Is 'Outsourced' really that offensive?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 11 Comments

Lewis Jacobs/NBCU Photo Bank/CP

From the reaction to Outsourced, you’d think it was the most offensive portrayal of India since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The half-hour comedy, which airs on Global at 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays, is about an American (Ben Rappaport) who is forced to take over a call centre in India—or at least a Hollywood sound-stage version of it. Rizwan Manji, the Canadian actor who plays the hero’s scheming assistant Rajiv, says he thought the show would be criticized for making light of outsourcing and “the unemployment rate in the United States.” Instead, critical reaction to the pilot mostly ignored economic issues and focused on racial ones; Joshua Ostroff in the Toronto alternative newspaper Eye Weekly wrote that it “pushes the offensive line toward out-and-out racism,” while zap2it.com declared that the jokes about “timid women” and Indian food are familiar to “people with senile, racist grandparents.”

Most of the complaints have been about the mocking of Indian customs and names. There are jokes about the name “Manmeet,” and Manji’s character tricks his boss into thinking that vindaloo is a god as well as a food. In response, the writers have argued that comedy is based on exaggeration, and that the Americans are also treated stereotypically. “It’s a comedy first,” Manji says, while head writer Robert Borden told the Kansas City Star that “we have to have the right to make the Indian characters out to be as silly as the white ones.”

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Microfinance meltdown

By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment

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The global economic downturn destroyed the image of big finance, but did nothing to tarnish that of microfinance, the altruistic business of making tiny loans to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. Recently, though, even microlending appears to be headed toward its own mini financial crisis.

Once hailed as a magic bullet against poverty, the practice has come under attack in India and Bangladesh where it is being accused of increasingly adopting the same loansharking methods that it is meant to rescue small borrowers from, like punishing interest rates. The backlash first originated in India, where a wave of suicides by farmers with outstanding microloans led local authorities to rein in financiers. Similarly, in neighbouring Bangladesh—the birthplace of the global microlending movement—regulators are planning measures that include an interest rate cap.

Microfinance firms deny wrongdoing, saying that charging hefty interest rates (usually around 30 per cent) is necessary to cover servicing costs in remote villages. But microfinance founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has been warning that high growth and high profits have been corrupting the industry. The concept of microcredit, he told the Wall Street Journal, “is being blatantly abused.”

Poor Pakistan

By Julia Belluz - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 45 Comments

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

When U.S. President Barack Obama touched down in India last week on Air Force One—part of a staggering 40-aircraft, six-armoured-car entourage—his was the biggest trip to India of any U.S. administration. And the scale of Obama’s much-discussed retinue matched the sizable gesture the U.S. made toward India, as the President described the India-U.S. friendship as “one of the defining and indispensible partnerships of the 21st century.” Other presidents have fostered closer ties with India, but Obama stayed in the country longer than he has in any other, and announced America’s backing of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council for India, making it the second nation—after Japan—to earn such a distinction.

But there was an equally significant, though more implicit, action that came with the strengthening ties between the world’s largest democracies. Shirking the long-time habit of U.S. presidents to pair a stop in India with a trip to the country’s archrival, Pakistan (long seen as America’s most important strategic ally in the region), Obama continued on to three other democracies (Indonesia, South Korea, Japan)—without any such nod to Islamabad. Though the U.S. has been working on “de-hyphenating”—or separating—relations with India and Pakistan for about a decade, four of the five previous trips by U.S. presidents to India were either preceded by or followed with stops in Pakistan, mainly to avoid upsetting either of the long-standing rivals in the zero-sum game that characterizes U.S. relations with the two nations.

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Wanted: lost languages

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

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In 2008, K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, travelled to Arunachal Pradesh, India, a remote northeast region of the country, which even Indians need a permit to reach. As a specialist in endangered languages, Harrison was searching for speakers of two little-known tongues—Aka and Miji. But he stumbled upon an incredible discovery: a third, hidden language, Koro. “Koro had never been noticed by outsiders,” says the Canadian-born anthropologist. But Koro was also concealed from within. “The Koro lived closely with the Aka, and downplayed the differences between them, believing they spoke a dialect of the Aka language,” Harrison says. “What’s cool is this is a small language, intermingled with a dominant group. You would think it would be abandoned by its speakers. But it has persisted, and we don’t know why.”

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A good deal, but what about the drugs?

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos

India’s dream of becoming an economic powerhouse will take a giant leap forward later this year with the scheduled signing of a bilateral free trade agreement with the European Union. The goal of the agreement is to triple the existing $74-billion trade flow between the two regions over the course of the next five years. Yet one outstanding issue is drawing considerable backlash, at home and abroad.

