Two weeks ago Wikistrat launched a simulation on North America’s energy bonanza. In case you’re wondering, Wikistrat is a firm that relies on a six-continent wide arsenal of analysts to stake out geostrategic scenarios, and the scope of its simulations are equally broad, at least at the start. For example:

What if current estimates of shale reserves prove overblown? In such a case Canada and the United States would’ve risked environment degradation of hundreds of communities, energy companies would’ve sunk billions of dollars into useless infrastructure, and years of scientific research into hydrocarbon fuel alternatives might be lost.

On the other extreme, shale might be the second coming of what Daniel Yergin once dubbed “Hydrocarbon Man.” Might large shale reserves in Latin America—especially Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay—touch off a not-so-friendly competition between the United States and China? Transport logistics give the US an overwhelming advantage in cooperation with Latin America’s gas firms, and China has its own trove of shale, so the potential for a great power struggle over shale in far-flung parts of South America may be deceptively low—for now.

Wikistrat’s gadflies are hashing out these two questions, along with roughly a dozen more scenarios regarding the future of shale. Stay tuned.

Brazil has been affected in recent weeks by suggestions of a slow down in Brazil’s usually hot economy. Inflation in China also has received some attention. The result was that some market studies have been done on the BRICS and emerging economies showing that countries like Mexico, South Africa and Vietnam are doing quite well and that China keeps on moving along to attract investment, even with signs of inflationary pressures. In a Bloomberg article on the top emerging markets, China was the only one of the BRICS to make the medal round, with Thailand and Chile taking the silver and bronze positions. Frontier markets, those who are not BRICS or possible future BRICS but had noticeable growth, also made their own listing with Vietnam at the top of the list. South Africa and Mexico made the top ten of emerging markets, South Africa already being seen as one of the BRICS and Mexico achieving record reserves despite slow growth in the US and local narcotics violence.

This year Mexico will elect a new President and Senate and the parties are slowly presenting their candidates for the upcoming six-year Presidential term. President Calderon has served his one and only legislated term in office of six years and it will remain to be seen whether his PAN party will be re-elected. With excellent economic numbers in a slow global economy, the PAN has a good chance of being re-elected. What might hurt the party is the open drug war in Mexico currently taking place that was a result of Mr. Calderon pressing for drug security in Mexico and the entrenched drug networks that have been established in Mexico over the last few decades. With former PAN President Vicente Fox pushing for a legalisation of the narcotics trade to reduce violence in Mexico, the PAN may have some soul searching to do before putting the Presidential campaign into full force.

A decent market measure for all economies can often been seen in the aviation industries response to different national economies. In Mexico, the now defunct Mexicana Airlines is showing some signs of re-emerging in Mexico after its financial collapse a few years ago. Emerging markets in general has seen some attention from the aviation industry in general as many companies seek customers in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, a result of region market growth in general through to 2016. While the aviation industry is not being displaced in North America and Europe, it does show that BRICS and other emerging and frontier markets will produce trade expansion while the US and eventually the EU drag themselves out of economic paralysis. A conference on competitiveness and innovation addressing the aviation industry by GE named “GE American Competitiveness: What Works” will deal with issues of expansion to emerging markets and strategies in the current US market slowdown next week in Washington DC. Anyone who wishes to see how one industry is handling expansion to emerging markets and growth in the time of economic slowdown should seek information from the conference presenters and organizers. With the possible re-birth of Mexicana and troubles in Asia with the A380, it is certain to be an interesting week of presentations. Information on the conference can be found here.

By Ted Regencia and Lindsay Minerva for Tablet Mag

Near the corner of Westchester Avenue and Pugsley Street in Parkchester, just off the elevated tracks of the No. 6 train, Yaakov Wayne Baumann stood outside a graffiti-covered storefront on a chilly Saturday morning. Suited up in a black overcoat with a matching wide-brimmed black fedora, the thickly bearded 42-year-old chatted with elderly congregants as they entered the building for Shabbat service.

The only unusual detail: This synagogue is a mosque.

Or rather, it’s housed inside a mosque. That’s right: Members of the Chabad of East Bronx, an ultra-Orthodox synagogue, worship in the Islamic Cultural Center of North America, which is home to the Al-Iman mosque.

“People have a misconception that Muslims hate Jews,” said Baumann. “But here is an example of them working with us.”

Indeed, though conventionally viewed as adversaries both here and abroad, the Jews and Muslims of the Bronx have been propelled into an unlikely bond by a demographic shift. The borough was once home to an estimated 630,000 Jews, but by 2002 that number had dropped to 45,100, according to a study by the Jewish Community Relations Council. At the same time, the Muslim population has been increasing. In Parkchester alone, there are currently five mosques, including Masjid Al-Iman.

“Nowhere in the world would Jews and Muslims be meeting under the same roof,” said Patricia Tomasulo, the Catholic Democratic precinct captain and Parkchester community organizer, who first introduced the leaders of the synagogue and mosque to each other. “It’s so unique.”

The relationship started years ago, when the Young Israel Congregation, then located on Virginia Avenue in Parkchester, was running clothing drives for needy families, according to Leon Bleckman, now 78, who was at the time the treasurer of the congregation. One of the recipients was Sheikh Moussa Drammeh, the founder of the Al-Iman Mosque, who was collecting donations for his congregants—many of whom are immigrants from Africa. The 49-year-old imam is an immigrant from Gambia in West Africa who came to the United States in 1986. After a year in Harlem, he moved to Parkchester, where he eventually founded the Muslim center and later established an Islamic grade school. Through that initial meeting, a rapport developed between the two houses of worship, and the synagogue continued to donate to the Islamic center, among other organizations.

