The Republic of Dissent

Africa, money, and inequality

Jonathan Power has an article in the International Herald Tribune, one of the best articles I’ve read today. Its subject is Africa and it focuses on the amount of money from foreign direct investment from China and others that is flowing throughout the continent despite of its so-called poverty. Sugary excerpt:

As Chinese and Indian investors almost pour into Africa one wonders if their European and North American competitors have woken up to the fact that Rip Van Winkle is waking up in Africa.

The fact that a top Chinese banker brackets Africa with Asia is one more sign that the Asians themselves see what is happening in Africa as a repeat of what happened to them 20 and 30 years ago.

They can see the potential while Western commentators, their spurious words tasting of sour grapes, point an accusing finger at China in particular, accusing it of planning to rape Africa as the Europeans did a century ago.

This is not rape, by any stretch of the imagination. This is business opportunity. Africa in many countries is on the way to booming and Africa is looking for marriages of convenience with willing investors in railroads, toll roads, ports, motorbike and cement factories. Already there are over 900 Chinese companies working in Africa.

Power succeeds in demonstrating with his article is that Africa is not a doomed continent that is condemned to poverty and to underdevelopment. The key question remains however whether there will ever be a way to solve the inequality question by enabling more Africans to share the wealth of the continent. The main issue is that very few Africans and too many foreigners are benefiting from the resources of Africa and this fact makes them value stability above everything else instead of addressing more urgent matters through means that may cause instability in the short run, but then lead to more prosperity for all Africans.

Foreign policy and celebrities

The always-entertaining Gideon Rachman makes some acute observations on the involvement of Celebrities, particularly Bono, in foreign policy:

Something about this mix of glitter and public policy makes me uncomfortable – and apparently I am not alone. When I suggested recently on my FT blog that Bono was a “grandstanding poseur”, I was astonished by the gleeful vitriol I unleashed in response. One commenter called the Irish anti-poverty campaigner a “preening narcissist”; another castigated “the absurd legal case he brought to reclaim a hat”; others pointed to the use of Dutch tax shelters by his band, U2; another accused him of being “a yobbo teaching PhDs how to do their jobs”.

After a while, I became a little alarmed – even ashamed. Bono and other celebrity campaigners may be irritating, but are they really that bad? Would it actually be better if they devoted themselves to more traditional rock-star pastimes such as smashing up hotel rooms and choking on their own vomit? As one of Bono’s sidekicks pointed out to me, in a pained e-mail, the star has “helped bring about debt cancellation of $70bn for African countries” and raised money for antimalarial bed-nets and drugs to combat HIV.

[…]  Let Bono into your life and you can be sure to be garlanded with gush. Ignore him and he can turn nasty. At the most recent Group of Eight leading industrialised nations summit, the rock star secured meetings with the US president, the German chancellor and the French president. But when Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, said he was too busy to meet him, Bono snarled that it was Mr Harper who had “blocked progress” on aid for Africa. A chastened prime minister promised to find time in his diary for a meeting.

The problem isn’t that celebrities are getting involved in foreign policy, but rather that the way foreign policy is conducted and the importance of image on the international scene. After all, Bono is just using what others as influential, but less famous have used to gain access and to try to influence political leaders. The issue therefore is not Bono or other celebrities, but policy makers, the public, and the system. After all, if only international conflicts and issues only gain the world’s attention when they become a cause célèbre, then what does it say about foreign policy itself and the values of our time. Bono is trying and he may not go overboard in his attempt to make a difference and that is understandable because he is an amateur, but again that is at the core of the problem, which is that amateurism is acceptable in a complicated field as foreign policy if it provides good feelings and great images.

Getting to know Christine Lagarde

I have to admit that I don't know what to make of Christine Lagarde, France's new Finance Minister. But I think that she's interesting , but again, all French who know America  very well are generally fascinating. I wonder how successful or rather how free to do her job, she is going to be given the fact that in France, economics is general about something else and the Finance Minister has to defer to the Prime Minister , in this case to the President given the fact that only Sarkozy matters, on pretty much everything.

