'Tis the Season To Be Incredulous: The moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas. By Christopher Hitchens

I had never before been a special fan of that great comedian Phyllis Diller, but she utterly won my heart this week by sending me an envelope that, when opened, contained a torn-off square of brown-bag paper of the kind suitable for latrine duty in an ill-run correctional facility. Duly unfurled, it carried a handwritten salutation reading as follows:

Money's scarce
Times are hard
Here's your fucking
Xmas card
I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?

The late Art Buchwald made himself additionally famous by reprinting a spoof Thanksgiving column that ran unchanged for many decades after its first appearance in the Herald Tribune, setting a high threshold of reader tolerance. My own wish is more ambitious: to write an anti-Christmas column that becomes fiercer every year while remaining, in essence, the same. The core objection, which I restate every December at about this time, is that for almost a whole month, the United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state.
As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events. Originally Christian, this devotional set-aside can now be joined by any other sectarian group with a plausible claim—Hanukkah or Kwanzaa—to a holy day that occurs near enough to the pagan winter solstice.

I have just flung aside my copy of the Weekly Standard, a magazine with a generally hardheaded and humorous approach to matters. It contains two seasonal articles that would probably not have made print were it not for the proximity to the said solstice. (To be fair, the same can be said of the article that you are reading, but I claim exemption under the terms of the "to hell with all that" amendment.) In the first example, the gifted Joseph Bottum complains that it's hard to write a new Christmas carol lyric because—well, because the existing model is composed of songs of such illiterate banality! But he presses on heroically with an attempt to compose a fresh carol, while fully admitting that the recently invented tradition of such songs creates an almost oppressive weight of kitsch. (He also complains of the doggerel-like mystifications of carols like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" while not daring to state the case at its most damning—as in ridiculous and nasty lines such as "This holy tide of Christmas all others doth deface." Believe me when I say that I know my stuff here and have paid my dues.)
The second essay is a review by Mark Tooley of a terrible-sounding book called Jesus for President by a terrible-sounding person named Shane Claiborne. You know the sort of thing very well: Jesus would have been a "human shield" in Baghdad in 2003; the United States is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire. It's the usual "liberation theology" drivel, whereby everybody except the inhabitants of the democratic West is supposed to abjure violence. (To the question of whether the plan to kill Hitler was moral or not, Claiborne cites no less an authority than the Führer's own secretary to claim that "all hopes for peace were lost" after the 1944 attempt. That, as should be obvious even to the most flickering intelligence, was chiefly because the attempt was a failure. What an idiot!)
But why is a magazine of the intelligentsia doing this to us, and to itself, this month? Tooley wants to prove that the legendary Jesus would have been more judicious and perhaps more neoconservative on these points. How can he hope to know that, or even to guess at it? Suppose we put the question like this: Imagine that conclusive archaeological and textual evidence emerged to prove that the whole story of the birth, life, and death of Jesus of Nazareth was either a delusion or a fabrication? Suppose the mother had admitted shyly that, in fact, she had fallen pregnant for predictable reasons? Suppose we found the post-Calvary body?
Serious Christians, of the sort I have been debating lately, would have no choice but to consider such news as absolutely calamitous. The light of the world would have gone out; the hope of humanity would have been extinguished. (The same obviously would apply to Muslims who couldn't bear the shock of finding that their prophet was fictional or fraudulent.) But I invite you to consider things more lucidly. If all the official stories of monotheism, from Moses to Mormonism, were to be utterly and finally discredited, we would be exactly where we are now. All the agonizing questions that we face, from the idea of the good life and our duties to each other to the concept of justice and the enigma of existence itself, would be just as difficult and also just as fascinating. It takes a totalitarian mind-set to claim that only one Bronze Age Palestinian revelation or prophecy or text can be our guide through this labyrinth. If the totalitarians cannot bear to abandon their adoration of their various Dear Leaders, can they not at least arrange to hold their ceremonies in private? Either that or give up the tax-exempt status that must remind them so painfully of the things of this material world.

Growing rift threatens to tear India apart

Hindu-Muslim tensions will rise further

Aatish Taseer

Barely a couple of weeks ago my stepsister, Shalaka, got married at the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Last Wednesday night my stepfather, Ajit, called to pay the bill. When he arrived home 10 minutes later he realised he had left his mobile phone charger behind, so he called Mandira, the Taj banquet manager.

“I can’t speak now, sir,” she said. “We’re under attack.”

Ajit lives in a building next door to Mumbai’s other big hotel, the Oberoi. Within a few moments, he heard gunshots from there too.

In the 48 hours that followed, his neighbourhood was sealed off and his building came under attack. In the windows of the Oberoi he saw deserted rooms, half-drawn curtains, fires, brown smoke and gunmen moving from floor to floor.

RELATED LINKS

• Mumbai: city of death

• Terror blasts hole in peace with Pakistan

By Friday, he knew that three chefs who had worked at his daughter’s wedding and the family of the Taj’s general manager were dead. Friends of his sisters had also been killed. As terrorist attacks went — and Mumbai has known several in the past few years — it didn’t come much closer to home than this.

My stepfather’s reaction came in the form of a text message the next day. It read: “Pardon Afzal [Muhammad Afzal, accused of attacking the Indian parliament in 2001], hang Sadhvi [a woman accused of participating in the only act of Hindu terrorism in a Muslim neighbourhood], Ban the Bajrang Dal [a Hindu extremist organisation], talk to Simi [a Muslim student organisation of which the Indian mujaheddin, responsible for a string of attacks in Indian cities, is said to be a part], restrict the Amarnath pilgrimage [a Hindu pilgrimage that led to upheavals in the Kashmir valley last summer] fund the Haj. Wow! Truly, my India is great! Fwd 2all Hindus.”

This message, steeped in irony, read like a roll call of the issues and violence that have divided Hindu and Muslim India over the past year. Almost a call to arms, it contained the great, twofold rage that has grown in Hindu India: the feeling that Islamic terrorism seeks to destroy the vigorous “new India” and the suspicion that the state is either unable or unwilling to defend itself — for cynical reasons, such as shoring up the Muslim vote for the government.

The attacks on Mumbai — a city that, in its prosperity, its hybridity and openness to the world, stands as a symbol of the new and energised India — confirmed to many what they had long feared.

Within hours of the attacks, groups gathered in the streets of Mumbai, chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Victory to Mother India) and singing “Vande Mataram” (Bow to you Mother), a patriotic song that Muslims had objected to as the choice for the national anthem because it implied obeisance to gods other than Allah.

Many British commentators have asked in surprise why India is being targeted. There is no confusion among Indians themselves. When the terrorists say on their websites that they seek to break up India and reclaim it for Islam, they speak a language many Hindu Indians understand. And India has proved to be the softest of soft targets.

More than 4,000 Indians have died in terrorist attacks — the country is the second biggest victim of terror after Iraq and virtually every one of its big cities has faced a terrorist attack. Yet the government has no centralised terrorist database, its intelligence is abysmal and there is little evidence that the state knows who it is fighting.