But in 2003, after years of declining membership, Young Israel was forced to sell its building at 1375 Virginia Ave., according to a database maintained by Yeshiva University, which keeps historical records of synagogues. Before the closing, non-religious items were given away; in fact, among the beneficiaries was none other than Drammeh, who took some chairs and tables for his center.

Meanwhile, Bleckman and the remaining members moved to a nearby storefront location, renting it for $2,000 a month including utilities. With mostly elderly congregants, Young Israel struggled to survive financially and, at the end of 2007, was forced to close for good. The remaining congregants were left without a place to pray. During the synagogue’s farewell service, four young men from the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights showed up. Three months earlier, Bleckman, then chairman of the synagogue’s emergency fund, had appealed for help from the Chabad.

“The boys from the Chabad said they came to save us,” said Bleckman. “We were crying.”

At this point, Chabad took over the congregational reins from Young Israel, with members officially adopting the new name Chabad of East Bronx. Still, for the next six to seven weeks, Bleckman said they could not even hold a service because they had nowhere to hold it.

When Drammeh learned of their plight, he immediately volunteered to accommodate them at the Muslim center at 2006 Westchester Ave.—for free.

“They don’t pay anything, because these are old folks whose income are very limited now,” said Drammeh, adding that he felt it was his turn to help the people who had once helped him and his community. “Not every Muslim likes us, because not every Muslim believes that Muslims and Jews should be like this,” Drammeh said, referring to the shared space. But “there’s no reason why we should hate each other, why we cannot be families.” Drammeh in particular admires the dedication of the Chabad rabbis, who walked 15 miles from Brooklyn every Saturday to run prayer services for the small Parkchester community.

For the first six months, congregants held Friday night Sabbath services inside Drammeh’s cramped office. As more people began joining the congregation, Drammeh offered them a bigger room where they could set up a makeshift shul. (When it’s not in use, students from the Islamic school use it as their classroom.) Inside the synagogue, a worn, beige cotton curtain separates the men and women who attend the service. A solitary chandelier hangs just above the black wooden arc that holds the borrowed Torah, which is brought weekly from the Chabad headquarters. A large table covered with prayer books stands in the center, and a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe is displayed prominently on a nearby wall. During Shabbat, when Jewish congregants are strictly prohibited from working, they have to rely on the Muslim workers at the center or on Drammeh to do simple chores such as turning on the light and switching on the heater.

At first, it did not make sense, said Hana Kabakow, wife of Rabbi Meir Kabakow. “I was surprised,” said the 26-year-old congregant who was born and raised in Israel. “But when I came here I understood.” The Kabakows have been coming to the service from Brooklyn for the last two years.

Harriet Miller, another congregant, said she appreciated the center’s accommodating the synagogue. “They are very sweet people,” said the 79-year-old Bronx native and long-time resident of Parkchester, who added that she welcomes the new Muslim immigrants in her neighborhood: “We were not brought up to hate.”

Drammeh also understands the importance of teaching tolerance more broadly, and for turning the school—which was itself founded at the nearby St. Helena Catholic Church on, of all days, Sept. 11, 2001—into a model of sorts for religious tolerance in New York.

“We’re not as divided as the media portrays us to be,” Drammeh said. “Almost 90 percent of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian teachings are the same.”

His latest project involves introducing fifth-grade Jewish and Islamic school students to each other’s religious traditions. Other participants of the program, now in its sixth year, include the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan, the Al Ihsan Academy of Queens, and the Kinneret Day School of Riverdale. At the end of the program, students organize an exhibit that shows family artifacts of their respective cultures and religion. The principal of the Islamic school, who is also Sheik Drammeh’s wife, said that even after the program ended, the participants became “fast friends” and would visit each other’s homes.

“They would have birthday parties together,” Shireena Drammeh said. “When someone invites you to their house, I mean, that says it all right there and then.”

While the Jewish congregants are thankful for their new home, they hope that one day they can rebuild their own synagogue. That day may be far off: Even now that they have space to worship, they still struggle to operate. They don’t have proper heating inside, and the portable working heater could not reach the separate area where the elderly women are seated, forcing them to wear their jackets during the entire service. Congregants are appealing for financial support from the Jewish community and other congregations.

But Leon Bleckman and others say they now also have loftier goals, including reviving the Jewish presence in the neighborhood and reaffirming the positive relationship with their Muslim friends. “We are able to co-exist together side by side in the same building,” said Assistant Rabbi Avi Friedman, 42. “That’s sort of like a taste of the future world to come—the messianic future where all people live in peace.”

Ted Regencia is a digital media student at the Columbia Journalism School. His Twitter feed is at @tedregencia. Lindsay Minerva, a digital media student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is an intern at Newsweek. Her Twitter feed is at @lindsayminerva.

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note- A story like this illustrates the good in all of us. A few months ago, we highlighted an article on Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee where Christians in that part of the US welcomed a Muslim community that was undergoing construction of their mosque nearby. Now this kind deed is being passed forward to another flock of faithful when Muslims in New York are offering a helping hand to Jewish members of their community. This is the type of love for one another God of all religions wants and appreciates. May God bless them all.

