Huma Sheikh
Kashmir is a particularly beautiful, yet unstable, region in South Asia that lies between India and Pakistan. Over the past 60 years, both India and Pakistan have fought three wars over this territory. Kashmir has been grappling with incidents of violence since a separatist uprising in 1989 and now the recent spate of protests due to a controversial religious land transfer issue has added fuel to the fire.
On May 26, the Jammu and Kashmir Government, in consultation with the Indian government, reached an agreement to transfer 100 acres of forest land to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board. The board is responsible for the smooth and trouble-free pilgrimage to the holy cave shrine of Amarnath, and the acres were given in order to set up temporary shelters and facilities for Hindu pilgrims. This evoked a huge controversy; demonstrators from the Kashmir Valley were against the land transfer, while protesters from the Jammu region supported it.
At first, the people of Kashmir opposed the land transfer because they feared ecological imbalance in the region. The protesters later claimed that land transfer was an attempt to change the demographics of the valley.
But the acre agreement is not the real issue, as far as protesters are concerned. The people in the region have pent-up emotions and take advantage of any situation that arises. There are already thousands of acres of farmers' land under the occupation of the Indian Army in the valley. While farmers are still optimistic about getting back their land, it seems the Indian government is no longer interested in the reduction or withdrawal of troops from the valley. The land transfer has only helped to spread negative sentiment.
Kashmir has been recognized by the U.N. as a disputed territory. The origin of the problem in the valley is traced back to the non-implementation of the agreement made by the Indian government in 1947 when India and Pakistan won their independence from Britain. According to the agreement, the people of Kashmir were promised the right to self-determination by the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. The various phases of self-determination, however, were always evaded by the Indian government. The valley has since become the bone of contention between the two neighboring countries.
The protesters also said that according to Article 370 of the agreement - which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir - no non-Kashmiri can own land in the valley. The recent row is thus a fight of Kashmiris for their rights.
Thousands of people took part in the processions in which 40 people, including a separatist leader, were killed and hundreds were injured due to police firing. As the protests turned violent, the Congress-led government in the region came under extreme pressure from its main alliance party, the People's Democratic Party. The party threatened to withdraw support if the government did not revoke the land order.
Though the order was revoked, the Ghulam Nabi Azad government had to step down after the People's Democratic Party didn't lend support to his government and the governor rule was imposed in Jammu and Kashmir.
The revocation of the order, on the other hand, provoked widespread protests in Jammu. Several people there were killed and many others injured in demonstrations. The people of Jammu, in support of the land transfer, enforced an economic blockade in the Kashmir Valley by stopping traffic on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway.
The protest continued for 61 days, and on Aug. 31, a Jammu and Kashmir governor-appointed panel signed an agreement with the Hindu groups, who were leading the agitation in Jammu. According to the agreement, the shrine board would be making temporary use of 40 hectares of land during the "yatra" (pilgrimage) period.
Although the new agreement has brought the situation under control in Jammu, it has provoked Muslims in Kashmir. Though there was a lull in violence in the Kashmir Valley during the holy month of Ramadan, a string of violent incidents have taken place in the past few days. Recently, curfew was imposed in the valley and several separatist leaders were arrested in order to stop them from holding sit-ins in Lal Chowk, the heart of the capital city in Kashmir.
The question is how many more lives must be lost before there is a complete end to violence in Kashmir?
