According to two articles in The Hindu, responsibility for the recent communal violence in Gujarat has become a central issue in the legislative elections scheduled in the state for December 12th. In an attempt to encourage fears among majority Hindus about the possibility of minority Muslim reprisals at the polls, the ruling BJP seems to be making protection of Hindus the main issue in the campaign. The challenging Congress Party is promising to set up special courts and to pursue criminal cases against those responsible for the violence beginning last February.

Congress is accusing the BJP of attempting to cover up its own complicity in the violence. Many observers -- and a recent "citizen's tribunal" consisting of, among others, several retired Supreme Court judges -- have indicated that politicians in Gujarat bear heavy responsibility for encouraging and protecting rioters. (An article by Human Rights Watch is available here. And in a recent interview with Rediff.com, Delhi-based political scientist Ghanshyam Shah calls the BJP minister in Gujarat, Narendra Modi, a "textbook fascist.") Modi has struck back at his political rivals by charging Congress with aiding Pakistan-financed terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Times of India also has a good profile of pre-election tensions in Mahsana, one area within the state of Gujarat, and an article noting that the political parties are predicting record-high turnout levels. The Indian Express published poll results that predict a Congress win in Gujarat.

The conflict over secularism and Hindu nationalism is a permanent tension in Indian politics. The Gujarat elections are likely to be an important proving ground for militant Hindus in the BJP and other more extreme parties. Let's hope they lose. India's traditions of tolerance and secularism should be encouraged and strengthened, especially in Gujarat, where the recent violence has exposed a high level of organized, local, official support for brutality against members of the Muslim minority.

The Washington Post's headline is "Campaign Finance Law Fails Its First Test." I have to admit to some fundamental confusion about what the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is supposed to accomplish. It's not that I haven't tried to understand what BCRA is about; rather, it's just really hard to cut through the accusations and counter-accusations on both sides of the debate. It's not even clear that supporters (like Brooking's Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein) and opponents (like Senator Mitch McConnell) are talking about the same bill. Granted, McConnell's arguments appear in a brief attacking the bill and Mann's and Ornstein's arguments appear in a paper for popular consumption. Still, if Mann and Ornstein are simply correct (i.e. if they're not engaging in their own "spin"), then McConnell and his lawyers are employing some serious hyperbole, if not outright distortion of the law, in their brief. According to Mann and Ornstein, BCRA "bans no speech." According to McConnell, the law is a frontal assault on free speech.

Who's right? More on that later. Now it's time for bed.

Rick Lyman of The New York Times is way too kind on this one. James Berardinelli is probably closer when he refers to the new Bond film's "abject silliness." Die Another Day is about as good as Moonraker. Moonraker is probably a better movie now, for its camp value, than when it was originally released, and maybe the same will be true of Die Another Day, but that's about the best thing one can say about it.

At some point, filmmakers will realize that CGI makes every movie look like a cartoon or a comic book, and that the best car chase scenes -- like the subway scene in The French Connection (1971) -- were filmed when computers were housed in special rooms because they were as big as refrigerators. In fact, it's even more interesting to watch an aging John Wayne, as McQ, in a Trans Am, chasing a laundry truck on the Seattle highways than it is to watch the final chase scene here -- obviously inspired by the Mario Kart video game -- between Bond in an Aston Martin with a cloaking device and Bad North Korean # 2 in a BMW convertible with a top-mounted gatlin gun, both of them circling around, and eventually within, a melting ice palace on a frozen lake in Iceland.

The plot has got some problems (bigger than one might expect, actually). The North Koreans can't even build a decent passenger car, but somehow they're able to sell enough weapons to finance the development, launch, and maintenance of a satellite-mounted death ray? Fine. But suspend that disbelief and you're stuck with another: in the context of the movie, Bad North Korean #1 can afford a death ray, but apparently he can't afford to pay a doctor to remove a dozen diamonds embedded in the face of his friend, Bad North Korean # 2?

I'll probably go see the next Bond movie. I just wish that Ang Lee would direct it. At least the movie only cost me six bucks -- $7.50 if you count the ATM fee, since Oswego's little movie theater doesn't take credit cards.

I'm a little behind the game here (the story is about two weeks old), but the Billboard Liberation Front has struck again.

CNN has the headline: "Freedom Party Urges Haider to Stay," and you might think that this was a real story, until you find the following line midway through the analysis of yesterday's elections: "It was unclear if the offer to quit was sincere, as Haider has repeatedly played hard-to-get in an attempt to force his will on the party."

Austria's Kurier has an amusing article about Joerg Haider's persistent threats to resign from his party. In March of 2001, Haider made the first of his threats to leave national politics if his party continued to disagree with him on policy issues. In February of this year, after a torrent of criticisms over his trip to meet Saddam Hussein, Haider declared, "I'm already gone." On August 30th, in the context of a dispute over tax reform, he declared that he was leaving politics "for good," unless his party lost in the elections. And now?

In Austria's elections this weekend, Joerg Haider's party lost big. The New York Times has good coverage of the results. (A nice chart of the results, in German, is available here.) Die Zeit calls the Freedom Party's results (10.2%) "just within the psychologically important double-digit area." Haider has recently made a buffoon out of himself, and harmed his image in Austria to boot, by meeting with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.