Filed under: American Muslims, Democracy, Freedoms, Islam, Israel, Muslims, Peace, United States Tagged: Al-Iman Mosque, Chabad Lubavitch, Interfaith Relations, Islamic Cultural Center of North America, Israel, Jewish Community Relations Council, Judaism, Muslim Americans, New York, New York Mosques, NY Jews, Yaakov Wayne Baumann, Young Israel

I went to an interesting event last week, the first of a four-part series:  Discourses on Nature and Society.  The discussion by a star panel of energy and environment experts was titled Energy for the Next 20 Years: Protecting the Environment and Meeting Our Demands.  The series is being cosponsored by the venerable NY Academy of Sciences and the Nature Conservancy.  The NY Academy of Sciences has been around since 1817.

The panelists were led by David Roberts, the top environmental blog Grist’s top writer.  (If, for some reason, you’ve not checked out Grist, please get on it right away.)  Roberts is as smart in person as he is in his writing.  (I have had, to toot my own horn for a sec, an article at Grist:  Biochar as the new black gold.)

Roberts laid out the premise that we are dealing with three fundamental problems:  (a) rising energy demand, much of it coming from the rapidly emerging economies of Asia and elsewhere, (b) stress thereby on limited traditional energy resources and on the environment from which they are being extracted, and (c) climate change.  He posited that our energy therefore needs to be plentiful, low carbon and not requiring a lot of land or pressuring the environment.

Each of the panelists then jumped in, covering an area of their expertise, before launching into a more extended cross discussion and the Q&A.  Jesse Jenkins, the Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute, fleshed out some of the issues relative to energy demand, talked about energy poverty – that billions in the developing world lack access to electricity – and that as we bring power to the rural populations that lack it, and as the burgeoning global middle classes start buying cars, air conditioners and plasma TVs for the first time, we must also be reducing our energy intensity.  (This is defined by the IPCC as “…the ratio of energy use to economic or physical output.  At the national level, energy intensity is the ratio of total primary energy use or final energy use to Gross Domestic Product. At the activity level, one can also use physical quantities in the denominator, e.g. litre fuel/vehicle km.”)  In simpler terms:  bang for the buck.  Jenkins underscored the idea that fossil fuels need to be made obsolete, but that energy needs to be cheap.

Jeff Opperman is the Senior Freshwater Scientist for the Nature Conservancy.  His principal brief has been to look at improving hydropower’s sustainability.  He echoed the need for cheap, decarbonized energy but with an eye to protecting natural resources.  He reminded us that even though the perception on hydro’s negative environmental impact is generally that it floods lands upstream from the dams, that there are also very serious concerns regarding its downstream effects on fisheries and agriculture.  To optimize, then, the environmental benefits of traditional hydropower, planning and siting are fundamental.

Another Nature Conservancy leader, Joe Fargione, their  Lead Scientist for North America, had some noteworthy things to say about biofuels.  (In my classes, I cite Dr. Fargione’s critical work on how biofuel production exacerbates climate change through the land-use changes that it engenders.)  He noted the other night that 35% of American corn goes to offset 6% of our oil for transportation – not a good tradeoff.  (I mentioned Amory Lovins’s new project and book, Reinventing Fire, here recently.  Lovins and his team at the Rocky Mountain Institute have a lot to say about the role of biofuels in transportation going forward.  I’m using Reinventing Fire in my Clean Tech class this Spring.  Lovins, for my money, has the answers to the panel’s questions regarding how best to optimize energy while reducing environmental impacts – with nearly maximum bang for the buck it turns out.)

Now Stewart Brand is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.  Here’s a guy, a visionary, who founded the Whole Earth Catalogue, a project that “…pushed grassroots direct power—tools and skills.”  Brand himself said famously:  “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”  So how do you get from that to shilling for nuclear power?  Damned if I know.  As I have noted here many times, and told Brand during the Q&A at the event, nuclear power is the least godlike activity going.  In any event, the presentation that Brand gave was rife with the inaccuracies that Amory Lovins so thoroughly debunked in his paper, “Four Nuclear Myths,” among them that solar and wind use too much land.  Brand, talking with me later, mentioned the “nuclear renaissance,” yet another myth.  Nuclear power is running on fumes.

Brand trotted out a new bit of nonsense:  that storage of spent nuclear fuel rods is safe in the U.S. because we use dry storage in casks.  First, that’s not even close to true.  If it were, as it is in Germany, I’d feel safer.  However, as we saw in Japan, most spent fuel rods are stored in pools of water where, if you have a loss of that water, very bad things happen quickly.  In the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists reports, “Spent fuel pools contain more highly radioactive fuel than the reactor cores. And the spent fuel pools at all U.S. nuclear plants are located outside the reactor containment structure.”  Or, as the veteran nuclear policy analyst, Robert Alvarez, notes here:  “Even though they contain some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet, U.S. spent nuclear fuel pools are mostly contained in ordinary industrial structures designed to merely protect them against the elements. Some are made from materials commonly used to house big-box stores and car dealerships.”

