The India China Institute

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The India China Institute
presents free panel discussions

April 18, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek Reconsidered
66 West 12th Street, Room 510

Join Laura Tyson Li and L.H.M. Ling for a discussion of what China’s eternal first lady can teach the next generation of female leaders in Asia.

Laura Tyson Li, a prominent journalist and biographer of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, has written for South China Morning Post, The Financial Times, and The Economist.

L.H.M. Ling teaches in International Affairs program at The New School and studies international development practice and emerging regional economies in South Asia.

April 21, 1:00-4:00 p.m.
Intermediate Organizations and The 'New' Nepal
55 West 13th Street, Second Floor

Come hear Pratyoush Onta, one of the most respected historians and public intellectuals from Nepal, discuss the social and political role intermediate organizations like NGOs and professional associations can play in the country's future.

April 26, 7:15-9:00 p.m.
The State of Democracy in South Asia
66 West 12th Street, Room 712

What does democracy mean today in South Asia? What are its biggest prospects and challenges?

Engage Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Ruparelia as they discuss Nepal’s constitutional future, Bangladesh’s eroding political institutions, Sri Lanka’s enduring ethnic violence, Pakistan’s democratic hopes, India's rising social inequality, and other pressing issues.

Widely recognized as India's premier electoral analyst, Yogendra Yadav is a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. 
Sanjay Ruparelia is a scholar of South Asian politics and an assistant professor of political science at The New School for Social Research.

This event is co-sponsored by the department of political science at The New School for Social Research

April 30, 12:30-3:00 p.m.
Future Histories: Exploring New Pathways for India and China
65 Fifth Avenue, Wolff Conference Room

Connect with India China Institute Fellow Aromar Revi and leading development scholars and practitioners as they discuss the challenges of sustaining long-range development in India and China. Aromar Revi is a founding director of TARU, a South Asian research and consulting firm specializing in urban and infrastructure planning.

Visit www.indiachina.newschool.edu for more details.

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Will American Bombs Kill My Iranian Dream?

Tomgram: Yaghmaian, Will American Bombs Kill My Iranian Dream?

Like a giant piece in an intricate, if ugly, jigsaw puzzle, the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, and its strike group are now sailing toward the Persian Gulf. On arrival, they will join the strike groups of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (which it is officially replacing) and the USS John C. Stennis patrolling the region, as stunning an example of "gunboat diplomacy" as we've seen in our lifetimes. I think it's a fair guess that, like most Americans, few, if any, of the Nimitz strike group's 6,000 sailors and Marines, who may become part of a massive Bush administration air assault on Iranian nuclear and other facilities, know much about modern Iranian history. Most may be unaware of the CIA/British coup d'état in Iran, in 1953, that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (which had just carried out the nationalizing of Iranian oil), reinstalled the Shah, and ushered in a long, contentious relationship between the two countries -- with all the "unintended consequences" that may end, whether through miscalculation or cold calculation, in a devastating war. conitnue...

The Poverty of the Welfare State

April 11, 2007

By Serhan Cevik | Istanbul

Breaking away from the legacy of welfare state, Israel has achieved faster income growth. Two factors — the lack of political direction to resolve territorial conflicts and the burden of an ever-growing welfare state — have kept the Israeli economy below its true potential. Even though a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians still remains in a distant future, structural reforms and prudent fiscal management in recent years have helped to rationalize Israel’s welfare system and thus reduce its burden on the economy. With intensifying political pressures over the decades, the cost of welfare expenditure and transfer payments to households increased from 31.5% of GDP in 1980 to 42.2% in 2002. As you would have thought, such an extravagant level of social spending not only worsened public finances, but also distorted economic incentives and lowered the economy’s growth potential. Realizing the extent of structural strains, especially on income growth in the private sector, the authorities have finally started moving away from the legacy of welfare state and dealing with institutional constraints. Accordingly, the burden of welfare spending and transfer payments declined rapidly to 36.5% of GDP, helping to lower the overall budget deficit to 0.9% of GDP at the end of last year and giving a significant boost to the economy. continue...

The Next Crusade

Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.
by John Cassidy April 9, 2007

Most bank staff opposed Wolfowitz’s presidency. An observer says that there’s a perception that “his real agenda remains hidden.”

The Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, a city in northwest Turkey, is a magnificent stone edifice, with four minarets and an austere, octagonal-shaped body supporting a large dome. Built for Sultan Selim II in the sixteenth century, it has withstood numerous earthquakes and can accommodate more than five thousand kneeling worshippers. One evening at the end of January, I visited the mosque with Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, and a half dozen of his aides and colleagues. Two years have passed since President Bush nominated Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and one of the architects of the war in Iraq, to head the sprawling multinational lending institution that has as its official goal “a world without poverty.”

