Lennie Tristano (1965)

This is Lennie Tristano performing at a Jazz Piano Workshop in Berlin in 1965.

Leonard Joseph Tristano (1919-1978) was a jazz pianist and composer. He was born in Chicago to an Italian immigrant family. He was blind from infancy. He studied piano and music theory from his pre-teen years and graduated from Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music in 1943.

Tristano's interest in jazz inspired a move to New York City in 1946. His advanced grasp of harmony pushed his music beyond even the complexities of the contemporary bebop movement, though Tristano was always explicit about acknowledging his enormous debt to Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. Though he and his followers remained at something of a slant to mainstream bebop, Tristano did on occasion play and record with bebop's preeminent figures such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Often the "Tristano school" has been contrasted with bebop by being labeled "cool jazz.”

The O-boomer generation

Marc Cooper weighs in on Senator Obama’s speech:

It’s not much of a risk to venture that Barack Obama’s much-noted speech on his association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright not only reinflated his wounded campaign but — much more likely — sealed his nomination.

I caught his talk out of the corner of my eye on a southern Arizona hotel-room TV as I was packing up, readying to cross the border. And about three minutes into Obama’s talk, I had to drop everything and sit down on the bed to hear the rest. It wasn’t the tone of his rhetoric, it wasn’t the sort of soaring verbiage that I saw him use in Iowa or Nevada to hold large crowds of supporters spellbound.

No, it was the substance. I was stunned, transfixed, by what you might call good old-fashioned cognitive dissonance. What I was hearing from his lips just wasn’t consistent with what I would expect any politician to say under these same circumstances. It was neither the false, lip-biting contrition of a Bill Clinton; the stage-managed but fundamentally brash atonement of an Eliot Spitzer; nor the pathetic, deceitful denial of a miserable Larry Craig. Instead, I suddenly heard myself listening to a thoughtful, introspective intellectual who might have been, say, editor of the Harvard Law Review.

In expedient political terms, the Rev. Wright kerfuffle was one of those sporadic “tests” that pepper our round-the-clock news cycles and our media-driven presidential campaigns. Obama not only met the test, he scored off the charts.

Pundit Andrew Sullivan rated it akin to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address. “This searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime,” Sullivan wrote. “It is a speech we have all been waiting for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.”

Even such stigmatized conservatives as Charles Murray couldn’t contain their praise. “Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one?” Murray wrote on the Web site of the late Bill Buckley’s National Review. “As far as I’m concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant — rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we’re used to from our pols.”

Obama’s speech came at the precise moment when I’d been mulling over his appeal to my generation of boomers. It’s been somewhat staggering for me to encounter the number of close friends of my own ’60s-generation cohort who, in the past few weeks, have been rather quietly confessing to me their own begrudging admiration for Obama.

And I do mean confessing. For those of us who grew up reading Ramparts, not Facebook, it’s somewhat uncomfortable, if not downright embarrassing, to admit to investing any real hope in a Democratic presidential candidate. It might be hard for the Millennials or even the Xers to fully grasp, but my generation was radicalized by LBJ Democrats more than by Nixon Republicans. We thought Jimmy Carter was a Southern conservative (and we were right). Bill Clinton, we thought, was the best Republican president since Ike (and I think the record confirms that notion as well).

But along came John Edwards and Obama this time around, and it was hard to deny that we were starting to hear some of the same arguments we had wearily been making over the last four decades finally coming from the presidential-campaign stump.

Not that we’ve been pushovers for Obama’s message of Change We Can Believe In. Coming to us veterans of the Gulf of Tonkin, Chicago ’68 and Kent State, it is a little bit like the Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to hawk the latest edition of The Watchtower at a convention of atheists.

But I know I speak for these same friends when I say you can now count us among the O-boomers. We’ve sipped no Kool-Aid, nor been seduced by focus-grouped campaign rhetoric, nor driven senseless by finely tuned speechifying. Instead, we’ve looked around and reached three simple conclusions:

First, that John McCain, whose personal courage cannot be denied, and who has had some distinguished moments in public life, now finds himself positioned in the American political system with little to run on except a platform of militarized jingoism.

Second, the election of Hillary Clinton would be an absolute guarantee of the political status quo. There might be a forward shift here or there compared to the Bushies, but the system itself would remain intact. And we are convinced that her decision making would, indeed, continue in the well-known Clintonian tradition of unmitigated expediency — as has already been more than amply demonstrated during her lamentable campaign.

Finally, we do not invest naive hope in Barack Obama. We O-boomers are, I fear, ready to be disappointed by a President Obama. It’s a well-worn reflex with us. But for the first time, in a very, very long time, we can sense at least the mathematical possibility of some refreshing change if he is elected. His speech this week served only as a geometrical multiplier.

Thinking through U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq

Marc Lynch posts a memo he wrote for a working group he is involved with discussing the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. He claims it is not necessarily comprehensive but is simply a “think piece.” The problem with the current U.S. policy in Iraq is policy was enacted without thinking it through. This is one (and hopefully there will be many others) attempt to think through a reversal of current policy. There are gaps – not the least of which pertains to Iraq’s neighbors, particularly Turkey and Iran – but this is worth the read.

What would be the effects on Iraqi domestic politics of an American announcement of a full withdrawal from Iraq over a 16-18 month period? For the purposes of this memo, I consider the precise timeline of the withdrawal less important than the firm, credible, public commitment to withdrawal.

First, any plausible withdrawal scenario must consider how the major actors will respond to a coming US departure and try to pre-empt most likely flashpoints. A US withdrawal should not seen exclusively as the removal of a barrier between otherwise unchanged Iraqi actors. A US withdrawal would change the identities, interests, expectations, and behavior of all actors. These transformative effects are a major reason why a firm and credible commitment to withdrawal on a clear timetable is necessary to achieve an acceptable outcome. Without such a commitment, Iraqi and regional actors alike will continue on their current course, while recent security gains will crumble as the political window closes. Without it, a Maliki-led or Maliki-like government will not be likely to deliver substantive political accommodation. Only faced with the loss of an open-ended U.S. commitment would its calculations would change. The same is true for every other actor in the Iraqi arena: Shia and Sunni, Green Zone and local, pro-US or insurgency.