Another myth is that renewable energy can’t get the job done.  Actually, that’s nothing better than a Big Lie.  But the bottom line, as I tried to point out during the Q&A, is that the embrace of nuclear power materially slows down our efforts to stop climate change and achieve sustainability because it drains resources, energy, expertise, and focus from building out the renewably powered distributed generation infrastructure that will give us at least a chance of overcoming the climate crisis.  Amory Lovins makes this point abundantly in his blockbuster paper and another panelist, Arne Jungjohann, articulated this beautifully during the Q&A.

Jungjohann, Director for the Environment and Global Dialogue Program in the Washington office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, had plenty of useful things to say about renewables and DG, particularly in Germany.  The Germans really get it, not only on shuttering their nuclear power plants, but on promoting clean tech:  they have the technology, the industry, the policy, the political will and the track record to show that clean tech means jobs.  The Green Party and the Social Democrats, powerful forces in German politics, want to see a 100% renewable energy economy by 2050.  Germany, has had visionaries like the late Hermann Scheer, and has canny businessmen like Peter Löscher, the head of Siemens, one of the world’s industrial powerhouses, leading the way.  I quoted Löscher here:  “The green revolution has started and by 2020, green technology will have surpassed the car industry as well as the engineering sector in Germany.”  As Jungjohann pointed out at the event, Germany installed nearly double the amount of solar PV in December as the U.S. did in all of 2011.

We’ve simply got to accelerate some of the breathtaking progress that has been taking place, not only in Germany, but throughout the world, on renewables, DG, green building, and as a number of panelists noted, smart urban planning and mass transit, and, at the end of the day, reduce our consumption to sustainable levels.  Eat a salad today and turn out the damn lights when you leave the room.

“I do not think Manto was particularly obsessed with prostitution. It might be more accurate to say that he was part of a broader movement in Modern literature to depict sexuality more honestly and sincerely than earlier generations had done, and writing stories with characters who were prostitutes was one way for him to do that.”

Amardeep Singh and Sadat Hasan Manto have something in common-both come from the same Indian side of Punjab. But that’s not the only connection they have.

Dr. Amardeep Singh, who teaches English literature at Lehigh University, is a second-generation Indian raised in the U.S. working on a new book on Sadat Hasan Manto. He is studying the Progressive Writers movement and other movements like Naya Kavita and Nayi Kahani that came after it. In this project he is trying to work with literature written in multiple South Asian languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and English. In some cases he is working with translations, while in other cases he is looking at material in the original languages.

His first book, “Literary Secularism: Religion and Modernity in Twentieth Century Fiction,” was based on his Ph.D. dissertation, and was published in 2006. Dr. Amardeep has also written a number of articles on British and contemporary world literature, focusing on authors such as E.M. Forster, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rabindranath Tagore, and G.V. Desani. In 2010 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue research on the new book project, “Modernism and Progressivism in South Asia.”

In this interview he talks candidly about Manto, his work and pedagogical issues in teaching South Asian literature in the U.S.:

1.    Sadat Hasan Manto was the product of an era when the subcontinent was going through significant political changes that ultimately ended in dividing the region into two separate countries. He wrote a lot on the impact of these changes on individuals and families. How would you analyze his understanding of the partition as portrayed in his short stories?  

Manto, as is well-known came out of what is today the Indian part of Punjab – Ludhiana and Amritsar. He grew up in a pluri-religious environment and felt a very deep sense of loss in the disappearance of that sense of shared community across religious lines. He was also influenced by the emerging Progressive Writers group he encountered at Aligarh Muslim University in 1934; they wrote in Urdu and had a generally secular and reformist outlook. Manto was living in Bombay in 1947, and he did not initially jump to join Pakistan at that time. However, as he found his career in the Bombay film industry suffering, in large part due to the discrimination against Muslims that began to appear in the industry around that time, he did finally decide to relocate to Lahore in 1947. From what I can tell, he did not love Lahore, but he did provisionally accept the idea of himself as a Pakistani during the last few years of his life.

Manto’s short stories about the Partition, particularly “Toba Tek Singh,” “Khol Do!” (Open It), and “Thanda Ghosht” (Cold Meat) are some of his most famous stories. Stories like “Khol Do” and “Thanda Ghosht,” both of which feature shocking scenes of sexual violence, show how disappointed he was in the way people on both sides of the religious divide acted during the Partition. These are stories where people seem to behave like animals, thinking only of revenge and the crudest sort of satisfaction. “Toba Tek Singh,” for its part, is more about the strange sense of dislocation many people felt as the identity of large regions near the border changed status overnight. What was “India” one day became “Pakistan” the next, even if people still spoke the same languages, drank the same chai, and lived the same lifestyle they had the day before. The conceit of “Toba Tek Singh” is to have a mentally ill person attempt to digest the arbitrariness of this sudden transformation.

2.    Manto was tried in India and Pakistan for “obscenity” as he used images of women as sex object and prostitute in several of his short stories. How would you compare obscenity and portraying sex as a social reality in literature? Who defines standards of pornography and sex in fine arts and literature in South Asia?

