Mid-term Elections * A Treasure Trove of Travel BooksInteresting to read in a British paper, The Observer (Guardian), that Mark Parkinson, former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, is running as a Democratic candidate for the position of Deputy Governor. My regular source of such news, the Washington Post, buried it in Page A20 on May 31st, and it was one of many items under the heading Nation in Brief ! "TOPEKA, Kan. -- Mark Parkinson, the former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, switched his affiliation to Democrat amid speculation that he would become the running mate of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) as she seeks a second term."No wonder I missed it. How did Mark Parkinson dare to leave God's Own Party! As the Queen said to Alice "Off with his head". (Alice In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)The Observer piece, filed by Paul Harris from Topeka, Kansas, deserves attention. Mr. Harris mentioned Mark Parkinson's defection and more. "Sitting in his headquarters, the new Democrat is sticking to his guns. Republicans in Kansas, he says, have let down their own people. "". 'They were fixated on ideological issues that really don't matter to people's everyday lives. What matters is improving schools and creating jobs,' he said. 'I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.' This is music to Democratic ears and has profound potential implications for November's mid-term elections. Kansas has been an iconic state for the Republican right, a symbol for issues such as teaching creationism in schools and fighting abortion rights. The modern Republican party, masterminded by political guru Karl Rove, has harnessed fury over such topics to allow the Republicans to dominate US politics since 2000. This was the topic of Thomas Frank's hit book of the 2004 presidential election campaign entitled: What's The Matter With Kansas? It used the state's falling under the spell of conservative Republicanism to explain national American politics. But in a swath of heartland states such as Kansas, Democrats are seeing the first signs of their party's rebirth. Parkinson is not alone in switching sides. In Virginia, Jim Webb, a one-time Reagan official, is seeking to be a Democrat senator. In South Carolina, top Republican prosecutor Barney Giese has defected after a spat with conservatives. Back in Kansas another top Republican, Paul Morrison, also joined the Democrats and is challenging a Republican to be the state attorney-general. *"Come senators, congressmenPlease heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he that gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outsideAnd it is ragin'.It'll soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'."---Bob Dylan * Unrequired Reading !The world wide web continues to amaze me. Last year I posted an item about Chasing the Monsoon, a book by British travel writer Alexander Frater. Checking recent visitors to my blog I found one who came to it from Marriott Picks, web site of the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library! Following the link I landed at a page titled "Unrequired Reading - Travel and Adventure". To my great pleasure I found a listing of travel books that took my breath away. I like to travel and I enjoy reading travel books. Don't believe I shall find all of them in local libraries but there will be enough of them to keep me content for months.The list below is just to impart a flavor of what the Marriott has.A Time of Gifts; from the Hook of Holland to the middle Danube /Patrick Leigh FermorAs an 18 year old walks from Holland to Istanbul in 1933London / John Russell“a fine and scholarly book that is also, in a sense, indulgent. John Russell is like a kind uncle who is taking London itself out for a treat.” NYTimesA Corner in the Marais; memoir of a Paris neighborhood /Alex Karmel A short history of Paris as exemplified by the author’s pied-a-terre.Long ago in France / M.F.K. FisherAmerica’s most gifted food writer on her life in Aix , Marseilles, and Dijon.The Roads to Santiago / Cees NooteboomAn appreciation of Spain by an art-lover who especially favors the Romanesque and small towns.Motoring with Mohammed; journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea / Eric HansenShipwrecked on a Red Sea island, Hansen must bury his travel journals and return years later to isolated Yemen to retrieve the experiences.The Heart of India / Mark Tully” ... powerful moral fables, informed by an elegiac sadness at the gradual erosion of the rural old India before a riptide of corruption, brutality and intolerance.” The TimesIn Xanadu / William Dalrymple A retracing of Marco Polo’s trek from Jerusalem to Kubla Kahn’s legendary palace. Desert Places / Robyn DavidsonTrek with the Rabaris, one of India’s vanishing nomadic peoples.Travel, it is wonderful. It educates your mind and your palate. It broadens your horizons. If you travel, go with an open mind.

