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As the final Alexander McQueen collection was shown in Paris yesterday, Fashionista posted this quotation, taken from an interview with McQueen for the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Love:
“People always ask if I think about a concept or the show or the front row or whatever first. No! Fuck off! The client comes first! The collection is driven by what clients want in different parts of the world, so I want them to be able to see it straight away and to judge it for themselves. Well I just think that which celebrities are wearing it, what reviews say–none of it matters if it’s all there for people to make their own minds up. I’m 40 now, but I want this to be a company that lives way beyond me, and I believe that customers are more important to making that happen than press. When I’m dead, hopefully this house will still be going. On a spaceship. Hopping up and down above the earth.”
Read more: Alexander McQueen Love, Fashion, Alexander McQueen Interview, Alexander McQueen, Style News
Iraqis can be proud this week of what they have just achieved: a second parliamentary election, with more than 6000 candidates competing, and a strong voter turnout, free from government interference.
The elections were conducted under an open-list proportional representation electoral system that maximized voter choice and will ensure a fairer distribution of seats in the legislature than in many western democracies.
They were guided by an election law that banned the use of racist or sectarian rhetoric in election campaigns, or the use of religious symbols. When candidates broke the rules, rival parties or impartial election monitors pointed it out, and the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) proceeded to warn the offending party and levy a hefty fine for its digression.
They were conducted with the Islamic Seminary in Najaf — the leadership centre for the Shi’a faithful comprising the majority constituent of Iraq’s diverse population — taking a neutral stance, emphasizing time and again that it was not backing any particular list or candidate. Instead, Sayid Sistani, Iraq’s most senior cleric, called on all Iraqis to exercise their right to vote, and to base their vote not on sectarian or ethnic calculations, but rather on who they believed would serve Iraq best.
Despite all the violent efforts of Al-Qaeda and die-hard Baathists, Iraqis came out en mass to vote. When mortar attacks landed, people rushed to help the victims, and then returned to their place in the queues to make their voice heard: NO to wars and violence; YES to peaceful participation and opposition; NO to a return to tyranny; YES to democracy.
Outside of Iraq, media reports liked to focus on the few violent incidents that took place – ignoring the fact that tragic as the loss of innocents were in these few days, the violence was thankfully not serious enough to pose major obstacles to voter turnout, and that in most provinces in Iraq, millions had come out to vote without facing any difficulties other than having to wait in long lines of excited voters.
As an election monitor, I watched those queues form in Arlington, Virginia of all places. There, as with other set locations across the United States, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, Iraqi expatriates and refugees were allowed to cast their vote as part of the Out-of-Country-Voting scheme organized by IHEC.
Some of those Iraqi Americans that were queuing up in the Virginia voting station lived locally; others had commuted from cities like New York or Boston so their voice could be heard. They were tired but enthusiastic, chatting away in unique blends of Arabic, English and Kurdish, and in dialects that reflected the mosaic of the Iraqi population back home, and the experiences of Iraqis abroad living in different corners of the globe.
Many voted for the State of Law Coalition (337) led by PM Nouri al-Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party. Why? Perhaps because they believed PM Maliki to have achieved more than any other Iraqi politician in the way of bringing security back to Iraqi streets, kick-starting the economy and fighting corruption. Or because they agreed with Dawa’s position on federalism, or the policies they advocated that would help stimulate and manage the enormous task of reconstruction and development that violence had forestalled over the last few years.
Others voted for Ayad Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya Coalition (333); others still for the Iraqi National Alliance (316) led by Maliki’s predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Why? Perhaps because they saw in Allawi or Jaafari or other figures in those two competing lists better substitutes for Maliki, or because they favored Allawi’s stance on de-Baathification, or Jaafari’s on the status of US troops. We can only guess.
There was a strong Iraqi Kurdish turnout, as well as from Iraqi Turkmen, Chaldeans and other minority groups. They too differed amongst themselves on who to vote for. Some supported the Kurdistan Alliance of Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani which currently dominates the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, others voted literally and metaphorically for Change — the coalition list headed by Talabani’s former ally, Nawshirwan Mustapha.
