Category: Foreign Affairs
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Indian Independence Day
I’m used to hearing about my sideline activity: ‘Don’t quit yer day job!’ This performance, part of my official duties, speaks for itself: time to revisit the common wisdom about where to put my energies. That said, the team who put it all together have proven once again how talented they are at producing something…
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Hold My Hand
We barely walk together anymore. The limited times we venture out, now, the barren streets pose no threat. And anyway, you have long since been “too old” for my protection. Still, you reached for my hand. Hand-in-hand we moved along the sidewalk. In whatever chaotic place, in Mumbai, Washington, Mexico City, across whatever peaceful pasture…
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Lockdown Countdown
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last night announced a nationwide lockdown, freezing 1.3 billion citizens in place starting at midnight tonight (coinciding with Ugadi, the first day of the New Year on the Hindu calendar). What a relief! For weeks I’ve been grappling with the lack of an end to coronavirus anxiety. Now we know.…
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The United States Department of State
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by
Referred to as the State Department, State, and DOS, the U.S. Department of State has recently been called by an unfitting new label. I don’t care about the insult. Hearing it called “deep state department” glances off as a meaningless jab. I’ve long inured myself against the public bluster. What concerns me more is the…
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Phenomenal Women
On International Women’s Day, I’m thinking about all the phenomenal women I admire around the world, including the nameless, faceless, toiling women who sow and reap the corn they’ll dry and grind into the flour they’ll pound and cook to feed their families in between their hours at the river beating clothes against the stones…
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About Mohamed
Every year this time my thoughts turn to Mohamed (his story is here). I had reason to conjure his story this fall and found the image below. Pictured is the American Library, Kabul, circa 1958. Is this the building where Mohamed learned to love the United States? Where he read American authors and watched American movies?…
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Gandhi at 150
It’s been 150 years since Gandhi’s birth, initiating a circle that goes round today. This year Gandhi Jayanti falls on the fourth day of Navratri, and so we’ve made his iconic ashram part of our annual display. It’s nearly finished, this replica of his simple home on the banks of the Sabarmati River in Gujarat.…
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War Novels and the War on Terror
More than 16 years ago, standing beneath a massive banner, George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq: “Mission Accomplished.” What followed this publicity stunt—he arrived on an aircraft carrier off California’s coast riding in a Navy jet—were years of insurgency and bloodshed in pursuit of a Dick Cheney figment: Saddam…
Ben East Books 