the morningside post

Rothbury: A Music Festival With Some Suggestions

By Ben Colmery
MIA 2009

In about a month everyone’s going to be asking each other, “So, what did you do over the summer?” Mostly, people are going to be interested in what internships everyone did, and just as importantly, where they did them.

Sure, these are interesting questions for SIPA people. After all, some are out there working on climate change, food security, economic development, conflict resolution, HIV/AIDS, or human rights. They are doing it in places like Ghana, Uganda, Thailand, Brazil, and Nigeria. And so much of it is important work, in the name of helping others.

I, on the other hand, recently did something that was of pivotal importance to helping me. I got my head screwed back on right. It wasn’t until I pulled this off that I realized just how askew my head had become after a year of pushing my brains to their outer reaches at SIPA. For all the good it had done me, something just wasn’t right.

Green Dragon Perspectives: Hope from Hvistendahl – China’s Environmental Movement 2.0

By Kerstin Ahlgren
MIA 2009

To a foreigner who has lived in China, Mara Hvistendahl (who spoke at a talk sponsored by Green Dragon on February 18th, 2008) set a familiar scene in her presentation on China’s Environmental Movement 2.0.  She talked about the “China cold,” symptoms of which include hacking, excess flem, spitting, and congestion.  Hvistendahl, however, has gone further than simply living with and complaining about the China cold and has consistently sought out those who are changing China’s environmental reality.  In doing so, she has become a clear voice of nuance and hope among the many China naysayers.

Kosovo Declares Independence; Serbs Burn U.S. Embassy, Russia Condemns Kosovo's Status

By Tanya Domi

Tanya Domi is an adjunct professor at SIPA. She also works in the University Office of Public Affairs and Communications. The views expressed here are her own and do not reflect those of Columbia University.

On Sunday, February 17, the week began on a high note in the Kosovo Parliament with a history making vote to unilaterally declare independence from their Serbian oppressors. This was followed by celebrations throughout the small territory symbolically highlighted by Kosovo's Philharmonic orchestra playing Beethoven's soaring Ninth Symphony, "Ode to Joy", a tip of its hat to the European Union (EU) who recognizes the uplifting music as its wordless anthem

However, the week ended on a more sober and cautionary note,

Global Elections: Potential Setbacks and Gains Foreseen Across Diverse Regions

By Tanya Domi
Adjunct Professor

As the U.S. Presidential election grinds out primaries and caucuses from coast to coast seeking a nominative head of each party’s ticket, other global elections around the world will be held over the next six to eights weeks with potential to: rebuke President Pervez Musharraf’s autocratic hand in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007; coronate Vladimir Putin’s hand picked successor Dmitry Medvedev in Russia; repudiate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hard line Islamist President of Iran in parliamentary elections, as the public rejects his apparent poor management of its increasing weak economy and; to ease the tension abounding in the Taiwan Straits, albeit somewhat deescalated following the Kuomintang’s (KMT) sweeping victory in Taiwan’s parliamentary elections this past weekend. KMT’s robust victory seems to give it momentum going into the Presidential election in March.                                                                                                                                                                  

While some things have changed in the small Balkan Republic of Montenegro, its transcendent and ubiquitous politician Milo Djukanovic will soon return to power as Prime Minister, which is likely to lead to a Djukanovic decision reminiscent of Putin, as he will likely pick the future Montenegrin presidential candidate who he will surely dominate in its small political space.  Highlights follow.

Pro-Western Incumbent Boris Tadic Re-elected to Presidency of Serbia

By Tanya Domi
Adjunct Professor

Ruling Serbian Democratic Party leader Boris Tadic was re-elected to a five-year term as president of Serbia last night with 50.5 percent of the vote and a margin of about 100,000 votes in beating back a vigorous campaign effort by Tomislav Nikolic, the Serb Radical Party deputy leader who garnered 47 percent of a record turnout of 67 percent of qualified voters.

The Radicals conceded defeat about 10 p.m. CET with Nikolic congratulating Tadic but promised to “remain his tough opposition.” Nikolic had forcefully opposed independence of the Kosovo province, administered by the U.N. since 1999 when then-President Slobodan Milosevic relinquished the province to the peacekeeping body. Tadic was forced into a run-off poll today after losing to Nikolic by four percent of the vote last month, in a record setting 61 percent turnout.