In dragging its feet, the Indian state does nobody a greater disservice than Indian Muslims. When there are no real suspects, arrests or trials, everyone becomes a suspect. Already an underclass, with low literacy rates, low incomes and poor representation in government jobs, Indian Muslims are increasingly alienated. There is also great pressure on them.

Nobody wants to listen to genuine grievances about poverty, illiteracy and unemployment in the face of a real threat to the country. Many Hindus want Muslims to come clean on the issue of the jihad and to make clear whose side they’re on.

Far from responding positively to this pressure, some Indian Muslims are simply beginning to see their grievances as part of a global conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim.

India’s position in this is unique. It has the largest Muslim minority population in the world (13.4% of the population, or about 150m) but unlike Muslims in western Europe, they are not immigrants.

They have been part of India for centuries.

This is why all Indians — Muslims and Hindu alike — know that the deepening divide threatens the country’s existence.

Many years ago, a divide like this re-energised the Hindu nationalist BJP. Today who knows who it might throw up? The hour of men like Narendra Modi, who oversaw a pogrom of Indian Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, might have come at last.

Aatish Taseer is the author of Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands, to be published in March by Canongate.

Malaysia Muslim body issues fatwa against tomboys

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters Life!) - Malaysia's top Islamic council has decreed that tomboyish behavior and lesbian sex are forbidden in Islam, a newspaper said on Friday.

The National Fatwa Council issued the edict following what it said a spate of cases involving young women behaving like men and indulging in lesbian sex, the Malay language Berita Harian daily said.

"There are teenage girls who prefer the male lifestyle including dressing up in men's clothes," it quoted council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin as saying. "More worryingly, they have started to engage in sexual activities."

He gave no other details.

Mainly Muslim Malaysia frowns on oral and gay sex, describing them as against the order of nature. Under the civil law, offenders -- both males or females -- can be jailed for up to 20 years, caned or fined.

Just over half of Malaysia's 27 million people are Malay Muslims, practicing the moderate brand of Islam.




LOL, I really don't know where to start; either on the absolute ignorance of a religious official who obviously has not bothered to learn more about the true nature of yoga before dismissing it; or the obvious insecurity of a person who clings so tightly to his faith but is SO worried that even the slightest deviation from it will cause him to convert!! This is absolutely the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of-and by the way, who are these people to tell other muslims what to do? Did we elect him? NO! Has he done ANYTHING to benefit his fellow citizens besides extorting them to close their minds to everything else but their religion? NO! Has he contributed to the collective knowledge of mankind? Of course not...he's spent waay too much time looking for imaginary temptations, imaginary nymphs to distract his precious flock from their beliefs, never mind the fact that the "flock" never actually chose him as their shepherd....And this applies to everyone else; who are we to legislate taste? Does it matter to you if someone is a lesbian? Would a lesbian be a threat to you? We have more dangerous threats coming from terrorists who claim their religion as justification for their deeds-however deluded they may be-shouldn't they be issuing fatwas against them? have lesbians threatened your family or general society? I think there is a more serious issue at hand here-that we as a society, whether muslim or not, have let these pompous religious know-it-alls tell us how to think, and what we can or cannot do-if you want to ban something, put it through the democratic process, debate it in Parliament, and enact a Law. Religion is there to guide our actions, and its a personal thing-no one has the right to tell another person what to wear, what to eat, what music to listen to, what exercise regime to follow, what books to read, etc etc etc. Unless we throw off the chains of these fatwa issuing morons and them to the ranks of real life clowns, only then will this country progress.

"One Week" by Barack Obama

Clive Thompson: Why Veteran Visionaries Will Save the World

By Clive Thompson  09.22.08

START

PREVIOUS: Power Ascender: Ballsy Tool Yanks People, Equipment up Walls

Don't trust anyone over 30. That's the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley, a land once again bestrode by millionaire CEOs who just learned to shave. Many people believe that the breakthrough ideas come only from the young. And why not? Media stories constantly recite the ages of a few famous founders: Bill Gates of Microsoft, 20; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, 20; the Google boys, 25; YouTube's Chad Hurley, 28. Tumblr founder David Karp is 21 — and on his second successful company.

Young people rule tech innovation, we tell ourselves, because they have several key advantages. They're fearless and naive, so they'll try anything. They can spy markets that elders, with their locked-in views, cannot. And without dependents or spouses, twentysomethings can work the sort of pyramid-building hours necessary for a startup. It's a kind of Logan's Run world: If you're ending a third decade, you're obsolete.

But hold on. A recent study has finally collected some data on age and high tech innovation and found that older geeks are just as successful as young Turks. What's more, the chronologically advanced are especially successful at solving problems we increasingly — and desperately — need solved.

In other words, the high tech future may belong to the over-30 set. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation surveyed 652 US-born CEOs and heads of product development who founded high tech firms in the boom (and bust) years of 1995 to 2005. Both the average and median ages were 39 — far older than the mythic dorm-room visionary. Turns out those youthquake pioneers don't really represent the pack. They're outliers.

So why is our intuition wrong about this? Because young and old founders create different types of startups.

Mature entrepreneurs tend to launch startups that require huge amounts of capital — biotech companies, energy firms, outfits that make expensive hardware. Startup costs in these areas include tens of millions for research resources, large staffs, maybe a laboratory. Then, to take their invention to market, they have to navigate complex, entrenched industries, which requires connections. "You need to know how to run a company right off the bat and inspire confidence in investors," says Vivek Wadhwa, a Harvard Fellow who coauthored the Kauffman Foundation report.

In contrast, those sexy Web-service firms that have dominated headlines on and off for the past decade require almost no capital. The "social software" market also rewards people who intuitively understand new media experiences. "There's been social change, too," says Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, a seed-funding firm. "Ten years ago, it was bizarrely unusual for someone graduating college to launch a startup. Now almost everyone who gets a computer science degree at least thinks about doing it."

In essence, the high tech world divides itself: Young people create the way-kewl consumer software — the Twitters and the Loopts — and older folks tackle the heavy-industry stuff. Young founders hack information; old founders hack atoms.

But we're moving to a world where we need more and more of the latter. Think of some of the thorniest high tech challenges — solar energy, battery systems, plug-in cars. These all reside in the world of atoms. Whoever cracks the problem of carbon sequestration is going to reap a multibillion-dollar reward. But they'll have to solve some hellishly complex physics puzzles and then introduce the solution to an energy industry riddled with byzantine state-by-state regulations and run by an old-boy network of cigar-chewing gazillionaires. Not something easily accomplished in sweatpants.

When you look at it this way, the constant hype over social applications like Facebook or Tumblr can seem a bit misplaced. I'm not saying that Web 3.0 or 4.0 apps are going away (or that they'll stop being fun). But here's my bet: When we finally start solving our global energy and resource dilemmas, the next generation of media-feted tech CEOs will look more like your parents than your kids. Or, to put it another way: Don't trust anyone who wants to put an age limit on innovation.

