Rant
(Don’t) Occupy OaklandI keep wanting to say a few words about the Occupy movement, but everything I want to say has been said by someone at this point. Yet the urge to say a few words about Occupy doesn’t abate, so I’ll go ahead and say this much: I was all in favor of Occupy when it started. Didn’t know exactly what it was going for, but I like the simplicity of its formulation: Ninety-nine Percent Yup, I thought, that nails it. That’s the root of our socio-political ills today. And I liked the populist feel of the movement. Like most Americans, I have long been craving a broad-based movement to reclaim this country and its ideals, some movement that the overwhelming majority of us could agree on. The Tea-Party-thing had the populism, but sadly its analysis was 99% dumb and 1% smart. What’s worse, the one percent of its analysis that was smart was wrong. The dumb part included all the culture-war stuff as remedies. “Everything will be okay if we can just stop gay people from getting married.” That stuff. Or: “Everything will be okay if we can just get the government to stop women from having abortions.” Or: “Everything will be okay if we can just turn education over the Church.” And the dumb stuff included the old chestnuts. “Everything will be okay if we can just pry the fingers of government off our Medicare.” Or: “Everything will be okay if we can just cut taxes enough to shut down the government.” And then there was the debt hysteria. “Too much debt in this country, we all have to cut back, tighten our belts, the government too.” Okay, too-much-debt is a problem. That’s the smart part of the Tea Party analysis. The disparity between the government’s revenues and the government’s expenditures, and the accumulation of government debt offset by government borrowing, is trouble in the making. Someone should do something. But who should do it and what should they do? That’s where Tea Party’s analysis veered away from smart into wrong, with a whole lot of dumb sprinkled in. The Tea Party’s idea was (and is): If we all stop spending money we’ll all have more money There must be a name for the logical fallacy involved in this conclusion, something like Universalizing the Particular. What’s true is that if everyone goes on spending as they have been, then any one person in the system who cuts back on his expenditures will grow richer. When water is flowing, you put a dam somewhere and you’ll create a pool behind it. But the water has to be flowing. It’s erroneous to conclude from this particular that if everyone stops spending, everyone will grow richer. Yet that’s the core of the Tea Party argument, the part of its analysis that doesn’t offer regressive social ideology as the answer to our ills. The Occupy movement is based on an entirely different analysis, encapsulated by that simply ratio it calls to our attention: 99 percent/1 percent. That’s brilliant: just four words to nail the flaw in our current ointment. So elegant, so concise, so precise. So true. I have to admit that when I first saw the phrase, I took it as hyperbolic. Admired the intent but figured the truth was more like 80/20 or so. But recently I saw an article in Newsweek by Nial Fergusson, illustrated with charts and diagrams, one of which showed that half the annual income in America now goes to 1% of the people. The other 99% of us share the rest. (And even there the disparity between top and bottom is dramatic, since 75% of the total income goes to the upper 10%.) I had no idea. What’s more, those top earners aren’t making their money doing jobs that pay really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good wages. They earn their money mainly from investments which, as Romney’s tax returns recently dramatized, are taxed at about a third of the rate applied to the sort of income most of us earn, even those of us who are lawyers, doctors, and movie stars. The salient point is not how many people are getting half the income. It’s the fact that half the income earned in this country–the upper half–is hardly taxed. The other half must be making up the difference. Taxes may be burdensome by taking less from the undertaxed top can only add to the problems of the overtaxed bottom. Which brings me back to Occupy. The genius of the movement at the start was that it encapsulated this whole complicated tangle in just four unmistakable words, clearing away all distractions the expose the single most important point. But what has the Occupy movement been doing? In my area, at least–in San Francisco, and even more especially in Oakland–the supposed Occupy activists have been setting up permanent tent cities in public parks, making them unavailable as parks for the general public and turning them into unsavory place for average-income families to bring their kids. These “activists” have trashed small shops in downtown Oakland, breaking windows and driving away shoppers who previously patronized those stores. They’ve shut down the port for periods of time, costing port workers substantial income. They’ve mounted demonstrations that drew police from other neighborhoods, causing crime to spike in those other areas. They’ve argued that they were demonstrating against police tactics, shifting the conversation to “Who started this?” in a quarrel between demonstrators and police, both of whom belong to the 99%. A few weeks ago, Occupy activists swarmed into Oakland City Hall and damaged children’s art works on display there. What does this have to do with that astonishing ration, the 99 percent and the 1 percent? Do these activists think the one percent hang out in city parks and are suffering now because Occupy Oakland activists have cut off their access to these parks? Do they think small shop owners aren’t part of the ninety-nine percent? Do they picture the leading one-percenters huddling in fear and whispering, “Oh my God, we’ve got to start sharing the wealth before those guys in Oakland trash another children’s art show”? The only productive actions are those that keep the public focused on the ratio originally summarized by those four words. Ninety-nine percent. One percent. Only thus will we start steering toward political solutions that address that one bottom-line fact (from which flows so much else.) Creating divisions within the 99%, arousing hostilities that pit people from one level of the 99% against people from another level of the 99% sabotages the very thing that made Occupy such a powerful idea. I can’t imagine any course of action better suited to the interests of the one percent than sowing clamorous divisions within the 99 %. If I were a Conspiracy Theorist, I would be looking for evidence now that the Occupy Oakland activists are minions of the one percent. I would be asking how much they were paid to do these things they’re doing, and I’d be trying to discover where the secret payments were deposited. But I am not raising these points, because I don’t believe in Conspiracy Theory. What I do believe in is stupidity and venality. These, unfortunately, are the secret forces that undermine the best laid plans of the noblest idealists. These are the only charges I’m bringing against Occupy Oakland: stupidly and venality.