There should be no underestimating of the risks involved in an American withdrawal. But at the same time, there should be no exaggerating them. The frequently-made suggestion that al-Qaeda could take over Iraq and its oil supplies is absurd, given Shia power and al-Qaeda's unpopularity even among Iraqi Sunnis. Descent back into sectarian bloodshed is more plausible, but by no means a certainty – and steps can be taken to reduce the risk. In last month's BBC survey carried, only 29% of Iraqis said that they believed that a US withdrawal would make Iraqi security worse. If a withdrawal is carried out responsibly, with appropriate steps taken in advance and with careful attention to the likely flashpoints, then there is no reason to assume a genocidal outcome.

The single most important question shaping the possibility of US withdrawal is whether it takes place in the context of a relatively strong, competent and effectively sovereign Iraqi state. US strategy should be oriented towards producing that core condition. The strategic failure of the "surge" has been that it has eroded the capacity and sovereignty of the Iraqi state by building up mutually hostile armed groups outside national institutions. The US must work to strengthen state institutions, and to force the integration of the Awakening Councils into the national army and police in advance of its withdrawal in order to avoid sectarian warfare. Despite the current American fashion in favor of decentralization, Iraqi support for a centralized Iraqi state remains strong: in last month's BBC survey, 66% of Iraqis preferred a unified Iraq with a strong central government, while only 23% favored the federation of strong regional governments.

A withdrawal will be more likely to produce positive effects if it is preceded by building Iraqi national institutions and mobilizing regional support. The most vulnerable remaining populations should be protected as long as possible. Intra-communal power struggles will likely be increasingly significant flashpoints with or without a US withdrawal, but will likely intensify in anticipation of a withdrawal which would likely significantly weaken the current ruling elite. I do not expect a withdrawal to proceed smoothly, given the legacy of five years of wrong paths, mismanagement, and sectarian violence. But it is also not impossible, especially if steps are taken now to improve the odds, and it is made more likely by a credible commitment to withdrawal.

Rather than the typical breakdown of Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, in this brief I divide reactions between the Green Zone politicians and non-state actors.

Green Zone Politicians:

The current government, and more broadly the Green Zone political class, is one of the few Iraqi groupings which genuinely wants or needs a sustained American presence – as the guarantor of its political survival. At the same time, they have been one of the greatest obstacles to national reconciliation, and have proved largely resistant to American pressure. Since surviving a series of attempts to unseat his government, Maliki seems to feel politically secure and has spoken often about his belief that national reconciliation has already been achieved. Support for
relatively unconditional American backing is similarly strong among the Green Zone Kurdish leadership. Even the Green Zone Sunnis, who have often been the most critical of the US in public and have long since quit the Maliki government, need the Americans to maintain their political positions.

The Green Zone dominant parties share a common situation, of disproportionate power in the national government and an eroding position within their own constituencies. The Sunni parties feel threatened by the rise of the Anbar Salvation Council and the Awakenings, and by their failure to achieve substantial national reconciliation legislation to strengthen their political hand with their constituency. The united Shia list of the UIA has long-since fragmented, with the Sadrists and Fadhila and other Shia parties now largely on the outside. By most reports, ISCI has lost ground with Shia voters, and would likely lose in elections (provincial or national). ISCI's political leadership therefore depends on US support for its political weight, and despite its strong Iranian ties would likely be loathe to see the US leave. The Supreme Council's response to a withdrawal would be clearly shaped by its terms, and by the role – implicit or explicit – of Iran in the presumed post-US order. At the same time, in the context of an agreement (tacit or overt) with Iran, its role could be guaranteed. Without such a guarantee, however, the incentives would be strong to unleash the Badr Brigades to stir up trouble in hopes of preventing the US from following through on its plans to depart.

No Iraqi actor would scream more loudly or offer more dire warnings of impending doom than the current Green Zone elite – and, not coincidentally, these are the voices most often heard in Washington and by politicians on short visits to Baghdad. But their warnings should be understood at least in part as expressions of their own political self-interest. No Iraqi actor is more likely to quickly readjust its behavior and calculations should such a withdrawal be announced. With the US set to depart, the whole range of national reconciliation initiatives which are currently seen as at best luxuries and at worst mortal threats would suddenly become a much more intense matter of self-interest. The integration of the Sunni Awakenings, for instance, would move from a challenge to Shia hegemony over the security forces into the best possible way to pre-empt their military challenge. The credible commitment to withdrawal would give the US much-needed leverage over the Green Zone leadership.

Outside the Green Zone:

Sadr and other Shia actors: the renewal of Sadr's ceasefire this month was a highly significant move, one which greatly increases the chances of short-term calm. I am persuaded that Sadr has chosen to sit out the surge, consolidating control of his movement while purging it of disloyal or unreliable cadres and laying the ground for a long-term political role. An American withdrawal which allows the Sadrists a political role, without trying to crush it militarily, would encourage Sadr's evolution in a political direction while increasing his perceived costs for renewing sectarian warfare. Sadr had long demanded an American withdrawal, and would seem to have little incentive to disrupt it once the commitment is clearly made. It seems likely that Ali Sistani and the Hawza would favor the withdrawal and a return to real Iraqi sovereignty. While their influence seems to have declined in recent years, as power has devolved to the armed groups on the streets, they could still play an important role in calming the transitional situation. The Fadhila Party would also almost certainly support the withdrawal, and would continue to vie for power at the local level in its strongholds. As a bulwark against domination by either ISCI or JAM, Fadhila could be useful – but at the same time, the sheer proliferation of competing armed groups renders the situation highly volatile.

Anbar Salvation Council and the Sunni insurgency: While much of the Sunni insurgency is currently cooperating with the United States through the Awakening Councils, they have clearly and repeatedly stated their demand for a clear and binding commitment to American withdrawal. The political leadership of the insurgency factions has made such a commitment their entry price into the political arena. A commitment to withdrawal would help to lock in their cooperation– as with Sadr, they would have little incentive to disrupt the very thing they most want. The key variable here is whether or not the Awakenings have been integrated into the national army and police before the withdrawal commences. If they have not been, then their ever-growing focus on the "Iranian occupation" - which encompasses the current Maliki government and the major Shia militias - makes renewed sectarian bloodshed quite likely. The turbulence in Sunni politics detailed in my earlier memo to this group has only increased, with the Anbar Salvation Council threatening violence against the Islamic Party, and rampant signs of discontent among the Awakenings. A commitment to withdraw, combined with serious pressure on the Maliki government to integrate the Awakenings, would offer the best chance to make long-term gains out of the short-term tactical
alliance.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq will likely try to claim victory if the US withdraws, of course, but they will also continue to take advantage of the US occupation in their propaganda if it does not. It is foolish to allow the enemy to dictate our strategy. Should the US withdraw, AQI would lose its major claim to Iraqi support, and would find not likely find more support among Sunnis – or, of course, Shia – than it does today.