Email clive@clivethompson.net.

If `Joe the Plumber' is like my plumber, he can go pound sand

There's a great screenplay idea behind the ludicrously over-the-top presence of "Joe the Plumber" in last night's debate:

Blue collar guy chats up a presidential candidate on the stump, finds himself referred to numerous times in the subsequent debate and becomes a national insta-celebrity for his rough-hewn, ornery yet charming nature and overall what-the-hell attitude.

He supports the candidate trailing badly in the polls, so that candidate, to inject life into his sagging campaign, persuades his running mate to step down "to spend more time with her family." Replaces her with Joe the Plumber.

A charmed and ultimately frivolous nation comes around, elects this team, and Joe goes to Washington. The president-elect hits his head getting out of the limo on inauguration day and is incapacitated. Much hilarity and many plumbing jokes ensue. Finally, he detects a suspicious trickle from a faucet during a UN visit and, using his ever-handy tools, foils a plumbing based-plot to take over the world.

The frenzy of attention directed at Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, during lasst night's debate was inevitable, and one of my first thoughts was "Gosh, that guy'd better not have anything even mildly embarrassing in his past." And, well, as it turns out we already know he owes back taxes, doesn't have a plumber's license, is actually named "Sam" and is a Republican . And this is before we find his college girlfriends and the guy he gave a wedgie to in high school.

Maybe Joe the Plumber is supposed to embody or symbolize the salt-of-the-earth, just-tryin'-to-get-ahead workin' guy.

But I don't see plumbers that way. In fact, I carry a major grudge against plumbers. Last year, when we had to do a tricky sink replacement while changing our kitchen countertops, we called a small, local plumbing company we found in the phone book. They sent out a plumber and proceeded to rip us off royally.

Sinkbasekt To install the sink we'd purchased, run new water lines to the ice maker and replace the faucet, drain pipes and minor accessories -- about five hours work -- the company billed us $2,200. On the itemized bill, they listed the sink basket strainer -- the little food trap that drops into the drain opening that you see in image at right being sold for $1.99 at Hardware.com -- at $159.00.

The "top of the line faucet" the plumber sold me for $553 I later found listed at $160. To re-install a disposer he charged $324, a service that I later priced at $100 from a major local appliance store.

I fought the company hard over this outrageous bill and they refused even to negotiate. I complained the Better Business Bureau, but that putative guardian of consumers' inerests deemed it a simple price dispute and wouldn't get involved or take my report.

I hope the plumbing company that came to my house gets a big, fat tax hike under the next president. And if Joe is the same kind of ripoff artist -- which I'm not saying he is -- I hope his company suffers as well.

John McCain's ads are LIES. Here's the video proof.

Brutal: Sarah Palin's Record on Aerial Wolf Hunting

Obama campaign rejects Palin 'terrorist' jibe

CNN) -- Barack Obama's campaign has quickly rejected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's claim that he associated "with terrorists who targeted our own country."


Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama's ties to controversial figure William Ayers.

Palin attacked Sen. Obama on Saturday for his brief political relationship with Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical Weather Underground which was involved in several bombings in the early 1970s, including the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama was eight years old at the time of bombings.

Obama and Ayers, now a university professor, have met several times since 1995, when both worked with a non-profit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said the two had not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in a Chicago neighborhood where both live.

Palin's attack delivered on the McCain campaign's announcement that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate with just a month left before the November general election.

"We see America as the greatest force for good in this world," Palin said at a fund-raising event in Colorado, adding, "Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

She cited an article in Saturday's New York Times about Obama's relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

Several other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship. Watch CNN's Truth Squad examine Palin claims »

Riot and bomb conspiracy charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974, and he is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan called Palin's comments "offensive" and "not surprising" given the McCain campaign's statement that "they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills."

With Obama rising in polls while the country struggles in the grip of a financial crisis, Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign decided to shift attention away from the troubled economy and on to issues of his opponent's character, judgment and personal associations, the Washington Post reported.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, requesting anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss strategy. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here."

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told CNN, "We are coming up on 30 days until the election, and there are a lot of unanswered questions about Sen. Obama's judgment."



The Obama camp said the tactic wouldn't work.

"What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy," Sevugan said.

SARAH PALIN Threatens America and the World

This woman is a threat to the world and to the US. Sarah Palin has no experience WHATSOEVER IN running a COUNTRY, and she stands a HEARTBEAT AWAY from being the world's most POWERFUL person. Is McCain NUTS???? Are the American people absolutely NUTS?? She's a RELIGIOUS FREAK FOR CRIN OUT LOUD!! She wants to ban abortion?? She doesn't think global warming's man made?? She wants to drill in Alaska??

SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME THIS AIN'T A BAD COMEDY....??

For the record....she was governor of Alsaka for friggin 21 MONTHS. DONT FUCKIN TELL ME SHE HAS ENOUGH EXPERIENCE TO RUN A COUNTRY AFTER BEING GOVERNOR OF THE 47TH MOST POPULOUS STATE IN THE US (oh, and by the way, the US has only 50 states)




I guess this pretty much sums up my choice for president.......

Zaid Ibrahim's open letter to PM of Malaysia

Zaid Ibrahim's open letter to PM

29 September 2008

YAB Dato’ Seri Abdullah Badawi
Prime Minister of Malaysia
5th Floor, East Wing
Perdana Putra Building
Putrajaya
Malaysia

Dear Mr Prime Minister

In our proclamation of independence, our first Prime Minister gave voice to the lofty aspirations and dreams of the people of Malaya: that Malaya was founded on the principles of liberty and justice, and the promise that collectively we would always strive to improve the welfare and happiness of its people.

Many years have passed since that momentous occasion and those aspirations and dreams remain true and are as relevant to us today as they were then. This was made possible by a strong grasp of fundamentals in the early period of this nation. The Federal Constitution and the laws made pursuant to it were well founded; they embodied the key elements of a democracy built on the Rule of Law. The Malaysian Judiciary once commanded great respect from Malaysians and was hailed as a beacon for other nations. Our earlier Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein Onn were truly leaders of integrity, patriots in their own right and most importantly, men of humility. They believed in and built this nation on the principles and values enunciated in our Constitution.

Even when they had to enact the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960, they were very cautious and apologetic about it. Tunku stated clearly that the Act was passed to deal with the communist threat. “My cabinet colleagues and I gave a solemn promise to Parliament and the nation that the immense powers given to the Government under the ISA would never be used to stifle legitimate opposition and silent lawful dissent”, was what the Tunku said. Our third Prime Minister Tun Hussein Onn reinforced this position by saying that the ISA was not intended to repress lawful political opposition and democratic activity on the part of the citizenry.