Mandarins of Morality * The non-existent WMDThink Fahrenheit 451. Can book burning be far behind? How appropriate, North Carolina---the home of Rev. Billy Graham, took the step to ban Cassel Dictionary of Slangs from school libraries. Before going further I would like to state I used the word "prick" as defined in wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn (asshole: insulting terms of address for people who are stupid or irritating or ridiculous) and not one of the other definitions---"penis". The pricks, devout pricks, campaigned against five books. Four of them escaped being banned but their turn might come.What about the Song of Songs (Bible: King James Version) ? That's one erotic piece of verse.From The Guardian, June 24, 2006: Jonathon Green, who compiled the 87,000 entries in the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, which was published last year, said that North Carolina is the only place he knows of where the book cannot be used in schools. A Wake County school official told ABC News that five books, including the dictionary, were formally challenged. The others were listed as The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, Junie B Jones and Some Sneaky, Peaky Spying by Barbara Park, Reluctantly Alice by Phyllis Reynolds and In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. School officials acted after pressure from Called2Action, a local Christian activist group whose website asks people to "join our E-army today to take your place on the front lines of the battle for our children's future". Some parents were also upset that their children were required to read books such as The Colour Purple by Alice Walker and Beloved by Toni Morrison, on the grounds that the books contain "vulgar and sexually explicit language". *Saddam Hussein's WMD They found them---they were stored in their heads---and they took us to war. Now they talk about democratizing Iraqis as the reason for the war. This is from the Post: "In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare." Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph. A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

Politicians and ElectorateAn ominous trend that has been growing for some time---more and more voters, especially younger ones, are sitting out elections. They think that it does not matter. Before criticizing them we ought to consider the legislators and their shameless antics in Congress. The title of late John Kennedy Toole's novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, is an apt description for the lot. Richard Morin's column in the Post points the finger at Jon Stewart's Daily Show for being partly responsible. "This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy. Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting. " Perhaps there is some truth in it but let's face it, the so called "voter turn off" began long before Jon Stewart appeared on the scene.On to Charles Babington, Page 01 of the Post: "The Republican-controlled Congress seems to be struggling lately to carry out its most basic mission: passing legislation. A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage failed miserably. Long-debated immigration legislation has reached an impasse. The House passed line-item veto and estate tax measures that face significant hurdles in the Senate, while the Senate devoted a week to impassioned debates over Iraq that only resulted in two failed Democratic resolutions."Democratic critics are reviving Harry S. Truman's taunt of a "Do-Nothing Congress." But many Republicans say they are exactly where they want to be as they head into the November elections, which will determine whether they retain their House and Senate majorities. In every instance, GOP leaders pushed legislation known to have little or no chance of eventual enactment but also known to appeal to conservative voters, whose turnout is crucial to the party's success.

We Are the Enemy * Ronaldo the Magnificent They are at it again. The Republicans have decided that success lies in standing behind the president and demonizing those who are critical of the war in Iraq. They have embraced the strategy, reported to be engineered by Karl Rove, to recover their crumbling fortunes. They have found the enemy and it is us. Charles Babington in the Post: "The Republican-controlled Senate, embracing President Bush's handling of the unpopular war in Iraq, rejected two Democratic efforts yesterday to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the three-year-old conflict."Displaying cohesion that has eluded Democrats, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to leave deployment decisions in the president's hands. The votes, which followed three days of sometimes-fierce debate, outlined the positions the two parties will carry into the November congressional elections and underscored the Democratic constituency's split between staunchly antiwar activists and those who are frustrated but less fervent. Thirty-one of the Senate's 44 Democrats opposed setting a firm deadline for withdrawal.True to form, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Con) sided with Republicans.More about Rove in Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing, June 22,2006: "Karl Rove is a master of high-stakes brinksmanship, as he has proven time and time again. But his latest venture may be his riskiest yet. Rove is betting that he can reframe the war in Iraq as a battle between courageous Republicans and pusillanimous Democrats. The stakes: Congress. (And subpoena power.)"Rove believes that this strength vs. weakness rhetorical construct, combined with continued attacks on the media, will be enough to counterbalance whatever negative news about the actual war continues to emerge between now and the mid-term elections. *Ronaldo of BrazilBetween Robinho, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho the Brazilians displayed great skill in their game against Japan (4-1). The Brazilians are in a strong position to return home with the cup.