Tibetans revolt against the Chinese

Despite the news blackout by the Chinese government, stories and video are managing to make their way out of Tibet following the crackdown on demonstrators. March 10th (the date of the Tibetan uprising against the Chinese 1959) has traditionally been a day of protest. This year the demonstrations have become particularly violent as Tibetans lash out at anything Chinese. The Chinese continue to attempt to control the press coverage of the events.

Below are video of what has been happening in Tibet during the past several days.

Are Americans ready for civilized, intelligent debate on the issues?

Senator Obama spoke yesterday about the complex issue of race in the United States. Both black and white Americans need to understand and appreciate the fears of frustrations of the other community. Everyone should know our ugly history on racial matters but also appreciate the progress that has been made. Everyone should come to appreciate that neither the black or white communities are monolith – each entail great complexity. Only then can we have a civilized, intelligent debate. Are Americans ready? Senator Obama seems to think so because by appealing to the intelligence and decency of the American people, he has placed his fate in their hands

Here are Michelle Goldberg’s thoughts in the Guardian:

Americans have endured election after election in which endlessly amplified talking heads have harped on risible questions of style and shallow analysis of dubious microtrends (Microtrends, of course, being the title of a book by Hillary Clinton's chief strategist). Who can forget all the blathering about Al Gore's embrace of earth tones and the implications for his masculinity? Or speculation as to whether John Kerry's windsurfing would sink him? George Bush had to drive the nation into multi-fronted catastrophe before we stopped hearing about what a fine beer-drinking companion he would make (and that despite the fact that he's a teetotaling recovering alcoholic.)

Worse, in our recent history the pundits' speculations have too often proved correct.

Maybe they've been self-fulfilling. Americans have, time and again, regarded symbolic blunders as more important than life-or-death policy mistakes. To witness the last few US elections was to be convinced that HL Mencken was right when he said: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Political consultants clearly believe this, for all their mawkish paeans to everyman. And so they make politics as idiotically simple as they understand - with reason - Americans themselves to be.

Obama rejects this with everything he does. The hope at the center of his campaign is that Mencken was wrong, and Obama's success at the polls has tempted more than a few out of their carapace of cynicism.

In his speech today, he showed that he believes that Americans are capable of hearing about the frustrated rage of black people without seeing terrifying visions of clenched-fisted separatists or mau-mauing hucksters. He showed that he sympathizes with the subterranean disappointments that fuel right-wing populism, but he refused to pander to it. "Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition," he said. "Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talkshow hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

These are not the soothing bromides one expects to hear in the speech of a candidate who is supposed to be desperately trying to reassure working-class white people.

At the end of his speech, Obama issued a challenge not just to the country, but also to the media, and even to those of his supporters like myself who have jumped on the outbursts of some Clintonites: "We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words," he said. "We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies."

Or we can have the civilized, intelligent debate that Obama somehow thinks this country is capable of. He is remarkably close to winning the Democratic nomination, and to the presidency, and he has staked it all on a belief in American decency. If that's not patriotism, what on earth is?

You can read her entire piece there.

Barack Obama: 'A More Perfect Union'

“A More Perfect Union” delivered by Senator Barack Obama on March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

You can read the text here.

Tibet has become China’s Gaza Strip

The Chinese continue their crack down on Tibetan independence activists who have been demonstrating around the March 10th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1959. According to today’s London Times:

Dozens of Tibetan prisoners were paraded on military trucks in Lhasa yesterday, with their heads bent and wrists handcuffed behind their backs, as soldiers from China’s People’s Liberation Army tightened their grip on the Tibetan capital.

As a midnight deadline approached for rioters to surrender, soldiers carried out house-to-house searches. Some of those suspected of taking part in the mayhem last Friday, when Tibetan anger at Chinese rule erupted into racial hatred with stabbing and beating of ethnic Han Chinese and the burning of shops, banks and businesses, had already been detained.

Four open army trucks carrying about 40 people, mostly young Tibetan men and women, drove in a slow convoy along main roads, witnesses said. Loudspeakers on the trucks broadcast calls to anyone who had taken part in the riots to turn themselves in. Those who gave themselves up might be treated leniently, the rest would face severe punishment, the broadcasts said.

***
The search for those involved began in earnest in Lhasa yesterday as office workers trickled back to work after a weekend of fear. Soldiers began house-to-house searches, checking all identification papers, residents said. Anyone unable to show an identity card and a household registration permitting residence in Lhasa was being taken away.

The unrest has spread swiftly into neighbouring provinces in China with a large ethnic Tibetan population. In an extraordinary development late yesterday, nearly 100 students in Beijing staged a daring vigil.

And this report from the International Campaign for Tibet:

Tibetan students held a silent vigil in Beijing today to honor the courage of Tibetan protestors in Tibet. The group of around 50 students (pictured) sat silently in a circle with heads bowed outside the Central Minorities University in the Haidian district of western Beijing this evening for around six hours. They were surrounded by an official security cordon preventing outsiders and other students from joining the protest, although some foreign reporters succeeded in gaining brief access to the protestors.

While some Tibetan students are known to have taken part in the pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, this is the first known demonstration by Tibetans in China's capital.

According to a source who received a message from Beijing, the students were allowed to leave at around 1 am, which appears to indicate that the authorities had followed a strategy of containing the protest in order to avoid provoking further dissent. It is not clear whether reprisals will follow. One source reported that a senior Beijing official arrived at the protest to ensure it was closed peacefully.

There was also a peaceful protest today by students at the South-Western Minorities University in Chengdu, although details could not be confirmed at the time of going to press.

