Pakistan for Beginners: 3, with Omer Alvie

Click to listen to Chris's conversation with Omer Alvie (17 minutes, 8 MB MP3)

But suppose this were a realistic novel! Just think what else I might have to put in... How much real-life material might become compulsory! -- About, for example... the attempt to declare the sari an obscene garment; or about the extra hangings -- the first for twenty years -- that were ordered purely to legitimize the execution of Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; or about why Bhutto's hangman has vanished into thin air, just like the many street-urchins who are being stolen every day in broad daylight; or about anti-Semitism, an interesting phenomenon, under whose influence people who have never met a Jew vilify all Jews for the sake of maintaining solidarity with the Arab states which offer Pakistan workers, these days, employment and much-needed foreign exchange; or about smuggling, the boom in heroin exports, military dictators, venal civilians, corrupt civil servants, bought judges, newspapers of whose stories the only thing that can confidently be said is that they are lies; or about the apportioning of the national budget, with special reference to the percentages set aside for defense (huge) and for education (not huge). Imagine my difficulties!

Salman Rushdie, in his "modern fairytale" of Pakistan, Shame, 1983... p. 67 in the Picador paperback.

Pakistan: All Martial and No Law was the headline on Omer Alvie's last piece for the invaluable Global Voices Online. In our conversation today he remarks on the comic-opera moment in the news this very day as General Musharraf took his oath as President Musharraf under a constitution he's suspended, making him -- what? -- a Suspended President. Omer Alvie is a Pakistani who works and blogs in Dubai, and commutes now and then to Karachi. He has a talent for the absurd humor and not-so-post-colonial anguish of Pakistani politics. It was all, as Omer says, described and foretold nearly a quarter century ago in Salman Rushdie's novel Shame -- a telling in fiction of the ouster and then the hanging of Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. "I tell myself this will be a novel of leavetaking," Rushdie writes in the book, "my last words on the East, from which, many years ago, I began to come loose." Omer Alvie is of a younger generation that once saw charisma and modernity in the face of Pervez Musharraf. He now feels bitter disappointment and the weight of more than Pakistan's history on events. He says:

The external influence is so strong on Pakistani politics... I have to go back to the War on Terror. This thing overall is farcical to me... If you want to get to the root cause of why terrorist cells exist, or why terrorism happens, you don't go around bombing countries or arresting innocent people in hopes of catching a few. That's not addressing the problem, and that's what's happening in Pakistan. I sometimes get the feeling that Pakistan is being conditioned. I believe it's on the same hitlist as Iraq, Iran and Syria. Actually I should clarify: the hitlist should have the letter S in front of it, because that's probably how the project of the New American Century and most of the Bush administration sees it... this collosally screwed up foreign policy which is now classified as a "war on terrorism"... ...The whole "war on terror" thing, this 9.11 thing, I think, has screwed up Pakistan more than anything else really, because it's affected us more. We're stuck in bookends. The average Pakistani is now stuck being questioned by extremists and militants about how to dress, what to do, when to pray, and being questioned constantly about how they live their lives. This is their experience in Pakistan. The same Pakistanis when they travel outside to the US get blamed and classified in a very generic manner as a terrorist, because they're a Pakistani or a Muslim. We are squeezed between 2 bookends.

Omer Alvie of The Olive Ream, in conversation with Open Source, November 29, 2007

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Discussing McCain's Hitler comment, CNN's Brown baselessly asserted McCain was "making his case for a strong military"

During postdebate analysis of the November 28 CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper aired an exchange between presidential candidates Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Rep. Ron Paul (TX), in which McCain referred to Paul's assertion that U.S. troops should be redeployed from Iraq and stated, "[W]e allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement." McCain went on to say that he visited with U.S. troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving and that "the message of these brave men and women who are serving over there is, 'Let us win.' " Asked by Cooper for her thoughts on McCain's statement, in which the senator equated opposition to the Iraq war and support for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq with the attitude that allowed Adolf Hitler to come to power, correspondent Campbell Brown asserted that McCain was "making his case for a strong military and an interventionist foreign policy." Brown, however, did not explain why she concluded from McCain's comparison of Paul's position on Iraq to the conditions leading to Hitler's ascension that McCain was "making his case for a strong military.''