The agreement, according to a new study in the Journal of the International AIDS Society, could significantly harm India’s generic drug industry, which supplies 80 per cent of the cheap, anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) that are sold to low- and middle-income countries. The study, which contains data from more than 17,000 donor-funded purchases of ARVs by 115 countries, suggests that negotiations between India and the EU have included measures that could delay, or in some cases restrict, generic medicines from reaching certain regions due to product patent restrictions, data requirements and tighter border rules. Such a move could significantly increase the cost of India’s ARVs, in addition to limiting dosage availability and delaying access to newer and more advanced drugs, the study argued.

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Stratego

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 12:21 PM - 0 Comments

India and China reportedly supported Portugal over Canada in the security council vote, while an official with the United Arab Emirates admits the UAE lobbied against Canada.

Shashishekhar Gavai, India’s High Commissioner to Canada, refused to comment on how India voted, pointing out that the member nations cast a secret ballot. However, he said Canadians should not become preoccupied with the loss of face associated with the defeat, pointing out that India lost a similar contest in 1996.

“One has to move on. It’s not really the end of the world,” Mr. Gavi said Wednesday in an interview. “Canada’s position does not stand diminished in any way.”

So much for 'Chindia'

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

GURINDER OSAN/AP

When Manmohan Singh warned of China’s “new assertiveness” last week, Asia watchers snapped to attention. The normally sage Indian prime minister accused Beijing of seeking to expand its reach in South Asia. With China muscling for resources and geopolitical clout, India, he warned, had better take heed. The timing of the rare public rebuke was especially provocative, as it came hot on the heels of a series of diplomatic flare-ups between the two giants. Temperatures on the continent are rising in step with the Asian rivals’ growth.

Last month, China denied a visa to an Indian general on the grounds he was based in disputed Jammu and Kashmir. That was retaliation, experts figure, for India’s earlier denial of a visa to a senior Chinese diplomat. China has, for more than a year, been angering India by refusing to issue normal visas to residents of Indian Kashmir. It is also stoking Indian fears of being encircled by a Chinese infrastructure build-up in northern Pakistan, and Indian Ocean port and rail developments in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Last month, India’s excitable media seized on reports that China has stationed as many as 11,000 troops in northern Pakistan, feeding growing fears of the “Chinese dragon.” For now, a planned defence exchange between the two has been halted at New Delhi’s behest.

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Serving for peace

By Julia Belluz - Friday, September 10, 2010 at 3:04 PM - 0 Comments

Pakistan’s No. 1 tennis player, Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, is the first of his countrymen to make it to the final of a Grand Slam. Before losing to American identical twins Mike and Bob Bryan, the tennis champ had a chance at winning both the men’s and mixed doubles finals of this year’s U.S. Open. But for Qureshi, there was more riding on his matches than simple sporting rivalry. To him, tennis is about world peace.

The 30-year-old has become something of a goodwill ambassador on and off the courts, drawing international attention for his unlikely alliances. In 2002, the Muslim player partnered with Amir Hadad of Israel for the doubles event at Wimbledon. While they made it to the third round at the prestigious tournament, and won the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year award for their union, Qureshi was lambasted back home and threatened with expulsion from the Davis Cup by the Pakistan Tennis Federation.

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Caught on Facebook

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Just when you thought Facebook was only good for organizing parties and stalking ex-boyfriends, the social networking site has become a weapon in the fight against traffic crime in India.

Police in New Delhi—a city of 12 million people (more than half of whom are motorists) and about 5,000 traffic cops—recently launched a Facebook page in the hopes of improving communication with the public. But the site has turned into a hub for airing grievances and tattling.

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'A beautiful living lab'

By Sarah Elton - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

William Daniels/PANOS

On a cool day a few years ago in a village in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, a group of government workers approached a thatched-roof hut. They had learned that a young man in his late 30s had died there several months earlier, and they wanted to ask his family some questions. How did he die? Had he been sick? In India, a medical examination or certificate of death isn’t required before burying or cremating a corpse, and so the workers were conducting a kind of verbal autopsy.

As the young man’s father told them the story—his son had developed a cough, then become sicker until he had trouble breathing—a few children and then a couple of older neighbours gathered around. His son had started smoking at age 10, the man said, but they didn’t know exactly what had killed him, only that he was in the hospital for three days before he died.

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How to really fuel discontent

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Amit Dave/Reuters

India’s fuel subsidies have long been considered too hot to touch. To tweak them is to invite public fury. So it came as a bit of a shock last month when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, hardly the political bruiser needed for the task, announced major reductions just ahead of Toronto’s G20 summit. The bold move, sure to hurt the poor who rely on kerosene to cook, will also sting politically. Massive strikes in response last week grounded planes, stopped trains and closed schools and businesses across India for a day. Goods were stranded at port when truckers joined in, using their parked rigs to gum up traffic. In places, violence flared, leading to thousands of arrests.

