Friday, February 22, 2013

To Fight India, We Fought Ourselves

(NYTimes)



By MOHSIN HAMID
LAHORE, Pakistan

ON Monday, my mother’s and sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. He was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the head.

Tuesday, I attended a protest in front of the Governor’s House in Lahore demanding that more be done to protect Pakistan’s Shiites from sectarian extremists. These extremists are responsible for increasingly frequent attacks, including bombings this year that killed more than 200 people, most of them Hazara Shiites, in the city of Quetta.

As I stood in the anguished crowd in Lahore, similar protests were being held throughout Pakistan. Roads were shut. Demonstrators blocked access to airports. My father was trapped in one for the evening, yet he said most of his fellow travelers bore the delay without anger. They sympathized with the protesters’ objectives.

Minority persecution is a common notion around the world, bringing to mind the treatment of African-Americans in the United States, for example, or Arab immigrants in Europe. In Pakistan, though, the situation is more unusual: those persecuted as minorities collectively constitute a vast majority.

A filmmaker I know who has relatives in the Ahmadi sect told me that her family’s graves in Lahore had been defaced, because Ahmadis are regarded as apostates. A Baluch friend said it was difficult to take Punjabi visitors with him to Baluchistan, because there is so much local anger there at violence toward the Baluch. An acquaintance of mine, a Pakistani Hindu, once got angry when I answered the question “how are things?” with the word “fine” — because things so obviously aren’t. And Pakistani Christians have borne the brunt of arrests under the country’s blasphemy law; a governor of my province was assassinated for trying to repeal it.

What then is the status of the country’s majority? In Pakistan, there is no such thing. Punjab is the most populous province, but its roughly 100 million people are divided by language, religious sect, outlook and gender. Sunni Muslims represent Pakistan’s most populous faith, but it’s dangerous to be the wrong kind of Sunni. Sunnis are regularly killed for being open to the new ways of the West, or for adhering to the old traditions of the Indian subcontinent, for being liberal, for being mystical, for being in politics, the army or the police, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the heart of Pakistan’s troubles is the celebration of the militant. Whether fighting in Afghanistan, or Kashmir, or at home, this deadly figure has been elevated to heroic status: willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, able to win the ultimate victory, selfless, noble. Yet as tens of thousands of Pakistanis die at the hands of such heroes, as tens of millions of Pakistanis go about their lives in daily fear of them, a recalibration is being demanded. The need of the hour, of the year, of the generation, is peace.

Pakistan is in the grips of militancy because of its fraught relationship with India, with which it has fought three wars and innumerable skirmishes since the countries separated in 1947. Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer against a much larger foe. But they have done the opposite, killing Pakistanis at home and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic conflicts abroad.

Normalizing relations with India could help starve Pakistani militancy of oxygen. So it is significant that the prospects for peace between the two nuclear-armed countries look better than they have in some time.

India and Pakistan share a lengthy land border, but they might as well be on separate continents, so limited is their trade with each other and the commingling of their people. Visas, traditionally hard to get, restricted to specific cities and burdened with onerous requirements to report to the local police, are becoming more flexible for business travelers and older citizens. Trade is also picking up. A pulp manufacturer in Pakistani Punjab, for example, told me he had identified a paper mill in Indian Punjab that could purchase his factory’s entire output.

These openings could be the first cracks in a dam that holds back a flood of interaction. Whenever I go to New Delhi, many I meet are eager to visit Lahore. Home to roughly a combined 25 million people, the cities are not much more than half an hour apart by plane, and yet they are linked by only two flights a week.

Cultural connections are increasing, too. Indian films dominate at Pakistani cinemas, and Indian songs play at Pakistani weddings. Now Pakistanis are making inroads in the opposite direction. Pakistani actors have appeared as Bollywood leads and on Indian reality TV. Pakistani contemporary art is being snapped up by Indian buyers. And New Delhi is the publishing center for the current crop of Pakistani English-language fiction.

A major constraint the two countries have faced in normalizing relations has been the power of security hawks on both sides, and especially in Pakistan. But even in this domain we might be seeing an improvement. The new official doctrine of the Pakistani Army for the first time identifies internal militants, rather than India, as the country’s No. 1 threat. And Pakistan has just completed an unprecedented five years under a single elected government. This year, it will be holding elections in which the largest parties all agree that peace with India is essential.