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What’s ComingI am currently working on a new book called Land of Lamentation: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan. The book is about the interrupted history of Afghanistan since the seeds of the modern country first began to germinate–which was in the mid-1750s, around the same time as the United States. Over the centuries, a series of global powers have fought over this territory like junkyard dogs fighting over a scrap of meat, and many books have chronicled the last 200 years of this story. Many have explored the “Great Game,” the 19th century struggle between the Russians and the British in Afghanistan; many historians have chronicled the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, which was opposed through proxies by the United States; and today’s conflict has been covered exhaustively as well, the conflict that pits an international coalition led by the United States against “the Taliban” and their global Jihadist associates. My book chronicles this same period, this same drama, but it’s not so much about the junkyard dogs. It’s more about the scrap of meat over which they’re fighting. It’s the turmoil and bloodshed, the heartbreak and high points of this country’s story, which includes the foreign interventions in this period, but it tells this story from the inside looking out Look for it in November or December, 2012. The title comes from a book by the Afghan poet of the 20th century, Khalilullah Khalili.. The book is called Matum-Serai, which actually means “House of Lamentation.” He wrote it in Peshawar, during the Soviet Occupation, when he was in unhappy exile. I had a photocopy of this book once, and I worked on translating a few lines from it, and then forgot aobut it, and after that, somehow, lost the book. But when I was brainstorming about a title, I found those few translated lines. I don’t know how closely they follow the original lines. Khalili’s daughter Marie sent me, upon request, a copy of Matum Serai, but it turns out the book was a collection of poems, and the one I translated was the one actually titled Matum Serai. So until I get a copy of the whole book, I won’t be able to compare my translation to the original. Here are the lines I found in my archives:
When I see the leaves falling, Then, in the same way that a caged bird On rainy nights, when clouds and winds prevail, Ustad Khalilullah Khalili |
Puzzled Musing
What Is Money?
I once ran across a a website called Zeitgeist that was peddling a paranoid conspiracy theory about money and the Federal Reserve and banking in general. The paranoia seemed to stem from the writers’ obversation that in the money system as it currently stands, banks create money by issuing debt, thus essentially (it seems) creating money out of thin air. The website saw this as a sinister sleight of hand. Actually, the equivalency of money and debt matches up pretty closely to what I’ve read recently in a bunch of books about money–except that economists seem to know and take for granted that money is nothing but debt personified, and are not freaked out by it. What does freak me out is the fact that the money-system seems so inherently insubstantial: it is nothing but the interconnected faith of many people about what everyone else believes and what they’re going to do based on that belief; it all works when everyone is on the same page, believing together, but when that interconnection breaks down or that faith disappears, the money simply ceases to exist. Economists all appear to know this, but most, I find, tend to think of gold and silver in a different light–those forms of money are “tangible.” They’re “real money.” And as long as paper money is backed by gold, the experts seem to say, then the paper money is more real. To me, the puzzling crux of the matter comes is in that phrases “backed by.” I’m a know-nothing in the discipline of economics, but as far as I can see, gold and silver are no more tangible than paper, at least in their character as money–as personifications of value. What actually and ultimately backs up any currency, whether it’s paper, gold, or conch shells, is real-world economic activity: stuff you can use, activity that produces stuff you can use, ingenuity that contributes to the production of stuff you can use, the interactivity the helps make the stuff you can use more lavish and complex and makes it accessible to all involved My brother Riaz once wrote me a letter suggesting that charging interest for a loan is inherently a Ponzi scheme because when it’s time to pay back the loan, that extra money has to come from somewhere and hence it must come out of someone else’s pocket–who then has to take out a loan (at interest) to cover the expenditure, and so on in an endless, expanding chain. But that’s true only in a barter system. In any more sophisticated economic system, a system based on credit (and hence debt) when a person borrows