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Karen Hughes' Youth Enrichment Camps: Indoctrination at an Early Age?

By John H. Brown, Guest Contributor

Maybe I'm biased. My memories of summer camp are not among my best. Sure, it was fun when I played jokes on the counselors or broke the camp rules without them knowing about it.

But as a kid I couldn't help thinking: why don't these pushy grown-ups telling me what to do get off my back? My parents seemed like perfect role models by comparison.

So, as a former Foreign Service Officer who always welcomed overseas assignments without camp-like regimentation, I approach yet another initiative by Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes -- her Youth Enrichment Program -- with a grain of personal salt. Here's how Ms. Hughes' new pet project is described by the State Department:

"In the summer of 2007, . . . Karen P. Hughes launched 20 Youth Enrichment Programs (YEP) for more than 6,000 young people in 13 countries and in the West Bank and Gaza. The programs offer a variety of activities and classes that aim to foster tolerance, respect for diversity and a better understanding of the United States. YEP is breaking new ground and reaching out to a new audience at an even younger age than those who participate in traditional exchange programs. Because the majority of the population in many countries is under the age of 25, it is more important than ever before to reach out to this younger age group and introduce them to America."

The Boston Globe (August 18), in an article by Farah Stockman, provides more details about YEP:

"Participants included more than 2,000 girls in Turkey who attended a basketball camp and 80 children from rural schools in Malaysia who learned about Thomas Jefferson and other US heroes on an American-style camping trip with embassy staff and families. ... Iraqi students learned about baseball and the English language for three days this summer in Baghdad."

Hughes -- "who has become the most powerful public-diplomacy czar in decades," according to the Globe's Ms. Stockman -- is all gung-ho about her (in her own mind) ground-breaking way to make America universally loved early on. "I know as a mother that by the time kids get to high school, their opinions are pretty hardened," she told AP's John Thorne (August 17, USA Today). "Children tend to be a lot more open-minded."

Give the Under Secretary credit for not officially calling her beloved camps "camps," given that other American camp (at Guantanamo), which is not exactly Muslim-friendly. And Palestinian refugee camps, last time I heard, are not known to be places where children are especially enriched.

Some Questions

Here are some questions for Ms. Hughes from this camp-skeptic:

--The “US heroes” the campers are being told about -- who are they, aside from Thomas Jefferson (are the kids told he owned slaves and condemned native Americans?). And who is an America hero, anyway? George W. Bush?

--Why this emphasis on American sports at the camps? As someone who played soccer (badly) as a kid, I don't quite understand why you can't love America if you don't play basketball or baseball. (Question to Cal Ripken fans proud that the long-enduring Baltimore Orioles shortstop has just been chosen by Secretary of State Rice as a "public diplomacy envoy," with China reportedly the first place he'll visit: how many Chinese actually play baseball or have even heard of our Hall-of-Famer?).

--How exactly are the kids selected to attend Hughes's camps? And by whom?

--How are camp graduates being viewed by the areas in which they live? Consider this, again from The Boston Globe: "A photo of the [Iraq YEP] group meeting with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker hangs on the door of Hughes's office at the State Department -- but it cannot be publicly released for fear that the children may be harmed by terrorists because of their connection with the United States."

--Don't the Hughes camps have a "Green Zone" quality to them? Aren't they separated from the reality of the societies surrounding them? So how can they be effective in these societies?

Tuesday Postcard

by CKR

Here are a couple of postcards from the Oregon Coast. (It's always the Oregon Coast and the Jersey Shore. But both places you can go to the beach, although the more volcanic parts of the Oregon Coast are certainly not very beachy.)

Shades of green . . . and brown: The Santa Fe Opera, 2007

By PHK
Photo credits © 2007 Ken Howard. Photos courtesy of the Santa Fe Opera 2007

In Richard Strauss’ Daphne, the Greek god Apollo concludes the opera by turning the nymph Daphne into a bay-laurel tree in accordance with her wishes to be with the trees and the flowers. Jean-Philippe Rimeau’s Platée is all about Roman gods playing tricks on earthly creatures. It features a warts-and-all-frog named Platée who the gods induce to fall in love with the Roman god Jupiter and vice versa.

The American premier of the opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul by the Chinese composer Tan Dun of “Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons” fame is bathed in elegant tea green – as one might expect - although
the opera’s press photos missed the dominant green entirely and it’s verboten to take photographs in the opera house – even before the performance begins – so I can’t show you what I mean. Even in Mozart’s old standby Così fan Tutte – which I did not see this time but friends did – women dressed in green
are in the opera’s opening scenes.