The events of the last three weeks have compelled me to review the way in which the ISA has been used. This exercise has sadly led me to the conclusion that the Government has time and time again failed the people of this country in repeatedly reneging on that solemn promise made by Tunku Abdul Rahman. This has been made possible because the Government and the law have mistakenly allowed the Minister of Home Affairs to detain anyone for whatever reason he thinks fit. This subjective discretion has been abused to further certain political interests.

History is the great teacher and speaks volumes in this regard. Even a cursory examination of the manner in which the ISA has been used almost from its inception would reveal the extent to which its intended purpose has been subjugated to the politics of the day.

Regrettably, Tunku Abdul Rahman himself reneged on his promise. In 1965, his administration detained Burhanuddin Helmi, the truly towering Malay intellectual, a nationalist who happened to be a PAS leader. He was kept in detention until his death in 1969. Helmi was a political opponent and could by no stretch of the imagination be considered to have been involved in the armed rebellion or communism that the ISA was designed to deal with. This detention was an aberration, a regrettable moment where politics had been permitted to trump the rule of law. It unfortunately appears to have set a precedent and many detentions of persons viewed as having been threatening to the incumbent administration followed through the years. Even our literary giant, ‘sasterawan negara’ the late Tan Sri A Samad Ismail was subjected to the ISA in 1976. How could he have been a threat to national security?

I need not remind you of the terrible impact of the 1987 Operasi Lalang. Its spectre haunts the Government as much as it does the peace loving people of this nation, casting a gloom over all of us. There were and still are many unanswered questions about those dark hours when more than a hundred persons were detained for purportedly being threats to national security. Why they were detained has never been made clear to Malaysians. Similarly, no explanation has been forthcoming as to why they were never charged in court. Those detainees included amongst their numbers senior opposition Members of Parliament who are still active in Parliament today. The only thing that is certain about that period was that UMNO was facing a leadership crisis. Isn’t it coincidental that the recent spate of ISA arrests has occurred when UMNO is again having a leadership crisis?

In 2001, Keadilan ‘reformasi’ activists were detained in an exercise that the Federal Court declared was in bad faith and unlawful. The continued detention of those that were not released earlier in the Kamunting detention facility was made possible only by the fact that the ISA had been questionably amended in 1988 to preclude judicial review of the Minister’s order to detain. Malaysians were told that these detainees had been attempting to overthrow the Government via militant means and violent demonstrations. Seven years have gone and yet no evidence in support of this assertion has been presented. Compounding the confusion even further, one of these so-called militants, Ezam Mohamad Noor, recently rejoined UMNO to great fanfare, as a prized catch it would seem.

At around the same time, members of PAS were also detained for purportedly being militant and allegedly having links to international terrorist networks. Those detained included Nik Adli, the son of Tuan Guru Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat the Menteri Besar of Kelantan. Malaysians were made a promise by the Government that evidence of the alleged terrorist activities and links of these detainees would be disclosed. To date no such evidence has been produced.

The same formula was used in late 2007 when the HINDRAF 5 were detained. Malaysians were told once again that these individuals were involved in efforts to overthrow the Government and had links with the militant Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka. To date no concrete evidence have been presented to support this assertion. It would seem therefore that the five were detained for their involvement in efforts that led to a mobilisation of Malaysian Indians to express, through peaceful means, their frustration against the way in which their community had been allowed to be marginalised. This cause has since been recognised as a legitimate one. The HINDRAF demonstration is nothing extraordinary as such assemblies are universally recognised as being a legitimate means of expression.

In the same vein, the grounds advanced in support of the most recent detentions of Tan Hoon Cheng, Teresa Kok and Raja Petra Kamarudin leave much to be desired. The explanation that Tan Hoon Cheng was detained for her own safety was farcical. The suggestion that Teresa Kok had been inciting religious sentiments was unfounded as was evinced by her subsequent release.

As for Raja Petra Kamarudin, the prominent critic of the Government, a perusal of his writings would show that he might have been insulting of the Government and certain individuals within it. However, being critical and insulting could not in any way amount to a threat to national security. If his writings are viewed as being insulting of Islam, Muslims or the Holy Prophet (pbuh), he should instead be charged under the Penal Code and not under the ISA. In any event, he had already been charged for sedition and criminal defamation in respect of some of his statements. He had claimed trial, indicating as such his readiness and ability to defend himself. Justice would best be served by allowing him his day in court more so where, in the minds of the public, the Government is in a position of conflict for having been the target of his strident criticism.

The instances cited above strongly suggest that the Government is undemocratic. It is this perspective that has over the last 25 plus years led to the Government seemingly arbitrarily detaining political opponents, civil society and consumer advocates, writers, businessmen, students, journalists whose crime, if it could be called that, was to have been critical of the Government. How it is these individuals can be perceived as being threats to national security is beyond my comprehension. The self-evident reality is that legitimate dissent was and is quashed through the heavy-handed use of the ISA.

There are those who support and advocate this carte-blanche reading of the ISA. They will seek to persuade you that the interests of the country demand that such power be retained, that Malaysians owe their peace and stability to laws such as the ISA. This overlooks the simple truth that Malaysians of all races cherish peace. We lived together harmoniously for the last 400 years, not because of these laws but in spite of them.

I believe the people of this country are mature and intelligent enough to distinguish actions that constitute a ‘real’ threat to the country from those that threaten political interests. Malaysians have come know that the ISA is used against political opponents and, it would seem, when the leadership is under challenge either from within the ruling party or from external elements.

Malaysians today want to see a Government that is committed to the court process to determine guilt or innocence even for alleged acts of incitement of racial or religious sentiment. They are less willing to believe, as they once did, that a single individual, namely the Minister of Home Affairs, knows best about matters of national security. They value freedom and the protection of civil liberties and this is true of people of other nations too.

Mr Prime Minister, the results of the last General Election are clear indication that the people of Malaysia are demanding a reinstatement of the Rule of Law. I was appointed as your, albeit short-lived, Minister in charge of legal affairs and judicial reform. In that capacity, I came to understand more keenly how many of us want reform, not for the sake of it, but for the extent to which our institutions have been undermined by events and the impact this has had on society.

With your blessing, I attempted to push for reform. High on my list of priorities was a reinstatement of the inherent right of judicial review that could be enabled through a reversion of the key constitutional provision to its form prior to the controversial amendment in 1988. I need not remind you that that constitutional amendment was prompted by the same series of events that led not only to Operasi Lalang but the sacking of the then Lord President and two supreme court justices. Chief amongst my concerns was the way in which the jurisdiction and the power of the Courts to grant remedy against unconstitutional and arbitrary action of the Executive had been removed by Parliament and the extent to which this had permitted an erosion of the civil liberties of Malaysians. It was this constitutional amendment that paved the way for the ouster provision in the ISA that virtually immunises the Minister from judicial review, a provision which exemplifies the injustice the constitutional amendment of 1988 has lent itself.