Dismissing Reason

“A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!”

Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signi-fies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.

Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.” Theodore Dalrymple, “What the New Atheists don’t see.”

Nu feminism

Mark Hooper wonders where have all the feminists gone in the Guardian Entertainment Blog. He makes the following point, which leaves me pensive because I wonder whether he is missing the point or just pointing out the obvious:

What message are these icons [Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse] sending out to their young female fans? That without the presence and guiding hand of a male figure, they descend into self-abuse, self-harm and bitching.

Nu feminism is a product of its time; aimless and without much substance beneath the bluster and pull-quotes. At the launch last week of Riot Grrrl, compilation of writings on the politicised, feminist bands of the 1990s including Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear, it occurred to me that something vital has been lost along with all that kicking and screaming.

The supposedly independent feminist icons of today are a bit of a mess without their men, whereas the incarnation of 15 years ago really did have something to shout about. The Riot Grrrls stole the cliches of rock posturing from men. At the time, I thought they were welcome to them. But now as I watch Winehouse accept her time honoured position of the R'n'B victim and Allen tying herself up in knots, I can't help thinking we need a new Kathleen Hanna.

Temper and the presumption of competence

The Economist’s Paris Bureau Chief has an interesting take on Sarkozy’s temper, which American audience got a glimpse of in a 60 minutes interview last Sunday:

Given Mr Sarkozy's masterful control of political communication, it is always surprising to see him lose control of his temper. The first time I got to see this up close was on a trip to Brussels for an interior ministers meeting in 2004, when I found myself at one point stuck in a lift with him and two aides. They had forgotten to bring a document from Paris, he was furious, and yelled at them while they stood there like two schoolboys sent into detention by the headmaster. At the time, I was surprised, not just that he treated his advisors this way, but that he did so in front of a journalist.

Over time, though, I've come to see this as the flipside of a fiery and fearless character. Just two days before CBS broadcast his interview walk-out, Mr Sarkozy paid an unexpected visit to hostile SNCF maintenance workers in the Paris region, not long after a strike against pension reform that brought chaos to commuters. With his arms crossed, and coat collar turned up against the chill, he marched straight up to this angry group, and took them on. As they harrangued him and threatened fresh strikes, he punched back. The street would not win, he said; everybody had to work longer to pay for pensions in the future.

In other words, Nicolas Sarkozy is a president who speaks his mind, sometimes too readily. Oh and by the way, the two aides he yelled at that time in the lift are now senior members of his team at the Elysée Palace.

I agree the larger point that Sarkozy’s temper is a part of the package, which the press thinks and more importantly, the French believe will do France some good. However, I think that the bigger point is that Sarkozy gets away with having a temper for two reasons. The first one is that he is likable and tries very hard to charm the press by getting sometimes uncomfortably close to them. The second reason is that he enjoys what I like to call the presumption of competence, which means that it is assumed that he is very good at what he does and that he will make a good president. Once that presumption of competence is shattered, my guess is that his temper will become less acceptable and that instead of seeing him as a superhero with a weakness, the press will see as just another irritable politician with a huge ego.

Coetzee and Roth

William Skidelsky compares in an article in Prospect Philip Roth and J.M. Coetzee. He finds that there are as many differences and similarities between them. Sugary excerpt:

Both Roth and Coetzee guard their personal lives closely, but the available evidence suggests that their personalities match their writing styles. Roth is garrulous and opinionated, something of a stand-up performer. Coeztee is famously taciturn. At the University of Cape Town, where he taught for many years, he was known as someone you didn't want to run into in the corridor. There are rumours of dinner parties at which he failed to utter a single word. It is tempting to imagine Roth and Coetzee having dinner together. Roth, you feel, would keep up a steady flow of impersonations, rants and dirty jokes. Coetzee, a thin smile on his lips, would respond mostly with polite nods—just occasionally breaking his silence to proffer some gnomic comment.
Yet we shouldn't make too much of the stylistic contrast between Roth and Coetzee. For in their respective verbal modes—manic talkativeness on the one hand, obdurate silence on the other—it is possible to see a certain likeness of disposition, a similar refusal to play by the rules. Most people, in their writing no less than in their conversation, inhabit a centre ground—otherwise known as manners or tact—between saying too much and saying too little. Linguistically, Roth and Coetzee inhabit the extremes. Neither has ever said what is expected of him. In Roth's case, this has frequently provoked scandal. When his early short stories, portraying the Jewish world of his New Jersey childhood in less than glowing terms, started to appear in the late 1950s, the elders of his community were outraged, and publicly took him to task. Portnoy's Complaint (1969), with its scenes of juvenile masturbation, caused outrage on a much larger scale. But in its own subtle way, Coetzee's reticence can be just as controversial. After he emerged as one of South Africa's foremost novelists in the 1970s, many expected him to speak out against apartheid—or at least denounce it in his work. Instead, he largely avoided the subject, before going on to excoriate post-apartheid South Africa in his 1999 novel Disgrace (his second Booker winner). Likewise, when he was awarded the Nobel prize in 2003, Coetzee used his acceptance lecture not to offer the customary grand statement about his art, or a Harold Pinter-style political tirade, but to unveil a short story "narrated" by Robinson Crusoe.

I am more familiar with Coetzee’s work than I am with Roth’s work. However, my limited knowledge of their work leads me to make the following simplistic assertions: it is impossible to read Philip Roth and not to feel that he is truly an American writer in the sense that in whatever language you read his work, you cannot escape his Americanness. J.M. Coetzee is more of an international writer in the sense that you don’t read him to learn about South Africa, about Apartheid, about race or whatever else, you read him to learn about guilt, sex, and other human emotions. The one thing that I will say that Roth and Coetzee have in common is the masculinity of their universe and I don’t use masculinity in a pejorative sense because I happen to like it since it doesn’t simplify it by reducing it to testosterone and manliness. What I mean is that in the world of the Fictions of Roth and Coetzee, men are masters of their domain and remain seductive no matter how flawed they are in the sense that it is difficult for the reader not to side with them while knowing that they wouldn’t be at their place.

Believing Hawkish France on Iran

Oliver Kamm finds France to be more credible than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran:

Who is the more reliable source? The Nobel peace laureate or the hawkish right-wing French government? On a balance of probability, the answer is obvious. It has to be the French government.

[…] The IAEA under Hans Blix had failed comprehensively to grasp how far advanced had been Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons programme. At the start of the Gulf War, Iraq had been two or three years away from producing enriched uranium. The IAEA belatedly found out after the reversal of Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, when the German government provided missing information about Saddam's centrifuge programme. We know that Iran acquired centrifuge designs in the mid-1990s, having bought them from the rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who in turn had stolen them from a European consortium.

I am not surprised that Kamm finds the French to be credible when they are hawkish because the mixture of testosterone and Sarkozyst toughness is just virile enough to appeal to him. However, by focusing on credibility, Kamm ducks the issue, which is whether, assuming that France and he are right, all of this talk, which almost seems to welcome a confrontation with Iran, helps. In other words, the issue is not whether Iran is dangerous or not, but anything short of war will deal with the danger because tough talk, disputes about how far along Iran nuclear power matter only if there is  a consensus that the use of force is not only unavoidable, but necessary. In other words, Podhoretzism and diplomacy don’t go together.

Making the political spouse invisible

Anne Applebaum makes the argument in her column that America should follow the example of France and allow political spouses to disappear:

Admittedly, the divorce was one step too far. But right up until the French first couple announced their permanent separation, I was rooting like mad for Cécilia Sarkozy. At last, a prominent wife of a prominent politician who did not pretend to be totally absorbed by her husband's career! During the few months since her husband became the French president, Mme. Sarkozy did not entertain, did not give interviews, did not show up for lunch with George W. Bush and did not even live at the Elysee Palace (the French equivalent of the White House). She certainly did not craft policies. "As far as nominations and decisions go, I keep the door of my office closed," she declared, post-divorce announcement, last week.