Bohème in earthtones

Only La Bohème features various shades of earth tone browns – but even in this beloved Puccini opera, Act II is set in the Parisian café Momus, a haunt of poor intellectuals. The café is named after Momus, the Roman god of literature and satire, who assumes a much more significant role in the comic opera Platée in which Momus has a great time playing himself.

If you haven’t seen a break-dancing frog, may I suggest you run, not walk to Platéee’s final
performance on August 22 at the Santa Fe Opera. The froggy break-dancer is worth the price of admission alone – and the whole production is a stitch – although without such creative directors, choreographers and costume designers who set this mid-18th century, melodic play-within-a-play in modern dress, it could have easily been a deadly two and one-half hour bore.

My friends thought Tea was fantastic – and we did agree on the creativeness of the costumes, stage design and percussive effects – particularly the inventive use of water as percussion and the inspired play of lights on the trio of on-stage musicians and their novel instruments. I, however, was less than enthralled with the plot and not entranced by most of the singing. The issue was not quality of voices or performers - it’s that I find listening to music that slides between notes, includes quarter tones and other elements derived from the Chinese musical genre grating after a while. And contrary to one of the reviews I read about the inherent musicality of the score, I found nothing even to contemplate whistling after departing the hall.

In contrast, I was pleasantly surprised by Daphne – but conversely a friend was not. I’m not generally a Strauss devoté and I usually prefer the modern Greeks to the classical experience. I’ll take composers Hadjidakis, Theodorakis, even Skolkotas on the musical front and novelist Nikos Kazanztakis or poet George Seferis to the legends and antics of the Olympians.

But never mind, Strauss’s minimalist Daphne held a certain attraction. And for the most part the score was melodic setting it on the verge, as Strauss is, between the 19th and 20th centuries. I think I detected even a passing refrain found in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess – an orchestral version I had just heard the week before at a Santa Fe Symphony concert downtown. Meanwhile back at the opera, Daphne’s haunting theme was performed by the oboe. This, after all, is only fitting for a nymph who turns into a tree since the word for oboe in French is hautbois, or high wood.

I’ve been attending performances of the Santa Fe Opera for the past several years – almost since I moved to New Mexico nine years ago and the opera began performing in a much improved, completely redesigned house.

Last year, the dominant color was red from the Magic Flute t-shirts worn by performers and on sale at the Opera Shop to the production of Carmen in which a sultry Sophie Van Mutter starred. This year the earth tones captured sales counter and stage.

Cross-cutting themes

This season, however, was also the first where I noticed cross-cutting thematic ideas that linked several operas to each other if only tenuously. Maybe such thematic relationships were there in the past – and I missed them. Or maybe I was so struck by the wearing of the greens this year that I started looking for other less visually striking cross-cutting connections – like Greek and Roman mythology that form the underpinning of Daphne and Platée – as well as provide a nice touch to La Bohème. These connections were pointed out in the voluminous program which also included abbreviated descriptions of the gods.

La Bohème was distinctly realistic as the program notes promised. Out with the traditionally, swelte, glamourous Mimí dying a thousand deaths of consumption center stage on a heavily upholstered period piece chaise lounge. In with a larger, frumpy Mimí dressed in nondescript brown collapsing in a ratty garden chair sans foot rest. I’m not sure that Jennifer Black, who starred as Mimí in July would have played the role along the lines Serena Farnocchia did in August but Farnocchia did not match the projection or voice of her stage partner Dmitri Pittas. In retrospect, I would have liked to have heard Black perform in Santa Fe in July but I would not have wanted to miss tenor Pittas who played the starving poet Rodolfo and Mimí’s unrequited love. The August night I saw him, he stole the show both dramatically and vocally.

Classical music for everyone

For a second year in a row, one opera – in this case La Bohème - was simulcast on huge screen at a park in Santa Fe where people came with picnic dinners and sat on blankets to enjoy the free show. Funding was made available too this year for another simulcast in downtown Albuquerque. Both telecasts - I'm told - were very well attended: that’s all to the good.

Maybe this just goes to show that classical music is far from dead despite the dearth of music education in American public schools – it just needs to be affordable, available and listenable. I’ll bet Porgy and Bess too would have attracted music in the park crowds. Another time?

Can the Nuclear Trade Deal Bring Down the Indian Government?

by CKR

Here is the statement of the Indian Communist Party's Politburo:

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) met in New Delhi on August 17 and 18, 2007. It unanimously adopted the following resolution:

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) fully endorsed the stand taken by the Left parties on the bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation with the United States. The statement of the Left parties has set out comprehensively the reasons why the agreement is not acceptable.