Monday, October 27, 2008
'Writing with Thread' at a glance
Huma Sheikh
'Writing with Thread' uses a mix of textile art and jewelry to showcase the lives of Southwest Chinese minorities.[Click to enlarge]
'Writing with Thread,' an exhibition of Southwestern Chinese jewlery and textile art, started off as a bid to bring awareness to UH students about a community that scripted its history without a written language.The exhibition, organized by the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery, is the largest of its kind, featuring over 500 objects from 15 ethnic groups and 100 subgroups of Southwest China."The event is fascinating, as it provides the history of the ethnic minorities who lived without written languages and passed their customs and traditions orally through generations," UH Art Gallery Director Lisa Yoshihara said. "So one way to document their cultural beliefs was through embroidery. And the thread became their ink and the needle their pen."The exhibition, which is on loan from Taiwan, showcases what they choose to be the most outstanding examples of the textile arts and is assembled by Huang Yingfeng, the director of Evergrand Museum in Taiwan. Huang has worked for over 17 years to collect the objects of historical importance. According Yoshihara, he believes the collection reflects the meaning associated with the production of indigenous clothing."Mr. Huang has spent nearly two decades building the collection in order to preserve it before it is lost. So it's a real gift to the world," Yoshihara said.She also said the UH Art Gallery is committed to featuring both contemporary and historic works to acclimatize students to different traditions. "We encourage students to see this unique collection because this is once in a lifetime chance," she said.'Writing with Thread' began on Sept. 21 and will continue until Nov. 30. The collection's presentation, which showcases apparel, baby carriers, quilt covers, festive and religious vestments and silver jewelry, reflects the great river systems of the Southwestern region of China along which indigenous groups settled.For more information on the exhibit, contact the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery at (808) 956-6888 or visit their website at hawaii.edu/artgallery/The exhibition will be held next in the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin from Jan. 31, 2009 through April 12, 2009. It will then be opened in New Mexico from May 15 to Aug. 16 at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.
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'Writing with Thread' uses a mix of textile art and jewelry to showcase the lives of Southwest Chinese minorities.[Click to enlarge]
'Writing with Thread,' an exhibition of Southwestern Chinese jewlery and textile art, started off as a bid to bring awareness to UH students about a community that scripted its history without a written language.The exhibition, organized by the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery, is the largest of its kind, featuring over 500 objects from 15 ethnic groups and 100 subgroups of Southwest China."The event is fascinating, as it provides the history of the ethnic minorities who lived without written languages and passed their customs and traditions orally through generations," UH Art Gallery Director Lisa Yoshihara said. "So one way to document their cultural beliefs was through embroidery. And the thread became their ink and the needle their pen."The exhibition, which is on loan from Taiwan, showcases what they choose to be the most outstanding examples of the textile arts and is assembled by Huang Yingfeng, the director of Evergrand Museum in Taiwan. Huang has worked for over 17 years to collect the objects of historical importance. According Yoshihara, he believes the collection reflects the meaning associated with the production of indigenous clothing."Mr. Huang has spent nearly two decades building the collection in order to preserve it before it is lost. So it's a real gift to the world," Yoshihara said.She also said the UH Art Gallery is committed to featuring both contemporary and historic works to acclimatize students to different traditions. "We encourage students to see this unique collection because this is once in a lifetime chance," she said.'Writing with Thread' began on Sept. 21 and will continue until Nov. 30. The collection's presentation, which showcases apparel, baby carriers, quilt covers, festive and religious vestments and silver jewelry, reflects the great river systems of the Southwestern region of China along which indigenous groups settled.For more information on the exhibit, contact the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery at (808) 956-6888 or visit their website at hawaii.edu/artgallery/The exhibition will be held next in the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin from Jan. 31, 2009 through April 12, 2009. It will then be opened in New Mexico from May 15 to Aug. 16 at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.
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Friday, October 17, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
I am not unemployed, suggests Natwar
I am not unemployed, suggests Natwar
Despite resigning, Mr Natwar Singh today
suggested on a defiant note that he would not remain unemployed
for even a day after losing his ministership.
''From tomorrow, I shall be writing a book and having a damn
good time,'' he said at the launch of a book written by
former Permanent Representative to the UN Chinmaya R Gharekhan.
''Half an hour earlier, I became gainfully unemployed,'' he
said, adding in response to questions, ''I will play with children,
read books, and have a good time''.
Asked later about the subject of his books, he said it would
be about ''diplomatic incidents'', but did not elaborate. Earlier
in reference to a remark about the Volcker controversy he said
that ''Mr Volcker, you know, is not one of my favorite
individuals''.
Mr Singh sought to give a positive spin to his return among
the diplomatic and scholarly community present for the launch.