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Jewellery for the masses

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Ajit Solanki/AP

Forget the middle classes—savvy marketers in India are targeting the rural masses. No one has done it better than the Tata group company (maker of the $2,500 Nano car), whose jewellery division, Titan Industries, has set its sights on rural towns with its GoldPlus line. “Thirty per cent of the GoldPlus income in 2009 came from people who we have reached in these small villages, up from 1.5 per cent in 2006,” a company executive told the Financial Times.

When GoldPlus was launched in 2005, it embarked on an ambitious marketing campaign to unite the fragmented village market—more than 70 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion population lives in villages of less than 5,000 people. GoldPlus employees toured the country in a bus called the Gold Chariot, set up 30 showrooms in six small states, and even infiltrated weddings to lure consumers away from their local jeweller—the traditional source of gold in the community.

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The Ignatieff doctrine

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 108 Comments

The Liberal leader is presently outlining his foreign policy in a speech to a Toronto audience. Simultaneously the Liberals have released a policy paper outlining the vision and various tangible proposals: emphasis on China, India and Africa, a post-combat training role for Canada in Afghanistan, a special envoy to the region, an overarching emphasis on empowering women in the developing world, a Canada Youth Service program, a new ambassador for circumpolar affairs, a permanent G20 secretariat, global scholarships for student from lower and middle income countries to study in Canada and a Branding Canada initiative.

Much of it links back to a notion of networked governance that Mr. Ignatieff mused on in Montreal.

That certainly isn’t cricket

By Kate Lunau - Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment

RAVEENDRAN / AFP / Getty Images

With its crisp white uniforms and languid pace, cricket has long been considered a strange, stodgy sport. Not so in the Indian Premier League, an American-style sports association like the NHL or NBA, that boasts cheerleaders, celebrity team owners (many of them Bollywood stars), and a new, fast-paced form of cricket—dubbed Twenty20—that lasts just a few hours, unlike traditional test cricket matches, which can take five days. In its three short years of existence, the IPL has ballooned into a $4-billion brand. But it’s been rocked by a scandal that’s hit Indian politics and taken down the league’s founder, with more fallout to come.

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The return of Hitler

By Katie Engelhart - Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 7:10 AM - 165 Comments

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On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler took his own life with a simultaneous bite into a cyanide pill and gunshot to the temple. The day before, he dictated his will from the dank confines of the Führerbunker, a concrete shelter buried some eight metres below the old Reich Chancellery, as Soviet forces encircled Berlin. What exactly happened next is still fiercely contested, but by most accounts, the bodies of Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, were carried upstairs to the garden by SS devotees, doused in gasoline, and burned to pieces—then buried, then later unearthed, and then buried again in an unknown location, or perhaps just scattered to the wind.

Almost 65 years later to the day, the man and the totalitarian regime he established continue to fascinate us. In just the last few years, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler’s poorly written, 700-page magnum opus, “turgid, verbose, shapeless,” to borrow from Winston Churchill, has earned bestseller status in some unlikely markets: India, Turkey and the Palestinian territories. His paintings are fetching record-setting prices, and trade in anything the Third Reich leader touched, or might have touched, is thriving. In some cases, the fascination is trivial, even absurd, such as the “Nazi chic” clothing that has been popular in Asia: T-shirts with Hitler portraits and swastikas. In others, though, it is more pernicious: the 65 years that have passed since Hitler’s death have not dulled the allure of the Führer, or his ideology, for the now-burgeoning extreme right.

Take the lead-up to last Sunday’s national elections in Hungary, which saw the far-right Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Movement for a Better Hungary) rake in 16.7 per cent of the national vote. In just a few years, Jobbik has grown from almost nothing, winning over a disenchanted electorate with its stark anti-Semitic and anti-Roma rhetoric. Party officials have been careful to dismiss any direct links to Nazism; anti-Semitism is masked in attacks on Israeli investors and hatred of the Roma is justified with talk of “gypsy crime.” But members of Jobbik’s paramilitary wing, the Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard), have not been so cautious. Neither have its supporters, who gathered by the Danube River last week to lash out at “Jewish pigs” and to unite in a common cry against foreigners on Hungarian soil: “They should leave!” Jobbik’s leaders, now at the helm of the opposition, are ready to take their country forward—away from all that “commotion over the Holocaust.”

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Bollywood’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’

By Katie Engelhart - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 3 Comments

Its promotional posters, placed throughout India, show two bare-chested men, eyes closed and necks strained, locked in a sexual embrace. And though the film does not come out until May, it is already being hailed as an iconoclastic cinematic break—or, more commonly, “Bollywood’s answer to Brokeback Mountain.”

