Pictures from El Alto, Bolivia

El Alto is a Aymara city perched at the rim of the canyon in which the world's highest capital, La Paz, is nestled. So El Alto, at 13,615 feet, is higher than La Paz. It is also poorer, confirming the trend I'd noticed in Andean Peru and in Lima: material wealth diminishes with elevation. The gated communities and the fancy stores are at the lowest points of La Paz. Complexion also changes with the drop in elevation: from Aymara dark brown to Spanish white. Evo, whom I mentioned in my last post, is a hero in El Alto, but the billboards celebrating his election victory disappear as you descend.

Despite the naked brick buildings and the generally unsanitary conditions, El Alto is full of entrepreneurial energy. The city market is full of every imaginable commodity -- second hand cars, cattle, clothes -- and sprawls over dozens of blocks. Some of the prosperity shows in El Alto: the wealthier Aymaras have offices with glass facades on their originally naked brick buildings.

Tiwanaku and Evo Morales

Most of us have heard of the Incas, but they were only the last of a line of empires that rose in western South America. Before them, in the high and mostly dry plateau of the Andes, called the Altiplano, the Tiwanaku flourished. The indigenous Aymara of modern day Bolivia consider themselves descendants of the Tiwanaku. In January 2006, a day before he assumed presidential office, Evo Morales, an Aymara himself, attended a ceremony at the principal archaeological site of of this ancient culture, two hours from La Paz.

The Spanish colonized this part of the world with much brutality in the 16th century; Bolivia became independent in the 19th century but it was a sham independence: the Spanish descended elites still held power. Evo Morales’s remarkable ascension to the highest office in Bolivia in 2006 – he had been a Coca farmer once – was a truly historic moment. Hence the coronation at Tiwanaku. Like the blacks of South Africa, the majority Aymara too were denied for a long time. Evo Morales may be viewed skeptically in the West because he is socialist, but it is from the perspective of indigenous empowerment that his rise is significant. In 2009, a month before I visited La Paz, he was reelected with an even stronger majority.



Above, you'll find some pictures of relics from the Tiwanaku site. The Spanish missionaries of the sixteenth century couldn’t let them be. They "exorcised" the spirit of the second relic by scraping a cross on the right shoulder. No doubt, this nasty bit of sabotage stemmed from a deep insecurity. If the God of Christianity was indeed the only worthy and true God, then why did that fact have to be imposed in a coercive manner?

Socialism in ant colonies and its lack in human societies: E.O. Wilson's perspectives

I recently chanced upon an old, 1997 interview of the famous biologist Edward Wilson. Wilson is known for his work on ant societies and in the interview he provides some good insights. Ant societies are well and truly socialist -- why so and why not human societies? The answer might lie in the differences in reproductive abilities. Long excerpts below:

There are about 9.500 known species of ants, many of whom you studied, but there is only one species of Homo. Why?

I think I have the answer for that. That is because we are so big. We are giant animals. The bigger the animal, the larger the territory and home range that the animal needs. Ant-species, consisting of very tiny organisms, can divide the environment up very finely. You can have one species that lives only in hollow twigs at the tops of trees, another species that lives under the bark, and yet another species that lives on the ground. Human beings, being giant animals and particularly being partly carnivorous, cannot divide the environment up finely among different Homo-species. There have been episodes in which there were multiple hominid-species, probably two or three species of Australopithecus, co-existing perhaps with the earliest Homo. But it is evidently the tendency of hominid species and particularly of Homo to eradicate any rivals. It is a widespread idea among anthropologists that when Homo sapiens came out of Africa into southern Europe about a hundred-thousand years ago, it proceeded to eliminate Homo neandertalensis, which was a native European species that had survived very well along the fringe of the advancing glacier.

You write that ants often share food among themselves. Why, and how did you find out?