Manto wrote about prostitution because it was a part of life in his era. Once he was asked this same question, and he had the following rejoinder:
“If any mention of a prostitute is obscene then her existence too is obscene. If any mention of her is prohibited, then her profession too should be prohibited. Do away with the prostitute; reference to her would vanish by itself.” (via Harish Narang)

I do not think Manto was particularly obsessed with prostitution. It might be more accurate to say that he was part of a broader movement in Modern literature to depict sexuality more honestly and sincerely than earlier generations had done, and writing stories with characters who were prostitutes was one way for him to do that. Even within Urdu and Hindi literature, Manto was not the only one to push the boundary with regards to explicit sexuality in his writing. The first wave of Progressive Writers, emerging from the Angarey group, also did this. One infamous story by Sajjad Zaheer, for instance, was called “Vision of Paradise” (Jannat ki Basharat) which featured a Maulvi who begins to have erotic dreams while he intends to stay up late praying. The story was controversial at the time because it was seen as blasphemous, and reading it today there’s no doubt that Zaheer intended to be provocative regarding religious piety. But it is no less provocative because of its use of explicit sexuality.

Alongside the Angarey group, Premchand himself was often more direct about matters of sexuality than many people realize. His famous 1936 novel Godaan, for instance, features a cross-caste sexual relationship described quite frankly – though it’s by no means pornographic. Finally, it should be noted that Manto’s friend and rival, Ismat Chughtai, also pushed the line regarding the depiction of sexuality.

That said, there’s no question that Manto takes things a step further. A story like “Bu” (Odour) is significantly more explicit in its depiction of a random sexual encounter than anything written by Zaheer or Chughtai. As a side note, this story, which is one of Manto’s most infamous ones, is not actually about prostitution, but rather a middle-class man’s encounter with a poor woman (a Marathi “Ghatin”) working as a laborer. Other stories do deal directly with prostitution, but often with a focus on the hypocrisy and weakness of men. Manto’s prostitutes are often honest and even noble individuals – trying to survive in a society that treats the exploitation of women’s bodies as merely another kind of financial transaction.

On the question of who sets the standards for obscenity. Here I think there’s no question that by the standards of his time, some of Manto’s stories could be found to be “obscene.” As is well-known, he was tried for obscenity six times during his career, some by the British Indian government before 1947, and some by the independent government of Pakistan. I certainly oppose the censorship, but I think Manto knew what he was doing in writing stories like “Bu,” and I don’t think he or his career suffered greatly because he got in trouble for it; if anything, it may have gotten him more attention and thus helped his career in some ways. That said, with the sexual elements in “Khol Do!” or “Thanda Ghosht,” I do feel these are worth defending, since Manto is referencing sexual violence not for titillation but to make an important ethical point.

3.    How would you compare Manto with short story writers of other languages, especially the known English writers of his time?

Manto was actually more influenced by Russian short story writers like Chekhov and French writers like Maupassant than he was by English literature. The Russian influence goes back to his time in college at Amritsar, where his mentor Abdul Bari Alig encouraged him to read the Russian short story writers. In fact, Manto’s very first book was his translation of French writer Victor Hugo’s The Last Days of a Condemned Man. He also published a book of translated short stories from Russia (often translated from translations: English to Urdu rather than Russian to Urdu) called Russi Afsane. In fact I do not think Manto can be usefully compared to any major English writers.

4.    For Manto, South Asia and the U.S. had astonishing paradoxes and similarities in 1950. When Manto was being tried in Pakistan for obscenity, for example, writers were also facing similar charges in the U.S. How would you compare these two societies in the 21st century?

Manto was actually highly aware of the obscenity trials taking place in the United States. In one of his Letters to Uncle Sam (in Urdu as “Chacha Sam Ke Nam”), he actually acknowledged the obscenity trial surrounding Erskine Caldwell’s novel God’s Little Acre. At that time (1950) the United States was seen as the source of racy images and scantily dressed starlets within South Asia, so this was especially surprising to Manto. As he put it, “You are the king of bare things so I am at a loss to understand, Chachaji, why you tried brother Erskine Caldwell.”  The judge in the Caldwell case, of course, dismissed the obscenity charge with some famous lines: “I am absolutely certain that the author has chosen to write truthfully about a certain segment of American society. It is my opinion that truth is always consistent with literature and should be so declared.” Manto claims he quoted these lines to the judge in his own case, but to no avail: “That is what I told the court that sentenced me, but it went ahead anyway and gave me three months in prison with hard labour and a fine of three hundred rupees. My judge thought that truth and literature should be kept far apart. Everyone has his opinion (‘raee’).”

While Pakistan and the U.S. were not so far apart in 1950, during the time of one of Manto’s obscenity trials and the trial of Erskine Caldwell, I think as time has gone on, they have grown further apart. In the 1960s, the U.S. moved away from the censorship model of the Hayes Code in the film industry, to a “ratings” model, wherein adult material would effectively always be legal as long as it was rated for adults only. Both India and Pakistan have, however, kept the censorship model alive, meaning that many legitimate and important works of art run the risk of censorship sometimes for arbitrary or simply

5.    You have been teaching literature in the U.S. for some time. Do you think there are major pedagogical issues in teaching South Asian literature to students of South Asian origin and white Americans?

I should preface by saying that I myself have been raised in the U.S., albeit in a pretty conservative Sikh community with strong and continuing connections to South Asia. One problem with raising issues such as caste or debates about gender roles within Indo-Islamic culture with students who aren’t familiar with the society is that you can very quickly give the students a very negative picture of South Asian society. If you bombard them with the depth of poverty in India, or the repressiveness around gender and sexuality that still pervades in some parts of the society, you can make it less likely that they’ll want to seriously engage with South Asia in the future. In my teaching I strive for a balanced look at the society, pointing at the way some things have improved (for instance, the growing middle class in both India and Pakistan) alongside the things that aren’t improving (growing religious conservatism in Pakistan, extreme disparities of wealth in India). In that respect I may differ from some of my colleagues on the left: I think trends such as globalization have been beneficial at least in some respects in South Asian societies.

