Friends, I’m away from my desk. Will be gone two weeks. If I get the chance, I’ll post blogs, but if not, let’s meet again on August 8.

The above photograph is of my daughter Ila, on a recent summer afternoon, pondering life’s big questions on the day after her third birthday.

Early this morning, I read Ben Macintyre’s weak review of Pankaj Mishra’s Temptations of the West. The prose is laudatory but bland. You wouldn’t know from the review that Mishra has written anything else, or that other brown folks have over the years wasted a lot of ink on the troubled subject of modernity’s divided legacy. Before I had even finished my tea, I posted a blog about it, and then, a minute later, I thought better of it and turned the polemical remarks into a letter to the editor. In that brief missive, I tried to quickly suggest that, unlike Mishra, Macintyre doesn’t in the least seem to be among the vast majority of this world’s inhabitants who have suffered under modernity even as they’ve also desperately yearned for its fruits. This large population of folks that I’m talking about exists on a different planet from those privileged others for whom modernity’s dilemma might be nothing more than the choice between a neighborhood bistro and a Starbucks. (Oh, the anguish of having to choose where one will buy one’s chai-latte!)

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They came from all over the country, Jews and Arabs, from the air-raid shelters of Haifa and Nazareth and the still safe neighborhoods of metropolitan Tel-Aviv.

The third demonstration against the war in Lebanon attracted much greater numbers than the first ones. While the first had 100 participants and the second reached already about 1000, this time (July 22) some 5000 took part.

“Olmert get out of Lebanon — the war is a disaster!” the protesters shouted. “We hall neither die nor kill - in the service of the USA” “Peretz, Peretz beware - in The Hague they are waiting for you! “Olmert, Olmert resign - you are not wanted anymore” “All the cabinet ministers are war criminals” and more.

More.

(Thanks, Lucia Sommer)

More here.

Holland Cotter begins his piece about the ongoing portrait exhibitions in Washington D.C. with an arresting image–about a city’s self-portrait based on an idea that it has of its own power and also its democratic ideals. What Cotter doesn’t mention about the portrait on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is its reliance on a colonial, anthropological gaze. Consider the use of the same model to represent several bodies: the same face in nearly all instances, costumed in different clothes handed-out by the artist, represents a large group of–what exactly?–we can’t easily call them individuals. The colonial nation as a rag-tag assemblage of regional clothing styles. Colonialism as an impoverished fashion-parade. I wonder whether the curators have remarked on this and alerted the viewers to the reason why the figures appear frozen in a pantomime. “Dear viewers: We present you this image so that you become aware of art as a cultural practice. There is history here. You are a part of it. Facing East: Portraits from Asia is being shown here so that we may all learn about how, in an earlier moment, we successfully produced the Indian as a type. Please visit the room on the right to enjoy some cool lemonade and comment on how this practice in new forms is ongoing today.”

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My friend, Hanady Salman (editor at As-Safir newspaper in Beirut), wrote this today:
“The fear is growing in Beirut. Beirut is sad, scared, wounded and … left alone. By yesterday morning, the UN said 150 000 people (foreigners and Lebanese holders of 2nd nationalities ) had already left Lebanon .Evacuations aresupposed to be completed by Friday . Today has been an exceptionally calm day : the US marines are evacuating Us citizens. By tomorrow , the country will be left to its own people and Israeli shelling. In Beirut , by Saturday , there will only be those who have nowhere else to go and the very few who deliberately decided to stay. There were also be those who managed to flee the south and the southern suburb of the capital.
What will happen to us on Saturday ?
A friend called a few minutes ago , scared and begging me to go hide with her in Baabdat in the mountains. She said her friend who works with the UN and lives in Washington called her to tell her to stay out of Beirut , because she heard that by Saturday , it will be hell , nothing will stop them. The city will be theirs : my city , my dearest city , my only home , is open to their warplanes and shells. Our kids , as of Saturday , will be the targets of Israeli fire. So it’s said.
What I fear the most is that by Saturday , July the 22nd, Beirut will be cut off from the rest of the country , and the world. Every morning , I rush to the office to make sure the internet is still working. Every day I ask myself : why didn’t they stop it ?
As of Saturday , I fear every city or region will be cut off from the rest of the country. Maybe they won’t bomb us. Maybe they will just leave us in our cities and villages to starve and rot to death. Maybe they will do both.
Worse than not knowing what will happen is knowing that whatever the Israelis decide to do, nobody wants or can stop them.
Hanady”

More here.

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Robin Khundkar sends this link to a video in German with English subtitles.

From Israel to Lebanon.

On War Post, Freddy Deknatel writes, “When I was a child I never wrote a message on a bomb.”

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“Killing innocent civilians is NOT an act of self-defense. Destroying a sovereign nation is NOT a measured response.”

Lebanese civilians have been under the constant attack of the state of Israel for several days. The State of Israel, in disregard to international law and the Geneva Convention, is launching a maritime and air siege targeting the entire population of the country. Innocent civilians are being collectively punished in Lebanon by the state of Israel in deliberate acts of terrorism as described in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.

To sign the above petition, click here.

Also, to listen in on the Bush-Blair exchange on Lebanon, go here.

Via Three Quarks Daily.

The unguarded Bush-Blair exchange sounds a bit like the dialog in the excellent David Hare play, Stuff Happens. Hare’s play is highly recommended as a lucid and damning work of political imagination.

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Ethan Zuckerman writes:

Quick - what do India, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia have in common?

It’s not a love of cricket. Or clandestine nuclear arms programs. Or even a fondness for flatbread.

They’re all - apparently - blocking blogspot.com.

India is the newcomer to this party, and it’s unclear just what blogs are being blocked, whether all ISPs are complying, and whether all blogspot blogs will be blocked or just a subset of sites. Fortunately, Indian bloggers are on the case, rapidly documenting just what can and can’t be reached.

Neha Viswanathan - Global Voices editor for South Asia and lovely human being - is doing a fantastic job of documenting the situation on her blog. Reading from the top to the bottom of a recent post - with fourteen updates - you get an excellent sense of how Indian bloggers are figuring out just what, precisely, is going on. She points to several other articles, which have excellent summaries of the situation, as people currently understand it, including Rediff, Amit, and Dina.

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Uma’s post about her driver NP’s journey back to Bihar by air is a very powerful and moving account of poor man’s travel to the world that he daily serves but rarely enters. What makes Uma’s record of events especially affecting is the way in which it builds on other events in the past, each of which in their own way excite empathy:

But NP has other concerns. “Flight mein koi kuch bolenge?” he asks uncertainly. Will someone say something to me in the flight? And then, with touching confidence: “Aapka card leke jaoonga.” I will carry your card. “Paani ka botal allowed karenge?” Will they let me take a waterbottle?

In the moving car I begin to write down for him, in tenth-standard Hindi – the first useful thing I have done with all those years of study of the language – what he should do at the airport. Starting with showing the tickets at the gate in order to get in. Then go inside, go to the Sahara counter. They will check your tickets and give you boarding cards with your seat numbers on them.

I am used to this systematic break-up of procedures into manageable steps. I have done it before, for very old and very young people. This time, I write the English words in Hindi script. Remember to put tags on your bags. You’ll get the tags at the counter. Then ask someone for Security Check and go there. Put your bags on the x-ray belt. Remember to take the bags when you are on the other side. Then wait for the flight announcement. Don’t miss the flight…

Once you get into the flight, find your seats and wear the seat-belts.

Photo above by Werner Bischof who visited the old Bihar, the Bihar of the fifties.

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