These two peaceful vigils follow a peaceful sit-down protest yesterday (March 16) of around 200 Tibetan students on the campus of from the Northwest Minority University in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province. In a message to a Tibetan in exile, one of the students said: "We are staging our protest in a very peaceful means and we are going to held a candle light vigil tonight." A foreign reporter who spoke to some of the students said that some of the students knew people who had been killed during the protests of the past week in Tibet, and that they wanted to pay silent tribute to their courage. One report said that some students in Lanzhou held a further sit-in today.

The protests by Tibetans in Beijing took place hours before the deadline imposed by the Chinese authorities for Tibetans to hand themselves in if they had taken part in rioting and demonstrations in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, over the past few days.

According to sources, the atmosphere in Lhasa is now 'terrifying', with soldiers carrying out house to house searches and taking people into custody. Tibetans who have pictures of the Dalai Lama are targeted and in some cases have been taken away. In an instant message communication with a Tibetan in exile, one Tibetan reported: "A [details withheld] university student child was taken by police. He was hit and as of now still can't stand." When asked why, the same source said: "Because he had a picture of Kundun [literally 'the presence', a reference to the Dalai Lama] around his neck."

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao clearly laid the blame for the unrest on the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader and temporal head of the Tibetan government in exile. He said, "There is ample fact - and we also have plenty of evidence - proving that this incident was organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," in Beijing at the end of the annual National People's Congress.

The Chinese are waiting on the Dalai Lama to die. They clearly believe time is on their side and once the Dalai Lama all their problems in Tibet will disappear. They fail to realize that anti-Chinese actions of Tibetans are way beyond the Dalai Lama’s control or inspiration. They are the result of Chinese oppression of Tibetan people and the slow decimation of Tibetan culture. Resentments have grown that will not go away once the Dalai Lama leaves the scene. The problems are a result of failed political policies and can only be resolved politically.

Jürgen Kremb has this assessment in Der Speigel:

…Beijing's distrust is … fuelled by the fact that the Dalai Lama remains head of the Free Tibet Campaign, which demands freedom and independence.

That may seem like a desirable outcome -- that Tibet receives its freedom like Kosovo and East Timor. But that has little to do with realpolitik. China would never consent to an independent Tibet -- neither a Communist People's Republic nor the nationalist power which is currently flexing its muscles in Asia. A "democratic China," developed through increasing trade with the world, is merely a chimera called into being by dreamers in the West. China sees Tibet as a "domestic affair" and as such is not willing to listen to council from outside its borders. Furthermore, America's human rights record of the last few years has made it easy for China to follow an aggressive course.

The problem, though, is that China has to understand that in a globalized world, there is no such thing as problems that are purely "domestic." It makes no sense for Beijing to clutch to a concept of sovereignty straight out of the 19th century. Lhasa long ago became China's Gaza Strip. The Dalai Lama no longer has complete authority on Tibetan streets and in Tibetan monasteries. It is the Tibetan Youth Congress that sets the tone these days.

This is a radical group of exile Tibetans that has withheld support for the Dalai Lama for years. They say that his peaceful path has failed to secure freedom for their homeland and that Tibetans must follow the path of other liberation movements, like the Palestinians or the East Timorese.

But it wasn't the Dalai Lama who fostered these angry youth, but rather the reluctance of China to seek out a political solution for Tibet. Like the children of Gaza, they are the product of social exclusion and cultural oppression. They won't allow themselves to be bossed around by the Chinese authorities or any other. China had been simply waiting until the Dalai Lama dies before they dealt with the Tibet problem -- the Tibet Youth Congress dooms that approach to failure.

You can read his entire article here.

“The feminist rationale for an Obama vote is really quite simple: My grand-niece.”

As Michelle Goldberg previously wrote, “Several otherwise admirable, even heroic women seem to identify with Clinton so profoundly that they interpret rejection of her as a personal rebuke. Stung, they accuse Obama supporters of flighty illogic, but there's a powerful, extra-rational emotional current in their arguments, a flailing in the face of an imagined betrayal. In their anger, they're lashing out in all kinds of counterproductive ways, doing far more damage to feminism than a Clinton loss ever could.”

The contempt some, if not many, of these old guard feminists have for people, particularly younger and black women, who have decided to back Senator Barack Obama for the nomination over Clinton is not a hopeful or healthy sign of the state of feminism. If differences cannot be tolerated then individual feminists may flourish while the movement, as defined by the old guard, withers.

Adele Stan explains why she supports Senator Obama and responds to Linda Hirshman’s attack on feminists who aren’t falling in line behind Senator Clinton:

… Hirshman … makes her claims as a feminist, and then tars fellow feminists -- those who vote differently than her -- with the right's "liberal elitist" brush. For flourish, she uses the sexist technique of ridiculing two women prominent in the Obama campaign by focusing only on their physical attributes. (Maria Shriver is reduced to a description of her hair, while Michelle Obama is mentioned in the context of her fashionable shoes.)

Feminists who support Obama, Hirshman writes, care little for the working-class woman. Their votes reflect nothing more than a "turn to solidarity with their own class." The same goes for college-educated women of all stripes who support Obama, all of whom are presumed, in Hirshman's argument, to be well-off, be they social workers or administrative assistants. If we cared for the working-class woman, she says, we would vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton because she was the first of the two to offer a paid family leave proposal and proposes a "slightly more generous" health plan than does Obama. If we vote on the basis of, say, something as esoteric as foreign policy, we're being elitist, because presumably everybody knows that foreign policy has no bearing on the life of the working-class woman.

I don't know who Hirshman thinks is fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But to dismiss Obama's stance against the war (and Clinton's vote to authorize President Bush's foray in to Iraq) as merely the high-minded concerns of narcissistic elites is perhaps not the best way to express solidarity with the class from which many of those fighting the war are drawn. It also smacks of the implication that foreign policy is too complicated a subject for the working-class woman to understand.

The notion that not rewarding Clinton for being "first" with a paid family-leave proposal somehow hurts working-class women is just silly, given Obama's own proposal. As for the "slightly more generous" health care plan proposed by Clinton, it works via a mandate that is legitimate fodder for debate, especially among the working-class people who would most feel the sting of the stick in this carrot-and-stick approach.

