_______________ "A WEAPON SO POWERFUL, IT WILL DESTROY THE WORLD" BY SARITA SARVATE (05/15/98)
	Sarita Sarvate's article, "A Weapon So Powerful It Will Destroy The World," traces the insidious trajectory of ultra-nationalist thinking. In justifying nuclear weapons Ms. Sarvate draws upon various ludicrous arguments from India's romance with science technology and an ancient tradition in the Bhagavad-Gita that evokes the "moral authority to annihilate." As a Pakistani, I shuddered with mortal fear last week. After all, our belligerent neighbor -- a nation of 1 billion strong, led by a Hindu-fundamentalist party -- had just detonated five nuclear devices 70 miles from our shared border. I subsequently followed developments closely, scrutinized official statements and prayed that we would not reciprocate their horrible bravado. On the other hand, Sarvate cheered. Her countrymen rejoiced. For her, for them, the "spectacular demonstration" of exploding nuclear bombs is a culmination of "thousands of years of thought -- philosophical, metaphysical and mathematical." I ask her, what sort of warped intellectual dynamic produces a weapon of mass destruction? Although as a nation India has been hostile not only toward Pakistan but all of South Asia, this reading of tradition is peculiar to the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its sympathizers, much like Sarvate. Until two years ago, the BJP's platform included "reclaiming" parts of Pakistan and constructing a temple on the site of a mosque demolished by its allied organization, the Shiv Sena. The present hierarchy of Indian politics includes a host of unsavory characters such as Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Shiv Sena leader Balasheb Thackeray and Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani. In the past the rulers at least paid lip service to secularism. This new brand is shameless. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee, a "moderate" fundamentalist, was a member of the National Volunteer Corps, a party which has been banned at various junctures in Indian history for fomenting violence against Muslims. Thackeray has said, "The Muslims in India should be treated the same way as were Jews in Germany." If this is the fate destined for those within, what does he plan for those without, the Muslims outside India? Advani stated in the May 18 Hindustan Times that the "decisive step to become a nuclear weapon state has brought about a qualitatively new stage in Indo-Pak relations, particularly in finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem" -- an obvious threat to use nuclear weapons to solve the unresolved status of Kashmir. Once, when asked if India will remain hostile if the Kashmir issue is resolved, he replied, "Kashmir is just an excuse. If it is not there we will find another one." These people, this regime, simply put, is bad. The subcontinent is one of the poorest regions in the world. India's belligerency will cost its populace exorbitant sums of money as health services, education and poverty-alleviation programs will further languish. Although Ms. Sarvate would disagree, I am quite certain that technology can be put to better use than creating weapons of mass destruction. Worse, of course, is the redoubtable specter of nuclear holocaust. It is a matter of time before they evoke the "moral authority to annihilate" Pakistan as they launch a "weapon so powerful that it will destroy the world." -- Husain Naqvi
_______________ LOVERS AND WRITERS BY GARRISON KEILLOR (05/19/98)
	I know I'm a day late and a dollar short on reactions to Garrison Keillor (aka "Mr. Blue") being featured in Salon, and am feeling way too verklempt to make this message the least bit interesting anyway, so I'll just cut my losses and say, bless you for dealing the lad into the game. Someday it'll go without saying that Keillor was, and is, the best American writer since Sam Clemens -- maybe the best American writer "period." How he manages to cast a skeptical eye on our national experience that honors it utterly without an ounce of guile or cynicism is beyond my ken, but it rings true like nothing else -- and life would be immeasurably poorer without it. Many tardy thanks. -- Sylvia Jordan Garrison Keillor is coming! Garrison Keillor is coming! I am so ecstatic I could scream. As a matter of fact, I did squeal a little when I read the news. Not that Salon needed anything to make it better, but with the advent of Mr. Blue you have improved your content. My fond memories of Keillor date back to my early teens, when my father would force us into the car at gunpoint and we