money to invest in a productive enterprise, the money grows, or at least it does if the enterprise succeeds in becoming productive. That is, the amount of economic activity and interactivity grows. And if that happens, when it’s time to pay back the loan, there actually is more of the fundamental underlying substance that money represents, the essence of value: more shoes, more food, more services, more exchange of above, etc. In short, there is actually more money. It seems to me that we writers, artists, and other information-workers are getting pinched right now because the economic system, which is the network of all people amongst whom money is circulating (i.e. who are contributing economic value, and at some later time taking out economic value) are saying, “You can’t join this club, you’re not entitled to receive economic-value from the pool of value we’re creating because you’re not putting anything of value into the pool–your novel, your short story, your essays and whatnot, have no money value, because we can get all that stuff for free now, thanks to the Internet (and other technologies). As more and more people are told, “You’re not contributing anything we want and therefore you can’t be part of our club,” the club shrinks.” And the shrinking of the club = the disappearing of money. Anyway, that’s how it looks to me.
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I read your book “Destiny Disrupted” it is a book that puts things in a different and realistic perspective for you. The amount of research you did is apparent throughout the book. In one chapter you mentioned Maulana Rumi and the story of Flute. This resonated with me as I truly admire his work. A renowned Pakistani Singer Tina Sani sang that same piece you mentioned in Urdu and did it so beautifully that I thought you might enjoy it even if you do not know Urdu.
http://www.cokestudio.com.pk/default.aspx?SeasonId=2#page=video.aspx%3FvideoId%3D1054%26SeasonId%3D3
Hello Tamim! Just heard the news about Obama and Panetta’s decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan ahead of schedule. I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting to hear your comments. Thanks. Elise
The talking continues; some sort of withdrawal is coming, but the nature of it is still unresolved. The U.S. will continue to hold onto major military bases in Afghanistan–at Bagram, at Kandahar, and perhaps in the north–while (attempting to) turn governance over to an Afghan strongman yet to be named. I don’t feel Panetta’s statement was a landmark moment of any kind.
Go East, Young Knight
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/the-true-story-of-the-first-crusade.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
How does this compare with your view of the Crusades in “Destiny disrupted?” As I recall you posited that the crusades were begun to give idle young upper class men who were not first in line to inherit the family title an outlet and to get them away from the local fiefdom.
The writer in the Times is partly questioning the bravery-piety-heroism narrative of the Crusades, and so do I; he also notes that Byzantine losses, especially to the Seljuks at Manzikert, inspired Emperor Alexius to call for Western help–but this is hardly as unknown as the Times guy seems to imply; and the other notion he seems to float, that Byzantine emperor Alexius called for the Crusades and the knights came rushing because he exercised authority they respected beyond that of the pope!–and that the pope and the social conditions in Western Europe had “barely” anything to do with it–is dubious on the face of it. Western Christendom had been divergingfrom the Eastern church for centuries, and the final break–the Great Schism–came in 1054, twenty years before Manzikert. Anna Comnena’s jaundiced account of the Crusaders who arrived at the Eastern court (She was Alexius’s daughter) makes it pretty clear that the Emperor knew he was in over his head as soon as the Western knights arrived, and his concern then was to get them to keep moving, move along, not tarry in Constantinople. (He could see how they were eying the furnishings.)
Hello,
I recently watched the PBS documentary “Islam: an empire of Faith”. The 2nd episode portrayed the city of Baghdad during its glorious years, the crusades, and finally the Mongol invasion. Although the documentary showed the brutality of the invasions, it also claimed that these invasions had a “positive impact” on the islamic civilization. I know you don’t agree with that as you call the Mongol invasion a “holocaust” and also mention that these events changed the trajectory of Islamic history.
I want to ask whether you think that these outside influences had an overall negative impact on the islamic history and whether you agree that muslims would have been better off if the “ghost of these supplanted empires hadn’t altered islam” as you mention on page 89 referring to the Byzantine and Sassanid empires.