Sanjay Sharma’s film Dunno Y…Na Jaane Kyun will, for the first time in Bollywood history, feature a gay kiss. The plot centres on a struggling model who moves to Mumbai in search of fame, and then begins a relationship with another man. In a country that only decriminalized homosexuality last year, it’s no surprise that the premise has some filmgoers squirming. (In fact, until recently, even heterosexual kisses—or “lip-locks”—were taboo, although that is changing.)

To be fair, Dunno Y will not show Bollywood’s first man-to-man kiss, per se. In 2008, the film Dostana portrayed two men pretending to be gay, in an effort to fool a young woman into living with them. At the end of the film, the two men kiss…as a punishment. And Bollywood has occasionally featured gay characters. But they are effeminate men whose roles are limited to comic relief.

And they are never cast in a sexual light. In contrast, Sharma insists that his film depicts a “normal relationship” between two unambiguously gay men. “The only thing I was particular about was that this character should not come across as a caricature or just as an object of mockery,” he told the Times of India.

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Corruption engulfs India’s army

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 5 Comments

Lt.-Gen. Avadesh Prakash, one of India’s highest ranking army officers, was just days from retirement when he was ordered to face a court martial recently over his alleged involvement in a controversial land deal. It is the latest in a series of corruption scandals to engulf India’s defence forces in the last few years.

Prakash is accused of abusing his position so a close friend and developer, Dilip Agarwal, could buy a 30-hectare parcel of land next to the headquarters of the army’s 33 Corps in West Bengal at a bargain-basement price. The scandal first came to light last year and Prakash was found guilty by a military court of inquiry in December. Though Lt.-Gen. V.K. Singh, the court’s convenor, recommended Prakash be fired, India’s army chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor decided that only light “administrative action” was warranted. As criticism grew that Kapoor was being too soft on Prakash, the defence minister, A.K. Antony, pushed for tougher disciplinary action against Prakash. Kapoor reluctantly agreed to a court martial for the three-star general: “The minister’s advice to [the] army chief amounts to being a direct order,” explained an unidentified official to the Times of India.

This is just one of the scandals to grip the 1.1-million man military force, in the midst of a multi-billion-dollar replacement of aged weaponry. There was the commander fired for selling subsidized alcohol on the black market, and the “ketchup colonel” who faked photographs of successful battles against militants, thereby winning promotions, by pouring the red sauce on civilians. Then last year, it was revealed that the silent “reconnaissance vehicles” purchased for covert missions behind enemy lines were in fact nothing more than golf carts used at exclusive military courses.

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Credibility is what’s really melting

By Mark Steyn - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:50 AM - 390 Comments

Whenever I write about “climate change,” a week or two later there’s a flurry of letters whose general line is: la-la-la can’t hear you. Dan Gajewski of Ottawa provided a typical example in our Dec. 28 issue. I’d written about the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit’s efforts to “hide the decline,” and mentioned that Phil Jones, their head honcho, had now conceded what I’d been saying for years—that there has been no “global warming” since 1997. Tim Flannery, Australia’s numero uno warm-monger, subsequently confirmed this on Oz TV, although he never had before.

In response, Mr. Gajewski wrote to our Letters page: “Steyn’s column on climate change was one-sided, juvenile and inarticulate.”

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Top 10 Romantic Destinations

By Chris Robinson, Takeoffeh.com - Friday, December 11, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 3 Comments

“Chris’ Top Ten Favourite Places” is a regular feature of top travel destinations selected from Chris Robinson’s personal experience. This week he picks his favourite “Romantic Places”.

Ah, the romance of travel… Here are ten places where I have become starry-eyed, beguiled and bewitched by the moment, the place and the person with me. I dare you to visit and not fall in love!

1. St. Vincent & the Grenadines
   Undeveloped, unspoiled and cloaked in emerald green rain forest, the mother island of St. Vincent also boasts an archipelago necklace of pristine tropical islands for the most perfect get-away-from-it-all experience. This is the spot we have chosen to renew our wedding vows after 30 years of marriage.
2. Treetops Lodge, Kenya
   There is something wonderfully powerful, primeval and romantic about staying up all night together in this atmospheric old wooden lodge built on stilts among the trees overlooking a waterhole and watching the nocturnal activities of the animals of the African plains. This is where Elizabeth arrived as a princess and departed as Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.
3. 

   Heidelburg, Germany
   Imagine an ancient castle ruin standing atop a wooded hill overlooking a medieval university town, with the Neckar River meandering through the town, old cobbled streets, quaint taverns, marketplaces and coaching inns dating back centuries…We wandered the streets just soaking up the atmosphere.

