Travels in the Riel World

Kenya has erupted into violence after a disputed election. The Pakistani political party of Benazir Bhutto has named her 19-year-old son as the party’s new leader.  This post is not meant to judge the politics of other countries. After all, the U.S. faced some problems of its own with a hotly disputed election seven years ago and, as Andrew Sullivan notes, we’re also dealing with a few American political dynasties at the moment.

Rather, what is interesting about both of these stories is that it emphasizes the role of culture in the government and politics of every country. 

In Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was named his mother’s successor at only 19 years of age, but in keeping with the dynastic traditions that are common across South Asia. His mother had herself taken over the reigns of the Pakistan Peoples Party from her father. As the New York Times writes:

The decision to place burden of blood and history on the son reflects … an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics — three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well.

In Kenya, meanwhile, the eruption of violence is not only over a disputed election result, but also over tribal grievances that have spilled into politics. The Washington Post reports:

But an undercurrent of tribalism ran through the campaign season, with Odinga accusing Kibaki of favoring his own ethnic group and raising suspicions that his inner circle would never relinquish power…

As the sun set Sunday, thousands of ardent Odinga supporters raged through the muddy, foot-worn paths of Nairobi’s biggest slum, Kibera, wielding nail-studded sticks, heavy rocks, hammers, machetes and flasks of alcohol, setting ablaze a market run mainly by Kibaki’s tribe, the Kikuyu, and continuing on…

The head of Kenya’s Red Cross Society, Abbas Gullet, told AP that the homes of many Kikuyu families had been attacked around the country and some of the residents were seeking refuge in police stations.

Two countries, two political systems, two sets of issues. But scratch the surface and you find cultural issues underpinning both stories.

Tribalism is an inescapable undercurrent of life throughout much of Africa and the Middle East. And, as this Washington Post article notes, one’s tribal loyalties have also played a significant role in democratic elections in Kenya, even though many voters deny it is an issue.

Although many issues are at stake in Kenya’s presidential election Thursday — by all accounts the most open and competitive since the country’s independence in 1963– one theme has pervaded the campaign season like no other: tribalism, considered the bane of African nation-building.

In some ways, Kenyans have adopted a political system in which leaders tend to trust and favor their own ethnic groups with appointments, contracts and other spoils of power in exchange for votes and, increasingly, campaign contributions.

Kenyans tend to deny being tribalist, though national voting patterns have often suggested otherwise.

In the current election, for example, the two main contenders are expected to draw 80 to 90 percent of the vote from their respective communities — among the largest in Kenya — and duke it out for dozens of smaller ethnic voting blocs in this country of 36 million. Yet in interviews around this politically important city in Kenya’s western Rift Valley region, Kikuyu and Luo voters explained their choices in terms other than tribal.

The three great monotheistic religions that were born in the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have numerous overlapping strands which are often lost amidst centuries of conflict. But there are those who continue to work at promoting interfaith dialogue in the hopes that some of these faiths’ shared spirituality can be rediscovered. Some of these individuals can be found at the Dier Mar Musa monastery in Syria and they were the subject of a profile this week by NPR.

Every 33 years, the major Christian and Muslim holidays of Christmas and Eid al Adha fall close together. This is one of those years. While Christmas focuses on the birth of Jesus Christ, Eid al Adha centers on Abraham, a shared prophet from the Koran and the Bible’s Old Testament. In the Middle East, these dual holidays are reminders of the many shared traditions of Muslims and Christians.

In the predominantly Muslim country of Syria, Christmas trees twinkle in shopping malls. Muslim neighborhoods are decorated with festive lights, a new custom borrowed from Christians… Across the Middle East, however, true understanding between Muslims and Christians is harder to find.

One religious community in a mountaintop monastery is trying to lead the way to understanding. Dier Mar Musa … was built more than 1,500 years ago, when Christians were a majority in the region.

“Christians in the Middle East, the numbers are going down quickly,” says Rev. Paolo Dall’Oglio, who leads this community of Christians and Muslims. “Some of us are willing to create hope together, to build a complementary world vision in a way that we can work on our future world, hand-by-hand as minorities that have something to offer to majorities.” …

To promote this dialogue, a place has been set aside within the church for Muslims to pray facing the holy city of Mecca. And on the wall, Arabic calligraphy in the shape of a dove spells out first phrase of the Muslim call to prayer.