With each Iraqi voter, there were different reasons and motivations for voting. Different stances and perspectives on Iraq’s history, its present and future. Some believed Maliki was the savior of Iraq, others the reason for its problems. Some saw in Allawi the politician that would bring positive changes to the country, others feared he would bring back Saddam’s Baath Party instead.
But as they each cast their vote, I witnessed something inspiring: Iraqis supporting rival groups laughed and joked with one another, they took pictures to honor the day, and left the station together speculating about the election’s outcome, and which of the winning lists would join together in parliament to form the government…
As an Iraqi, I am proud of what my country and people achieved this past weekend. Following disappointing elections in Afghanistan and controversial ones in Iran, we Iraqis showed that our country’s trajectory beams on a different path. Democracy in the Middle East is not impossible.
Let us hope the losers accept defeat with grace, the victors with the sense of huge responsibility that comes from recognizing the huge catalogue of pressing issues that they must tackle immediately once they assume governance.
I have faith in both groups. I have faith despite the immense challenges that lie ahead, of rebuilding a state and a nation that has had to endure decades of tyrannical dictatorship, sanctions, and war, and then occupation and internal strife. I have faith that now more than ever, and with each passing day, Iraqis are closer to realizing their dream of a free, prosperous, democratic Iraq.
Viva Iraq!
Jaffar al-Rikabi is an Iraqi graduate student at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He dreams of the day he can serve his country of origin in whatever capacity, shape or form.
Read more: Al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraq Election Violence, Iraq War, Iraq Elections, Iraq, Iraq Elections 2010, World News
Nearly 90% of commmercial academic publishers have seen growth in e-book sales over the past two years, according to a cross-sector survey released today (10th March) by the Association of Learned Professional and Scholarly Publishers. Growth in some cases was more than 1,000%, with e-book sales now almost 10% of total book sales of the publishers surveyed.
Read more: Uk, Academic Publishers, UK Publishers, Textbooks, Book Publishing, Books, Ebooks, Britain, Digital Textbooks, Books News
Women of color stand at the “intersection” of race and gender–a unique location that comes with its own set of challenges. The invisibility black women often face was perfectly encapsulated in the title of a 1982 anthology, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some Of Us Are Brave. So as Black History Month transitions into Women’s History Month, I thought I’d ask another woman of color to discuss strategies for engaging teens with race, gender, and history.
Neesha Meminger is the author of Shine, Coconut Moon, which was named a 2009 Smithsonian Notable Book for Children. Neesha’s also a brilliant blogger–don’t miss her provocative post on writing about the Other: “Hood Passes and Home Invasions.”
In an online review of my young adult novel, A Wish After Midnight, a mother recently wrote of her admiration for Genna, my black teen protagonist:
She is honest, intelligent, and level-headed for a young woman who has been snatched from the twenty-first century and thrown back to 1863. I’m sure most of us would have fallen apart, at least for a while, but [Genna] takes stock and adjusts to her surroundings. She’s the type of heroine you want your daughter to read about.
Girls like Genna didn’t appear in any of the books I read as a child, and it was important for me to create a character who embodied the strength and resiliency that I know so many urban teens possess. I also wanted to give Genna the opportunity to actively engage with history rather than passively waiting for something to happen to her. History was one of my favorite subjects in school, yet it wasn’t until graduate school that I was introduced to the long, impressive history of black women. I asked Neesha to describe the relationship women of color have (or have had) with history:
Women of color have been systemically written *out* of history. I can count on one hand the celebrated women of color I know about, because I didn’t learn about any women of color when I was in school. For people who don’t actively search for the achievements and accomplishments of women of color, I’m certain that the default belief is that women of color have contributed little to nothing toward the evolution of our world. Which is, of course, a flat-out lie, as evidenced by the women of color who are making news headlines in the present–women like Aung San Suu Kyi and Mukhtar Mai who are embodiments of courage, vision, and resistance in the face of tremendous odds. Will their names go down in history books? Unlikely, since most people–even today–haven’t heard of them. What gets coverage in our media and what makes news headlines is a barometer of what our culture values. Take a look at the headlines in any mainstream form of media. How many women of color do you see?