Well, the brutality and damage done by the Mongol invasions is incontrovertible, but when you ask whether the invasions had a “positive effect” overall, well–that’s a different question. I’m not going to weigh in on that one; I will only say that many historians think the Black Death, which wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century had some positive effects, leading to an economic and cultural revival that culminated in the Renaissence. And I think they make that case persuasively, so who’s to say what’s ultimatily a plus in history? (Unless, of course, you were one of the 75 million who died or their close relative, in which case you’d probably consider the Black Death to have been wholly negative.)
We are interested in purchasing the 10 book set on Native Americans- could you provide details on where to purchase for our school. Thank you
Michelle Miller, SLMS
Library Teacher
Gorham Intermediate School
Gorham, NY 14561
Hey Tamim, I’m pasting in an essay (letter to the Tampa Tribune) written by my cousin Rik Edmonds who lives in the panhandle of N. Florida. I found it stirred up my red blood and an interesting take on 99-1. It’s called:
What the Rich Owe
The hubris of the self-made man is a thing of grandeur, given moment and approbation by the immortal words of George Walker Bush in justifying tax cuts disproportionately favoring the rich: “It’s their tax dollars; they know best how to spend it.” As if the more perfect examples of humanity really could defy the laws of physics, lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, and survive to adulthood without the shelter of society. As if they were born without parents, grandparents, or ancestors; without family, neighbors, or nation; continents unto themselves. As if they invented language, mathematics, and science in their infancy, thereby justifying in their maturity a debt to society not exceeding the collateral effects of their single minded pursuit of private fortune; “trickle down.” Eons of human suffering, blood, and ultimate sacrifice fulfilled by this apotheosis of selfishness. As if living in a prosperous, lawful, healthy society added nothing to their perch at the top of it.
Consider the captain of industry (or of hedge). Now imagine him born black in war torn Africa, female, uneducated, orphaned and starving by the age of 11, abused and left for dust before the age of the age of 12. Wither now the captain’s triumphs, palaces, and retainers? Are not the most prosperous Americans precisely those who have benefited most among their countrymen from the grand fortune of being born into this blessed nation? Are they incapable of imagining their own prospects under less favorable circumstance? Is there no mote of gratitude to engender obligation? How much longer can raw contempt for the less fortunate masquerade as tough love? And can we abide the rewards of the market as the ultimate measure of an individual’s contribution to society and therefore society’s obligation to the individual? What of a Marine dead in a shell crater – what do our rich owe him?
Will we stifle the middle class that was the envy of the world to institute a return to the plutocracy of the robber barons, (“The Jungle” of Upton Sincalir’s microcosm of capitalism at the beginning of the previous century), regressing into a banana republic of dons and peons where the rich cannot help but remain a rotten sham of wealth and the poor cannot help but persist in hopeless poverty? Can such a nation prosper or long endure?
Interesting
I have just finished reading “Destiny Disrupted” 5 minutes ago. I think it’s a rare attempt at describing Islamic narrative of world history in an (as much as possible) unbiased analysis. I think such a breakdown of that narrative is as lacking in the “Islamic world” as it is in the “West”. Hence, I would like to know if this work has been translated into other languages including but not limited to Arabic, Pashto, Urdu and Turkish.
Thank you,
Someone has the Turkish translation rights, but I don’t know if a translation is now underway. And someone was looking for the Arabic translation rights, but I don’t know where that dstands as of now.
Mr. Ansary, given that a lot of nation states were actually created after WWI, how do you feel about your identity, as you’ve mentioned in your book, nation state didn’t develop in the middle as a result of some sort of reformation or revolutionary thought, they were a “have to catch up with the West” phenomenon. Give that you were born in such a state, how do you currently consolidate your identity?
Thank you,
Mr. Ansary, given that a lot of middle world nation states were actually created after WWI and as you’ve mentioned in your book, nation states didn’t develop in the middle world as a result of some sort of reformation or revolutionary thought, they were created by the competing superpowers in the west and adopted a “have to catch up with the West” phenomenon. Given that you were born in such a state, how do you currently consolidate your identity?
Thank you,
Hi
I’m Korean woman and I just finished reading your book “Destiny Disrupted”
It was great and really helped me to balance my thought about the world history.
thank you so much.
Actually My major was Farsi and I lived in tehran about 2 years.
so I am interested in Iran, Islam and Middle east.
Anyway thanks so much
I really want to read your next book asap
bye.
(Sorry. I am not good at writing english)