Bricks at Congress

Best lede ever.

Ahmadinejad

An interview that shows unsubstantiated lunacy and polemical irrationality, with bits of reasonable argumentation in between.

Dealing with Iran

Finally, some sensible suggestions. It's nice to see that at least some individuals acknowledge the complexity of politics and culture and religion within Iran, and know which parts to smite and which to support.

Immigration

For once, the President is right-on on this one. Admirable that he's doing this amidst such political turmoil. His ratings only went lower this morning.

No Clash

Someone asked me a pretty shocking question today. I thought I'd share my gut response:

Q: I don't understand. How could a Muslim community have anything other than an anti-Western mentality?

A: Perhaps you should ask that question to the large number of Muslims living in the U.S. and Europe, enjoying the freedoms in these countries after having escaped the stifling atmospheres of their own. Or the communities of African-American Muslims that live in the U.S. who simultaneougly have strong dual western and muslim identities. Or the Muslims in westernized Muslim states like Turkey, which in its secularization sought to emulate European advancements and itself be termed a Western" country. Or the scores of Bosnian Muslims who were rescued from genocide after Western intervention in Kosovo.

This question signals to me a conflation of the image of a few radical terrorists with all Muslim communities. There are many kinds of Muslims, with all sorts of cultural sensibilities, all over the world-- not all of them are Arab-centric, Wahhabi, anti-American wackos. Certainly some, but not all.

Picking a Fight with a Scarecrow

Indeed. But we weren't all illegal. Stop conflating the issue, folks.

Poking Fun

Colbert's keynote at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Pretty gutsy to say it all in front of the President. Favorite lines:

"Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center. >> And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It's a mala march is what I’m describing, a seasonal cookie."

Censorship, Internet, Google, and China

This is a very long but very excellent article on Google and China, from today's New York Times. Through its discussion, the article provides much insight into Chinese culture itself, and its ingrained notions of self-censorship, hesitation, and omission of curiousity. It also presents the actions of Google in the context of Yahoo and MSN, and poses the question of whether 99% of information to flourish in a stifled country isn't better than boycotting the country as whole out of principle.

Nepal

This is pretty amazing. It reminds me of something I read once in a book called Influence, where the author talks about the psychology behind inducing change. And he points to a pattern, evident in Perestroika and the fall of the Russian regime as well as the American Civil Rights movement and the sudden upsurge in the 60s, that shows that when people are conceded some freedom, when they get a taste of it, and then it is again taken away, the response is sudden, overwhelming, and revolutionary, often taking those with power by surprise. It is the contrast, the close grasp of potential and then feeling it slip away, that brings forth the surge.