Not actually so paranoid after all

I've often wondered about the U.S. role in Pakistan's nuclear program, given the rather special relationship we've maintained with Pervez Musharraf, and then wondered if that wasn't a touch paranoid on my part. Sadly, not at all paranoid.

A friend told me about the new book, Deception, by the investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, published last month. It's late for me and I'm feeling a little lazy, so I'll just quote from the publisher: "The shocking, three-decade story of A. Q. Khan and Pakistan’s nuclear program, and the complicity of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponry."

From the synopsis:

On December 15, 1975, A. Q. Khan—a young Pakistani scientist working in Holland—stole top-secret blueprints for a revolutionary new process to arm a nuclear bomb. His original intention, and that of his government, was purely patriotic—to provide Pakistan a counter to India’s recently unveiled nuclear device. However, as Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark chillingly relate in their masterful investigation of Khan’s career over the past thirty years, over time that limited ambition mushroomed into the world’s largest clandestine network engaged in selling nuclear secrets—a mercenary and illicit program managed by the Pakistani military and made possible, in large part, by aid money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and by indiscriminate assistance from China.

Most unnerving, the authors reveal that the sales of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, so much in the news today, were made with the clear knowledge of the American government, for whom Pakistan has been a crucial buffer state and ally—first against the Soviet Union, now in the “war against terror.”

Everything news is old

And Jeremy Olshan proves it on his new blog, Unchanging Times, where he gently takes the Times to task, comparing Times stories of old with today's so-called news.

It's not clear that he has it out for the Times per se, but since I kind of do, I'm extra pleased.

Must-see doc TV

Wanna see even-handed? I'll show you even-handed. Richard Armitage and Mohammad Jafari, among others, share more or less equal time on the same Frontline program, Showdown with Iran.

I agree with many of the comments-- never does the American press give the background on the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 (it's called history, which actually goes go back farther than 1979), which, 50-plus years on, still looms in the memories of many Iranians and does much to explain the current regime's preoccupation with asserting its sovereignity. Nor do I care for the title, which reflects the standard narrow and flawed narrative of the U.S.-Iran relations story. But overall, far and away better than most. One hopes it's enough to give pause to all but the looniest of those beating war drums in the direction of Iran. (Disclaimer: a good friend worked on this program, but given our shared tendency to critique press coverage of Iran at any opportunity I don't think the relationship has done much to cloud my perspective here.)

The well-designed and very user-friendly Frontline website is a treasure trove of extras, from full transcripts of interviews to behind-the-scenes with the crew to the comments (which the producers respond to, at times). Does anyone else think that public broadcasters make some of the best use of the web for multimedia? (Therefore I will chalk up my inability to find the correct Watch Online link last week when the program premiered to my own crappy tech mojo.)

Jafari is slightly better looking than Armitage, which is the only reason he gets the pix, above.

Best. Lawsuit. Ever.

God (!) knows what the hell I've been up to.

But State Rep. Ernie Chambers could tell you exactly what he's been up to: making a case against the powers that be. The Power, that is.

Chambers, a state rep in Nebraska, is suing God for terrorist activity (floods, famines, wreaking general havoc).

Check out the great alliteration in the list of charges. And props once more to the FP blog (that crew doesn't seem to miss much).

I'm just wondering where you find a dozen peers to serve on a jury panel in a case against God.

It's been one trashy year

One everydaytrash-y year, to be exact.

In that short time, everydaytrash has brought us the Weekly Compactor, Trashtastic Tuesdays, Literary Trash Week, Artistic Trash Week, introducted me to trashion, been named the world's foremost garblog, and much, much more. Almost makes you glad there's so much trash in the world for the blogging.

So, props and ovations, my friend.

Loyalties old and new

Yes, that's Thierry Henry in home colors.

Not Arsenal home colors, but Barca home colors.

While Gio and Guily, my old favorites, are gone.

This is the thing that always got me as a kid, when I'd follow the Padres and the Chargers (almost religously). I couldn't comprehend how a player could be "sold" to another team. Because....it was a Team. A Home Team. I stopped following the Padres when Steve Garvey came to play first base. How could they let a Dodger on the team? It was all blasphemous to me.

I understand economics of sports marginally better now, but the logic of markets doesn't apply to the irrational logic of loyalty, and doesn't assuage the idealist in me much more than it did when I was 9 or 10. It will take while to get used to this very new team.