6.    Urdu and Hindi are spoken by a large South Asian diaspora all over the world. Some say, combined together, it becomes the second largest language after Mandarin Chinese.  How do you see the future of teaching South Asian languages and literature in the U.S?  

The outlook for teaching South Asian languages in the U.S. is complex. On the one hand, languages like Urdu and Pashto have actually seen somewhat of a boom in recent years, though the boom is entirely due to the post 9/11 “war on terror,” and the source of the interest is the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies. Languages predominantly spoken in India are not receiving the same kind of interest. That said, even the study of those languages was, during the cold war, supported by the State Department.

Away from the question of official government support, the economic and prestige disparities in the publishing world have been quite detrimental to the study and publication of literature in South Asian languages. Authors know they will get paid more if they write in English, and have broader readership and recognition as well. This does not mean that good literature in Indian languages is not being written (indeed, in my own experience visiting Punjab not long ago I found the state of Punjabi poetry in Chandigarh to be particularly lively – though it’s mainly a live scene, without much in the way of economic support from the publishing world).

I do not teach at the kind of university where I would have a significant number of students interested in reading Hindi, Urdu, or Punjabi literature in the original. However, there is certainly interest among some students in reading literature in translation from Indian languages, perhaps in conjunction with literature written in English.

One interesting development is a growing community of writers working in South Asian languages here in North America. I was at the University of British Columbia for a Punjabi literature conference a few years ago, and I was overwhelmed at the number of students studying Punjabi, often at quite a high level. There is an entire community of diasporic Punjabi writers (novelists and poets), mainly living in Canada, and publishing in their own small publishing houses here in North America (some of those writers also publish their work in Punjabi in India). I do not know if something similar exists with other South Asian languages, though I have seen some collections along those lines.

I should add that I am a person who does not see the choice of language as absolutely determining of authenticity. There are very good, representative novels of South Asian life written in English and very poor ones written in Hindi and Urdu. I have always been inspired by the case of Ahmed Ali, who in mid-career shifted from Urdu to English without really losing much in the way of his ability to describe the Indo-Islamic culture of Old Delhi. I think authors who make a strong attempt to use words from South Asian languages in the midst of their English prose when necessary – and who don’t worry about the possible incomprehension of western readers – can be every bit as “authentic” as their peers writing in South Asian languages.

(From Viewpoint Online)

© 2012, Qaisar Abbas. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.

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Nobel Laureate and Former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez. Source: Defend Haiti

“In much of the World, and especially in our region, the military has been the source of the most thankless collective memories,” read a letter former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sánchez addressed to Haitian President Michel Martelly, advising his Excellency to reevaluate his military plans through historical lenses. “In the best case scenario, the Latin American armies have been prohibitively expensive for our economies and at worse, have meant a permanent source of instability for our democracies,” explained the letter.

President Martelly does not even have to look beyond Haiti’s borders to learn about the destructive effects of militarization. Malignant scars from Duvalier’s merciless army are fresh on the population’s skin, hunting the dreams of its countless victims as do vivid imagery seared into memories over more than a generation. Nevertheless, the president perceived a Haitian army as the bridge to sovereignty, signaling his resolve to fulfill his campaign promise: reconstitute the Armed Forces of Haiti.

In fact, a series of interviews Martelly granted to the press following his first official trip to Venezuela seemed to indicate a president willing to circumvent the Northern powers to pursue his highest ideals. “ Now, if nobody wants to help, then we have to think of a way to get that money to reestablish the army,” the AP quoted Martelly saying in response to the U.S. and Canada’s reluctance to fund his military initiatives. However, the president later admitted to a journalist of El Universal  ,a major Venezuelan daily with an estimated circulation of 150,000 readers, “I found a way to finance this force the same way I’ve found money for the education initiative,” mindful of the global attention he has generated. “I understand that many people are watching what we do carefully,” he added, “But we are open to working with the civil society.” Recently, President Martelly created a commission to study and evaluate the return of his army.

But “Haiti does not need to recreate the army,” countered Nobel laureate Sánchez in his letter published in its entirety on Defend Haiti, an online news organization. Echoing the opponents of militarization, the former leader felt a resourceful, professional and well-trained police force ensuring effective law enforcement and national security would be more beneficial to the country that military aircrafts he said would “never be more powerful than their neighbors’. Sánchez wrote it was no coincidence that Haiti, Guatemala and Nicaragua shared a common history with strong armies and reduced social investments in education and health and occupied the region’s bottom three places in the Human Development Index (HDI) prepared by the UN Development Programme. Reorienting the armies projected budget to social development programs for Haitians and their children, in his views, could be used “To strengthen democratic institutions to ensure minimum political stability in order to restore the confidence of Haitians and the international cooperation, whose help is essential and will remain so for a while longer.”