'' Given the choice, I would have been here instead of meeting the
Prime Minister,'' he said by way of explaning his delayed arrival
at the function.
On the book 'The Horseshoe Table', Mr. Singh said, it not
only provided an insider's view of the UN Security Council but
was also a very ''sensible and solid contribution'' reflecting
on the ''working and non-working contributions'' of the world
body.
''There is a democracy deficit in the UN Security Council,''
he said, reflecting on the ''power games'' that are witnessed on
the world stage under the garb of ''morality and justice''.
No longer bound by the ministerial code, Mr Singh used the
occasion to highlight the growing ''interventionist'' role of
the
''The collapse of the
an alternative point of view from the world, he pointed out.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Nixon, Bush, Palin
Nixon, Bush, Palin
By Roger Cohen
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
NEW YORK: In 1970, in the midst of the longest bear market since World War II, President Nixon declared: "Frankly, if I had any money, I'd be buying stocks right now."
The market soared.
Now, I've been asking myself, for the heck of it, what would happen if President Bush tried his own jawboning of the market and said: "Frankly, if I had any money, I'd be buying stocks right now."
My conclusion is: Mr. President, please, please, whatever your next whim, do not say that! I reckon the market could tank in ways that would make this week's 777 point one-day plunge look paltry.
I'm not about to write a paean to Nixon. I watched him quit in a bar in Bolinas, California; I can still hear the cheer. But even his tortured nature betrayed some essential seriousness about the fate of the United States of America. By contrast, the Bush crowd has gambled the future of this country with abandon.
(And Nixon did resign. Whatever happened to the notion that someone - a Cabinet member, a Wall Street CEO, the inventor of credit-default swaps - might actually fall on his or her sword? Shame has become a quaint chivalric notion, like honor, a thing of another American time.)
Let's take a closer look at the Bush gamble. It's worth doing, because the first person in this country to re-price risk on the basis that it no longer existed was the president. Now, that's leading by example.
The gamble involved going to war in Iraq at an estimated cost to date of about $700 billion (does that figure sound familiar?) while opting not to raise taxes but lower them. It involved going into that war, and another in Afghanistan, while asking not for shared sacrifice but a collective maxing-out in the service of shopping.
At the same time, Bush, who often seemed to need directions to the Treasury, opted to allow an opaque derivatives market to grow into the trillions without supervision, regulation or information. The market knew best. Turns out that what the market knew best was how to turn capitalism into a pyramid scheme for trading worthless pieces of paper.
The terrible cost is now clear. But we should be grateful for small mercies. Remember Bush wanted to throw Social Security into the gamble, too, by privatizing it!
Market capitalism is a sophisticated thing that calls for transparency, ethics and rules. Bush and his crowd gambled that some "new paradigm" meant these things were passé.
They're not. We have to be careful now. Already the contagion of bank failures has spread to Europe. People are asking of the United States: What became of this country?
The Chinese have been ready to treat U.S. Treasuries as a rock-hard store of value and loan us the dollars they accumulate at a very low interest rate. But what if they start to doubt the U.S. government will repay its debt?
"We are getting closer to a tipping point," said Benn Steil, an economist. "People are asking, can we really trust the dollar as a store of value?"
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management collapsed in 1971. Since then the dollar's been the primary reserve currency. Now, we're reaching another point where a rethink of the foundations for a global economy is needed.
Global trade and capital flows are essential to prosperity. But it's illogical to have a global system with no global reserve as insurance. Perhaps the trillions of Gulf and Chinese surpluses could be used to fund that. Or perhaps it's time for a return to the gold standard.
I know one thing: This is no time for further gambling. I'm grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Sarah Palin becoming president if the McCain-Palin Republican ticket wins the election is about one in six or seven.
That's the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or a flipped coin coming up heads three times running. Is America ready for that?
When power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead. There is one capable, sober guy in the Bush administration: Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He recently said U.S. forces in Iraq had to learn how to do counterinsurgency there. "But that came at a frightful human, financial and political cost," he noted.
