At last

A president we can respect, and whom the world will respect. It's a new era.

Let's just hope the outgoing administration manages to keep its fly zipped until January - no war with Iran or Pakistan, no environmental rape, no extra corporate welfare.

Hope is now back in fashion.

Road Rage

A few days a week, I drive three children (two of them mine) to school in Harrisburg. Of course, I drive carefully, refrain from swearing at idiot drivers, and generally attempt to model calm and responsible driver conduct. Some days it is particularly hard, today was among the hardest. Not because of some bizarre and life-threatening action by a truck driver or because (as is all too common) someone is following me too closely at high speed. This was something in front of me, that forced me to draw back even further than usual in the hope that the kids would not see such obscenity.

An SUV in front of me had a sticker on the back saying:

No Husseins in the White House.

Barely-disguised code in the current climate for "No Ni&&@#$ in the White House." So thank you, McCain-Palin campaign, for empowering racist hicks everywhere to be out and proud about their feebleminded, fearful hate. John Murtha acknowledged today that endemic racism in western PA will reduce the size of Obama's victory here. Sadly, it is not restricted to the west - we have our very own bigots here in the Capital Area.

How can we bring up decent, open-minded children with that kind of example around them? Hope and work for an Obama victory, of course. Model civility. And, like Wendy in South Park, confront and fight cancers wherever we encounter them.

Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

It's Blog Action Day - and the theme is poverty. It is such a huge theme - where does one even begin? Too big. So I will tell a small story of the kindness of strangers.

As an undergrad, I spent a few weeks one April traveling around Turkey with Francesca. We were on a budget of around £5 a day, if I remember correctly, not least because my parents had cut off financial support for a while for reasons I don't need to get into here. I had six months' worth of Turkish at that point, and I taught Francesca the essentials - greetings, please and thank you, and "I am a student, I have no money." Towards the end of our time there we were in Cappadocia, and it was Ramadan. Ramadan is particularly hard on the Turks, many of whom are very dedicated smokers, but we did not encounter any irritability, or anything other than the customary hospitality. On our way out of town to catch the bus to Ankara, a woman saw us passing and invited us into her house - which looked something like the one pictured here, but without the snow at that time. Although she was fasting, and clearly not at all wealthy, she pressed on us food for the journey - including delicious fresh tomatoes and spicy peppers. Insisted that we take it and asked for nothing. And of course, the memory of this - and other acts of simple kindness - remain fresh for me today.

It has been my experience traveling, particularly but not only in the Middle East, that those with little to share are often the most willing to do so. There is nothing romantic about this, and certainly nothing to celebrate about poverty in general. It is the practical solidarity and kindness of the poor. And it is a rebuke to the rampant materialism celebrated by so much of Western culture, and a necessary corrective to the acquisitiveness and consumerism that do so much to threaten not only our beleaguered planet, but also (as even the doctrinaire free-market fundamentalists are now forced to recognize) the sound functioning of economic life in general. We need a simpler life for all, a more even distribution of wealth, and a re-evaluation of consumer capitalism as the tasteless and dangerous system it is. We must connect in kindness and solidarity, value our fellow human beings over the acquisition of mere things, lift the whole planet out of poverty in a sustainable way. Every action towards that end, however small, is useful and hopeful.

Sing out

So, Clay Aiken has come out of the closet. Clay is gay. In other news, the Pope is reported to be Catholic, and bears are alleged to be... Well, you get the picture. I'm happy for him that he feels able to do this. It's a shame it took so long, but then again, would he really have done so well in Idol if he had been out and proud? How would my friend Dan Fishback fare? He would be fabulous, and he would not be allowed to succeed (not that he would go for it, I'm sure, except as some new twist on performance art). Ironically, over in the 'conservative' and 'intolerant' Middle East, we have transsexual superstars such as Bülent Ersoy (see below) and Aderet. Let's hope for Clay and others in the US that audiences follow the Lebanese example, and concentrate on the music, rather than worrying about who is producing it.

Vote Third Party?

Ostrich Syndrome

Transsexual diva Bülent Ersoy joins a long line of prominent public figures, including Orhan Pamuk, in undergoing prosecution for thoughtcrime. Criticizing the military is, as the BBC's Sarah Rainsford points out, a gamble. But what the military and its allies in the judiciary have to realize is that they have lost this one. It is no longer feasible, let alone desirable, to suppress all criticism of how the Turkish state has managed its Kurdish problem. If uncritical admiration of the military was ever established hegemonically, it has broken down by now. This is not in itself a problem. There is plenty to admire about the Turkish military. It should realize that criticism is not the enemy - that there are worse enemies, including complacency and paranoia. Let the Diva voice her concerns, let the writers examine the problem and propose solutions. The debate will be healthy. More to the point, it is already going on and is unlikely to be stopped now. So the best move is to get heads out of the sand and into the discussion.

Terror attack in Yemen

It's a small, sad world. Reports just coming in of an attack on the US Embassy in Sana'a feature Ryan Gliha, Embassy spokesperson. A decade ago, I was doing that job for the Brits in Egypt, answering questions from the media and the public about the attack on tourists at the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor. In those first few hours after the attack, we couldn't know when picking up the phone in the Embassy's impromptu incident room whether the person on the other end would be a tabloid journalist or a parent worried about her or his backpacking child who might or might not have been in Luxor at the time. A few days later I represented the Ambassador at a memorial ceremony held by the Governor of Luxor. It all remains very vivid for me.

I know Ryan a little from when we graduate students together with a common interest in Islam and Central Asia. I can only wish him well now as he does what I know to be an exhausting job, emotionally and otherwise.