4. Kashmir, India
   Once upon a peaceful time in this Shangri-La land, I stayed in blissful peace on a Victorian houseboat on Lake Dal beside a medieval town, with the Himalaya perfectly mirrored in dazzling waters…and I was lost to the magic of Kashmir. One day it will be possible to visit again and I will return with the love of my life.
5. Taj-Mahal, India
   I was so prepared to be disappointed with the Taj…and yet was blown softly away on the river breeze when I first saw it, by moonlight, from a distance. Close up, the love affair deepened. It is, quite simply, the perfect architectural embodiment of love and everyone should write it down now on their Bucket List if it isn’t there already.
   
6. 

   Moorea, French Polynesia
   A thatched hut built on stilts over the warm waters of a turquoise lagoon, a tiny verandah over the natural aquarium around us, and steps that led us gently into the clear warm waters…heaven on earth…well, heaven on water really I guess – but heaven nonetheless!
   

7. 

   Cambridge, UK
   OK, so this is a very personal choice…it’s where my romantic fate was sealed, arm-in-arm together on the medieval Magdalene Bridge as the moon’s reflection rippled across the River Cam and the spires of King’s College Chapel were silhouetted in the distance…I placed a ring on the finger of my girlfriend that is still there over thirty years later.
   

8. 

   Le Château Frontenac
   Our very own romantic hot spot: winter or summer, this castle-like hotel occupies an eminence in between The Citadel and Old Quebec in Quebec City and epitomizes the chic grandeur of our most beautiful Canadian city. This was where I took my wife for our first romantic weekend getaway when we arrived in Canada.

9. Tuscany, Italy
   Romance spices the Tuscan air, infuses the Tuscan wines and hangs miasma-like in the early morning mists that often surround the hill-top villages; stay in a castle, a villa or a farmhouse and let the essence of Tuscany seep into your soul! We stayed in the Villa Pitiana, a converted Benedictine Monastery on a hilltop outside Florence with views that went on forever.
   
10. 

    Frégate Island, Seychelles
    A 20 minute flight from the main island of Mahé, itself an island speck in the Indian Ocean, this tiny island boasts a single luxury lodge, unique flora and fauna and perfect granite coves all to yourself. If you are looking for the perfect tropical island romantic paradise, this is it – and we would return in a heartbeat.

By Chris Robinson
Chris hosts Canada’s top rated radio travel show – the Chris Robinson Travel Shows on Newstalk 1010 CFRB in Ontario and CJAD 8000 Montreal in Quebec. www.chrisrobinsontravelshow.ca

Photo Credits: iscoversvg.com, naturephotographer.net, Chris Robinson

Newsmakers '09: Feuds

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 1 Comment

	PALIN vs. JOHNSTON Call it the tussle on the tundra: America’s most famous Alaskans have been at each other’s throats ever since Levi Johnston left the Palin family home shortly after the birth of his son, Tripp, to Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol. In interviews and a tell-all article for Vanity Fair, Johnston paints a portrait of Sarah as a lazy, tempestuous, money-hungry egomaniac. Palin, meanwhile, has dismissed Bristol’s relationship with Johnston as a “mistake” and accused the 19-year-old newly minted Playgirl model of being a deadbeat on a “quest for fame, attention, and fortune.”
	PORT vs. COHEN The Skanks in NYC blog was never destined for greatness. And yet its musings about Canadian-born model Liskula Cohen (right) made headlines after Cohen went to court to force Google to identify the anonymous blogger. Cohen eventually dropped her US$3-million defamation suit against Rosemary Port, the 29-year-old fashion student in question. Port, though, launched a US$15-million suit against Google, which she claims should have upheld her right to call someone a “psychotic lying whore” online.
	INDIA vs. SCOTLAND It’s a fixture in Indian restaurants, but Glasgow chef Ahmed Aslam Ali says chicken tikka masala isn’t Indian at all—it’s Scottish. In fact, the 64-year-old founder of the Shish Mahal restaurant claims he invented it in the early 1970s. A Scottish MP is now taking the Scot’s claim one step further, trying to secure “protected designation of origin” status for the dish. Indian foodies have dismissed Ali’s claims as “preposterous,” and say chicken tikka masala is an “authentic Mughlai recipe” that’s been passed down for generations.
	VLADIMIR PUTIN vs. UKRAINE When Ukraine missed a US$500-million payment for Russian gas in November, Russian PM Vladimir Putin was incensed. His Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko, stepped in and negotiated a deal to guarantee gas deliveries. But Putin has since suggested Ukraine’s payment “problems” could be met with significant supply “problems.” And should Ukraine decide to siphon gas from shipments meant for Europe rather than buy it from Russia, he threatened, “we will cut supplies,” a tactic he already used last January.
	SEPARATIST vs. THE NATIONAL BATTLEFIELDS COMMISSION When Quebec’s hard-core separatist fringe threatened to disrupt a re-enactment of the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Canada’s National Battlefields Commission simply cancelled the event altogether. “We don’t want it to become a clash,” André Juneau, then commission president, said by way of explanation. “There was one in 1759 and we don’t want another.” History, it seems, isn’t written by the winners, but by the whiners.
	BECKHAM vs. FANS David Beckham probably knew better than to expect a warm welcome when he returned to L.A. for his first home game with Major League Soccer’s Galaxy. Despite his US$250-million contract, the star had skipped the Galaxy’s first 17 matches of the season, opting to play for an Italian club. But the reception was enough to leave Beckham wishing he’d stayed in Italy. Fed up with the taunts and boos, he tried to climb a barrier to get at an angry fan. Beckham claims he just wanted to shake hands; he was fined US$1,000 for the goodwill gesture.
	ATHEISTS vs. UNITED CHURCH Last winter, Canadian atheists announced they would be buying ad space on buses to promote their message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Rather than try to censor the message, the United Church of Canada opted to run a cheeky reply of its own: “There’s probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Whatever impact the ads may have had, the real message may very well have been, “There’s probably no point arguing about religion on the sides of buses.”
	AMERICAN APPERAL vs. WOODY ALLEN Woody Allen isn’t the first name that comes to most people’s minds when the topic of fashion models comes up. Still, no one was as surprised as Allen himself when his frumpish mug found its way onto an American Apparel billboard in 2007. Allen sued over the ad, which showed him dressed as an Orthodox Jew, with a caption, in Yiddish, calling him “the high rabbi.” They settled out of court in May for US$5 million.
	CHINA vs. RIO TINTO Last July, Chinese officials arrested four employees of Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, accusing them of stealing state secrets. The arrests followed a failed bid by Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese manufacturer, to invest US$19.5 billion in the company. Rio Tinto, along with Australian officials, is still working to free Stern Hu, the company’s chief iron ore negotiator, but Chinese officials say their investigation isn’t complete.