Peace with India or, rather, increasingly normal neighborly relations, offers the best chance for Pakistan to succeed in dismantling its cult of militancy. Pakistan’s extremists, of course, understand this, and so we can expect to see, as we have in the past, attempts to scupper progress through cross-border violence. They will try to goad India into retaliating and thereby giving them what serves them best: a state of frozen, impermeable hostility.

They may well succeed. For there is a disturbing rise of hyperbolic nationalism among India’s prickly emerging middle class, and the Indian media is quick to stoke the fires. The explosion of popular rage in India after a recent military exchange, in which soldiers on both sides of the border were killed, is an indicator of the danger.

So it is important now to prepare the public in both countries for an extremist outrage, which may well originate in Pakistan, and for the self-defeating calls for an extreme response, which are likely to be heard in India. Such confrontations have always derailed peace in the past. They must not be allowed to do so again. In the tricky months ahead, as India and Pakistan reconnect after decades of virtual embargo, those of us who believe in peace should regard extremist provocations not as barriers to our success but, perversely, as signs that we are succeeding.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novels “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and the forthcoming “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.”

U.S. Catholics Divided On Church’s Direction Under New Pope

(PEW Forum)



As the pontificate of Benedict XVI winds down, many American Catholics express a desire for change. For example, most U.S. Catholics say it would be good if the next pope allows priests to marry. And fully six-in-ten Catholics say it would be good if the next pope hails from a developing region new-pope-1like South America, Asia or Africa.
At the same time, many Catholics also express appreciation for the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. While about half of U.S. Catholics (46%) say the next pope should “move the church in new directions,” the other half (51%) say the new pope should “maintain the traditional positions of the church.” And among Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week, nearly two-thirds (63%) want the next pope to maintain the church’s traditional positions.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 13-18 among 1,504 adults (including 304 Catholics) also finds that nine-in-ten U.S. Catholics have heard a lot (60%) or at least a little (30%) about Benedict’s resignation. Just one-in-ten Catholics say they have heard nothing at all about his resignation.
In a separate national survey conducted Feb. 14-17 among 1,003 adults (including 212 Catholics), three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (74%) express a favorable view of the pope. Benedict’s ratings among Catholics now stand about where they were in March 2008 (just before his U.S. visit) and are lower than they were in April 2008, when 83% of U.S. Catholics expressed favorable views of him. Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was rated favorably by upwards of 90% of U.S. Catholics in three separate Pew Research polls in the 1980s and 1990s.
new-pope-2