After five years of rejection, I did start to wonder if my representation of terrorism and racial violence might be to blame for my inability to find a publisher for A Wish After Midnight . I started the novel in 2001–before 9/11–and Genna does reflect on the execution of Timothy McVeigh and his reasons for perpetrating the Oklahoma City bombing. I’m now working on the sequel, Judah’s Tale, which begins on September 10, 2001.
In Shine, Coconut Moon, Neesha writes about a South Asian teen who’s facing an identity crisis in the months following 9/11. I asked her why she chose to address this traumatic historical event in a novel for teens:
When I was writing Shine, Coconut Moon, I decided I could not write about a Sikh family in a post-9/11 world without also addressing the events of September 11th, 2001. Everyone I knew then was deeply affected, and it was an especially confusing and disillusioning time for the teens I was meeting–particularly South Asian teens who were now thrown into the position of having to choose to either DEFEND their religion/identity, or DISTANCE themselves from it.
I wanted to zero in on the struggle to come to terms with 1) who you are, which is a struggle ALL teens face, combined with 2) how the world sees/labels you, and 3) navigating all of that within a context of (tacitly or overtly) sanctioned hostility toward those who look like you. That’s a struggle I strongly identified with, having grown up in Canada in the 1970s. The racism I experienced during that time was very similar to the racism many South Asians (and anyone who appeared to be Arab or Muslim) experienced in the days and months after the September 11th attacks. I remember in the ’70s we were busy clarifying to our white classmates that we were not “Pakis” because we were not from Pakistan–we were from India. As if that would offer us some sort of protection. After September 11th, many Sikhs started up a campaign to show the world how Sikh turbans were different from Osama bin Laden’s turban, and that Sikhs were not Muslims and, therefore, were not terrorists. In other words, “I am not THEM! Please don’t hurt me.”
When we grew into our teens, we were still surviving–but now we were having to make decisions around whether we would stand up and be proud of who we were, or if we would abandon our identities in favor of assimilating with the very folks who’d slung racial slurs at us. In September of 2001, I saw much of this repeated around me. I deal with a lot of this in the novel as 17-year-old Samar navigates this new American climate. Before that day, she was simply an American. After that day, she had to prove it.
As we come up on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, I hope readers will search for stories that reveal a different perspective on terrorism–the unique point of view belonging to those women who stand at the intersection of race and gender.
Read more: 9/11, Multicultural Literature, Women's History Month, Canada, Race, Terrorism, Gender, African American Literature, Asian Women, Books News
A bit of wind has been taken from the sails of American Sinophobes. On 4 March 2010, Beijing announced China’s declared defense budget will only increase by 7.5% this year–the slowest rate in 20 years. The announcement came as a surprise to Western analysts who had predicted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would likely receive a 14.5% pay raise in 2010. They should have known better. Beijing has a history of appropriately diminishing military expenditures when more pressing issues arise. In this case, fostering sustainable economic development while avoiding inflation abetted by government spending.
China’s military budget has historically been a “riddle wrapped in an enigma.” While Beijing’s biannual white papers on national defense purportedly seek to address this mystery with a new air of transparency, the published figures do not include such large expenditures as strategic forces expenses, foreign acquisitions, state subsidies for the defense-industrial complex, and some military-related research and development. The result is wide-ranging estimates that vary from Beijing’s self-proclaimed $78 billion for 2010 to U.S. Defense Department assessments of between $100 and $150 billion.
That said, since 1978 the published Chinese defense budget has grown more than 20-fold. Beijing, however, is quick to place this increase in defense expenditures in a broader domestic political perspective. In the 2006 white paper on National Defense, Chinese officials argue:
In the 1980s, China began to shift the focus of its work to economic development. At that time, it was decided that national defense should be both subordinate to and serve the country’s overall economic development. As a result, national defense received a low input, and was in a state of self-preservation. From 1979 to 1989, the average annual increase of defense expenditure was 1.23 percent. However, the defense expenditure actually averaged registered an average annual decrease of 5.83 percent, given the 7.49 percent average annual increase in the consumer price index in the same period.