Canada Rolls Over: The Politics of Human Rights

By Tanya Domi
Adjunct Professor

Maxime Bernier, Canada’s Foreign Minister, announced last week that the ministry would rewrite a training manual for Canadian diplomats which listed the United States as an employer of torture methods, specifically citing the Guantanamo Bay Prison, after the U.S. government sharply rebuked its closest neighbor and ally. Bernier expressed regret for “embarrassment caused by public disclosure of the manual used in the department’s torture awareness training.”

Amnesty International released the training manual to the press which had been obtained through its legal action investigating alleged abuse of Afghan prisoners turned over to local Afghani authorities by Canadian soldiers. The Canadian torture awareness manual also listed China, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Syria as states where persons could face possible torture.

The bipartisan politicization of the NIE

The Bush administration’s policy towards Iran was thrown into disarray last when a new national intelligence estimate (NIE) declared that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This stunning assertion was seized upon by both liberals and conservatives to justify their positions towards Iran. The doves had a much easier task, waving the report as proof that the Bush administration had exaggerated the intelligence on Iran in another blind and dangerous rush to war. Initially thrown off stride, the Bush administration has regrouped into dizzying spin mode. Some hawks are now saying that the NIE actually bolsters the case against Iran while others are attacking the sixteen agencies that published it as short-sighted bureaucrats with a grudge against Bush.

Considering the whiplash flip-flop of the report, it is tempting to join Bush critics in using its findings to bludgeon into oblivion what is left of Bush’s credibility. But doing so would miss the point. Both sides are wrong by paying the NIE much more attention than it deserves.

War Reporting Scenario: Another note on "What Orwell Didn’t Know"

Comment by Tom Lansner

Tom Lansner is adjunct associate professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, specializing in international media and communications. He covered conflicts in many countries over a decade as correspondent for the London Observer and other publications. His three-part e-seminar on war reporting is available at Columbia Interactive.

In another essay in What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi  writes in “Lessons from the War Zone,” of her famous “private” email expressing her “anger and frustration at the disastrous situation in Iraq” which “concluded that Iraq was beyond salvation” — and was circulated far beyond the list of friends to whom she broadcast it. She argues that her reporting in the Wall Street Journal showed no “bias,” despite the “personal” view expressed so forcefully and eloquently in her email. The reader is of course left to wonder why her published reports did not much more reflect the conclusions of a reporter who was on the ground and daily risking life and limb to gather the information that convinced her — privately — of the war’s futility.

Fassihi also mentions her training at Columbia’s Journalism School, and in particular a scenario-based

America, Orwell, Iraq: Michael Massing’s “Thought Police” in the new book, What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics

Comment by Tom Lansner

Tom Lansner is adjunct associate professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, specializing in international media and communications. He covered conflicts in many countries over a decade as correspondent for the London Observer and other publications. His three-part e-seminar on war reporting is available at Columbia Interactive.

Americans are killing many, many civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does that resonate anywhere? It is a reality that most of the world, outside the United States, recognizes and finds repugnant. But it is a fact little mentioned by most American media, or covered too lightly to move the issue from the dust of the public record into a debate on the public agenda.

Are these killings accidental or unintentional or mistaken or avoidable, or simply murderous? Are they “un-American?”

Words do matter, of course. George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” still commands our attention in its lucid warning that language can corrupt as much as enlighten political discourse. What we call something shapes our perception of it. And the battle for perceptions is keenest in times of violent conflict, where public support for spending [especially our own] blood and treasure can easily wane if reasoned arguments are unconvincing — or emotional appeals insufficiently compelling.

The Controversy Continues - Mearsheimer and Walt to Visit Columbia

By Courtney Doggart
MIA 2009

Thought things were getting too calm on campus?  Not to worry.  This coming Monday, October 8, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer will be visiting Columbia in an unconventional book tour.  Their new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, in an expansion of a 2006 article by the same name, is sure to get some danders up.  The book’s premise is that the Israel lobby wields undue influence over U.S. foreign policy towards Israel and in the Middle East.  Realistically, they argue, the close U.S. relationship with its Middle Eastern ally is putting a rather large damper on other relationships in the region and around the world.  Good point.  But how much does this really have to do with the Israel lobby?  Is the lobby really a sinister group with ties to neo-cons in Cheney’s office that single-handedly pushed the Iraq War as the authors argue?  There is no doubt that there are overlaps, but as to whether the lobby is the mastermind, well, we’ll let you decide on that one. 

At the very least, we’ll have protesters again.  I mean, what’s a Monday if you can’t have protesters?

You can check out info on the event here.

Interested in blogging about it?  Contact editor@themorningsidepost.com