Stop the lama love-in

By Andy Lamey - Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 11:15 AM - 140 Comments

Everyone loves the Dalai Lama. Just how much was on display two weeks ago when the Tibetan religious leader paid a visit to the town of Tawang in northeastern India. Ethnic Tibetans travelled to the frontier outpost from all over the sub-continent in order to venerate the 74-year-old monk at a huge outdoor rally. “He is our god, he is the living Buddha. A glimpse of the Dalai Lama is like getting spiritual power inside you,” said one participant in explaining the extraordinary adulation the Dalai Lama inspires. Here in Canada, our view is not so different. When the Dalai Lama travelled to Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal last month, tens of thousands crowded into stadiums to hear his message of universal compassion. The rapturous reception was in keeping with our decision in 2006 to grant him citizenship, the highest honour Canada bestows on foreign leaders. The Dalai Lama’s other admirers include the U.S. government, which awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee. The general feeling of Lama-mania was summed up by TV star Sandra Oh, who co-hosted one of his Canadian appearances. “He’s a rock star! Rock star! Seriously, a rock star!”

Yet if the Dalai Lama is a rock star, does he live up to the hype? His spiritual teachings contain elements of illogic and intolerance that would not be accepted from any other religious figure. That these go unnoticed is largely due to the way Tibetan Buddhism functions as a spiritual Rorschach blot onto which Westerners project their hopes and desires. The primary problem, however, is political. In addition to being a spiritual figure, the Dalai Lama is the leader of the Free Tibet movement. And when it comes to advancing that goal, he has been a resounding failure. Uncritical adulation legitimizes the Dalai Lama’s failed leadership and undermines one of the great political causes of our time.

It’s not hard to understand the Dalai Lama’s appeal. At first glance he holds out the promise of religious belief purged of any trace of fundamentalism. When it comes to modern science, for example, he has said that when it conflicts with Buddhist teachings, Buddhism should be revised. Other theological statements he has made, such as his declaration that “any deed done with good motivation is a religious act,” bespeak a similarly open-minded temperament.

But this progressive outlook can sometimes turn out to be illusory. Consider the teaching for which he may be best known, his doctrine of universal compassion. As he has written, “non-violence applies not just to human beings, but to all sentient beings—any living thing that has a mind.” That belief is why, when the Dalai Lama was invited to a fundraising luncheon for a monastery in Wisconsin in 2007, the organizers expected him to ask for a vegetarian meal. Instead they watched him happily ingest pheasant and veal. “He pretty much lapped up every single plate that he had put in front of him,” one tablemate later said. “He loves food; he likes good food.” The Dalai Lama, it turns out, is vegetarian at his official residence in India but not while travelling. But a doctrine of compassion that switches on and off depending on geography is not much of a doctrine at all.