Back in the fifties Tom Eisner, a colleague of mine, and I did I believe the first experiments tracing radio-active label led sugar-water through colonies of ants. We were able to estimate the rate at which the food was exchanged, and the volume that was exchanged. Not only do many colonies exchange food with fanatic dedication, but in the colonies of many ant species the workers regurgitate food back and forth at an extraordinarily high rate. Now we understand that the result of this is that at any given time, all the workers have roughly the same food-content in their stomach. It is sort of a social stomach. So that an ant is informed of the status of a colony by the content of its own stomach. It therefore knows what it should be doing for the colony. If you only had a small number of extremely well-fed ants and the rest were hungry, the workers would go out hunting for more food, whereas in fact it might be a bad time to hunt for food.

Why doesn't this sort of communism exist among humans?

What I like to say is that Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species. Why doesn't it work in humans? Because we have reproductive independence, and we get maximum Darwinian fitness by looking after our own survival and having our own offspring. The great success of the social insects is that the success of the individual genes are invested in the success of the colony as a whole, and especially in the reproduction of the queen, and thus through her the reproduction of new colonies.

This was I think one of the main contributions of the idea of kin-selection. We now understand quite well why most species of social insects have sterile workers, and therefore can have communist-like systems. In which the colony is all, the individual is only a part of the colony, and the success of the whole community is what counts far above the success of the individual. The behavior of the individual social insect evolved with reference to what it contributes to the community, whereas the genetic fitness of a human being depends on how well it can individually use the society. We have become insect-like only by extreme contractual arrangements.

You write that a major difference between humans and ants is that we send our young men to war, while they send their old females. Why is that?

Well first of all, all the worker-ants are female. In the bee, ant and wasp-societies sisters are extremely closely related to one another, and therefore it pays to be altruistic toward sisters, whereas brothers do not benefit by giving anything to sisters. So the females are the ones who are fanatically devoted to one another.

Why are they old? Once again it comes down to this matter of what is best for the colony. As the workers grow older, they put more and more of their time outside, and as they become quite old or injured or sick, they spend their time either outside of the colony or right at the edge. The advantage of this is that the individuals that are going to die soon anyway, having already performed a lot of services, are the individuals that sacrifice themselves. It is the cheapest for the colony.

Whereas in humans, not only are the young males the strongest, but by being mammals in a competitive society young males tend to be greater risk-takers, braver and more adventurous. They are moving up in the ladder of status, rank, recognition, and power. And to be a member of the warrior-class when it is needed, has always been a rapid way of moving up. So that appears to be the main reason why we send young men out, and they are willing to go.

Frontline: A Death in Tehran

The death in question is of the young Neda Agha Sultan, who was out on the streets of Tehran protesting, after the controversial election election results in June this year. She was shot -- probably by a basij. Frontline provides some perspective of the events -- including footage collected from camera phones and camcorders -- leading to the shooting.

Michael Jackson and Balasaheb Thackeray

From Suketu Mehta's Maximum City:Bombay Lost and Found:

Shiv Sena's notions of what is culturally acceptable in India show a distinct bias towards kitsch: Michael Jackson, for example. In November 1996, Thackeray announced that the first performance of the pop star in India would proceed with his blessings. This may or may not have had to do with the fact that the singer had promised to donate the profits from his concert -- which eventually ran to more than a million dollars -- to a Shiv Sena-run youth employment project. The planned concert offended a number of people in the city, including Thackeray's own brother, who saw something alien in the values singer represented. "Who is Michael Jackson and how on earth is he linked to Hindu culture, which the Shiv Sena and its boss Thackeray talk about so proudly?"

The Shiv Sena Supremo responded, "Jackson is a great artist, and we must accept him as an artist. His movements are terrific. Not many people can that way. You will end up breaking your bones." Then the Saheb got to the heart of the matter. "And, well what is culture? He represents certain values in America, which India should not have any qualms in accepting. We would like to accept that part of America that is represented by Jackson." The pop star acknowledged Thackeray's praise by stopping off at the leader's residence on his way from the airport to his hotel and pissing in his toilet. Thackeray led photographers with pride to the sanctified bowl.

