General chatter

TIME asked a blunt question: 8216;8216;Is Pakistan a friend or a foe?8217;8217; Among the gang of suspected Taliban agents US soldiers nabbed a few months ago along the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, it revealed, were three men who were Pakistani army officers. For TIME, the question was: 8216;8216;Whose side, exactly, is Pakistan on?8221; It was, also: 8216;8216;Is it flirting with the potential disaster of a new war on the subcontinent by harbouring militants fighting India in the disputed region of Kashmir?8217;8217;

Musharraf8217;s reaction to the criticism was typically excessive. He chattered incessantly. He was especially stung, it seemed, by the NYT edit. In an hour-long interview to the same paper, he was both testy and pleading about the alleged lack of American understanding.

Amid the general verbosity, there was that moment when the words dried up. NYT: 8216;8216;Do you consider the actions of the separatists in Kashmir terrorism?8217;8217; Musharraf: 8216;8216;Now we are getting into the definitions of terrorism, which I want to avoid, really.8217;8217;

Aunty in a tizzy

The Aunty has become aggressive and pushy. Too aggressive, too pushy? At the expense of fairness and accuracy? What about credibility? The BBC-in-crisis is sparking larger ruminations and deeper questions on the state of the media in Britain. And on the state of the media.

The provocation, of course, is the now discredited report on the 8216;Today8217; radio programme accusing the Blair government of 8216;8216;sexing up8217;8217; the dossier it gave to Parliament as justification for an attack on Iraq. But the agonising goes beyond and further.

Many are expressing concern about the fact that the BBC doesn8217;t bask in the automatic respect it once did. Has the public broadcaster frittered away its enormous credibility 8212; it was once described as more trusted than the government, more respected than the monarchy, more relevant than the church? Intense competition dunnit? A case of media overreach in a more opinionated media climate? Is the 8216;8216;deference deficit8217;8217; to blame, a lack of respect for institutions? Is there a general blurring of lines between newsgathering and newsmaking? Is Media trying to become Opposition?

8216;8216;If only we were as tough on ourselves as on the BBC8217;8217;, GUARDIAN8217;s editor Alan Rusbridger roundly took on the Beeb8217;s critics last week. But he conceded the larger problem. For him, the role of the ombudsman would be a response to what he termed as the global crisis of trust in the media. Because 8216;8216;8230;we have to own up to our errors and do something about them8217;8217;.

Speaking of spin

In Britain, it isn8217;t just the BBC. Tony Blair is in ever deeper trouble as well. And according to NEWSWEEK, the whole world must worry about it. 8216;8216;The consequences of Blair8217;s diminishment are serious8217;8217;, wrote the magazine very seriously this week, 8216;8216;for Britain and for the world8217;8217;.

It argued that Tony is the best chance for restraining Bush. He was Bush8217;s partner, remember, in assembling an international coalition for war in Afghanistan. He persuaded Bush to make a case for invading Iraq at the UN. So 8216;8216;To a very real degree, Blair8217;s loss is the world8217;s loss8217;8217;.

Meanwhile, the GUARDIAN reported that Blair isn8217;t even top of the class in his misdemeanour. According to the author of a new encyclopaedia of propaganda, Tony Blair isn8217;t 8216;8216;particularly good8217;8217; at spin; if he were a master of propaganda, we wouldn8217;t be talking about it 8212; we wouldn8217;t know. The encyclopaedia awards the US the honour of being 8216;8216;the largest disseminator of propaganda and persuasion in history8217;8217;. For evidence, it pointed to the fact that the average American still neatly distinguishes between propaganda and advertising, between information/ persuasion and deception.

Just a moment

And somebody remembered Afghanistan. The NEW YORK TIMES took time out and recorded a moment in the life of a troubled nation.

About 45 women from some of the most 8216;8216;desperate corners8217;8217; of Afghanistan travelled to Kandahar. There, they wrote out an 8216;8216;Afghan Women8217;s Bill of Rights8217;8217;. The first amendment, reported the NYT, would guarantee an education. Then, health care, personal security and support of widows. Freedom of speech was number five on the list. Later, the freedom to vote, with a guarantee of constitutional rights to 8216;8216;widows, disabled women and orphans8217;8217;.

The Kandahar women presented their handwritten bill of rights to President Hamid Karzai. It is their input in the new constitution that is written over the next few months.

P.S.: MUCH will be said about Edward Said8217;s embattled politics, and its relationship to his scholarly arguments. But in an obituary in the GUARDIAN, Malise Ruthven recalled what a critic who grappled with Wagner8217;s anti-Semitism said about his music: 8216;8216;Wagner8217;s music by its very existence refuses to bear the ideological message that it is intended to convey8217;8217;.

Something similar could be said about Said8217;s work as a critic, said Ruthven. 8216;8216;The anti-colonial perspective that animates his work does not issue in ideological consistency. Rather, it challenges conventional assumptions about art, music and literature, opening up new avenues of inquiry and questioning the criteria by which knowledge is organised and husbanded.8217;8217;. Like his hero Theodor Adorno, she said, Said was the 8216;8216;quintessent intellectual, hating all systems, whether on our side or theirs, with equal distaste8217;8217;.