To his credit however, President Martelly is not the only one with military aspirations; many Haitians strongly support the return of a professional armed forces, especially with anti-UN protests erupting like volcanoes around the country and even the Continent. For many Haitians the army is not a matter of misplaced nostalgia, rather the fabric of the republic. The revolution, Liberation or abolitionist movements and freedom’s ideals were lost, absent the brave indigenous army defeating Napoleon’s forces; hence, the birth of the republic.  In fact, “There is no sovereignty without an army,” proclaimed one Senator conceptualizing the Haitian military roots. Such historical and sentimental contexts often eluded affluent journalists’ reports and editorials that primarily focused on Haiti’s epic poverty and misery, points driven home by the ex-Costa Rican President’s letter.

President Michel Martelly and Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Lamothe. Source: Le Nouvelliste

“The difference between the population of a country and another is in education, years of schooling, teaching, diversified and full access to information technology and communication,” wrote Sanchez. His parallel drawn between the two countries’ global ranking provided ample evidence supporting his argument; Costa Rica’s HDI ranking was 69 with life expectancy of 79.1 years as opposed to Haiti’s 145-place ranking with a 17.4-year average life expectancy for its children. Nevertheless, President Martelly’s economic and patriotic framing presented equally compelling arguments in the eyes of many Haitian nationals. “But at the same time, why do we need a foreign army to help us? A foreign army that’s costing us much more money,” he told the AP, asking reporters, “Why not hire young Haitians? Why not regain our sovereignty?” UN parades his peacekeeping boots in Haiti on an $800 million annual budget, comparing to the projected $25 million to $30 million annual budget Martelly said it would cost to create and maintain the Haitian pride and self-esteem.

As some political analysts pointed out, President Martelly seemed determined on making the Haitian army the central theme of his presidency, looking South of the Continent as North America and Europe barricaded his ambitions. Therefore, a failed army could highlight his 5-year tenure, as they inferred. For Sanchez however, “Reinstalling the army would be an error,” and that is why he said indifference was not an option. “Haiti can recover its dignity,” concluded his letter, “When all children and young people can see the future with hope and the Caribbean winds blow equally fortunate for everyone,” it insisted. “That’s what the people deserve, Mr. President.”

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The Israeli government recently sponsored a public relations campaign to woo Israeli ex-pats in the US to return home, and discourage those thinking about leaving the Jewish state from doing so.  Lots of countries do this, so the fact that Israel has begun to is not overly controversial.  What is surprising is the campaign’s indirect disparaging of American Jewry.  Several of the televised commercials take shots at US Jews, portraying them as assimilators and ignorant of Israeli culture. 

This clip shows a steretypical looking American Jewish man being insensitive to his Israeli girlfriend’s feelings about it being Israeli Rememberence Day, Yom Hazikaron.

The translation of the Hebrew narration at the end of this clip is “Before Abba (Hebrew for “Father”) Turns into daddy, it’s time to come back to Israel.”

The translation of the Hebrew narration at the end of this clip is “before Hanukkah turns into Christmas, it’s time to come back to Israel.”

There are certain truths to what the commercials suggest.  A significant portion of American Jews are somewhat assimilated and are largely unaware of Israeli culture.  However, what about those who do not fall in to this category?  These are the American Jews who are responsible for securing over $2 billion in annual aid for Israel and providing most of the funding for global Jewish philanthropy, which reaches into the billions.  American Jews are and should be disgusted with the Israeli government over this matter.  This is another ignorant, arrogant, and poorly thought out policy by the Netanyahu administration.  It is also a direct shot at a community who, by and large, have stood by him despite his questionable and isolationist policies.

The direct blame lies with the Immigrant Absorption Ministry. Bibi is playing dumb about the whole incident, claiming he didn’t know what they were up to (just like he didn’t know about the settlement announcement when US Vice President Biden was in Israel two years ago, and just like he didn’t know when the Foreign Minister placed the Turkish envoy on a smaller chair).  Which begs the questions: how could these ads air without him knowing and how will American Jewry respond to such carelessness and insult in the long-term?  Organizations like the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the American Zionist Movement, the office of the Conference of Presidents, Hillel International, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Union for Reform Judaism, and Chabad should confront the Israeli government on this issue.  How they should confront it is another story, and it will need some serious thought and careful handling. 

The Anti-Defamation League has already expressed their displeasure with the government and Bibi has since had the ads removed from television.  JFNA lauded the Israeli Prime Minister’s move.  Instead of applauding his efforts they should be scolding his thoughtlessness.  Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren offered a half-hearted apology stating, “the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption’s campaign clearly did not take into account American Jewish sensibilities, and we regret any offense it caused…The prime minister deeply values the American Jewish community and is committed to deepening ties between it and the State of Israel.” If Israel wants continued and unwavering American support, it needs to respect the Americans that are providing it. 

The growing divide between American Jews and Israelis was a hot topic of conversation at the most recent Jewish General Assembly in Denver.  It is now clearer than ever that it needs to be seriously and publicly addressed.  This will require a concerted and organized effort by both sides.  Given the immediate circumstances, however, Bibi needs to issue some sort of formal viral Internet video and written apology, either in the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz, apologizing to the American Jewish population.  As said before, it is quite understandable that Israelis would support him in trying to get ex-pats to come home.  But, they should also hold him accountable for his actions.  He has isolated them from the international community and now he is isolating them from their important American Jewish brethren.   It is episodes like this that have international Jewry wondering whether Israel really is still the home of the Jews, or just Israelis.