Atanu Dey on the military-industrial complex

Great piece here on how certain parties in both rich and poor countries have strong incentives to proliferate weapons in the global market, and -- unsurprisingly -- how this is very good for business. Consider the recent news where the US appears to be thinking of selling predator drones to Pakistan. Atanu writes:

The absurdity of the situation is resolved if you consider that the military-industrial complex of the US is involved in a simple dollar auction.

Briefly, the US gives Pakistan drones under some pretext. Since Pakistan is broke, it cannot pay for them. So the US gives military assistance to Pakistan to buy the drones with. Which basically means that the US pays its weapons manufacturers for supplying the Pakistanis. That’s the first-order effect of military aid to Pakistan: US weapons manufacturers continue to be in business.

The second-order effect follows predictably. India now has to match Pakistan’s weapons. India pays the US to buy drones. This means more business for US weapons manufacturers.

The war on terror has to continue because that’s what allows the machinery of the military-industrial complex humming away. The US is a military superpower and any day of the week it actually wants to, it can totally wipe off global Islamic terrorism. That it chooses not to do so is simple: its weapons industry will hurt like hell. Sure the US exports a lot of stuff other than weapons. But the politicians who make the policies are in the pockets of the weapons manufacturers.

All this reminds me of Dwight Eisenhower's prescient Presidential farewell address in 1961. Eisenhower was a military man himself, and he must have known well the ugly nexus that was developing between making of weapons and the making of money. This is the exact sentence he used:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Nobody seems to have heeded. The military-industrial complex is a reality now -- a major reality, and not just in the US. How do we get out of this one?

Also see, Why We Fight.

Elections in Ghana

Ghana, the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence - in 1957 - will have elections this coming week. After what happened in Kenya in December last year - that country too was regarded as stable until elections - and in Zimbabwe earlier this year, there might be some apprehension. Ghana also has recently discovered oil, always a problem - just look at neighboring Nigeria, whose oil wealth has been its bane.



(Video, via Ethan Zuckerman.)

But Ghana, everyone is saying, is different. Democracy has taken deep root there; the media and reporting scene is vibrant, the election commission strong. And the vote counting system - going by what this article says - is remarkably transparent:

During elections radio stations like the capital's JoyFM dispatch staff armed with mobile phones around the country.

The correspondent gives continuous live updates and reports by mobile phone to their media "election headquarters".

Once results are collated at the constituency, in the presence of party officials and electoral officers, the radio stations rapidly compile the results, broadcast them and a clear picture of the outcome is available within 24 hours.

The process has become too fast for old-fashioned election shenanigans.

JoyFM takes this a step further and publishes the results on the internet, thereby making it virtually impossible for a government to fiddle with results during a deliberate delay in their release by a government-controlled electoral commission as is the case elsewhere in Africa.

That's quite impressive; with such accountability, everything should be fine next week. Still, there will always be some some tension; besides the race is close. Fingers will be crossed.

How I helped Obama win in eight states

In August this year, as I moved from Minnesota to Massachusetts, I drove through eight states. Amazingly – and I realized this just recently – Obama won all these states. So here goes a quasi-satirical, fictional piece that follows my journey: the places I mention here are places and people I actually met. But I’ve twisted the actual narrative to have some fun.

________

I moved from Minnesota to Massachusetts in August this year. I drove for three days and through eight states to get to my destination: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and finally Massachusetts. Look carefully at that list. Do you notice something? Yes, they are all states in which Obama won; and they include some of his more memorable victories: Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

I am here to take credit for his successes. I hope the Obama campaign takes notice. After all, I traveled and spread Obama’s word in Midwestern prairie towns; I climbed lonely silos and shouted, so his message of change and hope could reach every barn and every farmhouse. And when I crossed the Mississippi – that most important American territorial and cultural marker – and entered Wisconsin, I set sail large paper boats with a “Yes, we can!” emblazoned on them, so the message would travel down the river, all the way to St.Louis, in the bellwether state of Missouri, where the race still remains tied.