See no politics, hear no politics and above all speak no politics -- and whatever else she was doing, she didn't keep the media informed, at least not on purpose. Yet her silence didn't prevent her husband's election, perhaps because most of her countrymen wholeheartedly approve. The vast majority of the French -- 89 percent, according to one poll-- think that their president's marriage is none of their business.

Increasingly, much of the rest of the Western world feels the same way. The husband of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, grants no interviews, makes no public appearances and teaches chemistry at a Berlin university, just as he's always done. Though she had some unfortunate tangles with the press, Cherie Booth, otherwise known as Mrs. Tony Blair, did go on practicing law while her husband was prime minister of Britain. And here I declare a personal interest: Though I am married to a Polish parliamentarian, I played no part whatsoever in his recent election campaign. Nor did anyone expect me to. In fact, whenever I do appear at Polish political events, people seem mildly surprised to see me -- which is how it should be.

America is in so many ways a traditional country. Americans want its president to be at least to able to present the image of the perfect family because it’s reassuring and makes it possible for  people to still lure themselves into thinking that leaders are good spouses and good heads of a family and these facts means that they will make good politicians. All of these ideas are part of a myth, which isn’t grounded in reality, which is precisely the reason why it will be very difficult to change things. But again, America loves myths because it enables it to remain an optimist and idealist country.

The right to say merde to society's expectations

“If I want to write about Jewish people, or paedophiles or Patagonians or witches in 12th-century Finland, then I will do so, despite being "authentically" none of these things. I also give notice that if I choose, I intend to imagine what your muddled writer quaintly terms "real people" living in "real communities". My work may convince or it may not. However, I will not accept that I have any a priori responsibility to anyone - white, black or brown, let alone any "community" - to represent them in any particular way.

If Monica Ali isn't brown enough or working-class enough or Sylheti enough for you, then, well, that's your weird little identity-political screw-up. Presumably she's not white enough for someone else. I'm sick of all this cant about cultural authenticity, and sick of the duty (imposed only on "minority" writers) to represent in some quasi-political fashion. Art isn't about promoting social cohesion, or cementing community relations. It's about telling the truth as you see it, even if it annoys or offends some people. That's called freedom of expression, and last time I checked we all thought it was quite a good idea.” Hari Kunzru. (Hat tip: The Elegant Variation.)

Another French American

The American press is obsessed with finding reasons to believe that Sarkozysm is Americanization and to claim the key members of the French government as American. A good example of this trend is Amity Shlaes’s article on the French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde whom Roger Cohen called American in the International Herald Tribune. Shlaes compares inappropriately Lagarde with Cecilia Sarkozy and asserts that she is American in almost every way. Sugary excerpt:

Ms. Lagarde's charm is that she focuses on the smaller challenges, the micro issues of enterprise. She addresses those specific aspects of nations' relative competitiveness that executives themselves talk about in the first-class lounge — at least when they aren't checking for updates on Cecilia.

[...] Ms. Lagarde is cutting marginal taxes even as the U.S. seems intent on raising them. By proposing a ban on payroll taxes on overtime, Ms. Lagarde is ensuring that the more a worker works, the more he gains, just as Mr. Sarkozy promised in his campaign. Ms. Lagarde reckons that this step alone will add 0.3% to France's annual growth.

Finally, the Sarkozy administration is lowering the share of citizens' total income that can go to income taxes to 50% or less, from 60%. This puts France more in line with Germany. And it is another example of the French moving in the opposite direction of the Americans.

Ms. Lagarde is also demanding that English be used more as the language of business. After Mr. Sarkozy's ascent, France finally ratified the dreaded London Protocol, which ends a requirement that all patents be translated into French. She utters the syllables "Wal-Mart" without grimace, a sight that is as tantalizing to an investment banker as Britney at work is to a 14-year-old.