The Italian region of Tuscany has inspired legions of fans because of the area’s natural beauty, culture, food and wine. Now the region of southeastern Australia around Adelaide is beginning to draw similar raves, according to this travel article in the New York Times.

“We searched all over the world for where we could start the kind of restaurant I always wanted to go to,” said Jim Carreker, who left his job as a chief executive in Silicon Valley to start the much-lauded gastronome hotel, the Louise, in the Barossa Valley in Australia last year. “When we came to Adelaide, we were stunned to discover the area had the best of everything: great wine growing, people who raised good livestock, fantastic fruits and vegetables. It’s like the Australian version of Tuscany except we also have extraordinary seafood.”

Two decades ago, Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia, was considered the dowdy wallflower to its lively coastal siblings, Melbourne and Sydney…But now South Australia’s capital, nestled along the Pacific Coast and sprawled against the garden greenbelt of the gentle River Torrens, has become the colorful cosmopolitan hub of Australia’s culinary revolution — 51 percent of the country’s wine is produced in the region, while the Adelaide Hills are Australia’s fruit and veggie basket.

Add to that picture the multiethnic population that has swarmed into this rapidly growing city of 1.1 million, and it seems inevitable that a teeming cafe and restaurant scene would arise. In fact, Adelaide claims the country’s highest number of restaurants per person.

I’d like to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season! Travels in the Riel World will be back on Dec. 26.

The annual Islamic pilgrimage to the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina is a huge and often chaotic event. Several million Muslims from around the world make the annual pilgrimage, and the crush of people has resulted in numerous tragedies and thousands of deaths. So this year the government of Saudi Arabia hired a team of German engineers to redesign the public walkways and the daily schedule in an effort to head off future disasters. Newsweek magazine reports:

German engineer Dirk Serwill had one reaction when presented with his most recent assignment: “Oh, my God.” God would actually play quite a prominent role in the project. Serwill was part of a team of German engineers hired last year by Saudi Arabia to help revamp the hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage, taking place this month, that draws millions to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The recent explosion in the number of pilgrims—from 1.5 million in 1996 to almost 4 million in 2006—has resulted in thousands of deaths in recent years. One engineer described it as “the biggest pedestrian problem in the world”—trying to fit millions of people speaking dozens of languages from 100 different countries into three square kilometers.

The crux of the problem is three ancient pillars in the Mina Valley, which pilgrims are required to stone as a symbol of the Devil. Serwill watches on his video monitor as thousands of pilgrims surround the site, a scene he compares to the spin cycle of a washing machine, “pushing and fighting their way to the pillars,” he says. Generally, three to four people can fit into one square meter; in Mecca, 10 fit in that space.

“You don’t find these levels of density among humans anywhere else—only among rats,” says Habib Zein Al-Abideen, the Saudi deputy minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs and head of the kingdom’s hajj-related construction. Under such conditions, pilgrims are exposed to pressure equivalent to more than a ton—similar to the weight of a small car.

Working mainly off videos and aerial photographs, the engineers employed cutting-edge computer software to digitally map pilgrim flows so that they could pinpoint the exact moments when disasters have broken out in the past. They used the latest theories in “panic studies” to understand how people react when forced into “escape mode”—much of it applied from rock concerts and football games.

Based on these studies, the engineers redesigned the entire hajj process by creating a network of one-way streets, circumscribed plazas, overflow areas and emergency escape routes—applying a strict structure to what has historically been haphazard and chaotic. They also organized what might be the most complex schedule ever attempted, coordinating time slots for 30,000 different groups of 100 pilgrims each.

The topic of medical tourism has gained quite a bit of coverage during the past year or so, as the media has become aware of the increasing numbers of Americans who are opting to go overseas for medical care and surgery because they can’t afford the same procedures in the U.S.

Now comes a glimpse of the other side of the story, as NPR recently reported about a doctor shortage in Thailand that is at least partly the result of medical professionals being lured away by the larger incomes they can receive for treating medical tourists.