I also sought to introduce means by which steps could be taken to assist the Judiciary to regain the reputation for independence and competence it once had. Unfortunately, this was viewed as undesirable by some since an independent Judiciary would mean that the Executive would be less ‘influential’.

I attempted to do these things and more because of the realisation that Malaysia’s democratic traditions and the Rule of Law are under siege. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with giving everyone an independent Judiciary and the opportunity to a fair trial. This is consistent with the universal norms of human rights as it is with the tenets of Islam, the religion of the Federation. Unchecked power to detain at the whim of one man is oppressiveness at its highest. Even in Israel, a nation that is perpetually at war, the power to detain is not vested in one man and detention orders require endorsement from a judge.

If there are national security considerations, then these can be approached without jettisoning the safeguards intended to protect individual citizens from being penalised wrongfully. In other jurisdictions involved in armed conflicts, trials are held in camera to allow for judicial scrutiny of evidence considered too sensitive for public disclosure so as to satisfy the ends of justice. If this can be done in these jurisdictions, why not here where the last armed struggle we saw, the very one that precipitated the need for the ISA, came to an end in the 1980s? Any doubts as to the continued relevance of the ISA in its present form should have been put to rest by the recommendation by the National Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) that the ISA be repealed and an anti-terror legislation suited to the times enacted in its place. Containing as it did a sunset clause in its original times, the ISA was never intended to be a permanent feature on the Malaysian legal landscape.

Through its continued use in the manner described above and in the face of public sentiment, it is only natural that the ISA has become in the mind of the people an instrument of oppression and the Government is one that lends itself to oppressiveness. Its continued use does not bode well for a society that is struggling to find its place in the global arena. It does not bode well for the democracy that is so vital for us to develop sustainably.

Mr Prime Minister, I remember very clearly what you once said; that if one has the opportunity to do what is good and right for the country, then he must take on the task. I respect you deeply for that and if I were confident that I would have been able to do some good for Malaysia, I would have remained on your team. Sir, you are still the Prime Minister and you still have the opportunity to leave your footprint in Malaysian history. I urge you to do so by repealing the ISA once and for all.

Let us attempt to fulfil that solemn promise made by our beloved first Prime Minister to the people of this country.

Yours sincerely

ZAID IBRAHIM
Kuala Lumpur

Mahathirism the cause of BN unravelling

Published in Malaysiakini.com Mahathirism the cause of BN unravelling

Proarte | Sep 19, 08 5:20pm

I refer to the Malaysiakini article MCA, Gerakan told to work with Umno to kick PM out. This article revealed Dr Mahathir's breathtaking hypocrisy. He lamented  that race relations were deteriorating under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi without even considering that it is the culture of Umno, which he himself engendered, which is responsible for Umno's racist and bigoted actions. Racial division in Malaysia  today emanates from one source only and that is Umno.    Surely it was the fact that people of different races and religions were willing to unite which resulted in the unprecedented gains for the Opposition in the Mar 8 elections. In fact, the races have never been more united in Malaysian history.  Yes, there is a long way to go, but there has been a palpable sea of change. Race relations only apparently 'deteriorate' when Umno instigates it using the media, religious government  authorities and the police. The recent ISA arrests of 3 individuals under the pretext of national security and race relations were utterly disingenuous and could only be described as a synthetic charade. When Dr Mahathir took over power, he emphasised Ketuanan Melayu. Racial division became the modus operandi of BN during his tenure. It was Dr Mahathir who in fact gloated that Umno could rule Malaysia without non-Malay support. So much for promoting racial harmony and Bangsa Malaysia.  Dr Mahathir inculcated the idea that non-Malays must accept the discrimination in the country if they wanted to prosper and live peacefully.  He rewrote Malaysian history, selectively applied the 1957 constitution and encouraged a racist agenda in the civil service reinforced by institutions such as Biro Tatanegara. Nevermind if the majority of the Umno bigwigs were not pure Malay, as long as they claimed to be Malay and were recognised as such, they could be leaders.   It explains why Dr Mahathir, whose Indian ancestors came to Malaysia little over 100 years ago, could volubly claim to be 'indigenous' but  yet consider Baba Chinese in Melaka who have been here for almost 600 years as orang asing.  This is 'Mahathirism' in short -  a Machiavellian ploy to exploit race and religion for financial gain and power. Dr Mahathir is shameless in his duplicity and the only reason why he was able to succeed was because he was a leader of a feudally minded people who were economically and educationally backward. His Machiavellian psychological ploy was to engender a tongkat mentality in the Malay community to make them loyal to Umno.  Dr Mahathir was able to bring about a semblance of unity and economic progress during his tenure due to his dictatorial grip on all institutions of governance. He was willing to share the wealth with the leaders of BN component parties as long as they acquiesced to his Ketuanan Melayu stipulation. It is no surprise that MCA and MIC leaders became immensely rich but had to sell out their communities as part of the deal. It was only a matter of time that we would see Mahathirism unravel because it was based on a lie and was becoming economically, socially and politically untenable. Anwar Ibrahim’s sacking was a symptom of this. This led to the haemorrhage of support from Umno to PAS and PKR.  In order the stem the loss, Dr Mahathir, the arch secularist in a cynical and unconstitutional manner, declared Malaysia an 'Islamic state' to steal the thunder, as it were, from PAS. This further divided Malaysian communities as there was now a rivalry between PAS and Umno for Islamic credentials leaving non-Muslims confounded and alienated.  Badawi's team saw this as an opportunity to wrest power from Dr Mahathir and seduced the rakyat with promises to end Mahathrism i.e. crony politics, police corruption, judicial corruption and religious and racial polarisation. The gullible rakyat responded by giving BN and Umno an unprecedented level of support in the 2004 elections. However, Abdullah squandered this opportunity to reform governance in Malaysia by reneging on his promises.  The overwhelming support seemed to make Umno even more arrogant to the extent that it actually put into practise the notion that it did not need other parties or communities to rule. This explains the arrogant and politically naive rhetoric by Khairy Jamaluddin about Penang needing a Malay chief minister, the brandishing of the keris by Hishamuddin Hussein at the Umno general assembly, the demolition of a Chinese temple in Penang and the escalation in Hindu temple demolitions. We recall that at the Umno conference which was held on Deepavali day, a delegate had the audacity to say that the temple issue was a 'small matter'. Khairy then went on to make his infamous speech about Indian news vendors “who controlled the business” not distributing his father-in-law's speech because they chose to go on holiday. This was just the tip of the iceberg of a cumulative set of events from 2004 till now which have left Malaysians feeling bitterly short-changed and cheated by Abdullah. I personally believe that Umno is not capable of reform under Abdullah, a man who has never been known to stand for anything other than being a 'Mr Nice Guy'. His promises for reform were at best well intentioned. The landslide win in 2004 made Umno think that they already had a winning formula  and so why rock the boat and change? Well, Mar 8 saw the rakyat waking up and bringing about change which they had been yearning for. The multiracial opposition smashed the psychological two-thirds majority of BN without any violent racial conflagration as a consequence.  It was a cathartic event for all Malaysians. It demolished the self -serving Mahathir mantra that  a two-thirds majority was required for political stability. In fact, people began for the first time to see BN majority rule as a liability.  Umno does not appear to have learnt anything . It still behaves like a ‘one man show’ when it cannot afford to do so. MIC and MCA are lame duck parties which are incresingly seeing the wisdom of distancing themselves from Abdullah's Umno, which arrogantly pushed them aside when they won with a landslide in 2004.  Umno is now riddled with hopeless division and scrambling for power that it does not seem to realise that it is weak and needs to build up multi- racial support, otherwise it is as good as dead in the long run. The current irrational actions by Umno to arrest people under ISA under bogus excuses betrays a pathetic mindset which sees the Malays as tools to be manipulated for Umno's own self-serving ends.  Malays know that it was an Umno warlord who uttered racist comments against the Chinese, yet the journalist who reported it was arrested. Malays now know that Khir Toyo’s allegations were the pretext for Teresa Kok’s ISA incarceration. The mosque in question has categorically said that Teresa was not involved in the azan petition and that the low volume of the azan was due to a technical fault.  Malays know from reading Raja Petra Kamarudin’s blog that he has always stood for justice and Islamic values. The arrests have further undermined Abdullah. It would appear that Abdullah's administration is in complete disarray and this is in no small way is due to his utter incompetence.  To be fair to Abdullah, he inherited the rot which Dr Mahathir had set in motion. I would go as far as to say that Dr Mahathir is to be blamed for all the nonsense we are witnessing now. Abdullah's fault lies in his inability to reform Mahathirism.  Malaysia and Umno needs Mahathir now like the proverbial hole in the head.