And that night - the first of my journey - I ate a hearty meal at King of Falafel, a restaurant in downtown Madison. I encouraged the Egyptian owner to vote for Change. When he complained that life was tough and business was slow because of a fierce Lebanese competitor whose restaurant was right across, I said to him:

“There is no Egyptian America or Lebanese America – there is only the United States of America.”

________

The next morning I was in Illinois, a state already well converted. As I drove through the notorious south side of Chicago – a place Obama had made home and where he’d done his community organizing work – I thought I saw a young and skinny Obama walking the streets, knocking on doors, helping frame and sign petitions, helping people pick up their lives as the steel factories closed.

I saw him slip on the sidewalk, fall, and twist his ankle; his papers, containing hundreds of signatures flew and scattered all over the street. But he collected them with the same patience and poise with which he ran his Presidential campaign. Later, I saw him addressing a group of just twenty people – yes just twenty people, not 200,000. Big audiences certainly do not develop in a day. I saw him stumble and stutter and lose his sentences - unfortunately there wasn't a teleprompter to channel his eloquence.

________

Twenty five miles south of Chicago is the town of Gary, in the state of Indiana. This predominantly black town would probably vote for Obama – unlike the state which was a toss-up – but I thought I had to do my part nevertheless. Every town counted; every person counted. White folks in Minnesota had advised me to avoid Gary; I was told to “gas up and avoid everything south of Chicago downtown; these are bad parts.” In America, as many of you well know, “bad” parts of town in the public discourse are generally an indirect reference to “Black” or “Hispanic” parts of town.

I made my way through Gary’s deserted main street, full of strangely empty buildings. I stuck a hundred Obama fliers on the walls, alongside tattered messages that said: “Gary: Celebrating one hundred years; Steel Strong!” But the heavy industry halcyon days were in the past. Now there wasn't much going on.

At a crowded gas station at the end of the street, I found the owners – an Indian-American man and his son – conducting transactions behind a bullet-proof glass partition. I said to them:

“Change is coming; it will break these barriers of suspicion and distrust that we have erected.”

I repeated this to a middle-aged black lady who arrived in posh red SUV. She was in a foul mood, and had begun cursing the two ragged men lounging outside the store. The men, she claimed angrily, were eyeing her car.

“Get a proper job!” she told them. Those behind me in the line grinned wryly.
________

A little farther east in Indiana is the town of South Bend. Here too, the downtown buildings were empty; the economy seemed to have stagnated. And as with other cities in the US, the demographic in and near downtown was mostly black. This contrasted sharply with the brilliantly landscaped campus of Notre Dame University a few miles away, where the rich sent their offspring. I wandered around the well maintained boulevards trying to find students who could energize the campaign in South Bend.

I came across a group of students and professors at a small hangout called Lula’s Café. Cosy and comfortable, the café’s interior was a world very different from downtown. The walls were full of murals; students discussed in groups. Some played drums; others played the flute: the atmosphere was very much like it is in organic cafes and stores. This was a community conveniently absorbed in its own world, its own bubble, seemingly impervious to the situation just a few miles away. Most of them were already Obama supporters, but I had something to say to them:

“We can't have a Hippie America and a New Age America and a Yuppie America and a Ghetto America. We can't have a rich college-going America and a poor high-school dropout America. We must have only the United States of America!”

________

Onward from Indiana to Ohio, yet another critical state. I drove and drove until I came to the town of Toledo. I was exhausted and slept long that night in one of the highway-side hotels. But next morning I was up early. I set myself up in the breakfast room, with other hotel guests – senior citizens, families with many children– shaking a packet of Quaker’s oatmeal, toasting English muffins, slicing boiled eggs, and having weak coffee.

