Questions for Adolfo Pérez Esquivel Questions for Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
The Nobel Peace Prize winner opens up on Occupy Wall Street, the United Nations and prospects for serious social reform.
Nov 21, 2011 / Kelly Hearn
Ice Cold Water Ice Cold Water
The palate clears, but the flavor of regional words sticks to the roof of the mind, salt, style slapped to theme: the categorical difference between a shooting star, otherworldly as it is, and its oceanic twin, slippery as a child at the playground, contracting its five arms toward its center, twirling, turning around, riding itself and abiding in its secret pleasures, neither bitter nor dour, which would suggest preference or its absence, something that simply goes from here to there, from one port to another, from this to that shade of meaning. Listen carefully to what is whispered in your ear: bring me “a glass of ice cold water” which, no doubt, will be found in the “ice-box.” But this request has nothing to do with quenching thirst. It has a twin meaning, maybe Siamese. It’s a highly personal way of considering and particularizing a universe that, all of a sudden, belongs to everyone, a currency, the familiar voice of all who open their doors and respond the same way with the same gestures and by so doing come to be themselves. What, otherwise, are a provincial’s daily pleasures? At ease speaking the vernacular God mandates and calling a spade a spade, avoiding any direct link between what was requested and served and what truly corresponds, the said and the received. And so what in other places might be called falling head over heels is rendered here as “a bucketful of ice cold water,” an expression derived from purely metaphoric “snows.” (translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander)
Nov 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Pura Lopez Colome
Exchange Exchange
Of Thee I Singh San Francisco I would like to point out some elementary factual errors in Martha Nussbaum’s review of Joseph Lelyveld’s biography of Mahatma Gandhi, “Gandhi and South Africa” [Oct. 31]. In it she compares India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to Gandhi. Nussbaum thinks Singh’s “dignified behavior” must “make Americans wonder how he ever could have won an election.” However, Singh is a member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament, similar to the British House of Lords), where people are nominated, not elected. In fact, the only time he contested for the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament), he was unable to win the seat. Nussbaum also claims that Singh, along with Sonia Gandhi, “has refocused political energy on the plight of the poorest, devising the Rural Employment Guarantee and the new Right to Food program.” This is the same Singh who is the architect of India’s neoliberal reforms, which have, since the 1990s, devastated India’s countryside, resulting in massive agrarian distress. Public hospitals have never been in sorrier shape, while swanky private hospitals catering to foreigners and rich Indians are mushrooming. Nussbaum’s claim that Singh and Sonia Gandhi devised the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is also misleading. As Arundhati Roy points out in her excellent book Field Notes on Democracy: “Ironically the NREGA only made it through parliament because of pressure brought to bear on the UPA [United Progressive Alliance] government by the Left Front, and it must be said, by Sonia Gandhi. It was passed despite tremendous resistance from the mandarins of the free market within the Congress Party.” Although NREGA is considered a revolutionary act, it is simply crumbs the state throws to the masses, who are up in arms all over India, for all the devastation the act has caused. SANJEEV MAHAJAN Nussbaum Replies Chicago I am grateful for Sanjeev Mahajan’s views about the Congress Party, which of course are shared by many of its opponents. At the time of the 2008 election, Manmohan Singh had been named as the person who would be prime minister should Congress win a majority, and he campaigned with that understanding (and he was sitting prime minister). So voters knew that a vote for Congress was a vote for him to continue in that office. They voted; the party won; he continued as prime minister. That, to me, is an obvious sense of winning an election. As for the NREGA: Mahajan does not dispute that it is a laudable achievement; he only claims that it was supported by the left parties as well as Congress. However, the record shows that India’s poor are ill advised, at least today, to rely on the left parties. In West Bengal, the CPI-M (the leading left party) went to defeat this year after years of failure to deliver a reasonable level of health, education or employment; and that party’s compromises with corporate investors, resisted by local peasants, provoked ugly assaults by the CPI-M’s cadres, who shot unarmed peasants in the back (see my “Violence on the Left: Nandigram and the Communists of West Bengal,” Dissent, Spring 2008). I do not say this to praise the new (post-CPI-M) Bengal government, which surely has little to commend it. My point is that the left has not fulfilled its promises to the poor, while Congress, on the national level, has actually crafted and passed a major program, both admirable and practical. This program, as I said, was crafted by Jean Drèze, in collaboration with Sonia Gandhi. I admire Arundhati Roy’s skill as a writer and her moral intensity; but her nonfiction writings are highly polemical and should not be one’s only source of information for such matters. MARTHA NUSSBAUM We apologize for clipping the T off letter-writer James M. Voigt’s name [“Letters,” Nov. 28].