Her assertion that women who vote for Obama vote against their own economic self-interest essentially holds no water.

The feminist rationale for an Obama vote is really quite simple: My grand-niece. Your daughter, if you have one. All the little girls who are growing up at a rather grim hour in American history.

Our nation is sinking deeper into recession. We are mired in a bloody, intractable conflict in Iraq, and may be losing the war in Afghanistan. Our beloved Constitution has been raped and pillaged. Instability and the specter of war threaten every continent. Climate change is hard upon us.

In difficult times, inspiration matters. The ability to lead lies less in the details of policy than in the ability to call people to sacrifice and courage, and to get them to comply. I'm not absolutely certain Obama can do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's not Clinton's strong suit. And given the similarities in their policies, I've cast my lot with him.

Don't get me wrong; symbols do matter. As a feminist, I've waited a long time to see a woman come this close to winning the presidency. I have hoped against hope to see a good, liberal woman lead this nation before I die. In the voting booth on primary day, I stared at the ballot for a long time before I marked it for Barack Obama. It was a painful mark to make. Painful because Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily dedicated, intelligent and talented public servant. Painful because at another hour, she would have been just what the doctor ordered for a nation in need of fixing.

But the moment in which policy solutions alone offered a cure has passed. In 2008, fixing is out and healing is in.

I stood in that voting booth and thought of my newest grand-niece, born only weeks before the District of Columbia presidential primary. Who, I thought, could best convince the American people to move forward in the interest of a common good, so that our nation might pass through this perilous time, to thrive once more by the time baby Julianna comes of age? For my grand-niece to enjoy the equality that has evaded women of my generation, the nation will first have to survive. The Constitution will need to be restored. Tasks such as these require the gifts of a brilliant orator more than the skills of a policy genius. I blinked back the tears and voted for the man. (Now, if he would promise to put a woman on the ticket, I would feel much better about the whole thing.)

I take no issue with the feminism of women who disagree with my choice. I do, however, take issue with those who disparage my character as their explanation for my choice. I came to feminism for its promise of freedom. Surely, self-proclaimed feminists owe the rest of us no less.

The Iraq War’s refugee legacy -- a humanitarian disaster

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, approximately one in five Iraqis has been displaced according to Refugees International. Those with the means – which means often the very people with skills needed to rebuild Iraq – have fled the country. Others are displaced internally. The issue has been ignored by the Bush administration in part because the recent lull in violence has been bought at the price of ridding various communities of minority members and bringing them back might spark renewed fighting. Also, to resettle refugees in the United States -- much like the U.S. did with over 900,000 Vietnamese -- would look as if the administration’s effort was anything but a total success.

The Wall Street Journal has this piece in today’s paper on the Iraq war’s refugee legacy:

Five years ago, Enas Abood exulted over Saddam Hussein's overthrow from her comfortable three-story home. Her husband found a job with the U.S. military and started bringing home a handsome paycheck, along with American candy for their son.

"We started to see a light at the end of tunnel," says Ms. Abood. "But this light did not last for long."

As the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion approaches this Wednesday, she and her three children live in a shabby rental in a Baghdad slum. Ms. Abood often goes hungry to feed her kids and survives on handouts. Her husband, unhappy and unemployed, took off two months ago. She hasn't seen him since.

America's decision to topple Saddam Hussein has left Iraqis a people uprooted. Iraq's Ministry of Health estimates that 180,000 Iraqis have been killed; other estimates put the numbers much higher.

But far more common still is Ms. Abood's journey from middle-class prosperity to transient poverty, reflecting the life-shattering disappointment that many Iraqis now see as the legacy of the war. An estimated four million Iraqis -- over 14% of the country's population -- have been displaced inside Iraq or to neighboring countries, largely due to the chaotic aftermath of the American-led invasion that began on March 19, 2003.

Prior to the invasion, about one million Iraqis were internally displaced by conflicts and by policies of Saddam Hussein to move certain ethnic groups. But aid agencies say more than two million citizens are now displaced inside the country, largely because of sectarian violence -- infighting between the Sunni and Shia Muslim sects -- or fighting between insurgents and U.S. troops. About 60% of the displaced are children.

Others have fled the country altogether, with some two million refugees living in neighboring Jordan and Syria alone. As foreign governments face mounting social pressures from the influx, they are tightening visa rules and sending many back to Iraq, where many refugees no longer have homes.

A few of Iraq's displaced are starting to return. While horrific violence still rips frequently through Iraq, combat successes by the U.S. and changing attitudes of some Iraqi political groups have led to an improvement in security in parts of the country. Last year, U.S. commanders poured fresh troops into Baghdad in the so-called surge strategy of ousting insurgents, and have persuaded some of Iraq's influential tribal leaders in joining the fight against the antigovernment forces.

In 2006, an average of 60,000 Iraqis were leaving their homes each month, according to the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on displaced populations. Since then, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, an Iraqi aid group, says the numbers have fallen from a high of 2.3 million Iraqis displaced inside the country last September to about 2.17 million as of the end of January. The organization says there are still about two million Iraqi refugees living in Jordan and Syria.

U.S. officials say they're taking steps to address what they call a "deepening" refugee crisis. In congressional hearings in Washington last week, a State Department official said USAID, a State Department group that facilitates reconstruction of developing countries, contributed more than $254 million in humanitarian assistance to "vulnerable populations" in Iraq. Still, officials testified that displaced Iraqis are facing worsening conditions and will need more food, shelter and employment.

Over the years, the Red Crescent had set up 39 camps across the country for displaced Iraqis. A few other camps were run by the Iraq government's Ministry of Migration, the Kurdish regional government or other groups. Aid organizations donated food, tents, fuel and other items.

But most of the Red Crescent camps were temporary tent cities, often lacking power and water, where garbage piled up uncollected. Iraqis shunned them, aid workers say, out of shame. The group shut down most of them late last year, and fewer than 1% of the country's current displaced live in the Iraq's few existing camps.

The rest are scrambling to find new homes -- renting in unfamiliar neighborhoods, moving in with family or squatting in abandoned buildings. These migrants are largely unreachable by aid agencies. Often, they aren't registered locally to receive food rations provided by the government. They have few connections to find work. That usually means they have little money, straining the resources of relatives who have taken them in.

