As the contest for a Demo cratic presidential nominee enters its final stages, the feminist dilemma has become palpable and painful. My inbox has been filled with passionate and provocative pieces from Katha Pollitt, Frances Kissling, Caroline Kennedy and Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama, all explaining why they are not supporting Hillary Clinton.

An equally strong commentary in support of Clinton, and dismissing Obama, has arrived from Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Ellie Smeal and Ellen Malcolm. All decry the misogyny evident in media coverage of the candidates and grapple — with varying degrees of success — with race and gender conflict. Clinton fans mention in passing that Hillary has been an international voice for women’s rights. 

As a feminist whose daily work focuses on the challenges facing women outside the United States — particularly those living in poverty, in war zones and under extreme patriarchal control — I think these conversations have a surreal quality. They are surreal because they are so perfectly American in their insularity. What is alarmingly absent from our conversations and arguments, even as they allude to race and gender, is any sense of how our decisions affect the well-being of people across the planet — not least the status of women, 51 percent of us, who are being treated with appalling brutality around the globe. 

There is something profoundly wrong when a conversation about qualifications to be president of the most powerful nation in the world ignores the reality facing most of that world’s inhabitants. While American pundits debate whether Clinton is being targeted unfairly, for example, thousands of women and children in Gaza are being collectively punished as Israel, a neighboring state and former occupying power, withholds food, fuel and electricity.

Yet who is talking about that? In the face of such a travesty of human rights and international law, not one of the presidential candidates, regardless of race or gender, has the gumption to speak out and say this is wrong. Not one has said that he or she will not tolerate such behaviour by any ally of the United States. 

We live in a world where women are facing an epidemic of rape in conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet neither Clinton nor Obama has seen fit to mention it. Recent reports of the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by religious extremists are adding new horror to an already horrifying situation but are going almost unreported.

Women and children today form the bulk of the world’s refugees and make up the majority of the world’s poor. Despite doing more than two-thirds of the world’s labour, women own only 1 percent of the world’s assets. Yet not one presidential candidate has chosen to highlight the profound threat that gender inequality is posing to the development, economic stability and future peace of our world. 

At times like these, the practical politics of US elections are staggeringly oppressive. We are told by the experts that Americans do not care about, or vote on the basis of, what happens in the rest of the world. We hear claims that presidential candidates cannot raise these issues during the race: we just have to trust that they will do better once they are in office. 

That is not good enough. I want to hear from the woman running for president why being a woman and a mother matters to her and how it will inform her leadership. I want her to stand up for the millions of women who are not heard here or around the world. I want her to chart her course as the wisest, most humane president the US has ever seen, not to show us how much more macho she can be as our next commander in chief. 

Women in the developing world are not reassured when they see Madeleine Albright standing next to Hillary Clinton. They have not forgotten that this former secretary of state, when questioned about the death of more than 500,000 children as a result of sanctions against Iraq, responded that the price had been worth it.

Most would prefer a president tough enough to say that Iraqi children matter to her as much as American children and that she would use the awesome power of the presidency to ensure the safety and well-being of all the world’s children. Hillary Clinton would not be alone if she chose to own her power as a skilled and qualified politician and as a woman.

There is a rising number of fiercely feminine and feminist leaders around the globe — people like Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who is unafraid to be an agnostic single mother in a deeply Catholic country, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, whose first act as president was passing legislation against sexual violence.

Hillary has a unique chance to stand alongside them. For her to dance so gingerly around the question of gender in international affairs is to miss an extraordinary opportunity to use gender as a platform for healing the deep wounds left by the previous presidency.

But my high expectations are not limited to Hillary. I have equally high goals for the man who says he will unite us. Obama has his own powerful but under-utilised tool: race. What prevents him, for example, from drawing analogies between the plight facing women — many of whom live in subjugation simply by virtue of their gender — and the experience of slavery? And why stop there?

By owning the question of race on an international stage, Obama would have an amazing opportunity to reach out to people worldwide — who are in more need of hope than most Americans could imagine. Regardless of whether there are votes in it, this is of profound relevance to all of us in this country. 

Yet Obama is also missing this chance. What is happening when a truly multi-racial candidate, whose first name means "blessing" in Hebrew and Arabic and whose middle name is Hussein, feels he must spend his moral capital proving his Christian credentials? What I want is for Obama to stand with my husband, a man born and raised in Pakistan, who now is asked to step aside for a random search each time we board an airplane. He needs to tell us that he knows only too well that if he were not a US senator but an ordinary man with a foreign name going on vacation with his family, this could happen to him.

I’d like to hear from him that when he looks at the United States or the world, what he sees are not Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews or atheists but simply human beings desperate to be treated with dignity and respect. 

Like Clinton, Obama, too, can find inspiration and solidarity with a new generation of global leaders emerging from the shackles of their minority status. For the first time in Latin American history, for example, indigenous or mixed-ancestry leaders are holding power as the heads of state in Bolivia and Venezuela. Obama has an unparalleled opportunity to speak to them from an empathetic perspective. And as September 11 showed us, our foreign policy is only a short step from our domestic concerns. 

The next President needs the ability to demonstrate the inner courage and conviction that comes from owning his or her "otherness." As a woman and a mother, Hillary Clinton could bring insights and perspectives no other president in US history could have brought to the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, Barack Obama manifests what it means to be a global citizen.