How to Fix Capitalism by Bill Gates.

Capitalism has improved the lives of billions of people — something that's easy to forget at a time of great economic uncertainty. But it has left out billions more. They have great needs, but they can't express those needs in ways that matter to markets. So they are stuck in poverty, suffer from preventable diseases and never have a chance to make the most of their lives. Governments and nonprofit groups have an irreplaceable role in helping them, but it will take too long if they try to do it alone. It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. To make the most of those skills, we need a more creative capitalism: an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. We need new ways to bring far more people into the system — capitalism — that has done so much good in the world.

There's much still to be done, but the good news is that creative capitalism is already with us. Some corporations have identified brand-new markets among the poor for life-changing technologies like cell phones. Others — sometimes with a nudge from activists — have seen how they can do good and do well at the same time. To take a real-world example, a few years ago I was sitting in a bar with Bono, and frankly, I thought he was a little nuts. It was late, we'd had a few drinks, and Bono was all fired up over a scheme to get companies to help tackle global poverty and disease. He kept dialing the private numbers of top executives and thrusting his cell phone at me to hear their sleepy yet enthusiastic replies. As crazy as it seemed that night, Bono's persistence soon gave birth to the (RED) campaign. Today companies like Gap, Hallmark and Dell sell (RED)-branded products and donate a portion of their profits to fight AIDS. (Microsoft recently signed up too.) It's a great thing: the companies make a difference while adding to their bottom line, consumers get to show their support for a good cause, and — most important — lives are saved. In the past year and a half, (RED) has generated $100 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, helping put nearly 80,000 people in poor countries on lifesaving drugs and helping more than 1.6 million get tested for HIV. That's creative capitalism at work.

Creative capitalism isn't some big new economic theory. And it isn't a knock on capitalism itself. It is a way to answer a vital question: How can we most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out?

The World Is Getting Better
It might seem strange to talk about creative capitalism when we're paying more than $4 for a gallon of gas and people are having trouble paying their mortgages. There's no doubt that today's economic troubles are real; people feel them deeply, and they deserve immediate attention. Creative capitalism isn't an answer to the relatively short-term ups and downs of the economic cycle. It's a response to the longer-term fact that too many people are missing out on a historic, century-long improvement in the quality of life. In many nations, life expectancy has grown dramatically in the past 100 years. More people vote in elections, express their views and enjoy economic freedom than ever before. Even with all the problems we face today, we are at a high point of human well-being. The world is getting a lot better.

The problem is, it's not getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for everyone. One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. They don't have enough nutritious food, clean water or electricity. The amazing innovations that have made many lives so much better — likevaccines and microchips — have largely passed them by. This is where governments and nonprofits come in. As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. And the world will make lasting progress on the big inequities that remain — problems like AIDS, poverty and education — only if governments and nonprofits do their part by giving more aid and more effective aid. But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Naturally, if companies are going to get more involved, they need to earn some kind of return. This is the heart of creative capitalism. It's not just about doing more corporate philanthropy or asking companies to be more virtuous. It's about giving them a real incentive to apply their expertise in new ways, making it possible to earn a return while serving the people who have been left out. This can happen in two ways: companies can find these opportunities on their own, or governments and nonprofits can help create such opportunities where they presently don't exist.

What's Been Missed
As C.K. Prahalad shows in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, there are markets all over the world that businesses have missed. One study found that the poorest two-thirds of the world's population has some $5 trillion in purchasing power. A key reason market forces are slow to make an impact in developing countries is that we don't spend enough time studying the needs of those markets. I should know: I saw it happen at Microsoft. For many years, Microsoft has used corporate philanthropy to bring technology to people who can't get it otherwise, donating more than $3 billion in cash and software to try to bridge the digital divide. But our real expertise is in writing software that solves problems, and recently we've realized that we weren't bringing enough of that expertise to problems in the developing world. So now we're looking at inequity as a business problem as well as something to be addressed through philanthropy. We're working on projects like a visual interface that will enable illiterate or semiliterate people to use a PC instantly, with minimal training. Another project of ours lets an entire classroom full of students use a single computer; we've developed software that lets each student use her own mouse to control a specially colored cursor so that as many as 50 kids can use one computer at the same time. This is a big advance for schools where there aren't enough computers to go around, and it serves a market we hadn't examined before.

Cell phones are another example. They're now a booming market in the developing world, but historically, companies vastly underestimated their potential. In 2000, when Vodafone bought a large stake in a Kenyan cell-phone company, it figured that the market in Kenya would max out at 400,000 users. Today that company, Safaricom, has more than 10 million. The company has done it by finding creative ways to serve low-income Kenyans. Its customers are charged by the second rather than by the minute, for example, which keeps down the cost. Safaricom is making a profit, and it's making a difference. Farmers use their cell phones to find the best prices in nearby markets. A number of innovative uses for cell phones are emerging. Already many Kenyans use them to store cash (via a kind of electronic money) and transfer funds. If you have to carry money over long distances — say, from the market back to your home — this kind of innovation makes a huge difference. You're less tempting to rob if you're not holding any cash.