Last month, the United Nations cautioned against refugees returning to Iraq because the conditions for safety and "dignity on a meaningful scale" didn't yet exist inside the country. "We have a humanitarian disaster," says Dana Graber Ladek, an Iraq specialist for the IOM.

You can read the entire article here.

Charles Mingus: “Flowers for a Lady” (1974)

Performing are Charles Mingus (bass), Dannie Richmond (drums), Don Pullen (piano), George Adams (tenor sax), and Hamiet Bluiett (baritone sax) on July 28, 1974 at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Todi, Italy.

Charles Mingus (1922 – 1979) was a jazz bassist, composer and bandleader. He was also known for his activism against racial injustice.

Mingus is highly ranked among the composers and performers of jazz, and he recorded many highly regarded albums. Dozens of musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. His tunes—though melodic and distinctive—are not often re-recorded, in part because of their unconventional nature. Mingus was also influential and creative as a band leader, recruiting talented and sometimes little-known artists whom he assembled into unconventional and revealing configurations.

“Homosexuals are worst than terrorists”

According to Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern, homosexuality is a bigger threat than terrorism. Speaking before a small gathering she apparently was unaware her remarks were being recorded let alone about to be released on an audio clip on YouTube. According to the AP:

A YouTube audio clip of a state lawmaker's screed against homosexuality, which she called a bigger threat than terrorism, has outraged gay activists and brought death threats rolling in.

"The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, OK, it's just a fact," Rep. Sally Kern said recently to a gathering of fellow Republicans outside the Capitol.

"Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. So it's the death knell in this country.

"I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat," she said.

The former school teacher has been a magnet for coast-to-coast condemnation, including a jab from comedian Ellen Degeneres, ever since someone posted her comments on the Internet last week. State police said they are investigating death threats against her.

Back home in the Bible Belt, though, the response has been mixed. Kern has gotten support from her fellow Republicans.

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Kern, who is finishing her second term, has tried unsuccessfully to pass bills to rid libraries' children's sections of books that have homosexual themes. She told the group that school children are being indoctrinated by gay activists.

"We're not teaching facts and knowledge any more, folks," she said. "We're teaching indoctrination, OK, and they are going after our young children, as young as 2 years of age, to try to teach them a homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle."

In the same speech, she said gays are "infiltrating city councils" across the country.

"It spreads, OK, and this stuff is deadly and it's spreading and it will destroy our young people," she said. "It will destroy this nation."

Kern said she made these comments on about four different occasions to small groups of Republicans and she thinks the recording was made at one of these meetings in January. Various recordings of it have generated more than a million hits on YouTube.

You can read the entire story here.

Five years in Iraq

We are a few days from the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The initial rationales for the invasion – the threat to the West from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda – were soon found to be groundless. Nevertheless, the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was quickly toppled and the formal occupation began with hopes of at least establishing a stable democracy in the Middle East.

Yet gross incompetence by the Coalitional Provisional Authority, more interested in conservative political correctness than serving the Iraqi people, allowed the diverse Iraqi nation – a product of the British mandate in the Middle East following WW I – to spin off in different directions. The result was ethnic and religious tensions turning into multiple civil wars under the noses of the occupying armed forces. Given the collapse of security a local version of Al Qaeda, which had not been a presence in Iraq before the invasion, sprung up to add to the chaos. In the meantime, attention and resources have been diverted from the Afghanistan conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Bush administration was in denial that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating rapidly until the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission (a.k.a. the Iraq Study Group) pointed out the obvious. The Bush administration in reaction came up with a new military effort referred to as the “surge” modeled after a similar but failed British effort in Basra. The idea was for a temporary increase in American troops to give the Iraqi government time to get its political house in order. The “surge” has now run its course and little has changed in regards to the Iraqi government. Violence is down but that is largely a result of the ethnic cleansing the preceded and coincided with the increase of American troops. In the meantime, the country is little more than a shell with a not very promising future.

Patrick Cockburn examines the current situation in The Independent:

'It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam," a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, might briefly venture into the city.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the US and the Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armoured cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet-proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Mr Maliki.

The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi Prime Minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.

Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.

The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.

More than most wars, the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shia, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father in 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.

The war of 2003 was bound to have radical consequences. If Saddam Hussein was overthrown and elections held, then the domination of the 20 per cent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shia community allied to the Kurds. In an election, Shia religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America's troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington's attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The US and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on 19 March 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home. Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.

The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, whether in the army or out of it, were doing. "They simply thought we were wogs," says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. "We didn't matter."

In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in 19th-century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market told me how a 24-year-old American, whose family were donors to the Republican Party, had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had PhDs, about the virtues of democracy.

There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shia wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.

Later President Bush and Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. "If we leave, there will be anarchy," friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway.

In that first year of the occupation it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: "I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken." Yet this was the moment when President Bush and his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, were saying that the insurgents were "remnants of the old regime" and "dead enders".

There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shia, but when I mentioned prominent Shia leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: "But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians." Al-Qa'ida in Iraq regarded the Shia as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shia marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shia began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shia militia death squads or the police.

After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006, sectarian fighting turned into a full-blown civil war. Mr Bush and Mr Blair strenuously denied that this was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shia Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three-quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.

The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the US, al-Qa'ida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.

There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.

Obama in Indiana

Senator Barack Obama reflects on Bobby Kennedy's famous speech in Indianapolis today (March 15, 2008) at a Town Hall Meeting in Plainfield, Indiana:

Let me just close my initial remarks by talking about bringing this country together. You know, Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most — gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis. Right after Dr. King was shot. Some of you remember reading about this speech. Some of you were alive when this speech was given. He stood on top of a car. He was in a crowd mostly of African Americans. And he delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed. And he said, at that moment of anguish, he said, we’ve got a choice. He said, we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes. And we can decide to walk down this road together. And remake America once again. And, you know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks - because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech at the convention in 2004, there is no Black America, or White America, or Asian America, or Latino America. There is the United States of America. But I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been this shift. You know, that you’ve been seeing in the reporting. You’ve been seeing some of the commentaries of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you heard some statements from my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject, although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly had — but if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked. And it just reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different.