Nov 21, 2011 / Our Readers and Martha C. Nussbaum
Supercommittee Was About the Bush Tax Cuts—and That Battle Isn’t Over Supercommittee Was About the Bush Tax Cuts—and That Battle Isn’t Over
The supercommittee has failed, and a deep partisan divide over how the federal government should function persists.
Nov 21, 2011 / George Zornick
Puzzle No. 3217 Puzzle No. 3217
ACROSS 1 Throw a dollar (4) 3 Apostle, for the most part good and crazy, is censorious (10) 10 Ship’s protective interior (5) 11 $1,000 photos containing leader of rowing competition (5,4) 12 McKellen and Fleming going after busted canoe with people from Vanuatu, for example (9) 13 Chalky isle in the sound (5) 14 New Delhi’s defense (6) 16 Disrupt raids on ancient people (7) 17 Suffering a reverse, went into the hole with editor in blue jeans (7) 19 Vocalist that’s red-hot? (6) 22 Maximum invested in Social Security checks (5) 23 He had a hunch involving somewhat tragic doom (9) 25 Stick around, primarily operating automobile in Sun Belt city (4,5) 26 Retch, cutting bliss short (5) 27 Jumbled bronze pile that’s been given to ten writers (counting carefully) whose names appear as complete answers in this puzzle (5,5) 28 See 2 DOWN 1 Shout with alarm, “That hurts!” (6) 2 and 28 Publisher’s canto ends uproariously (5,4) 4 Frank’s guru and mystic: Ed (9) 5 Ganja stashed in Integra’s seats (5) 6 One that provides goal to borrower (7) 7 Kill insect swallowing sodium (9) 8 Possible murder weapon tossed into lake (loch) with negligence (7) 9 Cerf edited article within The Nation (6) 15 Vintage transportation for red wine that sounds attractive (6,3) 16 Famous Cuban brought up reactionary fascist, practically (4,5) 17 Hoffman hiding black trashcan (7) 18 Strong wind, with fog and a bit of rain, over Alabama (7) 20 Voiced contrary opinions in barnyard language? (6) 21 Forceful company man (6) 23 Question and answer to dishonor Arab country (5) 24 Meditative utterance: “I see a Midwestern city” (5) ACROSS 1 LE + T(THE + REBEL)IGHT 9 SA(LUTE)D 10 ALAMO + DE 11 anag. 12 [a]UNTIE 13 EX + TRAM + URAL 15 US + ED 19 MAY + O (yam rev.) 20 anag. 22 “I’ll” 24 “missile tow” 26 OVA + TION (Toni anag.) 27 G(O)RILL + A 28 EQUATORIAL + PLAN E (a quote liar anag.) DOWN 1 anag. 2 TELEPATH + Y (the plate anag.) 3 anag. 4 rev. hidden 5 BRA IN WASH 6 L + E + AGUE 7 G(L)OAT 8 THEM + E 14 anag. 16 S(C)IN + TILL + A 17 D(ESP)ERATE (E-trade anag.) 18 MAIL D(R)OP (diploma anag.) 21 hidden 22 ADO + RE 23 SNAF + U (rev.) 25 SIG + MA (G.I.’s rev.)
Nov 21, 2011 / Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto
The Chamber’s Dishonest CFPB Poll The Chamber’s Dishonest CFPB Poll
The US Chamber of Commerce conducted a slanted poll on the new agency—but it still reveals some public relations dangers.
Nov 21, 2011 / George Zornick
Katrina vanden Heuvel: ‘There Is a Movement Brewing in America’ Katrina vanden Heuvel: ‘There Is a Movement Brewing in America’
Obama’s conciliatory leadership style has failed to confront the corrupt culture of Washington.
Nov 21, 2011 / Press Room
Why I Got Arrested at Occupy Wall Street Why I Got Arrested at Occupy Wall Street
Civil disobedience says, in effect, that the law is not sacred when a better world is at stake.
Nov 21, 2011 / Max Fraser
Occupy Wall Street and the Importance of Creative Protest Occupy Wall Street and the Importance of Creative Protest
Determination and creativity have been Occupy Wall Street's formula for success.
Nov 21, 2011 / Allison Kilkenny
Tebow Redeemed? Tebow Redeemed?
Tim Tebow is simply the worst quarterback I’ve ever seen. Yet he's 4-1 and I cannot look away.
Nov 21, 2011 / Dave Zirin