THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2013
In defence of JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy Rowling is often presented as a stultifyingly middle-class and cosy writer. That's unfair, her adult fiction makes a clear political point like few novels do. The Casual Vacancy wants you to exercise your feelings in the service of people you don't know SARAH DITUM Nobody thinks of JK Rowling as a great literary radical. Even the people who love her wouldn't claim she's an artist of the experimental: there's not much chance of confusing The Casual Vacancy with, say, the work of BS Johnson. Writing about child wizards or council elections, her style is continuous with the nineteenthcentury peak of realist storytelling of Dickens, Eliot, Trollope: plots that drive and characters who stand with absolute vividness. When you come to a Rowling novel, you know your fourth wall is structurally secure. Sometimes, that stylistic continuity gets mistaken for political complacency. When I was studying literature at university in 2005, one of my lecturers contrasted the Potter books with James Kelman's How Late it Was, How Late: Rowling represented the stultifying conservatism of the middle-class voice, Kelman was the jagged working-class breach in the bourgeois smoothness of letters. It seemed a slightly unfair way to make the point then, and even more so now her adult fiction is in view. Because while The Casual Vacancy isn't a difficult or particular abrasive novel, it's one that asks readers to do something hard, necessary and deeply unfashionable: The Casual Vacancy wants you to exercise your feelings in the service of people you don't know, people you may not meet or even like, but people whose lives are nevertheless knotted up with your own. And speaking at the Bath Literature Festival on Friday night, she was unambiguously clear that she had a political motive for this kind of writing. ‘It would be pointless to pretend I wasn't trying to make a point,’ she said. The Casual Vacancy was a reaction to specific concerns about Britain now: ‘I'm worried about the lack of empathy in our culture.’ If an interest in empathy is what motivates The Casual Vacancy's author, an absence of that quality is what animates the plot. If you haven't read The Casual Vacancy (and it's possible you haven't, even if it is the second-fastest selling adult novel of all time), it's set in the fictional village of Pagford, and the story hinges on a council election, the outcome of which will decide whether a whether a council estate called the Fields remains part of the village or is cast off to a neighbouring town. From the middle class characters competing for political office, there's little compassion for those they're striving to represent. Those standing on a platform of casting
off the Fields think of the local addicts as grasping dependents, a problem to be sloughed off; those campaigning for it to remain part of Pagford make their case with statistics and cost-benefit analysis, but even they can barely summon any warmth for the residents. The two lives of Pagfords two estates are so removed from each other's view, they rarely imagine that they have any responsibility for one another. The sole person who offered a bond between the village's economic layers, socially mobile Barry Fairbrother, is dead within the novel's first three pages (it's his death that necessitates the election). That's telling, isn't it? Rowling writes a state-of-thenation novel, and she's offed the key representative of individual advancement and mutual compassion before she even gets going. Pagford is its own place, but it's a miniature of the UK too. As we live now, if you're born down, you stay down, and the well-off have grown increasingly efficient at hoarding what's theirs and gathering more wealth to wealth. The lives of rich and poor meet less and less often: councils are actively dispatching their poorer residents to distant outposts of poverty, and in lieu of immediate knowledge, cruelty and caricature flourish. The character of Krystal Weedon in The Casual Vacancy could have been a Vicky Pollard-style underclass nightmare: crude, promiscuous, violent, illiterate. Krystal is all of those things, but she's also loving, striving towards a kind of motherhood she's never been shown herself, and Rowling describes her with love. During the talk, Rowling was asked whether The Casual Vacancy was a satire. Her answer was an emphatic no: ‘It's not satire. I couldn't have written about, let's say, Krystal as satire.’ Later, Rowling said that Krystal was a character she "just wanted to hug". Writing about Krystal without empathy would have been empty unkindness. You can take issue with The Casual Vacancy's air of Victorianism on aesthetic grounds, but we live in increasingly Victorian times: Samuel Smiles' doctrine of self-help could be a ‘2ResPublica paper. The nineteenth-century realists answered inequality in their fiction, turning faceless masses into individual stories, making the connectedness of society an undeniable truth in the eyes of their readers. Rowling does the same thing now, because a centuryodd later we are sliding into the same old divisions and cruelties. (NEW STATESMAN)
Pipereality or pipedream? M.S.KARIM
Importing gas from Iran presents a good option but have we done our homework to successfully launch ourselves into it? Or are we setting ourselves up for another failure?