The agreement should be seen in the light of the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress and in the context of the wider implications of India being bound into a strategic alliance with the United States and its adverse consequences for an independent foreign policy, sovereignty and the economic interests of the people. The Polit Bureau is of the firm opinion that going ahead with this agreement will not serve India’s interests.

Given the widespread opposition to the agreement and the fact that a majority in parliament do not support the nuclear cooperation deal, the government should not proceed further with the agreement.

Till all the objections are considered and the implications of the Hyde Act evaluated, the government should not take the next step with regard to negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It is for the Congress leadership to decide on the matter which will have serious consequences for the Government and the country.

The Polit Bureau decided to take the issue of the nuclear agreement and the dangers of the strategic alliance with the United States to the people through a nationwide mass campaign.

The Left parties will be meeting soon to discuss all other related matters.

Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan comments

If the CPI(M) withdraws support , the current Manmohan Singh government will be voted out .

One of our recent commenters thought it unlikely that the government would be voted out, but either he was wrong or things have changed.

A few Indian commenters are pointing out that India's 123 agreement gives India much more than China's gave it.

Indian Express

Times of India

The enabling legislation that the US Congress passed (Hyde Act) included the requirement that cooperation be ended if India carries out a nuclear test. That, and a recent statement by State Department spokesman Sean McCormick, are part of what has the Indian hard-liners up in arms. The Times of India has a summary of where things seem to be. The administration seems to be walking back McCormick's statement, but the Indian opposition parties are unlikely to be assured that their sovereign right to test will not be interfered with.

Here in the US, Jim Hoagland assures us that Prime Minister Singh will survive a vote of no confidence.

The Bloggers Develop US Nuclear Policy

by CKR

Mark has joined the discussion of US nuclear policy (my latest contribution, Cernig’s). It seems to me that what is important about this discussion is how much we agree despite different political views. The broad outlines of a desirable nuclear policy for the post-Cold-War world seem fairly obvious, even though the VSPs are having some trouble figuring it out.

If Mark, Cernig and I can come up with so many points that we agree on, perhaps our legislators could do the same. If they want to begin to work across the aisle, this is hardly the worst place to start. Nuclear destruction, after all, is equal political opportunity.

For this quick vacation post (I do apologize for not keeping the discussion rolling faster), I’ll group Mark’s requirements a bit differently than he did and add minimal summing-up and comments. I also hope to have a more comprehensive post on a new nuclear policy, something like what I’ve been promising for some time now, maybe next week. Mark and some of the commenters at Newshoggers have reminded me of points that I’ve been neglecting.

Australia and the Back Door

by CKR

PLS e-mailed from India last night. Apparently she hasn't been swallowed up by the floods.

She has just emerged from trekking in the mountains and is amazed to see the fight going on in parliament over the nuclear deal. She gives no details and says it's a story she can't do on the fly, so we'll have to wait for her to get home.

She did, however, say that Australia's willingness to sell uranium to India is undercutting any cooperation with the US that India might have been contemplating. I've actually added some of my interpretation into that; it's not exactly what she said, which was obviously done rather quickly.

I hadn't heard that development, so I did some googling.

The Guardian:

Howard's Cabinet agreed in principle on Tuesday to sell the nuclear fuel to India despite its refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty. The government argues that nuclear power is key to curbing global warming as the Indian and Chinese economies' hunger for energy grow.

``Our officials will now enter into negotiations regarding the conditions,'' Howard said. ``We want to be satisfied that the uranium will only be used for peaceful purposes.''

Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna confirmed that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had agreed to start negotiations.

Earlier Thursday, Howard told Parliament that India would have to agree to international inspections of its nuclear power plants and complete the details of its nuclear partnership pact with the United States.

Washington and New Delhi have sealed a technical pact that details how nuclear cooperation between the world's two largest democracies will work.

That's an AP report, basically all the Western world of news is giving us. Forbes does a little better. The Australian press is more vocal.

Herald Sun:

Mr Howard said the exports would be subject to strict conditions, including guarantees that the uranium would only be used for generating electricity.

But Greens leader Bob Brown said the deal would lead to more nuclear weapons being created.

"The Indians have made it clear that this will free up their own uranium to go into nuclear weapons,'' Senator Brown said.

"This is fostering, and will foster, tension with Pakistan. Pakistan now wants our uranium.''

The Australian:

[Opposition leader Ken] Rudd said Australians were deeply concerned about India's use of uranium and the possibility of an escalating arms race on the Indian subcontinent.

"No one in Australia wants a nuclear arms race aided by us in the Indian subcontinent or between India and China," Mr Rudd told the ABC.