The Dalai Lama’s position on same-sex relationships is equally puzzling. “I look at the issue at two levels,” he told the Vancouver Sun in 2004. Homosexuality is perfectly acceptable for non-believers. And for people who look to the Dalai Lama for guidance? “For a Buddhist, the same-sex union is engaging in sexual misconduct.” The double-sided approach is rooted in a traditional method of explaining discrepancies between schools of Buddhism, whereby the Buddha is said to have taught different things to different people. But as with the doctrine of compassion, the Dalai Lama’s considered view ends up being a sloppy relativist mess. Or at least it does in the West, where he is obliged to state his view regarding non-Buddhists. When addressing Buddhists directly the Dalai Lama’s position is less complicated—and more crudely prejudicial.

This side of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual teachings is never subject to criticism. Why? One possibility is that the Dalai Lama solves a specifically Western problem. In the 19th century the shared religious values that once permeated our civilization began a “long withdrawing roar,” as Matthew Arnold put it. Any religion one adopts now is merely one possibility among many, a reality that drains each of its explanatory value and force. An infatuation with the Dalai Lama is the Goldilocks solution for a culture that finds traditional religion too hot and atheism too cold. His exoticism marks him as authentic, and subjecting his teachings to critical scrutiny is beside the point, as there is never any chance we are going to engage his teachings seriously enough to be challenged by them. We instead want to bask in his distant spiritual glow.

The Dalai Lama’s appeal is arguably closely entwined with the peculiar fascination the West has long exhibited for all things Tibetan. When Europeans discovered Tibet, it was a remote kingdom that had never been colonized and still seemed to exist in the ancient past. It quickly became a land of fantasy. Shangri-La, the mystical Tibetan paradise, was first depicted in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. In the late 1930s the Nazis sent an expedition to Tibet, hoping to find an ancient race of Aryans. After the devastation of the Second World War, European intellectuals imagined Tibet as “an unarmed society.” As Buddhist scholar Donald Lopez notes, these myths have a common source. In each case, “the West perceives some lack within itself and fantasizes that the answer, through a process of projection, is to be found somewhere in the East.”

This process continued after China invaded Tibet in 1959, and many Tibetans were driven into exile. When the Beatles recorded Tomorrow Never Knows, John Lennon wanted his voice to sound like “the Dalai Lama on the mountain top.” Remember the cuddly and eco-friendly Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? The language they spoke was modified Tibetan. Today Tibet is embraced by celebrities ranging from the Beastie Boys to action hero Steven Seagal. “The Dalai Lama gave me a spiritual blessing that would not have been given to anyone who was not special,” Seagal announced in 1996. “I don’t think he has given such a blessing to another white person.”
Just how special Seagal is became clear in 1997 when Tibetan religious authority Penor Rinpoche declared him to be the reincarnation of a 17th-century lama. However ridiculous it may seem to imagine the star of Exit Wounds and Pistol Whipped as a holy being, Seagal’s anointment symbolizes the transformation Tibetan Buddhism has undergone as it has come in contact with new patrons and admirers in the West. Rather than something “out there,” Tibetan culture is influenced by how Westerners engage with it.

Unfortunately, on a political level, that influence has been highly negative. Seeing how requires understanding the different and at times conflicting roles the Dalai Lama now plays in addition to being the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. Nowhere is this more true than in regard to his position as leader of the Tibetan government in exile, and the Free Tibet movement more broadly.

Since China invaded Tibet it has engaged in a campaign of ruthless repression. It is official government policy to “end the nomadic way of life” of traditional Tibetans and to forcibly resettle them. Tibetans who protest are subject to show trials and torture. Opposing China’s actions has rightly been characterized as a moral struggle on the scale of the movement against apartheid or for Indian independence. Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama is the equal of neither Nelson Mandela nor Gandhi. He is as miscast as the head of Tibet liberation as the pope would have been leading the struggle against Hitler. Under his leadership political goals have inevitably taken a back seat to spiritual ones.

A comparison to South Africa is instructive. One of the most inspiring moments in the struggle against apartheid came during the famous Rivonia trial when Nelson Mandela, faced with a possible death sentence, spoke from the prisoner’s dock. Freedom, he said, was “an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela’s speech galvanized the anti-apartheid movement. The Dalai Lama’s pronouncements, by contrast, could not be less defiant. “I practise certain mental exercises which promote love toward all sentient beings, including especially my so-called enemies.” Mandela endorsed an international boycott of South African athletes. When China hosted the 2008 Olympics, the Dalai Lama sent Beijing his regards. “I send my prayers and good wishes for the success of the event.” If the Dalai Lama had led the struggle in South Africa, apartheid would still be in effect. Unsurprisingly, 50 years after the occupation, Tibet is still not free.