The Chinese Communist Party is significantly less apologetic or conciliatory about what happened to defense spending between 1989 and 1997. In China’s National Defense 2008, Beijing states that “to make up for the inadequacy of defense development and to maintain national security and unity, China gradually increased its defense expenditure on the basis of its sustained economic growth.” According to the Chinese military, during this time period annual defense spending rose by 14.5%. And from 1998-2009? Beijing unapologetically observes that “to maintain national security and development and meet requirement of the revolution in military affairs…China continued to increase its defense expenditure”–at an average annual rate of approximately 15%.
Since 2002, Beijing has claimed the increase can be directly attributed to five factors:
• Increasing salaries and allowances for military personnel
• Increasing investment in equipment, infrastructure, and weapons
• Training costs
• Compensating for rising consumer costs
• Increasing expenses for international cooperation in nontraditional security fields
In addition to these “traditional” explanations, Western scholars point to two other causes for increased Chinese defense appropriations. The first explanation is political–having been forced to almost completely divest from their commercial interests in the late 1990s, PLA officials are demanding an increasingly larger share of the national budget to meet taskings resident in the military strategic guidelines. The second, and related, explanation is that China’s economic growth has compelled the military to compete for qualified manpower and pay higher prices for raw and finished material — Beijing is now confronting the cost of an economy expanding at record rates.
Given this situation, Chinese defense expenditures will continue to climb–at rates which out-strip inflation–particularly as the PLA seeks to realize Beijing’s desire to serve as a responsible member of the international community. As the 2010 defense budget illustrates, however, the PLA will not be allowed to follow the Soviet model and spend the nation into fiscal insolvency. Instead, Chinese defense expenditures will be tailored to fund a military capable of meeting regional power projection requirements and will to ensure that a PLA commander has the equipment, personnel, and weapons required to counter and potentially defeat a modern adversary.
Rather than worrying this development, we should understand that Beijing’s maintenance of a large, modern military is driven by history, an anarchic international system, and the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to remain atop the nation’s political hierarchy. None of these observations are novel or particularly difficult to understand. And yet many of China’s harshest critics appear willing to ignore all three considerations when casting doubt on the intentions of Beijing’s military expenditures. China’s leaders have no intention of ever repeating the “century of humiliation,” no desire of being left defenseless in our Westphalian world, and will not brook any obvious challenge to their single-party rule of the Middle Kingdom–a modern People’s Liberation Army is critical to realizing these objectives, and will be funded in a manner Beijing deems in keeping with other national objectives.
Read more: Beijing, Military Spending, China, Politics News
SOUTH AFRICA — The sense of African energy and dynamism that I recently described during my visit to Kenya is reinforced strongly here. And it’s not just World Cup fever — though there are plenty of signs of that too.
By some estimates, close to 10 million people are expected to visit South Africa this summer for the football (soccer) extravaganza — a further boost to its economy and its image in the world. South Africa is a global player.
This country has long been seen as the growth hub in the south and eastern part of the continent. But this past year, as a member of the G-20 group of nations, South Africa has come to be seen as much more — an emerging market, yes. And now also an influence on how global decisions are shaped. This is a new role for Africa in the world — and a new way for Africa to be seen by the world.
I see President Zuma regularly at these G-20 meetings. It has been a special pleasure to meet him again in his homeland and to see him at work in leading the economic and political forces at play in a young country that puts forward a vision for itself in the 21st century.
From the IMF’s perspective, South Africa weathered the financial crisis well — with a set of pragmatic counter-cyclical policies that enabled the country to withstand its first recession in 20 years. It is no surprise that, in 2009, growth fell below the average 4.2 percent achieved during 2000-2008. But the worst appears to be over and we expect a relatively healthy 2.5 percent in 2010.
That does not mean that there are no challenges ahead. Quite the contrary, there are some big ones. And in my discussions with South Africans — over dinner with the Minister of Finance and other ministers, with business leaders over breakfast, and with a wonderful group of young students at the University of the Witwatersrand — they did not shy away from laying out what they saw as the priorities to be addressed. They include:
- Tackling unemployment. South Africa lost close to 1 million jobs last year. And, in a country of about 50 million people, unemployment is expected to peak at around 25 percent. That’s a lot of people without jobs. Too many. Growth has resumed, but job creation is as yet anemic — a problem which South Africa shares with many of the advanced countries also trying to recover from the financial crisis. Where are the jobs going to come from? It’s a huge challenge for South Africa, for Europe, and for the United States in the post-crisis world.