Millions of people come to Bangkok for medical care. They get everything from face-lifts to heart-bypass operations. These medical tourists have helped boost the Thai economy, but there’s a downside. Doctors in Thailand have become so busy with foreigners that Thai patients are having trouble getting care.

When medical tourists come to Bangkok, they usually go to places like Bumrungrad Hospital. It’s a private facility, downtown, near the fancy hotels. It has a sushi bar, interpreters who speak Arabic and Mandarin, and VIP suites with marble bathrooms.

Most Thais can’t afford it. They’re more likely go across town to Siriraj Hospital, along the banks of the Chao Phraya River…

The outpatient waiting room looks a bit like Grand Central Station. On a very hot day. With no air conditioning. Hundreds of patients are squeezed onto old wooden benches. Many more are slumped in wheelchairs or lying on gurneys. A recorded message asks for patience.

It’s a constant reminder that Siriraj doesn’t have nearly enough doctors. And neither do other hospitals that accept people covered by Thailand’s basic health plan.

The problem is money. Doctors don’t get paid much for working at public hospitals, so many won’t. The ones who do tend to moonlight at private facilities.

Business schools in China are growing by leaps and bounds, with more programs and a significant increase in the number of international students, according to this article in Business Week. The expatriate students are there to gain a better understanding of the Chinese business world, which they gain not only with on-the-ground experience in the country but also with academic programs that focus on integrating the unique culture of China with Western business thought.

In a course on competition strategy at BiMBA (Beijing International MBA), readings include Sun Tsu’s The Art of War and cases on military battles drawn from ancient and modern Chinese history. “We are integrating Chinese philosophy and realities with Western management theories,” says BiMBA’s U.S. dean John Yang.

Perhaps no school has gone as far as Cheung Kong GSB, which runs its MBA program from a 70-year-old villa in Shanghai. Courses range from the globalization of Chinese companies to Confucian humanism. While its faculty is drawn from top universities worldwide, the majority of professors are of Chinese origin.

One of them is Zheng Yusheng, associate dean and a professor of operations management. After spending 20 years in the U.S. and becoming the first tenured Chinese professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he returned to the mainland in 2002 to help set up the school.

His understanding of both Western and Chinese business cultures has made a mark on the MBA program. “In the U.S. there is almost no manufacturing, so what we teach there is how to manage retailers,” he notes. “China is a center of manufacturing, so we focus on manufacturing here. I say: You need to produce the right product, at the right time, for the right customers. That’s exactly what we have been doing.”

That’s the title of an interesting article that appeared recently in the Boston Globe. It focuses on some of the success stories coming out of Africa, despite the poverty, hunger and corruption that still plagues much of the continent.

This fall the United Nations announced that Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world least likely to meet any of the UN’s so-called Millennium Challenge Goals for reducing poverty, disease, hunger, and illiteracy…According to the World Health Organization, over the past year, 960,000 people, mostly children, died of malaria on the continent, and 1.6 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa died of AIDS. It’s a disconsolately familiar story.

But it’s not the whole story. By many standards, Africa is doing better than it has in decades. The number of democratically elected governments has risen sharply in the past decade, and the number of violent conflicts has dropped. African economies, and African businesses, are starting to show impressive results, and not just by the diminished standards the rest of the world reserves for its poorest continent…Last month, the World Bank reported that average GDP growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has averaged 5.4 percent over the last decade, better than the United States, with some countries poised for dramatic expansion.

“For the first time in a long time, you have the potential that a handful of countries could break from the pack and become leopards, cheetahs, or whatever the African equivalent of an Asian Tiger would be,” says John Page, the World Bank’s chief Africa economist.

What are some these success stories? The story provides a few examples:

Entrepreneurs in Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal are opening call centers and document-processing facilities to service the developed world. Mills in Madagascar and Lesotho, aided by favorable terms of trade, are making textiles for the US market. Stock markets in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana, while minuscule by Western standards, are booming. And earlier this fall, global banking giants Citigroup and UBS helped Ghana raise $750 million on the international bond market, the first sub-Saharan government bond offering outside South Africa in 30 years.

It all suggests that much of Africa, after decades of sclerosis and strife, may have turned a corner. Economists believe that several African countries have made the sort of fundamental changes in governance and economic management that could buttress them against swings in commodity prices and the other global economic shocks that in the past have been so devastating.