 
new-pope-3U.S. Catholics voice dissatisfaction with Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse scandal in the church. Among Catholics who say they followed news of the pontiff’s resignation, nearly two-thirds (63%) think he has done a poor or “only fair” job of addressing the sex abuse scandal, while 33% give him excellent or good ratings for his handling of the issue. Benedict gets better marks for his handling of interfaith relations; 55% of Catholics say he has done a good or excellent job promoting relations with other religions, while 37% say he has done a poor or “only fair” job in this area. But the public is more negative now than in 2008 in its views both on Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse scandal and on his handling of interfaith relations. Immediately following his 2008 visit to the U.S., 49% of American Catholics gave the pope good or excellent ratings for his handling of the sex abuse scandal, and 70% said he was doing a good or excellent job promoting interfaith relations.
A Look Ahead to the Next Pope 
new-pope-4
Half of U.S. Catholics (51%) say the next pope should maintain the traditional teachings of the church, while about the same number say the next pope should move the church in new directions (46%).
But among Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week, nearly two-thirds (63%) say the new pope should maintain the traditional positions of the church, while about one-third (35%) say the new pope should move the church in new directions. By contrast, among those who attend Mass less often, 54% say the next pope should move in new directions while 42% prefer to maintain the church’s traditional positions.
Six-in-ten Catholics who are college graduates say the next pope should move the church in new directions, compared with 38% who say the pope should maintain the church’s traditional positions. This balance of opinion is reversed among Catholics with some college or less education, among whom 56% want the church to maintain its traditional positions and 41% would like it to move in new directions.
There is little evidence of a generation gap on this question. Among Catholics under age 50 and those ages 50 and older, opinion is closely divided as to whether the new pope should move in new directions or maintain the church’s traditional positions.
Catholics who say the next pope should move the church in new directions were asked to describe, in their own words, in what new directions they would like to see the church go.
new-pope-5
About one-in-five Catholics who think the next pope should move the church in new directions say simply that the church should become more modern (19%). And 15% want the next pope to do more to end sex abuse in the church and punish the priests involved. 
In addition, upwards of one-in-five mention issues regarding the priesthood, including 14% who say priests should be allowed to marry and 9% who say women should be allowed to serve in the priesthood.
Others mention a desire to see the church become more accepting and open in general (14%), and an additional 9% say they want to see the church become more accepting of homosexuality and gay marriage in particular. Of Catholics who want a pope who will move the church in new directions, 7% specifically mention birth control, mainly indicating a desire for a lessening of the church’s opposition to the use of contraception.
new-pope-6
In response to a closed-ended question, nearly six-in-ten Catholics (58%) say it would be good if the next pope allows priests to get married, while 35% say this would be bad. Support for allowing priests to marry is much more common among Catholics who attend Mass less than once a week (66%) than among those who attend Mass regularly (46%).
Six-in-ten Catholic women (61%) say allowing priests to marry would be a good thing — about twice as many as say it would be a bad thing (30%). Men are more inclined than women to say that allowing priests to marry would be a bad thing (41% vs. 30%).
College graduates express more support than those Catholics with less education for allowing priests to marry (71% vs. 53%). There is little generational difference on this issue. 
A majority of Catholics (60%) say it would be a good thing if the next pope is from a developing region of the world, like South America, Asia or Africa. Only 14% say this would be a bad thing, while one-in-five say it would not matter either way (20%).
new-pope-7
Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week and those who attend less often express similar views on this issue. The view that it would be a good thing if the next pope is from a developing region is more common among college graduates (71%) than among those Catholics with less education (56%).
Views of Pope Benedict 
new-pope-8
Currently, about three-quarters of U.S. Catholics express either a very favorable (32%) or mostly favorable (41%) opinion of Benedict; roughly one-in-six U.S. Catholics (16%) express an unfavorable opinion. Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week are far more likely to express a favorable opinion of Benedict than those who attend less often (87% vs. 64%). 
Benedict’s favorability rating among U.S. Catholics has declined since April 2008, when it reached 83% immediately following the papal visit to the United States. The percentage of U.S. Catholics expressing a favorable opinion of Benedict has now settled back to levels seen in March 2008, prior to his visit. By contrast, in Pew Research polling conducted between 1987 and 1996, John Paul II was consistently rated favorably by upwards of nine-in-ten U.S. Catholics.
Of U.S. Catholics who have followed the news of the pope’s resignation, 55% say that Benedict has done a good or excellent job in promoting relations with other religions. Like the pontiff’s overall favorability rating, this number has declined in the past five years; it is down 15 points since the pope’s visit to the United States in 2008. Currently, 37% of U.S. Catholics give the pope poor or “only fair” marks for his handling of interfaith relations.
new-pope-9
Most Catholics who have followed news of the pope’s resignation (63%) rate Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse scandal as “only fair” or poor; one-third say he has done an excellent or good job addressing the scandal. Current evaluations of the pope’s handling of the scandal are comparable to those seen in 2010 and are significantly more negative than in April 2008.
new-pope-10
About the Surveys 
Most of the analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Feb. 13-18, 2013, among a national sample of 1,504 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (752 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone and 752 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 364 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about the survey methodology, see http://people-press.org/methodology/ 
The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau's American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status and relative usage of landline and cell phones (for those with both), based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:
new-pope-about-1
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.
Some of the analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Feb. 14-17, 2013, among a national sample of 1,003 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (502 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone and 501 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 276 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Universal Survey Center under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older.
The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status, based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:
new-pope-about-2
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Brad Keselowski shares vision for NASCAR's future


(USAToday)

Reigning Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski details dramatic changes he'd like to see in NASCAR in a wide-ranging interview
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Stroll through the compound where NASCAR's traveling circus lives, and it's easy to find Brad Keselowski's abode.

Just look for the motor home that doesn't resemble anyone else's.

At the end of a row inside the Sprint Cup drivers' gated community at Daytona International Speedway sits living quarters that could be disguised as a delivery truck .

"It's about $2.25 million for one of those brand-new Prevosts, and resale value is maybe $800,000 to $1 million," says Keselowski, 29, about his peers' motor homes. "That's ridiculous. They break down all the time."