would go on the weekly drive. We would drive for hours in Godforsaken country until my father found a likely spot where we would pile out of the car and go on a forced march through the wilderness. The reason for this activity was never fully explained to me. The only thing that kept me from expiring of boredom was listening to "A Prairie Home Companion." Tales of Norwegian bachelor farmers, Lutherans vs. the other church, and rotten tomatoes and older sisters, whose behinds made irresistible targets, made my father's forays into sadism somehow worth it. I look forward to experiencing Mr. Blue's wit and wisdom, both in his column and in Table Talk. You have made one reader very, very happy and just a tad bit nostalgic. Perhaps I will take my children on a drive this Sunday. -- Arlene Green I got to my desk, like I do every day, and I turned on my computer, same as I do every day. I went to the machine to get some coffee. "You know, Paula," I said to Paula, who works with me, "this coffee just gets worse and worse." She said that I was right, and it wasn't near as good as the coffee they used to have in the diner down on Pembroke Street before it closed down, and I had to agree with her. So, I sat back down and opened up Netscape and went over to Salon Magazine, like I do every day. And found to my intense annoyance that the boring, repetitive, folksy, cloying "Lake Woebegon" meanderings of Garrison Keillor were not enough and he's now going to inflict another tedious "cultural advice column" on us. As if Cintra bloody Wilson wasn't enough. I've suffered his incredibly uninteresting books because the acclaim was such I thought I was missing something. I wasn't. His insights into luttefisk and Lutheranism are profound enough for maybe two typed pages. Instead we got book after book after book of it. We don't need more self-important, meandering "cultural advice columns" from the inept. We need Salon doing more of the good stuff: news, reviews, opinion and stories about shagging. The last word on Keillor is reserved for Homer Simpson: "Be more funny". -- Ben Walsh Well now. It's about time. Thank you, Salon, for bringing Keillor on board. Instead of whining, sneering or blasting, Keillor advises, with a humor and gentleness previously lacking in other Salon columns. "Mr. Blue" is certainly the most hopeful stuff I've read in a long while. Relaxed and refreshed, I think I'm almost ready for some Cintra. -- Kristen Burkholder
_______________ UXORIOUS BY KATE MOSES (05/20/98)
	Kate Moses' meditation on the word "uxorious" -- defined as excessive devotion or submission to a wife -- could only have been written by a ... well, wife. She confines her flowery essay only to the active sense of the term, having to do with fondness and doting, and ignores the passive, vernacular sense: that of being "henpecked," or to put it even more vernacularly, "pussy-whipped." I would wager that to most men familiar with the term, it brings to mind not so much Ralph Fiennes in "The English Patient" as Jim Backus in "Rebel Without a Cause," enduring the imprecations of a suburban battle-ax while dressed in an apron. -- Tom Moody New York, N.Y. I guess you missed last year's Oscars. Someone used the word "uxorious" in his acceptance speech, sending many of us (including my wife and I) scurrying to our dictionaries. Shortly afterwards, it made the "a word a day" mailing list that I subscribe to, with a note about how many people wrote to the editor asking about the word they heard on the Oscars (some had a tougher time than my wife and I at guessing the spelling from hearing it). For several months afterwards, I signed off e-mail to my wife with "uxoriously," and finally abbreviated it to "ux.," which I use to this day. -- Bob DuCharme
_______________ DEATH COMES FOR THE BISHOP BY SALLIE TISDALE (05/14/98)
	Thank you for Sallie Tisdale's article about the death of Bishop Gerardi. Ours is a small world, and Guatemala is not far from Miami and the United States. The murder of Bishop Gerardi should serve to bring world attention to his report, "Nunca Mas." Please continue to cover this important drama of the struggle for human rights in our hemisphere. Current efforts to obtain documents about U.S. involvement in training and supporting war criminals are being thwarted. Gerardi believed that a new peace must be based on recognition of the truth of the atrocities that were suffered by the people of Guatemala. The people of the United States must also be allowed to know the truth about the role our government structure and policies played in these matters. -- Teresa L. Jordan SALON | May 27, 1998