and 'sending a message.' Students should be encouraged to develop the discursive intellect and in general sweat out reasoning on their own instead of blindly relying on authority to tell them how to view information.
For all that, the teacher needs to encourage classroom dialogue and debate in a structured way -- and of course, encourage the students to ask questions of the teacher. And teen students should be introduced to the fun exercise of learning to spot the standard reasoning traps; i.e., pseudo-logics, and how to avoid them.
Thinking for oneself, like everything else, is a matter of learning the ropes then practice, practice, practice. The Socratic method -- which, I might add, is an oral teaching method -- is the key to teaching students to reason things through and check and re-check their assumptions and the assumptions of others.
All this should be done in a highly structured way so that the student retains respect for authority -- respect, not blind obedience.
12:10 UPDATE
"How interesting that your post today is at least a little bit about talking to Iraqis about democracy! I finally wrote last night about how I think it would be fun to help Iraqis (or anyone anywhere) to "get" this idea of democracy by using classic American movies and music and biographies and discussions of them. It would certainly help with those cultural references...
Beth in the Midwest"
Dear Beth:
Before the US invaded in Iraq, the #1 TV show in the country was Baywatch. Iraqis, and indeed the entire developing world, have a terrribly distorted idea of America. And they don't realize that this country was built by people very much like themselves. An "American Democracy Film Project" would be a great idea, if the movies show Americans struggling to make their democracy work and the difficult life that most experienced in building this country.
The project could include people from the local viewing audience explaining the storyline to the rest of the audience and describing the film characters in a way that connects with people in their own land.
It's really important for peoples in developing lands to understand how hard early Americans worked and how many mistakes they made while trying to build a strong democracy. People in other lands need to understand that if we can do it, anybody can do it. It just takes persistence and a lot of sweat -- and of course a good Constitution and a dedication to democratic government.
Also, American visitors to the poorest countries can help correct false impressions if their family came from humble beginnings. They can tuck photos of their family's hardscrabble days into their wallets and pull them out for viewing at the drop of a hat. And make good use of their time waiting in airports, bus and train stations to recount immigrant hardship tales told by their relatives. We can't expect the VOA and such to do all the work of telling people who we are.
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