It’s finally done. After a lot of hullabaloo and fanfare in the national media over the last few months, the foundation stone for the historic Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline had been laid by the presidents of Islamic Republics of Pakistan and Iran. Having completed the construction of the line on its side of the border, an Iranian company has been tasked to construct the 750km long pipeline within Pakistan by December 2014. The Pakistani section would be linked to the 900km Iranian section of the pipeline for the gas to flow from Iran’s South Pars field into energy starved Pakistan. So, is this the panacea for the lingering energy crisis the country has been facing for last many years? Come January 2015, would we see a significant amount of gas added to our system for use as CNG, power conversion, household burner tips, etc. at affordable price? Pakistan has been working on a viable gas import option for over two decades. Qatar, Iran and lastly Turkmenistan all offered options to import gas via transnational pipelines. While it is true that each option presents a unique set of advantages and challenges, there is no question that a pipeline from Iran offered the most viable solution. Geographical proximity, terrain, distance, technical simplicity, no involvement of a transit country, etc. all point in favour of preferring the Iranian option over others. Any transnational pipeline is a function of many factors. Resource availability and demand, finance and technology, a viable market based commercial mechanism and much more. Interestingly politics play a more crucial role than all other factors combined. The development of Western Export Pipeline (WEP) from Azerbaijan to Turkey’s Black Sea port of Ceyhan in the late ‘90s for example was an enormous diplomatic exercise involving the US, UK, newly
independent former Soviet republics, Russia and Turkey. The physical construction of the line was much less of a worry for the stakeholders. In a volatile region like Central and South Asia adjoining the Middle East, there is no doubt that oil politics will always play a dominant role in deciding projects of this enormity. Ever since the overthrow of Shah in 1979, US relations with Iran can at best be termed as hostile. Similarly the historic rivalry between the oil rich Arab Middle East and Iran are unfriendly if not hostile. As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is no secret we have merely been a client state with strong dependence on both Saudi Arabia and the US. Hence, US support for Pakistan in getting any meaningful assistance from any of the multilateral donors is critical. In addition the role of China and to some extent Russia should also be considered. Both countries had aspirations to participate in the project initially. So if the US and Middle East are not in favour of Pakistan going ahead with the Iranian gas import project; why is Pakistan still pressing ahead? Has there been a paradigm shift in our foreign policy that is driving this project further? Do we consider the sanctions threat by the US a mere rhetoric or are we consciously inviting the wrath of the world’s only super power? Let’s attempt to understand the reasons behind the current energy crisis in Pakistan. Is the crisis because of a lack of resources or lack of capacity? Maybe a bit of both. But primarily the present regime did not have the will, capability or vision to tackle this issue. It is largely a management problem essentially revolving around the huge balance of payment issue between the power sector companies. The strategy at best was to drip feed the sector by injecting just enough in order to keep things going; albeit at half the capacity. Sideshows such as rental power
projects were initiated with the primary motive of extorting kickbacks. A complimentary project to gas import via Iran is LNG import. It’s been many years and the government is still trying to initiate the project that hits snags at the time of contract award. Lack of transparency in contracts always creates a hurdle and the case ends up in court. There is nothing that the PPP led government has done in its tenure to present a sustainable, viable and effective programme leading to the gradual elimination of our energy crisis. Pakistan’s resolve to bank on the US for its economic and military needs has not dipped in the last few years. We all witnessed the politicians bending over backwards to facilitate a conditional US assistance through the Kerry Lugar bill. In the case of Saudi Arabia, we have seen a ‘period’ of coldness ever since the current government has taken over. While there has not been any significant aid coming from Saudi Arabia in the last few years including the fact that Pakistan’s request for ‘cheap’ oil has constantly been declined, the image of Saudi Arabia as a friend still generally prevails. President Zardari is riding through turbulent waters. Initiating the project at this juncture is likely to be trumpeted by PPP as a major election slogan in the coming polls. We have already seen a few PPP MPAs dancing outside the Punjab Assembly to celebrate the historic event. By going ahead with the project, he may be able to arm-twist the US into extending more aid to Pakistan. However, if his gamble is called off, the cost will be substantial for Pakistan; long after President Zardari and the PPP led coalition government is voted out. The KSE already saw a mini crash on Monday as fears of US sanctions loom. In case the PPP is able to form the government again, I am sure a list of excuses has already been prepared to annul the project. Have we not seen a number of U-turns in the last few years?