At times it seems that is what Western Tibetophiles would unknowingly prefer. In the words of actor Richard Gere, a long-time advocate of Tibetan independence, “Many of us constantly remind our Tibetan friends, ‘You must maintain that sense of uniqueness and that genuine cultural commitment to non-violence. If you pick up arms and become like the Palestinians, you’ll lose your special status.’”

Leave aside the fact that the moral case for armed resistance in Tibet is as strong as it was in France under German occupation. There are many steps an independence movement can take that fall short of violence, measures such as strikes or boycotts. The Dalai Lama has thrown himself into none of these, which are all at odds with loving one’s enemy. This approach is reinforced by his Western admirers, who are drawn to the myth of Tibet as an unarmed society (even though Tibet has fought armies from Mongolia, Nepal and Britain). The overall effect of his staunchest Western fans therefore has been to reward and perpetuate an approach to Tibetan independence that has no hope of ever succeeding.

To be fair, his Holiness has begun to admit as much. “I have to accept failure; things are not improving in Tibet,” he said last November, acknowledging the “death sentence” Tibetans continue to face under Chinese rule. His supporters stress the awareness he brings to the Tibetan cause and the anger Chinese officials express whenever the Dalai Lama receives an audience with a Western leader. But after a certain point, awareness has to give way to action.

Slowly, another political faction is taking form. As one young Tibetan who has spent his entire life in exile in India said in March, “We do not get anything from China. So some young people want to go to a little bit of violence—not to kill anyone but to do something so that China knows they will actively [resist].” Such a view is in keeping with the position of the Tibetan Youth Congress, which stands for “the total independence of Tibet even at the cost of one’s life.” If progress is to ever be made on Tibet, these approaches need to be taken seriously. But that can only happen if the Dalai Lama steps aside as a political leader, and lets a new generation take over.

First, however, public perception of the Dalai Lama needs to change. As it stands, when people turn their attention to him, they do so in the spirit of answering John Lennon’s call to “turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.” The outcome of this lazy attitude is to reinforce the Dalai Lama’s leadership and his counterproductive efforts to free his people. The basic problem was summed up by the Dalai Lama himself when he stated, “I find no contradiction at all between politics and religion.” So long as the Dalai Lama is regarded as a figure of both spiritual and political liberation, his efforts to make the first goal happen will ensure the second never does.

"The interaction now draws to a close"

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 2:25 PM - 42 Comments

From the Inkless emailbox: Stephen Harper holds a news conference with the Prime Minister of India. Full transcript as provided by the Privy Council Office (ours, not theirs).

UNIDENTIFIED: Your Excellency, Prime Minister of Canada, Honourable Prime Minister, distinguished guests, we welcome you to today’s signing ceremony, where two agreements are going to be signed.  First, we have the memorandum of understanding for setting up the joint study group for examining the feasibility of signing a free trade agreement with Canada.  The Canadian signatory is his Excellency Mr. Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade, and the Indian signatory is Shri Anand Sharma, Honourable Minister of Commerce and Industry.  The two ministers are requested to come to the dais, please.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED: Next we have the memorandum of understanding for cooperation between the two countries in the field of energy.  The Canadian signatory is his Excellency Mr. Joseph Caron, High Commissioner of Canada to India, and the Indian signatory is Shri Harishankar Brahma, Secretary, Ministry of Power.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED: This concludes the signing ceremony.  The spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs is now requested to conduct the joint press interaction.

MODERATOR: A very good evening to you all, and welcome to the joint press interaction. First, the Prime Minister of India, Honourable Dr. Manmohan Singh, would be making his opening statement.  Next, the Prime Minister of Canada, his Excellency Stephen Harper will be making a statement.  May I now invite the Prime Minister of India for his remarks?

DR. MANMOHAN SINGH (Prime Minister of India): Your Excellency Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour for me to extend a very warm welcome to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his first visit to India as the Prime Minister of Canada.  This had been a long overdue visit, and we are extremely honoured, then, that Prime Minister Harper has been able to accept our invitation.  Relations between India and Canada are of long-standing nature.  They derive their strength from our shared values of democracy, respect for fundamental human rights, and multiculturalism.  Canada is host to a large Indian origin community of over one million.  This reflects the strong people-to-people links that exist between us and which have enriched our relationship.

Our bilateral relations have greatly strengthened since Prime Minister Harper assumed office.  Continue…

Slumdog Prime Minister

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 12:23 AM - 12 Comments

Rick Mercer foresaw this day.

The Prime Minister goes Bollywood

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 16, 2009 at 3:41 PM - 19 Comments

Or, more accurately, Stephen Harper claps as people dance around him.