Gates warned that "warfare is inevitably tragic, inefficient." He urged skepticism of any notion that "adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block."
In short, he lambasted the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush war effort for its gambler's irresponsibility. The same has been true on the financial front. The equivalent of "Shock and Awe" has been "Sub and Prime."
And people's houses across America really did go up in smoke while fear stalked the land.
Readers are invited to comment at my blog: www.iht.com/passages
By Roger Cohen
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
NEW YORK: In 1970, in the midst of the longest bear market since World War II, President Nixon declared: "Frankly, if I had any money, I'd be buying stocks right now."
The market soared.
Now, I've been asking myself, for the heck of it, what would happen if President Bush tried his own jawboning of the market and said: "Frankly, if I had any money, I'd be buying stocks right now."
My conclusion is: Mr. President, please, please, whatever your next whim, do not say that! I reckon the market could tank in ways that would make this week's 777 point one-day plunge look paltry.
I'm not about to write a paean to Nixon. I watched him quit in a bar in Bolinas, California; I can still hear the cheer. But even his tortured nature betrayed some essential seriousness about the fate of the United States of America. By contrast, the Bush crowd has gambled the future of this country with abandon.
(And Nixon did resign. Whatever happened to the notion that someone - a Cabinet member, a Wall Street CEO, the inventor of credit-default swaps - might actually fall on his or her sword? Shame has become a quaint chivalric notion, like honor, a thing of another American time.)
Let's take a closer look at the Bush gamble. It's worth doing, because the first person in this country to re-price risk on the basis that it no longer existed was the president. Now, that's leading by example.
The gamble involved going to war in Iraq at an estimated cost to date of about $700 billion (does that figure sound familiar?) while opting not to raise taxes but lower them. It involved going into that war, and another in Afghanistan, while asking not for shared sacrifice but a collective maxing-out in the service of shopping.
At the same time, Bush, who often seemed to need directions to the Treasury, opted to allow an opaque derivatives market to grow into the trillions without supervision, regulation or information. The market knew best. Turns out that what the market knew best was how to turn capitalism into a pyramid scheme for trading worthless pieces of paper.
The terrible cost is now clear. But we should be grateful for small mercies. Remember Bush wanted to throw Social Security into the gamble, too, by privatizing it!
Market capitalism is a sophisticated thing that calls for transparency, ethics and rules. Bush and his crowd gambled that some "new paradigm" meant these things were passé.
They're not. We have to be careful now. Already the contagion of bank failures has spread to Europe. People are asking of the United States: What became of this country?
The Chinese have been ready to treat U.S. Treasuries as a rock-hard store of value and loan us the dollars they accumulate at a very low interest rate. But what if they start to doubt the U.S. government will repay its debt?
"We are getting closer to a tipping point," said Benn Steil, an economist. "People are asking, can we really trust the dollar as a store of value?"
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management collapsed in 1971. Since then the dollar's been the primary reserve currency. Now, we're reaching another point where a rethink of the foundations for a global economy is needed.
Global trade and capital flows are essential to prosperity. But it's illogical to have a global system with no global reserve as insurance. Perhaps the trillions of Gulf and Chinese surpluses could be used to fund that. Or perhaps it's time for a return to the gold standard.
I know one thing: This is no time for further gambling. I'm grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Sarah Palin becoming president if the McCain-Palin Republican ticket wins the election is about one in six or seven.
That's the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or a flipped coin coming up heads three times running. Is America ready for that?
When power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead. There is one capable, sober guy in the Bush administration: Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He recently said U.S. forces in Iraq had to learn how to do counterinsurgency there. "But that came at a frightful human, financial and political cost," he noted.
Gates warned that "warfare is inevitably tragic, inefficient." He urged skepticism of any notion that "adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block."
In short, he lambasted the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush war effort for its gambler's irresponsibility. The same has been true on the financial front. The equivalent of "Shock and Awe" has been "Sub and Prime."
And people's houses across America really did go up in smoke while fear stalked the land.
Readers are invited to comment at my blog: www.iht.com/passages
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