I didn't have to do much. The television was on; Obama was addressing a large rally, reading eloquently from the teleprompter, his eyes moving left and right, following the prompts.

“Vote for him!” I said passionately. My audience in the breakfast room looked at me in the uncertain manner of undecided voters, but my passion must have roused something deep in them.

And I can claim safely now that that same passion came to fore in Ohio when Obama carried it last week.

________

I could go on and on: describe my stop at Cleveland, Ohio; my stops in the small towns of Pennsylvania, yet another battleground state; and finally the easy home stretch through Upstate New York and western Massachusetts, through quaint towns that were ready to vote for Obama anyway, and where yards proliferated with Obama signs. But that wouldn’t be interesting.

It shall suffice to say that I did my bit; that during this journey – from the plains of the Midwest to the hills of western Massachusetts, covering nearly 1200 miles, and experiencing, if only for a little bit, the stark social realities that face the country today – it shall suffice to say that on this journey, I planted a seed on all my stops along the way: an Obama seed that grew and prospered on Election Day.

In light of Joe, the Plumber

There’s been much talk about Joe, the Plumber, in the soap/drama that is the US Presidential election. For those who may be unaware, Joe the Plumber is an actual plumber - albeit with a different name - who earns about $40,000 but has aspirations to buy a 250,000/year earning business. Joe met Obama while the latter was campaigning in Ohio and is now a celebrity, ever since McCain mentioned him some dozen times during the third presidential debate.

For the two Presidential campaigns, Joe is a convenient stand-in for the “honest, hardworking” American – just like other generic stereotypes: Jill the engineer; Molly the dental hygienist; Jack the electrician; Chuck the truck driver. In my travels to American cities – Chicago, DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia – I’ve come across plenty of these so-called “ordinary” Americans, whom the Obama and McCain campaigns invoke at every turn. Here, then, are a few of my glimpses – a few of the many such I’ve met over the years.


1. The Shuttle Driver

A few days ago, I took a ride on a shuttle from Amherst, Massachusetts to the airport in Hartford. The shuttle service was called Bluebird. Joe, the driver, picked me up at 5 am. He was a tall man, perhaps in the early or mid-sixties. As we drove, I learned Joe owned Bluebird. He was in fact, the owner and the only driver. The minivan, fitted with a GPS, was his only vehicle. Joe used to work with Valley Transporter, a larger service with many employees, but had quit and begun Bluebird recently.

“So you must be one of the small businesses that the Presidential campaigns constantly refer to,” I said with a laugh.

Joe smiled and said yes, but there was a bit of a pause.

“I get one or two calls per day, but it’s been awfully quiet the last few weeks. I thought I wouldn’t get any more calls.” he said. “It must be the economy. Everything is expensive. I pay a hundred dollars a month to Google to ensure my shuttle reservation website shows up among the top results when prospective customers search on the internet.”

Joe lives in South Hadley, a small Massachusetts town very close to Amherst. His family consists only of his daughter, who went to college in the area, and is now attending hairdressing school.

I asked Joe where he stood politically.

“Well, I don’t prefer either of the candidates. Both are not liberal enough for me. I’d like someone who is a lot more liberal. Someone who’ll get us out of Iraq quickly. I still cannot believe we are in this mess. But if I vote, I’ll vote for Obama.”

Nothing surprising there: this was Massachusetts after all. In fact, I’ve seen only one McCain sign so far in my drives around the towns here. I was surprised, though, that Joe didn’t mention anything about the economy affecting his choice of candidates. Especially since Joe himself was feeling the pinch.

But perhaps Joe was thinking broadly: if billions hadn’t been spent in a meaningless war, perhaps they could have been put to better use at home.


2. The Mechanic

In April this year, while traveling on an Amtrak train from Washington DC to Baltimore, I met Joe, a short, potbellied man in his mid forties with somewhat ragged clothes and large, calloused hands. My first impression was that this was one of the “working class men” that the television networks were constantly talking about at the time. The Democratic primaries were still going on; the Obama-Clinton contest was still undecided. The general wisdom floating around was that to win states like Pensylvania, the candidates would have to win over working class voters.