What is at stake in this election is not merely the historic first that would be accomplished if either a black man or a woman became the next US President. What is at stake is the fragile future of our shared world. 

Sociable people get fat, worriers thin — study

Outgoing people tend to be overweight, while anxious types are more likely to be thin, according to Japanese researchers who examined the links between personality and body mass.

More than 30,000 people in northeastern Japan aged between 40 and 64 were quizzed about their height and weight, and given a personality test, according to a study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research last month.

The results showed that outgoing people were far more likely than other people to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25, a widely used definition of overweight, said Masako Kakizaki of Tohoku University, who led the analysis.

After controlling for other factors, such as smoking, men in the most extrovert category were 1.73 times more likely to be obese than their most introvert counterparts. Extrovert women were 1.53 times as likely to be obese.

People ranked as having the most anxious personalities were twice as likely as the least anxious to be underweight, or have a BMI of less than 18.5, the study found.

"These results may provide clues to devising more effective measures for preventing overweight, obesity or underweight," the researchers said in their paper.

Why email is so old fashioned

The art of correspondence faces another rude shove towards oblivion: even email is under fire for being "too formal."

Outside of work, SMS and instant messaging are fast becoming the writing tools of choice. Indeed, South Korea — that crystal ball of all our digital future — has even seen a report that many teenagers have stopped using email altogether.

"It’s for old people," they say.

A poll of more than 2000 middle, high school and college students, taken recently in Seoul, revealed that more than two-thirds rarely or never use email.

Korea’s digital generation is way ahead of even the Japanese. Fifty per cent of South Koreans are signed up to their version of Facebook, called Cyworld, which took off almost a decade before other social networking sites around the world.

For most South Koreans, email is fit only for addressing the elderly, or for business and formal missives.

Even those in their 30s, such as Dr. Youngmi Kim, a professor at Edinburgh University, says she doesn’t use it much when she is communicating with fellow Koreans.

"I use my Cyworld mini homepage to communicate among Korean close friends," she says. "(Cyworld) is faster and it can be used both for private and public use."

It’s a global trend but more pronounced in South Korea, says Tomi Ahonen, a communications consultant and the co-author of a new book, Digital Korea. "Korean young adults put it so well. Email is simply outdated and not used between friends and colleagues. The only people you would use mobile email with are the older generation at work. Email? It’s so ’90s!"

According to the poll, mobile texting, instant messaging and the perception that email is "a lot of bother" are all contributing to the end of the email era. Other factors, say the report, are the difficulty of ascertaining if an email has arrived and the lack of immediate response. One young Korean said that texting felt like a ping-pong game and that email was more "like doing homework."

Similar bugbears are driving email use down globally under the twin gods of ease and instant gratification, Ahonen says. "This phenomenon is not limited to South Korea. We are even seeing the first signs of it in the US — a country that is a leader in email and wireless email, and the laggard in mobile.

"It started with the young abandoning email in favour of texting and since then the youth preference has spread and is now hitting the mainstream age groups."

Texting’s immediacy, privacy and personalisation, combined with the increasing trend to see the mobile as talismanic — a personal touchstone requiring immediate attention at every trill — means SMS is proving the most potent email slayer.

A typical email is read within 24 hours and responded to within 48 hours. A typical SMS is read within a minute and responded to within five, Ahonen says.

"The privacy aspect of SMS versus email is also important," the author says. "Email is very open: you might have others walking by the computer screen at an open office or in an internet cafe. The PC you use may be shared, such as those at a university or at the office, or the home family PC. And the email service itself is often monitored at work, for example."

In contrast, text messages are totally private, he argues. Kids don’t let parents snoop around their phones and two-thirds of married adults do not share their phones with their spouses.

"There still are many areas where email will prevail for a long time, even in South Korea — to send attachments in business, for example," Ahonen says. "But for simple person-to-person communications, the traffic and messaging is shifting clearly away from email to SMS, instant messaging and social networking services such as blogs and digital communities.

"In terms of communication speed and privacy, SMS text messaging totally trumps email. It’s past its peak."

Hi,

Rubs has had a torrid week. Mostly due to difficulties in handling people. Some have rigid points of view that make them inflexible and as a result they go into "everybody is entitled to my opinion," mode. In any case once the dust settles down, as it must, some will be not quite settled in their minds. "Dust thou art to dust returneth" to their pet hates, maybe what they hope for. But, life will go on.

We see this phenomenon within the body politic of our nation. In abundance. It’s a case of marketing one politician or a political party each day even if there is no election in sight. Marketing per se is alright provided there is much to show. Our people are not behind those of developed nations in any field. It’s the island mentality that takes over when one is domiciled here.

This is evident when a Sri Lankan works overseas. He is the conscientious busy bee. Enter the plane to return and the indiscipline takes over. Watch how they scurry to be the first in the immigration queue. Listen to the loud chatter and the shoving that goes on near the baggage carousal. Observe the chaos at the exit to enter vehicles.

It should be our fervent hope that the simple things are observed by people in an orderly and civil manner. Our neighbours and fellow human beings’ rights must be respected. Our environment should be preserved. Clarity and capacity of thought should be encouraged, nay insisted upon. We may yet have a chance to witness a better tomorrow.....hopefully in our time.

Ta Ra and see you next week,