This is how people can benefit when businesses find opportunities that have been missed. But since I started talking about creative capitalism earlier this year, I've heard from some skeptics who doubt that there are any new markets. They say, "If these opportunities really existed, someone would have found them by now." I disagree. Their argument assumes that businesses have already studied every possible market for their products. Their attitude reminds me of the old joke about an economist who's walking down the street with a friend. The economist steps over a $10 bill that's lying on the ground. His friend asks him why he didn't take the money. "It couldn't possibly be there," he explains. "If it were, somebody would've picked it up!" Some companies make the same mistake. They think all the $10 bills have already been picked up. It would be a shame if we missed such opportunities, and it would make a huge difference if, instead, researchers and strategists at corporations met regularly with experts on the needs of the poor and talked about new applications for their best ideas.

Beyond finding new markets and developing new products, companies sometimes can benefit by providing the poor with heavily discounted access to products. Industries like software and pharmaceuticals, for example, have very low production costs, so you can come out ahead by selling your product for a bigger profit in rich markets and for a smaller profit, or at cost, in poor ones. Businesses in other industries can't do this tiered pricing, but they can benefit from the public recognition and enhanced reputation that come from serving those who can't pay. The companies involved in the (RED) campaign draw in new customers who want to be associated with a good cause. That might be the tipping point that leads people to pick one product over another.

There's another crucial benefit that accrues to businesses that do good work. They will find it easier to recruit and retain great employees. Young people today — all over the world — want to work for organizations that they can feel good about. Show them that a company is applying its expertise to help the poorest, and they will repay that commitment with their own dedication.

Creating New Incentives
Even so, no matter how hard businesses look or how creatively they think, there are some problems in the world that aren't amenable to solution by existing market incentives. Malaria is a great example: the people who most need new drugs or a vaccine are the least able to pay, so the drugs and vaccines never get made. In these cases, governments and nonprofits can create the incentives. This is the second way in which creative capitalism can take wing. Incentives can be as straightforward as giving public praise to the companies that are doing work that serves the poor. This summer, a Dutch nonprofit called the Access to Medicine Foundation started publishing a report card that shows which pharmaceutical companies are doing the most to make sure that medicines are made for — and reach — people in developing countries. When I talk to executives from pharmaceutical companies, they tell me that they want to do more for neglected diseases — but they at least need to get credit for it. This report card does exactly that.

Publicity is very valuable, but sometimes it's still not enough to persuade companies to get involved. Even the best p.r. may not pay the bill for 10 years of research into a new drug. That's why it's so important for governments to create more financial incentives. Under a U.S. law enacted last year, for example, any drug company that develops a new treatment for a neglected disease like malaria can get a priority review from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for another product it has made. If you develop a new drug for malaria, your profitable cholesterol drug could go on the market as much as a year earlier. Such a priority review could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a fantastic way for governments to go beyond the aid they already give and channel market forces so they improve even more lives.

Of course, governments in developing countries have to do a lot to foster capitalism themselves. They must pass laws and make regulations that let markets flourish, bringing the benefits of economic growth to more people. In fact, that's another argument I've heard against creative capitalism: "We don't need to make capitalism more creative. We just need governments to stop interfering with it." There is something to this. Many countries could spark more business investment — both within their borders and from the outside — if they did more to guarantee property rights, cut red tape and so on. But these changes come slowly. In the meantime, we can't wait. As a businessman, I've seen that companies can tap new markets right now, even if conditions aren't ideal. And as a philanthropist, I've found that our caring for others compels us to help people right now. The longer we wait, the more people suffer needlessly.

The Next Step
In june, I moved out of my day-to-day role at Microsoft to spend more time on the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I'll be talking with political leaders about how their governments can increase aid for the poor, make it more effective and bring in new partners through creative capitalism. I'll also talk with CEOs about what their companies can do. One idea is to dedicate a percentage of their top innovators' time to issues that affect the people who have been left behind. This kind of contribution takes the brainpower that makes life better for the richest and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else. Some pharmaceutical companies, like Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, are already doing this. The Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical shared some of its technology with a Tanzanian textile company, helping it produce millions of bed nets, which are crucial tools in the fight to eradicate malaria. Other companies are doing the same in food, cell phones and banking.

In other words, creative capitalism is already under way. But we can do much more. Governments can create more incentives like the FDA voucher. We can expand the report-card idea beyond the pharmaceutical industry and make sure the rankings get publicity so companies get credit for doing good work. Consumers can reward companies that do their part by buying their products. Employees can ask how their employers are contributing. If more companies follow the lead of the most creative organizations in their industry, they will make a huge impact on some of the world's worst problems.

More than 30 years ago, Paul Allen and I started Microsoft because we wanted to be part of a movement to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Ten years ago, Melinda and I started our foundation because we want to be part of a different movement — this time, to help create a world where no one has to live on a dollar a day or die from a disease we know how to prevent. Creative capitalism can help make it happen. I hope more people will join the cause.

P.S.:  A surprisingly diverse range of people have objected to this vision of Gates. Dissenting opinions can be found here

10 Questions for Sarah Palin

10 Questions for Sarah Palin
WHAT ABC NEWS ANCHOR CHARLES GIBSON SHOULD ASK THE CANDIDATE.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, at 6:17 PM ET

Sarah Palin
ABC News anchor Charles Gibson's forthcoming interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin—her first since being hoisted onto the ticket by John McCain—will give a national audience an unvarnished look at the candidate. Because Palin is telegenic and the interview will be shot against scenic Alaskan backdrops, the only thing to prevent the interview from turning into sweet Republican syrup will be tough questions from Gibson.
Gibson and his team got knocked by Washington Post columnist Tom Shales as "shoddy," "despicable," and "prosecutorial" after they hosted the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although I think the transcript tells a different story, Gibson will surely approach this interview on tip-toe lest he become the story again.
Gibson enters this Q&A at a disadvantage: Palin and her associates know volumes more about Gibson and his interviewing techniques and the questions that he's likely to ask than he knows about her and her positions. She'll have crammed like a Ph.D. candidate preparing for an oral examination, and her expert coaches will have prepared her on how to slip out of questions for which she doesn't have answers.

Gibson will wisely avoid the "gotcha" questions designed to prove that she's an ignoramus because she can't name all the capitals of the now-independent Soviet republics. Likewise, he'll skip the complicated hypotheticals ("If the president of North Korea has a stroke and nobody seems to be in charge and the country appears to have restarted its nuclear program, as president, what do you do?").
Because this is Palin's first interview, her coming-out if you will, Gibson has an obligation to ask questions about the issues thrust into the news by her words and actions. After covering that area, he needs to ask the sort of open-ended questions that will dislodge her from the script the McCainites have prepared. We need to hear her genuine views—which are largely unknown—on a range of issues.
Because the first instincts of a politician are to evade a tough question by dismissing it, filibustering, or answering a question that wasn't asked, Gibson's toughest job will be formulating the follow-up question to block her retreat.
Because the McCain campaign is running against Washington, they're got to run against George W. Bush and the Republican majority that not so long ago held Congress. Gibson needs a question that defines this separation. So he should start by asking:

1) What Bush administration policy do you disagree with most, and what would you have done differently?