Joe was talkative. He had a wily look about him; he came across as someone who knew well the ways of the world. He had been in the military, loading bombs during the first Gulf War. He had traveled to India too, to Kerala; he’d also been on a secret plane that had flown over Russia, and had almost been hit by a Russian missile. He said all this with an easy pride.

Joe earned his living now as a mechanic. He had grown up in Philadelphia, in the south side, near “hardware docks”, where things were assembled and disassembled. That experience had fascinated him. He had a special love for cars and trucks. “Automobiles,” he claimed, “ran in his blood.” He worked in what seemed like a high intensity environment, where cars and trucks had to be fixed quickly. He bragged of a rough but macho life: those who worked with him were tough. Sometimes, in accidents, mechanics lost the tops of their fingers, and yet pretended that nothing had happened. They covered the fingers with tissue and kept on working.

As he talked, I began to sense something different. This wasn’t a “working class” man - at least he wasn't anymore. He was paid more than 100 dollars an hour. His boss, in order to keep him from moving to a more lucrative job elsewhere, pleaded with him to stay and kept increasing his pay. Joe dictated the terms of his increase every year.

“In America, everyone wants to blame others for their situation these days,” he said, talking of political and social matters. “They say: I am in this situation because of you. Pointing fingers. It’s all a blame game.” I couldn’t help wondering if he was referring to the black community.

His views were very conservative. “I hate liberal democrats,” he said. “Global warming is something democrats have cooked up to take our money, tax us. In the Midwest, right beneath American land, there is oil there for the taking. But the democrats won’t want take it; they want to steal money from us. So my advice is: Never vote Democrat.”

It made sense now. Joe was well off; he had probably earned his wealth the hard way and was now protective of it. A Democrat government meant taxes, and that might mean some of his wealth would be siphoned away.

We got off at Baltimore Penn Station. When I’d first seen him in the train, his ragged clothes had suggested that he might be frugal, that upon reaching Baltimore, he’d get home in a bus. But at the station, as we parted ways, Joe said he would call a taxi. He said it in a tone that suggested he called taxis all the time, without hesitation.

How mistaken initial impressions can be.


3. And finally, Jane

I’ll finish with a note about a lady named Jane I met in Minnesota. Jane was 52. Unlike the shuttle driver in Amherst and the mechanic in Baltimore, Jane had nothing political to say, but she was full of warmth and spoke with great earnestness. She talked to me – while we rode on the shuttle van from Minneapolis to Rochester, Minnesota – of her family, and of how she had left Rochester only twice in her lifetime, this trip of hers to Minneapolis being one of them. I was fascinated by that fact: it contrasted sharply with my own life. I had moved a lot, even while in India. The other trip Jane had made outside Rochester, Minnesota had been to the Appalachian country in Kentucky. That to her had been like a visit to a foreign place.

Jane was one of eleven children. Her father had grown up during the Great Depression and had struggled. But he had worked hard to provide for his children. Jane was the third child, and she had only brothers after her.

One of Jane’s brothers worked as an electrician; another as a brick layer; yet another as a carpenter; one had been in the navy; her sister worked as a beautician. Jane herself worked as a nurse who cared for the elderly. Remarkably all of them lived in Rochester. Jane did not have to call a service when she wanted something fixed at home; her brothers would do it for her. They were a close knit family.

Joe the Plumber was just one person, one example of your “ordinary, hard-working American”. But here was a family whose occupations sounded like a roll call of the unspectacular, plebeian jobs. If the Presidential candidates had known of Jane's family, they might have come rushing to use them as an example.

This, they would promptly claim, was the type of hardworking American family they would fight for when they were elected to office.