[…] Her relatively pro-entrepreneurial stance means she will be able to take advantage of pent-up demand to do business in France. After all, many companies have regretfully stayed away as long as a quarter of a century, ever since Francois Mitterrand laid out his crazy first agenda, nationalizing financial institutions and pushing through higher wages. All France need do is show it is serious to bring them back. And the person who understands that isn't Cecilia, but Christine.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say for it seems that these days that France is only worth anything if it resembles America or rather inspires to resemble America. There is no doubt that America is a great country, it is in my opinion the best country for the dreamers and the ambitions. Nevertheless, I think that the more globalized the world becomes, the more important it is that countries retain their own characteristics and that societies are allowed to be different. What bothers me is this increasing conventional idea that Americanization is the best and only way for a country to prosper. America is an exceptional nation . I don’t think that every country can be America even though they are all right to aspire to be American-like and to love American idealism.

Immigration, family, and blood

Christopher Caldwell makes the following point of France’s new immigration, which takes the voluntary steps of tying immigration, citizenship, with DNA:

The sin of the new French immigration law, in the eyes of its opponents, is that it accepts the western concept of family as it is popularly understood. That concept is a biological one (provided we include adoptive parentage). DNA is just a different, and more scientific, language for talking about these close bonds. The government recognises biological parentage as equal in legitimacy to official parentage – and it withholds that legitimacy from newer forms of intimacy that get called “family”. This the core of the French controversy. New ideas about family are masquerading as time-honoured ideas about human rights.

This government’s idea of family is old and clannish. It rests on folk wisdom about how blood is thicker than water. The catch is, so does the idea that you have a right to live in a given country just because your relations do. If the state accords no particular status to biological parents, then that right becomes illogical – a quaint piece of posturing. The DNA provisions in France’s new law are disingenuous and needlessly provocative. But you cannot oppose them on familial grounds without calling into question the grounds on which family reunification immigration is established as a “right” in the first place.

Caldwell almost gets it because blood ties has really nothing to do with immigration, but family ties do because at the core of the concept of the family is the transmission not of genes but of certain values. At the heart of the matter of the French controversial law are French residency and citizenship and the desire to make them about both merit and hereditary. Since there is no consensus on French identity, conservatives and traditionalists are making the question of avoiding bad seeds and their toxic descendants part of French society. If it were possible to define “Frenchness” in the twentieth century, all that the French government would have to do is to say to its would-be immigrants that to be French or to live in France, they have to this, this, and that. America, although this too is changing, doesn’t have the same issue for to be an America means in general to be willing to work hard and to do everything to accomplish the American dream. One has to look at Schwarzenegger to understand this point and to realize that he became at an American, by working hard at it and that if there had been a requirement to speak English without an accent and without making any mistakes, he would still be in Austria.

Feminism and Pop

Zenobia of Mind the Gap rebuts Geri Halliwell’s (of the Spice Girls) mindless attack on feminism:

My main issue, though, is with the Guardian. Geri said some pretty bad stuff in that interview. Most obviously, she used "lesbianism" in a pejorative sense. She also did that irritating "let's disown the bra-burning" thing. Now, I've seen footage of that shit, and I think there was nothing wrong with it, in fact it was pretty damn great. But no digressions now. She also thinks feminism would emasculate men, and that we need to reclaim our femininity. Of course, I mean, she's Geri Halliwell. But even cutting her some slack, those are all far, far worse things to say than "Gee, I'm not really sure I'm a feminist, really...". Also, the Guardian did the same thing with Carmen Electra a while ago. And feminism isn't even remotely part of her job description. It's cool if she wants to be a feminist, but I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it if she isn't.
It's important not to be afraid of the word, of course, and to use it and be proud of the history behind it. But not everyone wants to identify as feminist, quite often for very good reasons of their own. And most of those who aren't feminist, or choose not to self-apply the word, are still contributing plenty to society, and good enough for them. I don't think Missy Elliott is remotely a feminist, but she's doing a lot more for the cause just through being excellent at what she does than a whole truckload full of Pinks, Pipettes and Dittos.