She'll praise the president before damning his increased spending. To that answer Gibson should volley:
Then how much smaller would the McCain budget be and where precisely should he cut?
If she tries to vague Gibson out, which she will, he need only restate his request for specifics. It will be like pouring sand into her gears. No Republican president has ever delivered on the promise to shrink the federal government, and no Republican president ever will.
Next question:

2) How are you like Hillary Clinton?

Palin will flash that million-dollar, time-buying smile. It's a trick question, but it's an honest trick question because it forces her to acknowledge the obvious similarities. Both women are ambitious, underrated, glass-ceiling crackers and family-career jugglers, but Palin will do her best to distance herself from the comparison because it violates her sense of self. In Palin's mind, Clinton is a baby-killer, a socialist, a Washington insider, and a vain pig. She'll evade with gracious words about how she differs from Clinton, but Gibson can guide her toward self-reflection by noting the similarities (ambitious, underrated, cracker, juggler) and daring her to deny them.
Some questions work because they contain a preface that prevents the questioned from escaping. Here's the earmark-pork question Gibson should ask:

3) You're running as a reformer, a crusader against the special interests and politics as usual. Setting aside for a moment Sen. Ted Stevens' legal problems, should Alaska return to the Senate this Republican who has delivered more pork to his state than virtually any other elected official? Yes or no?

Like a good, loyal Republican, she'll resist condemning Stevens and will extol his virtues, perhaps by perhaps by talking about his struggle to make government smaller. After she runs the line out 100 feet or so, Gibson should give it this yank:
But in the past you had no problem with asking Alaskans to vote out a standing Republican. You challenged the incumbent Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, on a pork-slaying, reformist platform and beat him in the primary. Isn't Stevens as antithetical to your views on good government as Murkowski?
The McCain campaign believes that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia has given Palin standing as a foreign policy maven, or something akin. For the purposes of his interview, Gibson could accept this as a given in his preface and ask:

4) Unique among all U.S. governors, you lead a state that shares a border with Russia, a sometimes hostile nation with a nuclear arsenal and new geopolitical ambitions. Given that, how do you evaluate Vladimir Putin?

This untethered question evaporates upon being asked: Palin will respond with generalities from the "trust but verify" stockpile. Gibson's duty will be to wrap her answer in barbed wire and toss it back to her:

That's not very specific, governor. It's the sort of response I might get from the governor of Iowa. Can you share any special insight about Russia and Putin that you've gleaned from your years in office?
The vice president can't be the voice of loyal opposition to the president. She is always his slave, so on the campaign trail Palin will have to recant her previously stated view that global warming is not caused by man and accept McCain's view that it is. Politicians should feel free to change their views, if only because the process by which they change their views informs how they will govern. (Tim Russert used to cruise these waters every Sunday.) Gibson should force her to expand on how her mind was changed by asking:

5) Do you still disagree with John McCain's position that global warming is caused by man? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.

She'll try to filibuster about the need for a vigorous debate on the issue, but Gibson is enough of a pro to make her fold and admit that she has surrendered to McCain's position. This follow-up will expose her as a socialist greenie:
Do you favor McCain's advocacy of a carbon-emission cap-and-trade system to stem climate change? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.
Here's another issue that will require genuflection on Palin's part and force her to show how and why she changes her mind. She supports drilling in ANWR. McCain does not. Gibson should ask:

6) On the campaign trail or as vice president, will you try to persuade Mr. McCain to adopt your position on drilling in ANWR? Or have you adopted his?

Some questions must be asked simply because they're on everybody's mind. Just because the candidate will have a well-rehearsed answer shouldn't disqualify it. So, let's hear Gibson ask:

7) Were you for the bridge to nowhere before you were against it?

She can't shrug off the question or joke her way out of this one. If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll call it the biggest mistake of her political career and one from which she's learned many valuable lessons. Gibson's follow-up should explore the libertarian socialist paradise that Alaska has become and ask her if she intends block it from the federal trough. Make her give a number for Alaska's fair take, Charlie.
Every candidate hates the press, but no smart candidate vents on the topic without thinking through the consequences. Palin scalded the press in her acceptance speech, saying she wasn't seeking the "good opinion" of Washington "reporters and commentators." The comment may presage a campaign against the press, or it could have been just a populist wisecrack. Gibson could open the topic with this softball:

8) For most in the nation, you're an unknown quantity. What questions should the press be asking you?

She'll probably throw down platitudes about the glories of the First Amendment and salute the newspaper reporters in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau who have kept government accountable. Blah, blah, blah. If she doesn't become unhinged, Gibson should invite her to with this follow-up:
What questions are out of bounds?
Will she protest the coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the nature of Trig Palin's birth, the investigation of her role in the firing of her state trooper brother-in-law? Will she draw a circle around her nuclear family that she forbids the press to enter, or will she acknowledge that she has already made every member of her clan a McCain-Palin campaign appendage and that it's too late to complain? If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll laugh and say that the testing only made her family stronger and better prepared for the future. As cheerful as can be, she'll say, I wish that the news about Bristol's pregnancy could have been released on our family's time table, not that of the press that was asking whether Trig was my baby. But that's all passed. I'm as used to sharp-elbow politics as I am to sharp-elbow basketball, so I hold no grudge against anybody, not even the nasty anonymous bloggers.
If she goes this direction, you can be sure that the McCain campaign will urge the press to consider no question out of bounds for the Obama-Biden ticket.
As a foreign policy novice, Palin deserves an open-ended question like this about what she knew before McCain picked her and what she's learned since:

9) What have you learned about foreign policy from John McCain since joining the ticket?

She'll ably recite chapter and verse from the McCain manual. Gibson's goal here shouldn't be to force a fumble but to see how far she'll carry the ball when given a field that stretches a thousand yards before her. Will she have a beginning, a middle, and an end questioning her answer? Will it reveal her a foreign policy prodigy or a dope whose understanding is miles wide and nano-inches deep. Gibson should resist asking a follow-up and just smile and nod his lunkhead nod that says, Tell me more. Can she fill dead air? Can she resist it?
Finally, Palin is the sort of politician for whom the personal is the political. She's already reaped political rewards from the deployment of her son, a soldier, to Iraq, so Gibson has every right to personalize her views by asking:

10) Your son is being sent to Iraq. What is he fighting for?

Follow-ups:
John McCain says we're on the road to victory in Iraq. How do you define victory? What exactly have we won?
******
Bonus questions for Gibson: What rights do suspected terrorists have? And if Gibson is up to it, this one: On Sept. 2, you and your husband issued a statement about Bristol Palin's pregnancy stating that you were "proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." Was it Bristol's independent decision to have her baby? Would you have blocked her from getting an abortion if that had been her decision?