The World Bank employs thirteen thousand people in more than a hundred countries, and lends about twenty-five billion dollars a year to poor and middle-income nations. When Wolfowitz inspects bank programs, he often visits religious sites and other monuments. At the Selimiye Mosque, a stern-looking young man with a black beard who identified himself as the imam met us at the entrance and invited us inside. After putting on slippers, Wolfowitz entered the mosque and listened as the imam, demonstrating its acoustics, raised the call to Allah.

Wolfowitz has an abiding interest in the Islamic world. His father, Jacob, an eminent mathematician who taught at Columbia and Cornell, was a fervent Zionist, and Wolfowitz’s elder sister, Laura, lives in Israel. Wolfowitz’s critics sometimes portray him as an unquestioning defender of the Israeli government, and yet he has publicly expressed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, and some Arab reformers regard him as a friend. Since separating from his wife of more than thirty years, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz, in 2001, he has dated a secular Muslim woman in her fifties, Shaha Ali Riza. A British national from a Libyan family who grew up in Saudi Arabia, Riza is a longtime advocate of democracy in Arab countries. continue....

Realistic Growth Policy for our times

In remembering David Gordon, the late founder of SCEPA (then CEPA) and New School Professor of Economics, this conference will explore an issue that was important to him, and remains relevant today--the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. The aim is to promote a lively dialogue between scholars focused on labor market regulation, industrial relations and corporate governance, and political and cultural institutions, with scholars of economic growth who see institutions and income distribution as central to their analysis. The hope is to further our understanding of progressive and growth-promoting policies in today's economic climate.

Reservations are required. Please RSVP to cepa@newschool.edu or call 212-229-5901 x4911. continue...

Whatever It Takes

The politics of the man behind “24.”

by Jane Mayer February 19, 2007

Joel Surnow calls the show he helped create “patriotic.” Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

The office desk of Joel Surnow—the co-creator and executive producer of “24,” the popular counterterrorism drama on Fox—faces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad, after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. A few years ago, Surnow received it as a gift from an Army regiment stationed in Iraq; the soldiers had shared a collection of “24” DVDs, he told me, until it was destroyed by an enemy bomb. “The military loves our show,” he said recently. Surnow is fifty-two, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip. When he was young, he worked as a carpet salesman with his father. The trick to selling anything, he learned, is to carry yourself with confidence and get the customer to like you within the first five minutes. He’s got it down. “People in the Administration love the series, too,” he said. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.” continue...

For the Christian Right, Gay-Hating Is Just the Start

G and I listened and talked with Chris Hedges, the award winning journalist and religious/political  comentator as he talked about the rising danger of the Religious Right to our country...as presented in his new book, American Fascists, The Christian Right and the War on America.The following article deals with issues which he discussed..with great passion

He focused on the Rights efforts to dehumanize groups as evil deviants who could be used as scapegoats. The first have been gays, lesbians, Muslims and Secular Humanists...the same kind of beginning as in previous Fascist countries...These are serious threats....

For the Christian Right, Gay-Hating Is Just the Start

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on March 19, 2007, Printed on March 22, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49160/

On the morning of March 8 in Sioux Center, Iowa, a bus parked outside a hotel was found covered with anti-gay slurs, along with a hate-filled message on a piece of cardboard reading: "God does not love feary fags."

The bus was one of two that were transporting some 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, along with supporters, on the start of a two-month trip to 32 Christian colleges with policies that discriminate against those who are not heterosexuals. The Equality Ride, as it is known, organized by Soulforce, had first traveled to Sioux Center to visit Dordt College, a school that counts "sexual activity with someone of the same gender" as possible grounds for "an employee's discharge or a student's dismissal." .... more

Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" and "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."

© 2007 Independent

Mightier Than the Pen

Never Mind Cursive -- Will Children Still Write
In an Era Ruled by Computers and PDA?
March 5, 2007

My four-year-old son is starting to get interested in making letters -- beginning, naturally, with writing his own name. He even makes some of the letters backwards, which I confess I thought only happened when adults imitated kids' writing.

Watching Joshua train his hand to make an 'S,' though, got me thinking: In our technological age, how much use will he get out of this particular skill? Will keyboards and touchscreens render pens and pencils specialized implements, with my kid never using a pen for anything much longer than a Post-It note?

for more go to wsjonline....