Most everyone knows about the Mayan temples at Chichén Itzá, Mexico, which aren’t far from the tourist playgrounds of Cancun. But the Mayans left an even more impressive complex at Tikal in Guatemala, which is lesser known only because it is more remote and less touristed. Ethan Todras-Whitehill, however, went to Tikal recently and reported on his experience for the NY Times.

Now, in the dim light of early morning, a green sea of leaves stretches out before us, fog banks float about like dinghies, and only the resident leviathans, Temples I and III, dare to lift their stony heads above the horizon. Slowly, the city below the canopy begins to take shape, the hidden concert hall of moss-covered stone that has echoed this same jungle symphony every morning for more than a thousand years.

The very word “ruin” suggests a fallen city or temple, a one-time New York or Jerusalem whose inhabitants died out, taking the life of the place with them. But Tikal, surrounded by ever-creeping vegetation and screeching wildlife, and since 1996 once again used for rituals by the Mayan people, feels organic and strangely vivid. It is as if when the inhabitants of the city left, the jungle moved in, keeping it alive until the Mayans could return. Tikal has the feel of a living ruin, closer to its original vitality than perhaps any other deserted city of the past.

Among Mayan sites, Tikal has long been second banana to Chichén Itzá in Mexico…But that popularity seems based on factors other than the ruins themselves. The great advantage of Chichén Itzá is accessibility, in particular, its proximity to the resort towns of the Yucatán Peninsula. It is less lively than Tikal and smaller — its centerpiece a step pyramid that is half the height of some Tikal structures…But for my park entry fee, no ruins can match Tikal’s. Some ancient sites — the Pyramids, the Colosseum — feel monumental. Others — Ephesus, Petra — feel like cities. Stand in the center of Tikal’s Great Plaza, and you will have a feeling of both.

In pastoral areas of Africa, cows are an integral part of the life of communities. Families give cows to children to raise, the animals are used as dowry payments, and a family’s wealth is often measured by the number of cows they own. In Sudan, however, as in other countries in East Africa, the government is now trying to convince villagers that cows can be more valuable to their communities if they are seen as a marketable commodity. As this article in the Washington Post shows, it’s not an easy sell.

Romeo Lomunyamoi sat on a rock in the late morning sun, his sizable herd of cattle lumbering around the yellow-green field before him. In the next few days, he said, he had a momentous decision to make, one he had been turning over in his mind for weeks like a stressed corporate executive: whether to sell a cow.

“I am always very sorry to sell a cow,” he said, explaining that in his entire life he has sold exactly two. “Loboloka and Wanamute,” he said, easily recalling the black heifer with a white-striped head and the red bull with white spots. “Everyone was so sad.”

That is the common sentiment about selling cattle in this cool, hilly region of southern Sudan, where pastoralists whisper and sing to cows they name and know like family members. Around here, cows are the social currency that binds communities together, and selling even one is considered a grave matter forced on people mostly by unwanted circumstance — in Lomunyamoi’s case, his family’s looming hunger.

In the next few months, the nascent government of semiautonomous southern Sudan plans to conduct an ambitious, if controversial, experiment that has been tried with varying degrees of success in other sub-Saharan African countries, including neighboring Kenya. Government workers will fan out into cattle land in a studied attempt to undo traditional communal thinking about cows and replace it, slowly, with a more profit-driven, market-oriented mentality…

Meanwhile, the southern Sudanese government faces a daunting fact: Here in one of the cattle capitals of Africa, cows are so rarely sold that they are imported from Uganda to meet local demand. Extra milk, instead of being bottled and sold, is often given away or poured into the sand…

In pastoralist societies … cattle not only provide precious milk and meat. They also amount to a four-legged monetary, banking, insurance and social security system. Cows are used for dowries, the traditional negotiated payment that a young man’s family makes to that of his bride and that weaves extended families together over generations. A cow might be used to settle a dispute or as a kind of savings account. In one traditional practice, a family might give a bull to another family, with the expectation that in coming years it would be repaid in cows, with interest.

Accordingly, a family that sells cows in large numbers is generally viewed as poor or foolish.