A small decline in the double standard

Sort of, according to the Guardian: FIFA says female futbolers should wear tighter shorts, while German World Cup officials wanted all those boys to go topless.

No great conspiracy

This is one of the most poignant and concise indictments of the war in Iraq that I've come across.

I Love Loren

Because she's so smart and because she has eloquently and respectfully taken the sometimes annoyingly bleeding heart Nicholas Kristoff to task.

Give and Take

Nightgrapefruit may not remember pronouncing me genius(!) for ripping out individual New Yorker articles to read on the longish F-train ride to meet up for our weekend runs in Prospect Park (I'm entertained but don't have to sacrifice the entire mag at the end of my journey for the sake of a run), but for the record, I agree on the assessment. I also take single pieces on shorter rides when I don't want to carry a lot of stuff around and need insurance against boredom (even an inveterate people-watcher sometimes gets bored watching other trainriders).

Anyway, this is how I only recently found myself reading Margaret Talbot's profile on the journalist Orianna Fallaci, written last year, several months before Fallici's death last September.

I was momentarily fascinated, then quickly appalled, by Fallaci. I have an intuitive bias against journalists who become - and mostly it's because they allow themselves to become - celebrities. And, bigots like Fallaci are unappealing on their face. While a curious creature - her anti-Islamic vehemence is startling and therefore a cause for wonder - in the end she comes off blindly angry and single-minded (if not exactly simple-minded), and therefore is inherently boring. Fallaci reserved an acute vitriol for Muslims in Europe and the most recent wave of Islamic cultural presence there, particularly in her native Italy:


“They live at our expense, because they’ve got schools, hospitals, everything,” she said at one point, beginning to shout. “And they want to build damn mosques everywhere.” She spoke of a new mosque and Islamic center planned for Colle di Val d’Elsa, near Siena. She vowed that it would not remain standing. “If I’m alive, I will go to my friends in Carrara—you know, where there is the marble. They are all anarchists. With them, I take the explosives. I make you juuump in the air. I blow it up! With the anarchists of Carrara. I do not want to see this mosque—it’s very near my house in Tuscany. I do not want to see a twenty-four-metre minaret in the landscape of Giotto. When I cannot even wear a cross or carry a Bible in their country! So I BLOW IT UP! ”


To be fair, I have read none of Fallaci's work, but as this woman who concerned herself, ostensibly, with broadening human freedom (and whose parents were anti-fascists during WWII in Italy and suffered for it), I was sad to read that outburst (the likes of which she was apparently very well known for).

I perked up a little later, though, when I happened to visit the Arabist (their site has been down a lot the past few days), where I found
this bit about an exhibit on Islam in Italy now on at the Met, and learned that Venice holds the distinction of being the city where the first Koran was printed, and that denizens of the same town learned how to blow glass from Syrian Arabs. (Arab not always equating to Muslim, of course, but you get the point).

Perhaps it is better that Fallaci is no longer in the neighborhood to endure the presence of this exhibit (she lived for years on the Upper East Side before returning to Italy shortly before her death). Imagine the damage her shouts of denial at the quiet but thunderous facts of cultural contribution and adoption might do to the delicate objets d'art in the Met.

Wear It Out

Seems that the UK shares the view that global warming is our true collective enemy, and went to the trouble of telling the UN security council so.

Use It Up (everyday trash in absentia)

NOTE: Since I'm have used up all my blogger techmentality mojo and can't seem to figure out basics of posting via wordpress, I'm temporarily posting items for everydaytrash here. We'll move 'em over when Leila returns.

Apologies to everydaytrash faithful who thought they need not fear trash withdrawal while Leila ventured to other continents. I will spare you any excuses and just get down to it.

So many efforts are made to look to the future to solve our trash-related challenges that I wanted to take a brief look to the past. Before "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle" became a household mantra (if not yet a real habit), there was World War II and a slew of resource conservation propaganda. Back in the day, there were extensive efforts to encourage individuals to cut back or do without in almost every aspect of everyday life - do you really need to go on that trip? Are you preparing your home for winter so that you use the smallest amount of fuel needed? Suburbanites, have you planted a victory garden on your property so that industrial farmers can sell more of their food to support soldiers overseas?