An op-ed in The Australian lays it out.

if we sell uranium to India we will be saying this simple thing to all members of the NPT: even if you test a nuclear weapon, there's no penalty because Australia and the US soon will be ready to supply you with nuclear materials such as uranium and nuclear know-how anyway.

This fatally undermines the whole logic and rationale for the NPT. Why be a member of the NPT if, like India, you are going to get the benefits of nuclear co-operation anyway? And, more immediately, how on earth do we excoriate, seek to isolate and apply sanctions to Iran, an NPT member, for seeking to develop nuclear weapons when Australia and the US are ready to supply nuclear materials to India, which has already tested nuclear weapons and is not an NPT member?

This is the "back door" that Peter Potman spoke of at the Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference. And it looks like Australia, or at least its prime minister, is ready to charge right through it.

Hoping and Praying for the Endeavour

by CKR

What none of us are saying about the space shuttle Endeavour is, "Haven't we heard this before?"

The frozen foam breaking off and gouging the heat-resistant tiles.

The assurances that no, it won't be a problem.

We're all thinking on eggshells, hoping and praying that it won't be a repeat of the Columbia disaster in 2003, but not daring to say that out loud.

I lost interest in the space program a long time ago, when it appeared to me that the only participants were middle-aged men. They've changed that, but I moved on to other things in the meanwhile. So I follow events only at a distance until disaster strikes. I would follow the successes, but they are modest and incremental, the kind of thing that requires more attention than I have spent on this subject.

The disasters, of course, grab everyone's attention. It was four years ago that the Columbia broke up on re-entry. Everyone had gotten accustomed to that hard frozen foam breaking off, sometimes hitting the shuttle. Not a problem, until it was.

Space flight is still exploratory and dangerous. The crews, I hope, are fully aware of that.

But serious engineers know that the best solutions to safety problems are engineered solutions. The kind of solutions that eliminate, oh, say, the possibility of frozen foam breaking off and gouging holes in the heat shield. That's much better than figuring out how to fix the damage in space.

It's hard to believe that NASA's engineers don't know this. I've been wondering, every time I read once again about that deadly foam, why it isn't gone from the assembly. Some of it breaks off every launch. I've never read a good explanation of why they haven't eliminated it.

The gouge is on a different part of the structure this time. We can only hope that the simulations are correct. Hoping and praying sem to be as good as anything NASA has been doing to eliminate the foam-damage problem.

The Young J. Edgar Hoover: A Book Review Essay - Updated April 15, 2008!

By Patricia H. Kushlis

This book is now available in paperback. Information is as follows: US $17.50, CAN $18.95, UK £10.99, ISBN: 9780306816277, USBN-10: 030681627X, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Mass, 472 pages.

How can the US deal with an amorphous terrorist threat from a network of militant Islamists while preserving the civil liberties enshrined in the constitution? This is the question Kenneth Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar Hoover, the Red Scare and the Assault on Civil Liberties, returns to time and again throughout his book on J. Edgar Hoover’s early years as Ackerman, a DC lawyer with lengthy political experience, examines the record of a troubled period in US history that is all too reminiscent of today.

By 1919, the US had ended its involvement in World War I but the country was in turmoil. Labor strikes, masses of unemployed returning soldiers, hyperinflation and a swell of non-English speaking immigrants primarily from Russia, Eastern Europe and Italy contributed to the unstable brew. Meanwhile, the country was left without effective leadership: President Woodrow Wilson was first engrossed overseas in promoting the idea of a League of Nations as a part of the postwar European peace settlement, and then became incapacitated by a stroke.

Abroad, the rise of Bolshevism in Europe and Lenin’s overthrow of the Russian Government in 1917 sent shivers through America’s business and political leadership. In a sense, the 24 year old J. Edgar Hoover turned out, for himself at least, to be in the right place at the right time.

Ackerman places Hoover’s meteoric rise from clerk to Director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation in the context of the times and the personalities of the Justice Department.

Hoover made his job his life. His considerable organizational skills - including detailed and massive record keeping on his fellow citizens - enabled the Bureau to establish and maintain copious illegal files on far too many innocent American citizens, to engage in illegal massive searches and seizures targeted against the immigrant community in a single-minded quest of rooting out possible Communists.

From a Constitutional standpoint, too, Hoover’s actions made a mockery of the First Amendment’s rights to Freedom of Speech. In the end, this mini-Cultural Revolution in reverse resulted in far too many arrests but few convictions and the American public soon tired of it. Among those on Hoover’s suspect list included two of our most revered Supreme Court justices - Felix Frankfurter and Oliver Wendell Holmes.