Pragmatism or expediencySummer has begun. The mid-term elections are getting closer and there are signs that the Democrats don't have their act together. The Republicans are vulnerable but how strong is the backlash against their excesses and the president's failed policies remain open to questions. A lot can happen between now and November. But November will certainly be an indicator of the direction the winds are blowing. Then the presidential hopefuls will begin jockeying in earnest for 2008. David Broder's Thinking Outside The Blog describes the influence of bloggers in shaping policies of the Democratic Party. "But the blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought. The candidates who have been adopted as heroes by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the convention's leader, and his fellow bloggers have mainly imploded in the heat of battle -- as was the case with Howard Dean in 2004 -- or come up short, as happened to the Democratic challengers in special House elections in Ohio and California."Fortunately, there are others than these "net roots" activists working on the challenge of defining the Democratic message. I do not include the Democratic congressional leadership in the hopeful camp. The new legislative "agenda" that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Co. trotted out last week was as meager as it was unimaginative.Yes, bloggers like Moulitsas of the DailyKos have an impact. If some of them are strident, some stridency is needed. For too long the divisive and militant tactics of the Republicans succeeded in muting the voice of opposition. However, for the Democrats to take back Congress calls for the need to compromise. My fear is how far to the right they will move. The Democratic leaders in Congress do not give much reason to hope that they will be more principled than the members across the aisle. I am for pragmatism; I will bitterly condemn them if they sell themselves and end up becoming Republican light. *Martin TaylorIs the departure of Martin Taylor from Microsoft a significant event? To us, non techies, he was unknown until the announcement on June 20th that he was no longer vice president of Windows live and MSN marketing. There are speculations about where he will surface---Google, Yahoo. Does it really matter?

Looking for Enemies, Looking for Wars The more we learn about the people who exploited and manipulated post 9/11 America the more scary they look. In their world the enemies lurk everywhere...enemies often created by them. In The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light, Barton Gellman of the Washington Post writes about Ron Suskind's new book "The One Percent Doctrine". "This "Cheney Doctrine" let Bush evade analytic debate, Suskind writes, and "rely on impulse and improvisation to a degree that was without precedent for a modern president." But that approach constricted the mission of the intelligence and counterterrorism professionals whose point of view dominates this book. Many of them came to believe, Suskind reports, that "their jobs were not to help shape policy, but to affirm it." (Some of them nicknamed Cheney "Edgar," as in Edgar Bergen -- casting the president as the ventriloquist's dummy.) Suskind calls those career terror-fighters "the invisibles," and he likes them. His book is full of amazing, persuasively detailed vignettes about their world. At least a dozen former intelligence officials speak frankly in public here, as did former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill in Suskind's previous book, "The Price of Loyalty."Where are they going to take us and how far are we going to let them go?

" A novel where India examines E.M. Forster"That is the title of the review of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. The Guardian, one of my favorite newspapers on the web, republished its review of "A Passage to India". The review had appeared 82 years ago---on June 20, 1924. "The story is, essentially, that of the close contact of east and west in the persons of Dr Aziz, a Muslim, assistant medical officers of the Chandrapore hospital, and Mr Fielding, principal of the college. In them it is as close as blood itself allows. So far as affection is concerned they are friends, so that the interplay of east and west is along the very finest channels of human intercourse - suggesting the comparison of the blood and air vessels in the lungs; but the friendship is always at the mercy of the feelings which rise from the deeps of racial personality. "I have read the book more than once (it was a must read for book lovers growing up in India) and I have seen the 1984 movie directed by David Lean. It is Forster's "Howards End" that I rate at the top of his works. But Forster's story of a small town in India during the early part of 20th century remains a classic. Mr Forster leans, if anywhere, towards his own race in his acute sense of their difficulties, but not more than by the weight of blood; and, again, fairness is not the word for his sensitive presentation. It is something much less conscious; not so much a virtue as a fatality of his genius. Whether he presents Englishman or Muslim or Hindu or Eurasian he is no longer examining life, but being examined by it in the deeps of his personality as an artist.Not all readers will agree but it is a passage worth taking.