I can't resist asking the obvious rhetorical question about why no similarly widespread federal initiative exists today. For those who don't want to call what's happening in Iraq a war, (or, reasonably, would prefer not to think of Iraqis as the enemy), there's always the real and universal enemy of global warming to rally against.

In any case, for your historical reading pleasure, here's a great short from Straight Dope at the Chicago Reader, reviewing which WWII efforts were beneficial (most) and which were mostly propaganda designed to boost morale (one or two). The Decatur Daily talks to folks who lived with rationing as everyday practice. More pix from wartime poster propaganda like the above (don't you love how innocently racy the Use It Up poster is?) can be found here (fair warning that plenty of these are far from PC). And, back to the present, San Francisco revitalizes the victory garden for 2007.

Dry and Droll

But you need not be Brit to find the BBC's program (programme) Recorded for Training Purposes funny, all sketch and satire. I love the fake ad for pc fruit products, whose claims include that "We make the Body Shop look like a Japanese whaling vessel."

Then, there's homegrown smart radio humor, too.

When Winning Is Losing

I won't resort to the s-word epithetics of my Man Utd-supporting coterie of friends, but Beatles orginators notwithstanding, Liverpool is not among my favorite locales these days, its futbolers having lost to Barca yet somehow still having managed to knock 'em out of the champions running.

I'm not about to shift allegiances from club or sport, but this whole "you can win the game but lose the championship spot" is probably part of the reason this game still has a bit of a difficult time in the U.S.

Deco, above right, in away colors.

Verdict

One down, four score and 7 (give or take) to go.

What a Mess

I’ll be guest blogging over at everydaytrash while co-conspirator nightgrapefruit is on the other side of the world for a couple of weeks.

If you haven’t found everydaytrash yet, we're not talking parishiltonnicolerichie trash. We mean dirty, smelly, nasty trash, the kind that you probably just drop down the garbage chute or set out on the curb and don’t think about again, even though you should. In Leila's absence I will deliver the second-finest in trashy news and commentary from all corners of the world.

For the moment I'm figuring out how to post on Wordpress, but will be spewing forth soon enough.

Grits

I found the note below in my e-mail queue this morning:









Dear Kimberly,

Beginning in April 2006, we collected online data from you and over 600 other participants. The study you completed helped us learn more about grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long term goals. Gritty individuals have consistent interests over time and pursue goals even in the face of failure. Individuals who score lower on the grit scale are less persistent and more likely to move frequently from interest to interest. Though individual questionnaire scores will not be reported, these results, obtained from the entire sample, may be of interest to you as a participant.

As expected, gritty individuals were more conscientious. Grit was also associated with an agreeable disposition and extraversion. Grittier people were more satisfied with their lives. Grit was highest among participants aged 65 and older and lowest among participants aged 25-34. Ratings of grit by self-report closely matched those of friends and family members. That is, our conception of our own level of grit seems largely aligned with the conceptions of our intimates.

Unfortunately, we are not able to answer individual queries about this study at this time. However, we do appreciate your participation-thank you!

Angela Lee Duckworth, PhD
Positive Psychology Center
3701 Market St. Suite 209
Philadelphia, PA 19104

215/898-1339 (office)
215/573-2188 (fax)
duckwort@psych.upenn.edu (email)
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/


***

I have a vague recollection of reading some pop-psych article on happiness a while ago, online, and clicking through to some survey. I'm slightly disappointed that the researchers won't provide my own personal score on their scale of grittiness. But mostly I'm curious about a couple of things. If grit was highest among older participants, isn't that likely because older folks have had more time to be persistent over time, or have learned that it takes time to achieve long term goals, or that people in general grow more concerned with what they make of their lives as they grow older and therefore may work harder as they age to guarantee acheivement? And nothing in the summary about correlations of gender with grit?

Stay tuned. I may just work up enough grit to look into these and other grit-related questions.

Public Libraries: Good for Brains, Good for Business

That’s what a new study by the Urban Institute says.


I needed no convincing, but I can always use an excuse to post a pix of my favorite public library: Seattle’s Central Library, here.


From the Philanthropy News Digest summary:

“The study relates specific ways local governments, agencies, and libraries are working together to benefit individuals, agencies, and the community at large in four areas: early literacy services, employment and career resources, small business resources and programs, and a physical presence that contributes to stability, safety, and quality of life, while attracting foot traffic, providing long-term tenancy, and complementing neighboring retail and cultural destinations. Capitalizing on these strengths, libraries can fuel not only current but also emerging economic activity.”

