I went out and bought Sea of Poppies. Thanks for the introduction and for the great interview. Your world-view, vision, breadth of understandIng, your probing wit are needed now more than ever. You have helped to bring about this brighter day!!! I am happy to have access to your interviews, comments etc. and to be a part of this public discourse. You will ever be missed on TV and radio. Those of us who have followed your career do so appreciate your provocative and penetrating approach to issues current and historical and are thrilled to find you again. GLAD THAT YOU ARE ON THE PLANET!!!

Barbara

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081222&fname=Amitav&sid=1&pn=1

The talk is adapted from a session in Cairo last March. It moves me!

Chris Lydon

Amitav Ghosh wrote an op-ed for the NYT the other day on the tragedy in Mumbai last week:

India’s 9/11? Not Exactly

Todays editorial in the NY Times is a prime example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04thu1.html?hp

The closest they come to describing a falling empire is the phrase, which they attribute to other commentators: “dreaded multipolarity”

And don’t worry, the Gray Lady assures us all:

“A relative decline in power also does not mean that the United States will not remain powerful.”

“Relative,” what a word! I love that word…the word is so…well, it’s just so, relative!

Although that doesn’t mean I will be “reigning in expectations.” Just the opposite, indeed.

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

-MLK 1967

http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

The current economic crisis was some 35 years in the making with both parties and all presidents since Nixon complicit in the policies (or lack thereof) that allowed the private sector to obscenely profit from selling “magic beans” to investors and reap large bonuses and commissions by abrogating their fiduciary responsibilities.

Globalization (read – exploitation of cheap labor to benefit executives and stockholders at the expense of local workers) has exacerbated the crisis and will continue to unless it is stemmed as PE Obama proposes to do by making it less profitable to ship jobs overseas.

The financial tsunami that is sweeping the world is an empirical example of the interconnectedness and interdependency of all things and is an opportunity for great change if it is recognized and exploited (in the ideal sense) to affect peace and brotherhood. A President Obama can’t do it without willing participants to work for the commonweal; he is an idea man and a persuasive rhetorician who just may be the catalyst for an ideal “new deal” in which we all have a role. He knows the nature of what is required, exemplified when he said: “We are the change we seek!”

We need a critical mass of us to want and work toward the ideal; it is we who must alter our beliefs about ourselves and the world to realize the change, Obama is merely a mirror for our best selves to create the world we desire.

Peace and happy Thanksgiving to ALL,

Jazzman

Probably like Ghosh and many other “outsiders”, who will watch the speech, I have a more nuanced understanding of the US presidency. Even if Obama is an exceptional person, he is restrained both by the complexity of the world and by the structural rigidity of the office.

Sorry for this analogy, but if he is an agent of change, he must be the type of parasite that pretends to be local (thus the appointment of so many old-guard, neo-liberal Clinton democrats) and once in the system he kills the host. The ruling elite would never let this happen and they would find a cure for his virus. Otherwise, he is just the kind of parasite that lives in a symbiotic relationship with the host, in which case nothing much happens and the imperial, greedy nation keeps over-feeding itself, but maybe at a less frantic pace than in the past 40 years.

It is not that I don’t have hope, but it will only be realized if the young, and all the groups who supported Obama take to the streets and force him to carry out his promise. Was the election campaign only a pop-culture, feel good moment for the US or can the Obama fever spread to be the kind of viral grass-roots movement that brings about actual transformation? In the election Obama gave the people his greatest gift. He showed them that their voice can be heard. It’s in that which I place my tempered hope, not Obama the president.

I recommend Ghosh’s two pieces from 2002 and 2003 that I linked above.

We elect a president to make judgments as best he can about where to put the next foot forward. The Bush presidency has put many of us in despair for 8 long years. We have muted the TV every time he appeared in recent years.

There is way too much wrong to be righted or attended to as quickly as Nother seems to want from one man. This opinion is what I fear. Such an attitude multiplied and amplified will exert a big drag on Obama and we will ultimately be shooting ourselves really if we bury him with impatient demands judgments and criticisms. If he is really the treasure of a leader that we seek and we want to nurture we must also be kind in our demands and have some patience.

Best wishes for a great holiday.

hello Sidewalker- will get to Japan one of these days soon I hope!