Link Banana

I’ve documented before The Economist’s penchant for unusual economic indicators. The classic example, the Big Mac index — in which the price of the sandwich serves as a proxy for purchasing power parity (PPP), has been unveiled for 2008.

Perhaps more novelly, the magazine’s Africa correspondent, Jonathan Ledgard, offers the intriguing possibilty that sales of Coca-Cola are a signal of how peaceful and prosperous a given area of the continent is. (via Passport)

Apparently dogs, like people, are made peaceful by oppulence:

Adaptations by individual dogs have added up to a dramatic shift in canine culture. Begging is a submissive activity, so today there are fewer all-out interpack wars, which sometimes used to last for months, according to Mr. Poyarkov. Within packs there are more stable social hierarchies that allow the whole group to prosper.

(via kottke.org, where Cliff Kuang is making me feel like a chump)

It’s not surprising that Israel’s 60th anniversary has gotten a lot more ink than the 60th anniversary of the coincident nabka (catastrophe). Yesterday, Elias Khoury wrote an Op-Ed adressing the latter.

Israel has depicted the problem as rooted in the Arab world’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. But even after the majority of Arab states demonstrated their recognition of this right by supporting the Saudi peace initiative of 2002, nothing changed; in fact, things became worse. To Palestinians, the true problem lies in Israel’s rejection of the Palestinian right to an independent state, and in the prevailing Israeli culture’s refusal to recognize that Palestinians were themselves victims of forced expulsion from their lands.

Recognizing the sufferings of the victim, even if they are of the victim of a victim, is the necessary condition for an exit from this long and tragic tunnel. However, as the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci suggests, it is difficult to maintain the optimism of the will in the face of the pessimism of the intellect.

Pessimism of the will is what we are living today in the Middle East. It is a pessimism that warns not only of the danger of recurring episodes of catastrophe as Arab societies break apart, but of the dismal prospect of an endless war that will provoke future tragedies in the 21st century.

The complexities of the Israel-Fatah-Hamas are often lost on me. But this I was heartened by:

However, Hamas is now attempting to sell the virtues of a ceasefire to a battered people accustomed to talk of “steadfastness” and “resistance”. A group of leading thinkers is to visit universities and hold symposia to convince Gazans that a period of calm will help lift the siege and rebuild their disappearing economy.

Though that hardly means that a resolution is suddenly within sight, I can’t see this as a bad thing.

The CS Monitor asks a question that should be answered quickly (and affirmatively).

The hand-wringing over talking to Hamas reflects a shift away from the black-and-white diplomatic approach of President Bush’s first term to a more realist and results-oriented tendency in the second. If the US can talk to archenemy Iran to get something it wants in Iraq, the reasoning goes, then why not explore what might be gained from someone sitting down with Hamas?

I’m actually a day late, but still interesting. Bonus points to those who knew that is was based on the letters N and D (for nuclear disarmament) in semaphore. More bonus points to those that knew semaphore is flag signaling.

(via clusterflock)

An odd way to find a way to end human wars, but not without value: study other primates. The answer for bonobos:

“No deadly warfare,” de Waal says, “little hunting, no male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex.” Their promiscuity, he speculates, reduces violence both within and between bonobo troops, just as intermarriage does between human tribes. What may start out as a confrontation between two bonobo communities can turn into socializing, with sex between members, grooming, and play.

And humans:

De Waal has also reduced conflict among monkeys by increasing their interdependence and ensuring equal access to food. Applying these lessons to humans, de Waal sees promise in alliances, such as the European Union, that promote trade and travel and hence interdependence. “Foster economic ties,” he says, “and the reason for warfare, which is usually resources, will probably dissipate.”

(via clusterflock)

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke. And though I’m sure some will dismiss her conclusion about the experience as “new-agey claptrap,” it’s a story worth listening to.

(via kottke)

Given the ongoing mess in Sudan, the recent chaos in Chad, the shambles of Zimbabwe, and the still-fragile situation in Kenya, it easy to see Africa as a hopeless case. In the Washington Post, Craig Timberg points to the great steps forward that have been made in western Africa in the last decade.

Reborn as well, over the past decade, has been democracy itself here in Ghana and among its neighbors along West Africa’s Atlantic coast. From Sierra Leone east to Nigeria, stability and at least a tentative version of multiparty politics have begun taking hold after many years of coups, military dictatorships and civil war.