I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget them. We have to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them. But what you also have to do is remember what Bobby Kennedy said. That it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America. And that we have to do not just so that our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is the only way that we are going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care divided. We cannot create an economy that works for everybody divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we’re going to win this election. That’s how we’re going to change the country.

Marian McPartland: “In a Mist” (1974)

Marian McPartland plays “In a Mist” composed by Bix Beiderbecke in 1927.

Margaret Marian Turner was born in England on March 20, 1918. She was a musical prodigy from the time she could sit at the piano, about the age of three. Marian studied classical music, and, in addition to piano, has mastered the violin.

Marian was introduced to jazz by a boyfriend who often brought jazz records to her house. For hours they would listen to the music of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and others. From that point on, Marian was hooked on jazz. In 1943, Marian began playing in USO camp shows in Belgium and France, where she met a Chicago cornetist named Jimmy McPartland, a Bix Beiderbeck protégé. The two were married and performed at their own wedding at a military base in Germany. In 1952, Marian's trio began what was to become a long-running gig at New York's Hickory House, where many legendary musicians to whom Marian had once listened often sat in the audience listening to Marian.

In 1964, Marian McPartland launched a new venture on WBAI-FM (New York City), conducting a weekly radio program that featured recordings and interviews with guests. In 1978, Marian began hosting her own radio program for National Public Radio: Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. The program features Ms. McPartland at the keyboard with guest performers (usually pianists). It is currently the longest-running cultural program on NPR.

Marian McPartland turns 90 next Thursday. Happy birthday, Marian.

Can you be a feminist and not vote for Senator Clinton?

One demographic group Senator Clinton seems to be able to count on in her campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency is older white Democratic women. To some extent that may be understandable. Women who came of age during the 60’s and 70’s share a common experience of rising expectations in the face of gender based discrimination.

While that may seem understandable what seems to be a little out of kilter is the contempt some, if not many, of these Clinton supporters have for people, particularly younger and black women, who have decided to back Senator Barack Obama for the nomination over Clinton. It’s as if Democrats are not allowed to agree to disagree.

Geraldine Farraro’s rather bizarre comments about Senator Obamas race that she repeated over and over again was not so much directed at Senator Obama as to his supporters. She couldn’t seem to comprehend that voters may choose a candidate other than Hillary Clinton for reasons other than race: Senator Clinton is entitled to this nomination and therefore anyone supporting someone other than Clinton can’t be thinking rationally. If you watched any of the news clips of Ms. Farraro you saw a very angry woman who has convinced herself that she has something to be offended about.

Is Farraro alone? Unfortunately, no. There are some old guard feminists who take support for anyone other than Clinton as a personal rejection and betrayal. This is not a hopeful or healthy sign of the state of feminism. Michelle Goldberg has these observations in the Guardian:

Infuriated by Barack Obama's ascent, Geraldine Ferraro, erstwhile feminist icon, has transformed herself into Archie Bunker in heels. First she claimed that Obama owes his electoral success to being black, as if Hillary Clinton were some unlucky victim of affirmative action, in danger of losing a job she deserves to an unqualified token. As the uproar over her comments grew, she dug in further, claiming that she herself is the injured party: "Racism works in two different directions," she said. "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

How's that? Well, that's the kind of thing Rush Limbaugh and other self-appointed spokesmen for the beleaguered white male like to say. To hear a putative progressive, the first and only American woman ever nominated for vice-president, complain about the unfair advantages black men enjoy in American life is, to say the least, disappointing. (Maybe it shouldn't be - the Politico informs us that she said similar things about Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, though her comments had since been largely forgotten.) Yesterday, having thoroughly disgraced herself, she quit her post on Clinton's finance committee, though she remained blithely self-righteous about the entire affair, never offering even a hint of an apology.

Some have suggested the whole thing was part of a Clinton scheme to ratchet up racial tensions in advance of the Pennsylvania primary. That's possible, but there's a simpler explanation. Several otherwise admirable, even heroic women seem to identify with Clinton so profoundly that they interpret rejection of her as a personal rebuke. Stung, they accuse Obama supporters of flighty illogic, but there's a powerful, extra-rational emotional current in their arguments, a flailing in the face of an imagined betrayal. In their anger, they're lashing out in all kinds of counterproductive ways, doing far more damage to feminism than a Clinton loss ever could.

In January, the venerable Gloria Steinem made a more sober version of Ferarro's argument in the New York Times, arguing (though she claims not to have been) that gender trumps race in the victim sweepstakes, and that if young women are voting for Obama over Clinton, it could be because of false consciousness. "What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age," she wrote. (Just what is so radical about automatically backing a candidate whose primary qualification is her husband, and whose surrogates have attacked Obama for consorting with "left-wing" intellectuals, remains unsaid. Clinton is a woman - what else do you need to know?)

A few days after Steinem's op-ed, there was Marcia Pappas, president of the New York chapter of the National Organisation for Women, putting out a press release accusing Obama and John Edwards of a "psychological gang bang", for, um, criticising Clinton during a debate. Then, last month Robin Morgan, the feminist writer who edited the seminal anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful, unleashed a hysterical screed accusing female Obama supporters of being, essentially, blinkered bimbos: "Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can't identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her."

Linda Hirshman, author of the bracing feminist manifesto Get to Work, was slightly more decorous in a Washington Post column about pro-Obama women, but every bit as condescending. Like other Hillary hard-liners, she starts with the assumption that Clinton obviously and indisputably deserves the votes of right-thinking females, so only some kind of psychological flaw, moral failure or logical fallacy can explain why so many smart, accomplished women aren't getting in line.

Yes, she allows, "maybe Obama is the best candidate, and these highly educated women, with their greater political savvy, have recognised his value." But then she spends the rest of the column pondering other, apparently more likely answers. Maybe, she suggests, pro-Obama voters are elitists who can't relate to their less fortunate, Clinton-voting sisters. "Or," she writes, "it could just be that women with more education (and more money) relate on a subconscious level to the young and handsome Barack and Michelle Obama, with their white-porticoed mansion in one of the cooler Chicago neighbourhoods and her Jimmy Choo shoes." Perhaps women are just cowed by Obama's cultish supporters. Writes Hirshman: "It's well established social science that women on the whole are much more averse to political conflict than men are, so it's fair to speculate that avoiding that gantlet may be one more reason women are tilting toward Obama."