Chronicles of Coups

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish chronicler of coups and revolutions, has died.

The BBC photo makes him look like a toiler, which I don't doubt - he wrote about dozens of upheavals. But I much prefer the photo in the facing page of my Vintage International paperback copy of Shah of Shahs. It makes him look like the Prince of Darkness, a mischievous and malevolent glint to his eye, an effect heightened by his big arched eyebrows, and completed by the crooked grin that just bares his teeth. I suspect it might be a more honest photo - someone so exposed to so much violence and turmoil often propelled by evil must take some kind of satisfaction from seeking it out again and again. Or perhaps it was just escaping a death sentence not once, but four times, that gave him a gallows humor. Then again, this one, pulled from the Wikipedia commons, has a touch of the charming, erudite intellectual about it and seems genuine enough.

The only work of his I've read is Shah of Shahs, assigned last year for school. I think he underestimated the role that memory of Mossadegh and the 1953 coup played in the consciousness of Iran in 1979 - Kapuscinski dismissed Mossadegh as ineffectual and inconsequential. But he seemed masterful at illuminating the mass psychology of living under two back-to-back interpretations of brutality, first the Shah and his Savak, and then the Ayatollahs and their Komitehs. It's usually so easy to think of behaving as a unfree person impossible from where I sit, but not after reading Kapuscinski. It's time to pick up more of his work.

Futbol Facts

I e-mailed my first draft of my master's project off on Tuesday, and had enough time in the afternoon to stop in to catch what I thought would be an easy Barca victory over a less accomplished team. After Barca was up 2-0 early on, the boys clearly thought it would be easy, too, and started to play that way. Until they found themselves facing a little guy named Wellington and a 2-2 tie shortly thereafter. What I thought would have been a boring game in an almost-deserted bar turned into quite a thrilling 3-2 win and made up for my having missed too many matches lately. Victory is always sweeter when it's hard-earned.

First half drink: bloody mary
Optional: meat pie
Second half drink: guinness (usually only when needing reinforcement during a close match, like Tuesday's against Alaves)
51% of reason for supporting Barca: mas que un club
49% of reason: There's not a bully or grandstander in the bunch. Plus Ronaldinho has the grace to never forget to say thanks to God for helping him look good. And then, as I have previously observed, Frank Rykaard always looks gorgeous in a suit.
Hero of the day: Saviola
Possibly edging out Gio as my fave: Guily.

May Cooler (and Smarter and More Courageous) Heads Prevail

Days after the U.S. dispatched a second set of battle ships to the Middle East, the BBC reports on efforts underway in Congress to force President Bush to seek its approval should he pursue an attack on Iran. If the resolution did manage to pass both the House and Senate it would hardly guarantee a more clear-eyed policy. Remembering my favorite bogus Power Point presentation a la Colin Powell in early 2003, I would never underestimate the ability of something of far less substance to effect events of great material impact. But I find the possibility of a resolution a little heartening in any case.

Elsewhere, FP's blog notes the obvious potential parallel of current U.S. rumblings in the direction of Iran with the Gulf of Tonkin farce that got the U.S. mired in Vietnam. The only thing I really take issue with in the FP bit is Mike Boyer's suggestion that a Tonkin-esque instigation to justify an attack against Iran seems far-fetched. If the original trumped up Gulf of Tonkin incident and the aforementioned Power Point tell us anything, it's that all those seemingly far-fetched wacko notions are disproportionately effective at starting these sorts of things.

Finally, I was surprised back in October that the American press did not make more noise about Daniel Ellsberg's (pictured with Mrs. E, above) call in Harpers for insider Bush admin wonks to do earlier for Iran what he tried to do for Vietnam by leaking the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg encouraged wonks like himself to reveal the administration's secret plans (perhaps now less and less secret on a day-by-day basis) to attack Iran. You'd think the Times and the Wa. Post, the financial beneficiaries of Ellsberg's risk (not to mention beneficiaries of that little old Supreme Court case involving prior restraint) would love to get their hands on such documents. It would at least sell papers, if not protect the national interests that might be served by preventing another nasty and immoral war.

P.S. Meanwhile, as the U.S. bemoans Iran’s nuclear ambitions, likely years from fruition, bigger and brawnier China surprises the world by getting its ballistic satellite-destroying missles off in space right now.