(via UN Dispatch)

Turns out the plan to suspend talks earlier this week worked. We should all be glad for that.

Kenya’s rival politicians have signed a peace deal to end the violent post-election crisis in which hundreds died.

President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga agreed to form a coalition government after weeks of wrangling, mediator Kofi Annan said.

David Grossman presents a fascinating look at the future of Israel though the eyes of a profoundly concerned citizen.

We haven’t gotten off the hook [about the 2006 war with Lebanon] because we haven’t yet really gotten onto it. We have not yet dared to face, open-eyed, this war’s deep and frightening significance. Set aside for a moment the convoluted, supremely cautious final report. Go back to the war days. Recall the moments of anxiety, the sense of ever-widening fissures, when it suddenly became clear to each and every one of us that perhaps the army will not always be able to save us, and that there could be a time when a war could end otherwise.

Isn’t that what suddenly began to seep through the tightly fastened armor of denial that we Israelis always shut ourselves up in? True, existential fear is an almost constant companion; it is always hovering over us; but perhaps precisely for that reason it is so threatening, and so hard for us to look straight at. Maybe that is why we actually do not dare face it soberly, and why we don’t take the necessary measures to counter it. I do not mean just military measures (even there we failed), but also the profound and comprehensive change of consciousness required of all who are truly determined to prevent such a deadly danger.

New York has a fun little story about Gordon Thomas, the 91-year-old musician who is finally getting the recognition he’s always wanted but never got.

You can hear some of his music at his website, and I have to say I rather like his song Peace, Peace (link to mp3). It’s both hilarious and hopeful.

Amos Elon’s essay in the most recent New York Review of Books is the best introduction I’ve seen to Ehud Olmert, the history of Israeli settlements, and the prospects of success in the latest push for peace.

Olmert may be the most pragmatic Israeli leader since 1967. One hopes he does not come too late. According to Haaretz, he told an American delegation recently that in “Israel there are perhaps 400,000 people who maintain the state, leaders in the economy, in science and in culture. I want to make sure they have hope, that they’ll stay here.” His own two sons, it is well known, live in New York. He is the first Israeli premier who has expressed some empathy for the Palestinian tragedy. In his speech in Annapolis in late November, he said, “We are not indifferent to [the Palestinians’] suffering.” It is true that the next morning eight Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army but it is impossible to overlook what seems, at least, the beginning of a change. The leftist Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy was uncharacteristically optimistic, wondering whether perhaps an Israeli de Klerk was emerging here.

The Economist has a good update on the situation in Kenya, and the slow effort to make peace. I kind of wish I’d read it before writing this, but I don’t know how much it would have helped.

…this week they started talking to each other. A former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who is the leading mediator, has persuaded President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, to enter into negotiations with Raila Odinga, a Luo, who leads the opposition Orange Democratic Movement. Both leaders have appointed representatives to resolve what Mr Annan calls “immediate political issues” and break the impasse, but he gave warning that it may take much longer, even a year, to forge a solid and comprehensive agreement.

Sarah Vowell’s written the best tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. that’s likely to come out of this day of memory.

…there’s a pleasing symmetry in Reagan forking over a day to Dr. King. Both men owe their reputations to the Sermon on the Mount. The president’s most enduring bequest might be a city-smiting drug war, but thanks to a nice smile and a biblical sound bite that’s not how he’s remembered. Reagan cribbed from the Gospel of Matthew via the Puritan John Winthrop to dream up his “shining city on a hill” legacy. And Americans in general and Republican presidential candidates in particular still believe in it, probably because they’re not watching “The Wire.”

Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. 17, 1957, in Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the “loving your enemies” sermon this way: “So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’ ”

Go ahead and re-read that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”

The 14th Dalai Lama won the Nobel Prize in 1989. And though that’s hardly news, the speech which I just found (while working on this) is definately worth reading today:

I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of the oppressed everywhere and for all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace. I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of non-violent action for change Mahatma Gandhi whose life taught and inspired me. And, of course, I accept it on behalf of the six million Tibetan people, my brave countrymen and women inside Tibet, who have suffered and continue to suffer so much. They confront a calculated and systematic strategy aimed at the destruction of their national and cultural identities. The prize reaffirms our conviction that with truth, courage and determination as our weapons, Tibet will be liberated.

No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have the same basic human needs and is concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples. That is human nature. The great changes that are taking place everywhere in the world, from Eastern Europe to Africa are a clear indication of this.