Get that? Like the pseudo-populist demagogues of the right, Hirshman presumes a virtuous authenticity in the political sympathies of the less educated, and something vaguely perverse in the choices of the learned. This is, of course, the same tactic the Republicans have used to systematically devalue knowledge and expertise over the last eight ungodly years.

In the end, such rhetoric is likely to do less damage to the Obama campaign - he's winning regardless - than to feminism. The fact is, the majority of young Democratic women are voting for Obama. Maligning and disparaging them is no way to recruit them into a movement. If feminism equaled supporting Hillary Clinton, I'm not the only one who wouldn't want anything to do with it.

Of course, it doesn't. The fact is, some of the most incisive feminist writers and effective feminist activists - people like Katha Pollitt, Frances Kissling and Eve Ensler, among many others - are backing Obama. The late Molly Ivins - a fiercely progressive, genuinely populist Texan in her 60s - spelled out her opposition to Clinton in January of 2006, in a column bluntly titled "I will not support Hillary Clinton for president". "Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone," she wrote. "This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges."

Ivins was clearly angry at Clinton, but she didn't attack Clinton voters. Few of Obama's feminist supporters have. The rage is concentrated on the other side. Watching Hillary struggle, some of her most outspoken feminist backers seem to be recalling every time they were passed over for some upstart man, every slight and humiliation visited on aging women in America. And so it's become all about them.

Leslie Bennets, the Vanity Fair journalist, recently mocked those who wish Clinton would drop out of the race. "Why doesn't she just get out of the way?" she wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "The media have sorted it all out so neatly: He is young, glamorous, charismatic and funny; he represents the future. She is older, strident, earnest and humourless; she is the past. He inspires; she hectors. Ugh!" She continued, elaborating on the indignities older women in America face. "America requires that females be (or at least appear) young and sexually desirable," she wrote. "Once they've passed the age of facile objectification and commodification, they're supposed to disappear. How dare they not cooperate with our national insistence that older women become invisible?"

This is a ridiculous argument, but it has a grain of truth at the centre that makes it ring emotionally true. Yes, aging women in the US are treated with unbridled contempt. But this contempt has very, very little to do with calls for Clinton not to tear the Democratic party apart, given that she's extremely unlikely to win a majority of pledged delegates or the popular vote. If the roles were reversed, if Obama were behind by every metric, Clinton would have been coroneted by now, and the cry for her opponent to get out and quit being a spoiler would be deafening. Gender injustice is a gross, epidemic problem, resulting in more human rights violations worldwide than any other iniquity. But gender injustice does not explain what's going on here. To insist that it does is crude projection.

The irony is that, for the overwhelming majority of women, voting against Clinton was never about repudiating second-wave feminism. But the more leaders of the movement insist on conflating their noble struggle for social justice with the fate of an uninspiring and nepotistic candidate, the less relevant it will be. Many progressives, male and female alike, see Clinton as cynical and narcissistic, pandering to interest-group sectarianism even as she compromises on important principals. It would be a hideous shame if they came to see feminism the same way.

Chinese crack down on Tibetan independence demonstrators

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded and seized control of Tibet in late 1949. Approximately half of Tibet was incorporated into surrounding Chinese provinces in 1950 and the remaining country was formally annexed by the PRC in 1951. An uprising by Tibetans against the Chinese occupation began in 1956 and spread until it was finally crushed in 1959. Tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and the Dalai Lama fled to exile in India along with an estimated 80,000 refugees. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s, the Chinese Red Guard conducted a campaign to destroy Tibetan cultural sites. During this period an estimated 6,500 Buddist Mondastaries were destroyed and only a few of those left standing were not vadalized. Opposition to Chinese rule flares up from time to time and is always burtally suppressed.

Tibetan National Uprising Day on March 10th, and subsequent days, has marked demonstrations and rallies by Buddhist monks and Tibetans against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. These are thought to be the largest protests against Chinese rule in over two decades. Rioting has broken out in the Tibetan city of Lhasa. According to the BBC, people are setting fire to cars and shops and destroying anything of Chinese influence. According to the U.S. embassy in Beijing, U.S. citizens have reported hearing gunfire. According to the New York Times, Chinese security forces have surrounded Buddhist monasteries in Lhasa as part of a crackdown on the monks. The situation is being reported to the world by groups such as the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

This assessment is from the International Campaign to Save Tibet:

Conditions are said to be increasingly tense within the three major monasteries in Lhasa, which are under lockdown and surrounded by troops following peaceful demonstrations over the last three days by hundreds of monks from Drepung, Sera and Ganden monasteries on the outskirts of the capital. Ganden monks demonstrated yesterday, marking the third day in a series of protests unprecedented in recent years that have now rippled through the Lhasa area, while others are reported in at least two remote rural monasteries and towns in areas of central and eastern Tibet.

All three monasteries are closed off to tourists according to several tourism operators. Two Drepung monks are said by Radio Free Asia to be in serious condition after stabbing themselves in a possible attempt to commit suicide, while monks at Sera are refusing to attend classes and are on hunger strike in a bold act of protest despite the crackdown at the monastery.

The number of Tibetans detained as a result of the protests could not be confirmed today. Although the initial response on the ground appears to have been more restrained than expected, there are indications that the authorities have begun a process of investigation in monasteries that could lead to detention and torture in a standard official pattern of reprisals followed by political re-education. There is an intensified atmosphere of fear and tension in Tibet's capital.

In a familiar official response, the Chinese authorities blamed the Dalai Lama for the protests that began on Monday, the 49th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang called the protests "a deliberate political plot of the Dalai Lama group to cause social unrest, separate Tibet from China, and wreck the stable, harmonious, and normal life of the Tibetan people." (Xinhua, March 13).

The Dalai Lama became, and remains, Tibet’s best-known international spokesperson. However, he is 71 years old. China is calculating that international interest in Tibet will wane after he dies.

But the Chinese face a wider range of criticism for its human rights record – both directly in China and indirectly through its dealings with governments of Sudan and Burma among others. Much attention is focused on the Summer Olympics and brought a number of protests from various groups. In fact, the Chinese have now prohibited climbing on the north face of Mount Everest because they plan on having the Olympic torch carried into Tibet from Everest and fear demonstrations.