Laila Lalami

During the primaries, I was often surprised at the line of thinking that equated Barack Obama with the status quo, simply because he was not progressive enough.  Of course Obama was not progressive enough.  But now that Governor Sarah Palin–a woman who believes that Iraq is “a task from God”–has been added to the Republican ticket, perhaps we will see a little clarity on the left about what exactly is at stake in this election.

I think Sarah Vowell puts it well in her opinion piece for the New York Times:

I’m convinced that the immediate mass flip-out over the Palin nomination can’t be entirely explained by sexism, elitism or partisan animosity. It was a symptom of just how much the presidential future is a suspense movie scored by Bernard Herrmann. It’s enough of a nail-biter to throw in with a two-person ticket for four years. So if newscasters don’t even know how to pronounce the vice presidential pick’s name upon announcement, the violins of apprehension start to screech “Psycho” shower-scene loud.

The good news is that Governor Palin has sufficient experience in public life to leave behind enough of a paper trail that we can discern her positions on many of the most important issues of the day. The bad news is that after taking this crash course in where she stands, I know that if she were elected I would be afraid to leave my apartment after sundown.

During a gubernatorial debate in 2006, Governor Palin claimed that if her daughter, then 16, were impregnated as the result of being raped, Ms. Palin would hope that the girl would “choose life,” which is a polite way of saying she would expect a tenth-grader to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

Here’s a not-so-polite fact about the United States: According to Amnesty International, a woman is raped here every six minutes.

Having been successful at peddling a war in 2003 by shutting out or co-opting the media, the Republicans hope to do the same trick.  Sarah Palin has been unavailable to the press since the announcement, and any coverage of her in the press has been called “outrageous,” “over the line,” or “sexist.”  Finally this weekend, where her absence on Sunday morning talk shows was glaring, the campaign announced that she would sit down with….Charlie Gibson, the same man who was widely derided for the way in which he handled the Clinton-Obama debate.  Expect a lot of softballs for Palin, and a lot of lies.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading about John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin: her Troopergate, her alleged membership in an Alaska secessionist party, her apparent confusion, just a few weeks ago, about what exactly a vice president does, her questions about banning books in a Wasilla library, her pregnant teenage daughter, etc. Who has time for issues like the continuing military occupation of Iraq or universal health care or the economy or the new cold war when you can get dragged into this kind of drama? It’s obvious she’s been selected more for her life story than for her meager domestic credentials. For God’s sake, her state has fewer people than Brooklyn. As for her foreign policy knowledge, I’d like to see someone ask her about the nuclear non-proliferation treaties or the difference between a Sunni and a Shia or where the Green Line falls or how she plans to handle relations with Pakistan.  But I won’t bet on it. I suspect we’ll keep hearing about the pregnant girl and the hockey player boyfriend instead.

Christopher Hayes reports on the first-ever Muslim Democratic Caucus for The Nation while Amitava Kumar covers the first DNC meeting of the Indian American Leadership Initiative for The Indian Express.

The speed with which the current administration has sought to frame the conflict between Georgia and Russia as another Battle Between Good and Evil (TM) is not very surprising. What is surprising, at least to me, is the willingness of some journalists to repeat the false assertion that Russian Dictator Prime Minister Vladimir Putin started the conflict by sending his tanks into South Ossetia. In fact, small scale fighting had been taking place between Georgia and South Ossetia for a long, long time, and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili started his military offensive first. Of course, that doesn’t make Putin right, but it’s a nuance that is completely lost in the run-up to the new Cold War. Time to put on tinfoil hats and build a basement.

Life expectancy in the United States has now fallen behind that of almost every other industrialized nation, while at the same time the U.S. is spending more on health care (per capita) than any other country.

The Guardian has another photo series, this one by Christian Sinibaldi, on migrants who arrive in Italy by boat from North Africa. Heartbreaking.

I found Jenny Diski’s LRB essay on post-apartheid South Africa to be thoughtful and well-observed, without being cynical. I don’t really want to excerpt any part of it; just read it all here. Doesn’t political change, no matter how hard people fight for it, always end up being different than anyone expected? Minds don’t change as quickly as governments do. A useful reminder, I think, for our electoral season.

Remember Kanan Makiya? Aside from predicting that American troops would be “greeted with sweets and flowers” in Iraq, he’s apparently also moved more than 7 million pages of records from the Baath party to the United States, where they will be housed in the Hoover Institution at Stanford. The Iraqi National archivist Saad Eskander wants the looted papers back in Baghdad, where they belong, but who’s listening to him? Neither the occupying forces nor their handmaidens in Iraq.

The Supreme Court has ruled, for the third time, that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay can challenge their detention in civil courts within the United States. The justices found that:

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s 70-page majority opinion.

Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburgh, and Stephen Breyer voted in favor of the decision, while John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Ever out of touch with reality, George Bush was quoted by the AP as saying:

“We’ll abide by the court’s decision. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it,” Bush told a news conference in Rome, where he was on a weeklong European visit. “We’ll study this opinion and we’ll do so … to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate.”

Sigh. Another 220 days to go.

The New York Times ran a piece yesterday on the (very profitable) business of hymen restoration in France, and today Slate picks up the subject as well. Both articles mention the case of the Muslim marriage that was annulled by a French court because the bride misrepresented herself as a virgin, but neither one mentions that the groom in the case is actually a French convert who was upset that his North African wife had lied to him about her past (in)experience. He asked for an annulment, and his legal case was based on the fact that she misrepresented herself, not on the substance of the misrepresentation. Naturally many Muslims and non-Muslims in France were upset with this ridiculous ruling because it leaves the door open for retrograde ways of handling the institution of marriage. These two points were not really made in the articles. It never ceases to amaze me how much importance is given in the Western press to what Muslim women wear on their heads, or what they have between their legs. I only wish that their education and their health warranted such attention.