Dr. Douglas Brinkley and Rep. Don Young spar during a Congressional hearing

For fifty years, the U.S. has debated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The 19 million acre refuge was declared a federal protected area in 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), setting aside almost 80 million acres of public lands. Nearly one third of the protected areas was declared wilderness. Numerous national parks, monuments, preserves, and wildlife refuges were created or expanded by the Act. Senators Ted Stevens and Mike Gravel opposed turning over such a large amount of area to the National Park Service, claiming that it would harm the prospects for economic development in Alaska. While the decision was ultimately unpopular, the creation of numerous national park areas served to increase tourism in the state. Still, Gravel lost his seat in the next election, as constituents blamed him for the decision. Furthermore, tourism to ANWR has not increased. The park is extremely remote, with no roads leading to it. Only about 250 visitors come to the park every year (“elitists,” as Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) calls them, as we’ll see later).

While the House voted to declare the entire refuge as wilderness, the Senate differed. In the end, eight million acres of ANWR were designated as wilderness, while 1.5 million acres of coastal plain were not. Section 1002 of ANILCA called for the following in the coastal plain: a “comprehensive and continuing inventory and assessment of the fish and wildlife resources of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; an analysis of the impacts of oil and gas exploration development, and production, and to authorize exploratory activity within the coastal plain in a manner that avoids significant adverse effects on the fish and wildlife and other resources.”

A baseline study was completed by the Department of the Interior in 1987. A more recent report written in 2001 by ANWR staff is a more accurate reflection of current conditions in the park for oil and drilling, yet it is still ten years old. The USGS estimates that between 3 and 10.4 billion barrels of oil are economically recoverable at $30 [1]. With oil at almost $100 a barrel, even more oil is likely economically recoverable. Yet still, there would hardly be enough oil to fuel annual American consumption, which in 2007 totaled 15.1 billion barrels. The amount of oil is also not big enough to impact world oil prices.

USGS Chart with curves showing recoverable oil

People in favor of drilling in ANWR strive to draw a contrast between the coastal plain, also known as “Section 1002,” and the Brooks Mountains in the southern part of the refuge. Drilling would occur on the coastal plain, which they paint as a place that is already developed and no longer pristine. The town of Kaktovik sits on the coastal plain, and one exploratory drill was made nearby in 1985, though it was later plugged and abandoned.

Yet as a counterpoint, the USGS says:

“The 1002 Area is critically important to the ecological integrity of the whole Arctic Refuge, providing essential habitats for numerous internationally important species such as the Porcupine Caribou herd and polar bears. The compactness and proximity of a number of arctic and subarctic ecological zones in the Arctic Refuge provides for greater plant and animal diversity than in any other similar sized land area on Alaska’s North Slope.”

ANWR is the largest national wildlife refuge in the U.S.. The USGS also claims, “Such a broad spectrum of diverse habitats occurring within a single protected unit is unparalleled in North America, and perhaps in the entire circumpolar north.” [2] To the east, Canada has three neighboring protected areas. The two national parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut, are prohibited from oil exploration.

The rest of Alaska’s North Slope is already open for oil drilling. Over the past ten years, the number of Alaskans in favor of opening up ANWR to drilling has stood around or over 70%. President Obama is opposed to drilling in ANWR. However, though he has not opened up the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to more drilling, he has approved more lease sales for offshore drilling in the Arctic. Two new leases sales are planned in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in 2015 and 2016, respectively [4]. Another lease sale is planned to take place in 2013 for Alaska’s Cook Inlet, in the south-central part of the state.

Despite Obama’s opposition, Congress seems to be moving closer to opening Section 1002 to drilling. Representative Doc Hastings (R-Washington) and Don Young (R-Alaska) have cosponsored the “Alaskan Energy for American Jobs Act,” which has been referred to the Referred to the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. It would repeal Section 1003 of ANILCA, which makes prohibits drilling for oil and gas in Section 1002.

One of the hearings on the bill got quite heated. Last Friday, Dr. Douglas Brinkley, a history professor and expert in Alaskan history, was testifying in Congress in favor of keeping ANWR closed to drilling. Representative  Young was at the hearing, and he did not like what Dr. Brinkley had to say. He treated him with disdain, and Dr. Brinkley did not take it lightly. While he sincerely appreciates the wilderness that is ANWR, Rep. Young seems not to. He said,

“The Arctic Plain is really nothing. You say it’s not the heart — it is not the heart. It is not the heart. It is part of the most deficit part of the area. And what hurts me the most as you sit there in the Rice University, when the people support drilling for their good and for the good of this nation, as a college professor in an ivory tower you can go up there and camp and spend your time. And I hope you spend a lot of money.”

The debate on Arctic drilling has sunk to new lows. While it isn’t that surprising that the most vocal champions of preserving Alaska’s wilderness come from the outside – after all, they do not stand to gain economically from drilling there – it is sad that Alaska’s sole congressional representative will not even listen to opposing views.

Sources

[1] “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment, 1998, Including Economic Analysis,” USGS

[2] “Potential Impacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on the Arctic Refuge’s Coastal Plain: Historical Overview and Issues of Concern,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

[3] “Alaskans Strongly Support ANWR Development,“ ANWR.org: Jobs and Energy for America

[4] “Proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

News Links

“Historian gets into it with Don Young during Congressional hearing,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

“A video of Rep. Don Young every American should see,” MinnPost.com