For years now, a growing demographic problem in Asia has resulted from a cultural preference for sons over daughters. Now, however, there are signs that South Korea may finally be bucking this trend, which has caught the attention of other Asian nations looking to rebalance the ratio of women to men in their societies. The Herald Tribune has the story:

In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys over baby girls is fast receding. Demographers have welcomed the shift, which they say holds promise for other Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam. There a continuing preference for boys, coupled with access to ultrasound technology, has led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses, resulting in a large imbalance between boys and girls.

“China and India are closely studying South Korea as a trendsetter in Asia,” said Chung Woo Jin, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They are curious whether the same social and economic changes can occur in their countries as fast as they did in South Korea’s relatively small and densely populated society.” …

For years in Asia, the sex ratio at birth has been tilting toward boys in a way demographers had never seen before. In China in 2005, the ratio was 120 boys for every 100 girls, according to the UN Population Fund. India logged about 108 boys to 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was taken. Vietnam, with a ratio of 110 boys to 100 girls last year, was further tipping the regional imbalance.

The Population Fund warned in an October report that tinkering with nature’s probabilities would lead to increased sexual violence and that the trafficking of women would grow because a growing number of men would not be able find wives or would resort to importing women from poorer regions…

In South Korea, sons historically received the inheritance, carried on the family lineage and took care of their parents in old age - and even in the afterlife, it was believed, as they oversaw ceremonies of ancestor worship. Newlywed couples went to live with the husband’s family.

“In the old days, when there was no adequate social safety net, Korean parents regarded having a son as kind of making an investment for old age security,” Chung said…

With women’s economic influence rising and the old male-oriented Confucian precepts crumbling, parents now find fewer reasons to prefer sons over daughters.

Anyone who has traveled in Vietnam has had to deal with the sometimes unsettling need to cross a street amidst a flock of motorbikes. With increasing numbers of motorists, and a chaotic stew of bikes, autos and pedestrians all trying to share the same road space, the Vietnamese penchant for not wearing helmets has become a public safety issue. The government is trying to legislate the wearing of helmets on motorbikes, but young Vietnamese are apparently resisting. Why? Helmets aren’t fashionable. More in this piece in Time magazine.

Thousands of motorbikes swerving at high speed and near-misses at every corner can make the roaring streets of Hanoi a terrifying place for the uninitiated. But for Vietnamese teenagers like Trinh Thanh Van, the motorized maelstrom is a party on wheels. It’s 8 p.m. on a weeknight, and 19-year-old Van is out with two girlfriends on the back of her red Honda Wave, darting through ever-shifting streams of motorbikes as they look for new friends. It’s a typical evening of luon lo (literally “wandering”), the nightly ritual where young Vietnamese cruise, flirt and flaunt their finest fashions.

But there’s one traditional biker accessory Van and her stylish friends avoid: crash helmets. They aren’t alone: Less than 10% of riders wear helmets in a country where motorbikes make up 90% of road traffic. “For us, helmets aren’t fashionable,” admits Van’s friend Ha, 19, during a roadside chat. Van reluctantly agrees: “If girls have to wear helmets, no one will see their beautiful hairstyles and makeup.”

Soon, though, Vietnam’s motorcyclists won’t have a choice. A new law is to take effect on Dec. 15 that requires motorbike riders and passengers to wear helmets on the road. The law marks a new attempt by the communist authorities to effect a huge societal change — a similar effort failed five years ago. But with 13,000 Vietnamese having died in traffic accidents last year alone, 80% of them from head injuries, the purpose of the new law is to save lives…

Despite the danger, however, most Vietnamese have resisted pleas to wear helmets, dubbing them “rice cookers” and complaining that they’re too hot, uncomfortable and even that they block the peripheral vision crucial to navigating split-second swerves.

As more young women in India join the workforce and move out of their family’s homes, they are gaining an independence and confronting issues that their mothers could never have imagined. There was an interesting article about this topic recently in the International Herald Tribune.

Not long ago, an Indian woman, even a working Indian woman, would almost always have moved from her parents’ house to her husband’s. Perhaps her only freedom would be during college, when she might live on campus or take a room for a year or two at what is known here as the working women’s hostel.