- Reducing inequality. A little known fact: South Africa has now surpassed Brazil as having the highest level of inequality in the world. South Africa has taken remarkable steps to address anti-apartheid injustices in housing, education, and health care. But much remains to be done. With one-third of the population less than 14 years old, social tensions can only fester if these young people grow up without a clear sense of a better quality of life for them and their families.
- Building a flexible, competitive economy. A growing economy is not the only answer to meeting these challenges, but it is an indispensable ingredient. While here, I have been making the point that barriers to competition should be brought down across a number of key sectors — to strengthen South Africa’s position in global markets. Other reforms to enhance flexibility in labor and product markets can also help. A successful global player needs to build resilience to global economic shocks.
Forward-looking society
These are tough challenges. Can South Africa meet them? There is no doubt in my mind that it can.
This is a forward-looking, life-affirming society. I saw this in many places. But perhaps, above all, I saw it in Soweto where Anne and I visited an inspirational group called Grassroots Soccer.
Grassroots Soccer delivers HIV/AIDS counseling, as well as more general life skills, to youth. The group bases its work on the devastation wrought by AIDS–and the popularity of football (soccer). Over 300,000 kids have graduated from the program. As I watched those children play, I was filled with emotion–and inspiration.
Yes, South Africa is going to meet its challenges.
Also see my earlier posts on this trip: “Africa Is Back” and “IMF–Delivering on Promises to Africa“
From iMFdirect blog.
Read more: South Africa, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jacob Zuma, World Cup, International Monetary Fund, Africa, Imf, G-20, World News
As Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Afghanistan Taskforce, I want to offer my thoughts on the war in Afghanistan in light of Rep. Kucinich’s resolution, H.Con.Res. 248, considered today on the House floor. I firmly believe our current strategy falls far short of bringing stability to Afghanistan or security to America. My serious concerns about U.S. strategy have led me to oppose the war funding supplemental bill in 2009, oppose increased funding for the 30,000 troop surge, support a war tax, and call for an about-face in funding priorities. My concerns have led me to host innumerous congressional briefings on Afghanistan, pursue the commissioning of GAO reports to audit aspects of U.S. engagement, and author multiple op-eds on the subject. In short, I take my chairmanship very seriously.
As long as we continue to pursue military solutions to this conflict, paying little to no heed to economic, political and social solutions, security will remain elusive. As long as we continue to forego the building of Afghan capacity and instead prop up a privatized defense industrial complex, as well as an increasingly privatized development industrial complex, Afghans will never be able to answer our call to “stand up”. As long as we remain unwilling to bring to justice our allied warlords and corrupt officials in Afghanistan, our calls for an end to corruption in Kabul ring hollow.
Washington must face up to the alarming reality that the hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into Afghanistan are simply not benefiting the Afghan people whatsoever and are not being used effectively in the long-term U.S. strategic interest. Washington also must realize that hard power is utterly limited in its capacity to eliminate an ideological enemy, who is not finite in number. What must be pursued, instead, is the build-up of Afghan state capacity to provide policing and legal enforcement, systems of justice, and good intelligence (in addition, of course, to the socio-economic policies capable of educating and employing a vulnerable population).
Ending this war (and with it, the loss of additional American lives), a policy prescription which I certainly support, will not end the pursuit of a failed security strategy. It is this failed strategy, inaugurated by the previous administration in Iraq and Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, which I want Washington to rethink immediately, before we continue similar strategies elsewhere. This is the conversation I wish my colleagues in Congress would host, before we are soon engaged in the very same debate about failed strategies in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia.
Read more: Afghanistan, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep Honda, Home News
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says it is the US, not Tehran, that is playing a “double game” in Afghanistan.
Failures by the police to tackle anti-social behaviour risks public confidence, says the Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
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