The bottom-line is that Pakistan’s energy situation requires a radical treatment, and charity should begin at home. The government should reform the power sector first through better and improved management. Importing gas from Iran presents a good option but have we done our homework to successfully launch ourselves into it? Or are we setting ourselves up for another failure? Some essential steps immediately come to mind that should’ve been addressed before taking a nosedive into the IranPakistan pipeline project. We should have created a professional vehicle to undertake the project. The Inter State Gas System (ISGS) lacks the professional management having prior experience of executing similar projects. Political risk management should have been addressed prior to initiating the project. I have not seen any useful diplomatic activity to achieve this. We should have engaged with the significant foreign countries asking for support. Those we tried engaging with, we failed to attract to the project. We should not have accepted loans from Iran to undertake Pakistan’s share of project construction and we should not have awarded the contract to the Iranian contractor without bidding. The money will be paid back by the public so the contract award must have come after a proper competitive process. We are also ignoring the fact that Iran does not have the financial capability to bankroll the project. Iran is cash starved and cannot fund this project. Finally, one must add that it isn’t fair for a coalition government to start the project in the last week of its term and ensure that the incoming government bears its brunt. THE WRITER IS AN EXPERIENCED OIL INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL BASED IN
ISLAMABAD. HE HOLDS A MASTERS DEGREE IN PETROLEUM POLICY
Journalistic Malpractice at Washington Post and New York Times DAVE LINDORFF Thanks to the courageous action of Private Bradley Manning, the young soldier who has been held for over two years by the US military on trumped-up charges including espionage and aiding the enemy, we now have solid evidence that the country’s two leading news organisations, the Washington Post and the New York Times, are not interested in serious reporting critical of the government. Manning, in admitting at his military court martial hearing recently that he was in fact the source of hundreds of thousands of damning and embarrassing documents and cables exposing the perfidy and even war crimes of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan which were turned over to Wikileaks, also stated that he had first attempted to provide those documents which included the secret video of an attack helicopter massacring civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and those who tried to rescue the victims - to the Post and the Times. Both supposed “news” organisations failed to pursue his offer, and did not run those stories of US criminality until the documents had been released by Wikileaks. The same two news organisations, not surprisingly, have largely ignored Bradley’s prolonged incarceration in a military brig incarceration that held him in solitary confinement, often naked, and which a UN
After failing to pursue Manning’s offer of documentation about US war crimes, and then after failing to adequately cover his horrific ongoing persecution by the Obama administration and the Pentagon, the Times and the Post should just hang it up and admit that they are not news organisations, but are just propaganda agencies human rights investigator called “torture” as well as his pretrial hearing and trial, once that process finally got underway. Even the New York Times’ own ombudsman felt compelled to criticise the paper for its shameless dereliction of journalistic duty in ignoring the persecution of a man whose work the paper sprayed all over its news pages, once his documentary evidence became available through Wikileaks, instead of directly from Manning himself. (And once it became clear that other publications, notably the British Guardian newspaper and the German magazine Der Spiegel, were going to publish his leaks.) Now as an investigative reporter myself, I know that you get a lot of cranks who call you up and say that they have information about some incredible scandal, and it is tempting in many cases to just go ‘uh-huh, uh-huh, I’ll look into it,’ and then toss the call-back number into the wastebasket. But that is not smart journalism. Most people who are whistleblowers have a hard time giving a nice organised synopsis of what they know, can have an inflated sense of the importance of what they want to tell you, and can even be deliberately exaggerating to get your attention. It’s important when you
get a call like that to take the time to ask questions, to check out the person’s credentials, and to follow up enough to establish whether there is truth to what is being said. If there is truth there, then it needs to be pursued. The Post is now claiming that Manning hung up when a reporter at that paper told him she would need to get approval from a "senior editor" to pursue the story. That is a complete load of crap. Reporters don't go to senior editors when they first have the inkling of a good story. They first investigate to see if there really is a story. A meeting with the source, to verify he is who he says he is, and a look at some of the documentary evidence, would have been in order before going to even an immediate supervising editor to ask for time to pursue the assignment. Saying you first have to get a "senior editor's" permission is a bull-shit brush-off and the Post knows it. Similarly, Bill Keller, now a columnist at the New York Times, on Monday ran an opinion piece "explaining" how Manning got blown off by the Times on his watch as executive editor. He claims Manning left a voice mail with the paper but never got a call back. Excuse me, but the folks who answer those
voice mails surely get advised that if someone offers a scoop they are to forward it to a responsible editor or reporter to evaluate. If they aren't doing that, they should just move to Bangalore and go into the call service center business over at the Times and stop pretending to be in the journalism business! Manning was not exaggerating about what he had, and when he said he had documents, video and other information that exposed war crimes by the US military in Iraq, that should have been more than enough to alert whomever he contacted at the Post and the Times to send someone to meet with him and confirm his identity and the veracity of his claim to have documentary evidence. Neither publication, according to Manning, did this basic due diligence. They just blew him off. Here was an enlisted man, with no axe to grind, coming to these publications at incredible personal risk, offering them evidence not of the personal corruption of an individual, but of the criminality of a war. That is a huge story of vast importance to the American people and to the people of the world, and the Times and the Post completely blew it off.
As my bureau chief Frank Crook at the New York office of the Sydney Morning Herald once told me back in 1984, when I informed him that I had learned, only months later, that my wife and I had attended a birthing class program before the birth of our daughter along with Mick Jagger’s then wife Jerry Hall and had failed to recognize who she was, ‘Ah mate, you ought to turn in your journalist’s license after a stunt like that!’ (Mick hadn’t gone to classes with Jerry, leaving that job to her sister instead, which was my excuse for not recognizing her. Mick I would have spotted.) While I don’t think my lack of awareness was grounds for quitting the journalism profession (I wouldn’t have violated her privacy and written a story about Jerry’s pregnancy anyhow!), I would have to say that after failing to pursue Manning’s offer of documentation about US war crimes, and then after failing to adequately cover his horrific ongoing persecution by the Obama administration and the Pentagon, the Times and the Post should just hang it up and admit that they are not news organisations, but are just propaganda agencies. (THISCAN ’ TBEHAPPENING.NET)