That trajectory has begun to loosen as a surging economy creates new jobs, prompts young professionals to leave home and live on their own, and slowly, perhaps unwittingly, nudges a traditional society to accept new freedoms for women…

The changes are sharpest in the lives of women who have found a footing in the new economy and who are for the most part middle-class, college-educated professionals exploring jobs that did not exist a generation ago.

High-technology workers and fashion designers, aerobics instructors and radio DJs, these women in their 20s are living independently, far from their families. Many are deferring marriage for a year or two, maybe more, while they make money and live lives that most of their mothers could not have dreamed of…

“I think it’s a very significant shift,” said Urvashi Butalia, publisher of Zubaan Books, based in New Delhi, which promotes women’s writing. “It signals a kind of change and acceptability. It testifies to women’s desire and wish to be economically independent, to be able to interact in public space and be in the same world as men.” Equally important, she said, is the attitude adjustment among elders. “For families to accept that women will remain single, that they will live on their own, that they will work and defer marriage, is a very, very significant shift,” she said. “Even if it’s very small, it’s beginning to happen in a society where before, if you wanted to do that, you’d be out on a limb.”

It’s that time of year again - when newspapers and travel magazines begin proclaiming hot destinations for the following year. Some of it is silly, but it can also be a fun way to add to your own dream destination list. The NY Times published their ‘08 story this past weekend, with 43 destinations in the newspaper and an additional 10 online. A sampling:

Laos (#1) - Vietnam and Cambodia are so 2007. Now, Laos is shaping up to be Indochina’s next hot spot. Ancient sites like the Wat Phou temple complex and the capital city of Vientiane are drawing culture seekers. Luxury teak houseboats are cruising down the Mekong. And global nomads are heading to Luang Prabang.

Quito, Ecuador (#15) - If you’ve been to Quito, Ecuador, there’s a good chance you were heading to the Galápagos. But Quito, the colonial capital perched 9,200 feet up in the Andes, is no longer just a whistle stop. The city’s crumbling historic center, one of Latin America’s least altered, has been reborn after a seven-year, $200 million renovation. And a crop of upscale hotels has arrived … making Quito a glorious new center in the so-called Middle of the World.

Namibia (#38) - In the 17 years since Namibia gained independence from South Africa, this desert country on the West African coast carved out an early eco-tourist niche, with government-run campsites like Namutoni in the Etosha National Park. Now the country is going eco-deluxe.

Barossa Valley, Australia (#51) - The world’s love affair with shiraz is bringing wine spectators to Australia’s Barossa Valley. The hilly region is home to some of the world’s oldest shiraz vines, some dating back to the 1840s. And if the more than 60 wineries aren’t enough, Barossa also offers an artisanal cheese trail, and nearby Adelaide is a foodie destination in its own right.

John Tierney wrote a fascinating article recently for the NY Times about the role that culture and religion play in determining scientific beliefs and practices. The story focuses specifically on biotechnology, and about the different approaches taken by Asian and Western cultures on issues like stem-cell research and genetic engineering.

While critics on the right and the left fret about the morality of stem-cell research and genetic engineering, prominent Western scientists have been going to Asia … (which) offers researchers new labs, fewer restrictions and a different view of divinity and the afterlife…

“Asian religions worry less than Western religions that biotechnology is about ‘playing God,’” says Cynthia Fox, the author of “Cell of Cells,” a book about the global race among stem-cell researchers. “Therapeutic cloning in particular jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation.”

You can see this East-West divide in maps drawn up by Lee M. Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton. Dr. Silver, who analyzes clashes of spirituality and science in his book “Challenging Nature,” has been charting biotechnology policies around the world and trying to make spiritual sense of who’s afraid of what.

Dr. Silver’s interesting work has led him to divide spiritual and scientific believers into three geographic groups:

The first, traditional Christians, predominate in the Western Hemisphere and some European countries. The second, which he calls post-Christians, are concentrated in other European countries and parts of North America, especially along the coasts. The third group are followers of Eastern religions.

“Most people in Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Dr. Silver says, “have a root tradition in which there is no single creator God. Instead, there may be no gods or many gods, and there is no master plan for the universe. Instead, spirits are eternal and individual virtue — karma — determines what happens to your spirit in your next life. With some exceptions, this view generally allows the acceptance of both embryo research to support life and genetically modified crops.”