Presidential debates: Then and now

If you watched the Presidential debate yesterday and are following all the points being debated, you’ll find the above video interesting. This is from 16 years ago, when Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton were debating. Notice how remarkably similar the topics of then are to the topics today. The same rhetoric about a burgeoning national debt, no jobs, and the need to improve the healthcare system: nothing seems to have changed.

The only difference, then, between the two debates is how they were conducted. Both were town-hall style affairs. But notice how insistent the questioner is in the Bush-Clinton video; she pointedly asks Bush Sr. to give a clear answer; and she was allowed to follow up. In yesterday’s debate the audience was dull, hardly part of the discussion; or perhaps they were asked to be that way, to be mere props while the candidates could go about repeating their already well-known views ad nauseum.

Views from Tehran and Kabul: On the US Presidential Election

Elections in the US matter elsewhere. I was called a radical in 2004 for suggesting that Iraqis should also vote for the US Presidential Election. And now, as we get closer to to another election, it's only fair that Afghans and Iranians - the former especially - should have a right to views, if not the right to vote.

Here are a couple of videos of recent street interviews from Kabul and Tehran.

There are some hilarious statements, especially from Tehran. Check the Persian carpet-seller who supports McCain because he looks fit to be president whereas Obama is merely talk and celebrity looks. And many young Iranians like Obama because Obama is not too different from "U-ba-ma", which roughly translates to "He is with us."

But the best comes from one of the Tehran respondents who asks: "George Bush isn't running again, is he?"

Will Mugabe stay on?

In the 1970s while fighting for freedom against the entrenched and seemingly unshakable white rule of Ian Smith, Robert Mugabe was radical and uncompromising in his approach, espousing Marxism and revolution in Zimbabwe. But when he overwhelmingly won the elections twenty-eight years ago – Zimbabwe’s majority black population was finally allowed to vote for the first time – he stuck a conciliatory note, calming the fears of the country's white minority. This is what he said on April 18, 1980, Zimbabwe’s independence day:

“The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If we ever look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequalities that must never find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against white.”

Stirring, sage words. But more than anything else they illustrate how a politician can speak such eloquent phrases and go back on them. Mugabe persecuted whites during his twenty-eight year tenure, routinely persecutes his political opponents, and has today left the country’s economy in shambles. The current inflation rate is staggering. Lunch for 8 people costs six million Zimbabwe dollars (see picture), about 18 US dollars.

And Zimbabwe is very much in the news these days after recent elections. Mugabe seems to have lost to the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But unsurprisingly Mugabe refuses to concede, although there has been speculation he might give in this time. What next? Tyrants usually don’t leave easily; one just hopes Mugabe's exit, whenever it happens, does not lead to instability and violence.

Frontline - Bush's War

It’s been five years since the Iraq war, and a lot has been written about the subject. But if you want a comprehensive one-stop overview, beginning from when Iraq first appeared on the Bush agenda - believe it or not, the neoconservatives in Bush's circle brought it up in the days after 9/11 despite there being no reason to do so – to the back room dealings among the President’s closest advisers; from the facts that were manufactured to fit war policy, to the embarrassing lack of planning in Iraq after the invasion; for all this and lots more look no further than this superb, 4-hour documentary by Frontline called Bush’s War, recently aired on American Public Television. You’ll get to see interviews from many of the major players; you’ll learn of the intense tug of war between the two sparring camps: Colin Powell and the State Department people on one side; Cheney, Rumsfeld Wolfowitz, the neoconservatives, on the other. You’ll also get to know how flimsy the Iraq war planning effort was, how it was bungled badly.

Yes, the story is known, has been told before, but not on such an epic scale and not in such an accessible form. The entire show is available free online. Go watch and find out how those with power pull strings and deftly conduct their politics – it’s a fascinating look at the decision-makers of the Bush government.

Ahmadinejad's Letter

An interesting find: this is the letter that Iranian president Ahmadinejad wrote a few weeks ago to President Bush.