Indeed, McCain made no comments about the need for a "strong military" during the debate:

McCAIN: If Congress can't fix the tax code, give me the job and I'll fix it.

I just want to also say that Congressman Paul, I've heard him now in many debates talk about bringing our troops home, and about the war in Iraq and how it's failed.

[applause]

And I want to tell you that that kind of isolationism, sir, is what caused World War II. We allowed --

[applause]

We allowed --

[audience booing]

COOPER: Allow him his answer. Allow him his answer, please.

McCAIN: We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement.

[audience booing]

McCAIN: And I want to tell you something, sir. I just -- I just finished having Thanksgiving with the troops, and their message to you is -- the message of these brave men and women who are serving over there is, "Let us win. Let us" --

[applause]

COOPER: We will -- please. We will get to Iraq --

From the November 28 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360:

COOPER: Campbell, John McCain took on Ron Paul about the war in Iraq and his desire to bring home the troops now.

Let's listen to that.

[begin video clip]

McCAIN: We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement.

[audience booing]

McCAIN: And I want to tell you something, sir. I just -- I just finished having Thanksgiving with the troops, and their message to you is -- the message of these brave men and women who are serving over there is, "Let us win. Let us" --

[applause]

[crosstalk]

PAUL: What John is saying is just totally distorted. He doesn't even understand the difference between non-intervention and isolationism.

I am not an isolationism -- an isolationist. I want to trade with people, talk with people, travel. But I don't want to send --

COOPER: Time is up, and we're going to talk about this later.

PAUL: -- our troops overseas using force to tell them how to live. We would object to it here and they're going to object to us over there.

[end video clip]

COOPER: Campbell Brown, your thoughts on this exchange?

BROWN: Well, I think, Anderson, that McCain used that exchange very effectively.

I mean, Ron Paul is essentially where Democrats are on the war. And McCain used him, in a way, as a foil on this to show how he would go after Democrats if he gets the nomination. And I think he did it pretty effectively, making his case for a strong military and an interventionist foreign policy.

I think I'm going to play contrarian a little bit with the other two panelists, since we are a panel, on some of the other issues. I did think the opening exchange, you know, immigration seems to be the dominant issue, not only among Republicans, but, frankly, Democrats now.

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penitentiary - podictionary 656

We have several common words in English for the places we lock people up.  There’s prison, jail and penitentiary.

Why so many, what’s the difference?

Prison and penitentiary have pretty well become synonymous, but it wasn’t always that way.  And jail is another story all on its own.  Jail is a place run by local authorities to hold prisoners until the legal system decides what to do with them while a prison or penitentiary is a place where someone convicted of a more serious offense is sent to wait out their time.  I’ll talk more about jail in another episode.

The word prison has been in English far longer than the word penitentiary.  Prison turns up in Old English while penitentiary makes its first appearance about 500 years ago.  Prison appears to be one of a relatively small number of words that came to English from French and Latin but before the Norman Conquest.  Of course there had long been trade and exchange between Britain and the rest of Europe before the Norman’s took over and since the Latin roots of the word prison lie in a meaning of “the action of making an arrest” we can imagine conflicts with foreign traders in each other’s countries as a possible vehicle to carry this word early into English.

Penitentiary on the other hand didn’t at first have to do with imprisonment.  Instead it had to do with feeling badly about what you’d done.  To feel penitent comes from a Latin root meaning “regret for one’s actions.”  Obviously it’s also related to the word repent.  These word roots wound their way from Latin through French and into Middle English.

When penitentiary first appeared in English as a word unto itself meaning a place you go after you do something bad, it applied exclusively to religious offenses.  So they were places people were sent to think about how they had offended God.

Then just after 1800 two new meanings arise.  In England special places were set up for unmarried mothers to go to feel bad about that night when they had felt so good.  That’s right, for a while a refuge for “fallen women” was called a penitentiary.

In the United States around the same time a penitentiary described not a jail or a prison, but a place of confinement that was more designed to reform the offender than to punish them.  Over the last two centuries however this subtlety has fallen away and a prison is a penitentiary is a penitentiary is a prison.

Distinctions in treatment of offenders thankfully does continue.  It’s a delicate balance; impossible to know if a crook can be reformed.  As John Milton said:

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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