By contrast, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the master creator who gives out new souls to each individual human being and gives humans “dominion” over soul-less plants and animals. To traditional Christians who consider an embryo to be a human being with a soul, it is wrong for scientists to use cloning to create human embryos or to destroy embryos in the course of research.

But there is no such taboo against humans’ applying cloning and genetic engineering to “lower” animals and plants. As a result, Dr. Silver says, cloned animals and genetically modified crops have not become a source of major controversy for traditional Christians. Post-Christians are more worried about the flora and fauna.

“Many Europeans, as well as leftists in America,” Dr. Silver says, “have rejected the traditional Christian God and replaced it with a post-Christian goddess of Mother Nature and a modified Christian eschatology. It isn’t a coherent belief system. It might or might not incorporate New Age thinking. But deep down, there’s a view that humans shouldn’t be tampering with the natural world.”

Hence the opposition to genetically modified food. Because post-Christians do not necessarily share the biblical view of an omnipotent deity with the sole power to create souls, Dr. Silver says, they are less worried about scientists “playing God” in the laboratory with embryos.

You’re in Buenos Aires. You want to dance the tango but you don’t have a partner. What’s a person to do? Hire a “tango taxi dancer,” according to this fun little story in Time magazine.

The Salon Canning is an authentic milonga, an unassuming hall in the old Palermo district of Buenos Aires where the entwined bodies of dancers gyrate into the wee hours to the tune of Argentina’s signature musical style, the tango. At one of the tables, a tall, dark-haired man scans the room with an alert gaze, his attention resting on the foreign women who sit alone at tables waiting patiently to be asked to dance.

He is not a tango instructor nor a gigolo or low-lifer eyeing the house for easy prey. Eduardo Amarillo is a “tango taxi dancer,” and his aim is to ensure that no tango-loving foreigner leaves Argentina without having twirled at least once around the floor…Two years ago, Amarillo launched a business providing a hassle-free dancing service for tourists, and today he heads a group of 25 male and female “tango taxi dancers” who charge $20 dollars an hour.

The decor at the Canning is austere. Bare walls surround square tables and plastic chairs. No one comes here expecting luxury; this place is all about dancing. An American woman who works as an executive in New York but preferred that her name be withheld sits at Amarillo’s table, eager to test the results of her tango lessons.

“When I booked the service I was nervous I might be inadvertently employing an escort service,” she confides. “But if you don’t know anybody and are staying for a short time at least you are guaranteed that you will get to dance.” She has no interest in the sexual promise packaged in one of the world’s most sensuous dance forms. “It’s not about sex, it’s about intimacy, a chance to be ‘there’ with another person for an incredibly intimate three minutes. It’s more a metaphysical than physical experience.”

That’s the argument Fareed Zakaria makes in a recent Newsweek column, and he presents a strong case that government policies designed to deter unwelcome visitors are instead causing millions of legitimate businesspeople and tourists to stay away.

According to the Commerce Department, the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom. And this is not about Arabs or Muslims. The number of Japanese visiting the United States declined from 5 million in 2000 to 3.6 million last year. The numbers have begun to increase, but by 2010 they’re still projected to be 19 percent below 2000 levels. During this same span (2000–2010), global tourism is expected to grow by 44 percent.

The most striking statistic involves tourists from Great Britain. These are people from America’s closest ally, the overwhelming majority of them white Anglos with names like Smith and Jones. For Brits, the United States these days is Filene’s Basement. The pound is worth $2, a 47 percent increase in six years. And yet, between 2000 and 2006, the number of Britons visiting America declined by 11 percent. In that same period British travel to India went up 102 percent, to New Zealand 106 percent, to Turkey 82 percent and to the Caribbean 31 percent. If you’re wondering why, read the polls or any travelogue on a British Web site. They are filled with horror stories about the inconvenience and indignity of traveling to America.

For many, the trials begin even before they arrive. In a world of expedited travel, getting a visa to enter the United States has become a laborious process. It takes, on average, 69 days in Mumbai, 65 days in São Paolo and 44 days in Shanghai  simply to process a request. It’s no wonder that quick business trips to America are a thing of the past. Business travel to the United States declined by 10 percent between 2004 and 2005 (the most recent data available), while similar travel to Europe increased by 8 percent.