So with the help of assistant Bill Cole, Keselowski built his home for about a third of the price but with a more spacious interior thanks to two pullout slides. The weekend he debuted his more reliable model last summer, he won at Kentucky Speedway.

It was further validation for the unconventional mind of the most iconoclastic NASCAR champion in recent memory.

"Every time I do something different, I'm more successful," says Keselowski, who was the first driver to tweet during a race a year ago when the Daytona 500 was stopped by a jet dryer inferno. "I know I'm doing something right when people look at me and go, 'You're (screwed) up.' "

PHOTOS: History of the Daytona 500

Butting heads has been a modus operandi since Keselowski broke into NASCAR's premier series full-time in 2010, warring with veterans such as Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin. He earned respect in qualifying for the Chase for the Sprint Cup the past two seasons and becoming the eighth-youngest champion in history in 2012. Yet some drivers have dubbed him "Craze-lowski" because of his outspoken manner .

Whether it be about sponsors, the schedule, social media or Danica Patrick ("I don't think, 'Oh there's that girl.' I think, 'Oh, there's that 30th-place driver.'"), Keselowski seems to always have something to say.

PATRICK: Could change auto racing, sports forever

"I think we all sit back and chuckle at times at some of the things he says and does," five-time champion Jimmie Johnson says. "He is a great guy. He has the best of intentions for our sport; for his sponsor; for his team. He just needs to mature a little."

"I can always be wiser, if that's what he means," Keselowski says when told of Johnson's comments. "I can always make better decisions. Obviously, I'm mature enough to win a championship, so I can't be too far off."

IN DEPTH: Jeff Gordon talks wrecking, collecting and dancing

But it's not all bluster for the youngest of five raised by a Rochester Hills, Mich., racing family with bedrock Midwestern values and blue-collar work ethic. In his champion's speech last year, Keselowski struck themes of humility, piety and unity in pledging to help move the sport in a positive direction as it wrestles with relevance and recapturing a younger, hipper audience amid sagging TV ratings and attendance.

"I might not be that guy, but that doesn't mean I can't step up to the plate and try to swing the bat," he says. "It doesn't mean I'll be successful. You're trying to take a crack at a Randy Johnson fastball in his prime. It's a tough sell.

"But someone has to step up to the plate first. Until that happens, this sport isn't living up to its potential, and I think it has a very high potential. We've got a great story to tell."

USA TODAY Sports asked the reigning king of Sprint Cup to tell his. In a wide-ranging interview in that unlikeliest of motor homes, Keselowski shared his idyllic vision of NASCAR .

It's the world according to Keselowski. "It's a different place," he laughs.

Here it is in the champ's words.

Overall vision

The problem I see in the sport is that there are multiple entities that have to work together for us to be successful.

We have sponsors — partners, or whatever the hell you want to call them — tracks, the sanctioning body and the teams. Those are our four groups, and how well they cooperate dictates what we have as a product for our fans. And our fans create everything.

You combine that with the shift in all spectator sports to a TV-dominated world . For the longest time, NASCAR had twice the amount of people at the game than the NFL did, but we don't even have 50% of their TV viewership. What's happened is that TV has become more popular and attendance at the track or any sporting facility has dwindled with the exception of major events — Super Bowls, Daytona 500s, World Series.

PLAY NOW: USA TODAY Sports Fantasy Racing Challenge

We haven't adapted as a sport to that. But why haven't we adapted?

When Bill France Jr. was in charge of NASCAR, he had control of all these pieces and wasn't at the mercy of the TV world. He had control of the tracks and NASCAR, which is now divided in two with Lesa (France Kennedy, president of International Speedway Corp. that controls 12 tracks) and (NASCAR Chairman) Brian (France). France Jr. had relationships with the sponsors, drivers and teams. Now we don't have that. Those three other pieces are segregated. Those three pieces need to get together. And until all three of those can unite, we're a house divided, and we're making bad decisions that are affecting how to generate revenue for the sport.

In today's sports world, you have to be very powerful in drawing people to TV, and we're not TV friendly. That's one of the key areas for success. Part of that is we're not delivering a product. And we're fighting the tracks. We have to be up on the wheel a little more and looking for what's in front of us, and when we see it, we have to be able to react on it. And in order to be able to react on it, we need to be united.

Add to Google