Commentary/Rajeev Srinivasan

What is this: the season to be merry and inexplicable attacks of good sense breaking out all over?

I am not quite sure what is setting all this off, but suspicious occurrences of good sense have been popping up in surprising quarters all over America.

Maybe it is midwinter madness--after all, it is the ancient celebrations of the Winter Solstice, now coinciding with Christmas and Hanukkah and the neo-African Kwanza. And the beginning of uttarayanam, the auspicious time of the Hindu year, I suppose.

It isn't that bad, weather-wise, here in balmy San Francisco -- our winters are blessed with a little frost, intermittent rains and the greening of the otherwise bald hills on the periphery of the Bay. Which look quite bucolic, rather like green Ireland, with piebald, ruminating cows chewing gravely on precipitous slopes in pretty Niles Canyon and Sunol Valley and Almaden. Yes, our winters are beautiful.

But in the cold frozen reaches up North, such as in Minnesota or Wisconsin, blanketed as they are with snow and extreme cold, people suffer from serious mood swings. I understand alcoholism increases, and the incidence of household murders goes up.

Cabin fever, they call it: people going crazy partly from the overwhelming desire to get out of the claustrophobic indoors. I understand it has to do with the lack of light, too. Some reptilian, vestigial sense organ in our brains apparently gets alarmed at the short, cold days -- our bodies crave sunlight.

In any case, people do bizarre things in the winter. My adventurous friend Rajeevan Kattil, formerly of Minnesota, used to indulge in the odd sport of ice-fishing. This pastime involves driving your truck out to the middle of a frozen lake, cutting a hole in the ice with a power-saw, setting up a tent well-stocked with booze, and sticking a fishing line in the water. And waiting, because nothing much happens, for hours or even days. Sometimes, the whole thing, fisherman included, falls into the water. As I said, odd.

And so I was only a little amazed to hear about extraordinarily sensible things being said and done in two different quarters: one, the amiable fraternity of retired generals; the other, the eminently practical domain of Disney. The generals, sixty of them, got together, and they pondered. Now this is hardly a pacifist group: it includes several former NATO as well as Soviet commanders.

Many of them must have been in positions similar to the mad US General Bucky Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Dr Strangelove -- itching to blow the other side off the face of the planet. They pondered, and on December 4th, they issued a report. They said something incredible: that there was no need for nuclear weapons. That the nuclear powers should, as soon as possible, dismantle their arsenals.

I can imagine the consternation in certain circles in Washington, DC, Paris, London, Moscow, and Beijing. It is one thing for India to talk about the need for complete elimination of nuclear weapons. That can be dismissed as mere foolishness and obstinacy on the part of a busybody nation. But for their own generals to stand up and say so, now that is something else altogether. I suspect the generals's report will be turned over to the spin doctors and the damage control artists. Nothing substantive will come of it.

But this is a beginning. Arundhati Ghose, India's indefatigible ambassador to the CTBT negotiations, might even permit herself a smug, 'See, I told you so!' If only public opinion can be brought around!

The other incident was in its own way equally revolutionary. It has become an article of faith among US multinationals to believe that they cannot, at any cost, offend the People's Republic of China. Imagine 1.2 billion consumers drinking Coca-Cola or eating hamburgers, or buying computers or whatever, that is the mantra du jour.

So China can generally get away with murder by merely threatening to exclude American companies from some allegedly lucrative market space in their country. They have used this threat extensively: for example, by awarding a recent commercial aircraft order to Airbus pointedly to spite Boeing. Now Disney Co, despite the cuddly images of Disneyland and Goofy and Donald Duck, is hardly a pushover. They are one of the more successful and clever firms in the entertainment business. And they have not been known, generally, to let ethical dilemmas get in the way of their making money.

So when the Chinese government had a little tiff with Disney, and raised its usual threats, punters would have been foolish not to bet on Disney caving in. What is of interest is that Disney did not. In the case of the film Kundun about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Disney officials suggested that China should mind its own business, and not interfere in freedom of expression issues.

Kundun is a film directed by the respected film-maker, Martin Scorsese, whose previous films, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver have been huge critical and commercial successes. Kundun is a sympathetic portrayal of HH the 14th Dalai Lama as a child. It is currently being filmed in Morocco for release in 1997.

Of course, it is well known that China does not want its oppression of the Tibetans becoming public knowledge. They have taken a series of propaganda steps to avoid this undesirable eventuality. This includes bullying every foreign government that dares to offer HH the Dalai Lama any opportunity to speak.

I am sure it was a rude shock to the propaganda mavens of Beijing to be told off by Disney. They had held ransom the lucrative Chinese concession for Disney schlock -- apparently worth some large number of millions of dollars -- in exchange for Disney's dropping distribution of Kundun. Being somewhat sceptical of Disney, I believe they may yet come around to see the 'wisdom' of Beijing's ways.

Nevertheless, this is a famous moment for the forces of sensibility. A blow has been struck in the defence of the oppressed everywhere. And to think that it takes Mickey Mouse to stand up and assert itself when General Electric and even McDonald's have folded! Maybe, just maybe, Disney did their sums, and found out what others have through painful experience -- profits in China are usually illusory.

Anyway, all this puts me, notoriously a gloomy person, in a jolly good mood.

Ho, ho, ho, indeed!