Truthout.org and Karl Rove * The World Cup - Braziiiiil, BraziiiillA case of wish fulfillment. Joe Lauria's article in the Post reminded me that I was among those who ran with Truthout's report about the indictment of Karl Rove. The fact that mainstream media remained quiet didn't deter us because other important stories have appeared in independent publications , and in the blogosphere, ahead of the majors. Our visceral dislike of the Bush Administration no doubt played a role. We wanted to see Karl Rove on the dock and we didn't stop to think. "The May 13 story on the Web site Truthout.org was explosive: Presidential adviser Karl Rove had been indicted by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in connection with his role in leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media, it blared. The report set off hysteria on the Internet, and the mainstream media scrambled to nail it down. Only . . . it wasn't true." *Brazil in World CupWas not following the games closely but yesterday, when Brazil defeated the Australian Socceroos 2-0 to be in the final 16, my Brazilian neighbors made the whole neighborhood aware. Loud cheers, music and dancing on sidewalks by men and women wearing the Brazilian team colors provided entertainment on a sunny morning. Great fun. I was in Paris when the French beat Brazil (3-0) to win the cup in 1998. The city went wild. Champs D'Elysee was closed to vehicular traffic and the celebrations went on through the night. I am rooting for Brazil, the defending champions.

Clock Ticking for Tony Blair * Lethal Weapons Unless the Labour Party has a change of heart, Tony Blair's term as prime minister would end before 2008 when there will be a new president in the United States. I was in England shortly after the 1997 election when Tony Blair broke the Conservatives' 18-year lock by defeating John Major. There was a sense of hope among Labourites, and he did not let them down,,,,not then. But people change and power corrupts. Over the course of years he became arrogant and, among other things, led Britain into an unpopular and unjustified war. Why Tony Blair, a far more intelligent and eloquent man than G.W. Bush can ever hope to be, decided to hitch his star to the American president is a mystery. Perhaps he miscalculated. He saw a chance of glory and, after committing himself, he was unable back out. Blair was an active partner in the lies and deceptions spun about Iraq. Influence of "donors" has also raised its ugly head.Patrick Wintur in The Guardian: "Nearly a quarter of current party members disclose they were close or "quite close" to quitting the party because of the invasion of Iraq, but 60% say they were not at all close. Asked to name the party's six worst mistakes, Iraq comes top, cited by 52%. Subservience to the US comes second (49%), relying on privatisation in the public services (46%) comes third, and refusing to raise the top rate of income tax (36%) comes fourth.Only 15% of party members cite removing Saddam Hussein as the one of the most six successful aspects of the government." ...

Saturday's Snippets Another delightful column in the Post by Alaka Basu of Cornell University. It took me back to the India I knew. It was not only girls, we boys too applied copious amounts of oil to our hair. Talk about a greasy look ! But the fact is I know of Indian women and men working and living in the United States who still follow the routine. Some traditions die hard. "But the lessons the nuns taught were clearly poorly absorbed. For even a simple term such as "bad hair," something on which a clear, literal definition was surely possible, meant different things to us and to those who controlled us. To our mothers, bad hair was hair that was cut so short that, when it was worn loose down the back, one could not sit on it. Bad hair was what resulted when we refused to let Granny massage her home-extracted hibiscus oil into our scalps twice a week. (Here we were one with the nuns, who also gagged on the smell of that oil.) Bad hair was hair that fell in bangs on the forehead, and caused our eyelashes to flutter unduly through them. Bad hair was hair that smelled of some capitalist-conspiracy-inspired shampoo instead of the sandalwood incense in which live coals were bathed for us to dry our freshly washed hair over."Soon all the bad hair girls formed a bold and confident group around Sister Aquinas. She agreed that it was not immoral to want to look nice (we often wondered if she ever regretted her own clean-shaven head). But she also told us that it was immoral not to discover all the other joys that the world had to offer, joys that did not spring from male admirers alone. So she took us for long walks along the beach to savor the sand under our toes and the sunset above our heads; she introduced us to "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." She assured us that it was important to know our native literature and our own gods as well as we were being taught to know William Golding and Jesus Christ."Karl Rove Back in the SaddleDid champagne corks pop in the White House? We'll never know but President Bush expressed his pleasure. Karl Rove, the master political strategist is back to serve the president. He has his work cut out for him. The political scenario has changed; not all of Rove's plans paid off. Jim VandeHei and Dan Balz in the Post:"Rove gambled that Bush could bend Congress and a skeptical public to his will. He was wrong."When you look at the history of this second term, the Social Security proposal and selling of it . . . was a big tactical mistake," said a former White House official, who would discuss internal operations only under the condition of anonymity. "The problem was the opportunity cost: When Bush was busy selling Social Security ineffectively, the numbers on Iraq were dropping precipitously."