Zenobia puts her finger on the problem with feminism, which is that it is too vague, too narrow, too strict, or too empty depending on your perspective. My critique of feminism focuses on its relevance and on the fact that it doesn’t mean it anything anymore for there is a disconnection between thought, reality, and action. Feminism is like rap. At the beginning, its aim was noble, but it has become superseded by glamour and pop. It is for that reason it is popular either to diss it or to embrace it without deep thoughts because what matters is its history and images and how hip they are perceived to be at the time. Feminism just like socialism (I’m not saying that the two are the same) is dead and t true believers are trying to keep it alive through necromancy. Unfortunately, the trouble with necromancy is that it doesn’t deal with le réel, with the real, it deals with the past and the sacred. Feminism is passé. Those who admire de Beauvoir and the others have to have the courage to admit it and to imagine something else, something with teeth that a pop singer cannot mindlessly and easily criticize and be taken seriously.

Ze Interview

Here is most of the now famous or infamous Sarko interview. I had the strong urge to scream at Lesley Stahl while I was watching it to remind her of the obvious, that is that Sarkozy isn't Brad Pitt and that she would treat an American politician who had the ambition to change America so casually and almost dismissively as to say that only his person matters and that FRANCE doesn't.

America, Europe, and History

“The real rupture between the American perspective and the European one lies deep in their political histories.

The American Declaration of Independence, which is embedded in the consciousness of every school child in the US, begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

All men are created equal, and are all endowed with unalienable rights. The 18th-century concept of "natural rights", which makes political freedom the birthright of every human being wherever he resides, is central to America's view of the world.

US citizens do not get their right to be free by courtesy of the government: their government exists by virtue of acknowledging the citizen's unalienable right to liberty. Americans have always been obliged, long before George Bush, to uphold the rule that the only legitimate government is one that rules with the consent of a free people.

Naive? Inconsistent with America's own patchy history of selective support for dictatorship? You bet.

But the note of purity is still there: it is what Americans believe themselves to stand for and why they can rise to the occasion of a Kosovo while cynical, defeatist Europe dithers. The US never experienced the disillusionments of the European 19th century when the French Revolution turned into the Terror and the great hope of universal human liberty subsided into imperial decay.

There is, as well, a singular difference between the peoples of Europe and America: the population of the US consists of those who are themselves, or who are descended from, people who chose to go there. (With the exception of the African slaves and their descendants who have been the most notable outcasts from the American dream.) Perhaps that puts a peculiar value on self-determination, and a misguided belief in its power.

It may be true that Americans fail to understand how different they are from most people in the world.” Janet Dailey, “Cameron should reassess America's 'idealism'.”

Super-Sarko and journalism

Like all Red Sox fans, I was on another planet this weekend. Nevertheless, I took the time to watch the interview of Sarkozy on Sixty Minutes. It was difficult to resist the urge to watch it for the buildup was spectacular for it was known that at the end, Sarkozy was going to walk out  of the interview. I therefore expected sparks and to know more him and his policies, but I was disappointed when I saw that Sixty minutes was treating Sarkozy not like a politician, but as the next superstar that was going again to revolutionize France. For these reasons, the reporting was shallow and  simplistic and it was easy to see that Lesley Stahl, the journalist, was treating Sarkozy like a Pop Star not like the head of State for she seems to be more interested in him than in  France and in Sarkozysm.

So what did I make of the stormy walk-out? Not much. What bothered me was the fact that Sarko was insulting his press secretary in front of the cameras and that he could show restraint. But again, restraint and Sarkozy don’t go together and the French have decided with the election of Sarkozy that they want action even if it comes at the costs of protocol and of decorum.

However, the most important thing about the Sixty Minutes piece was the complicity that Sarkozy tried to create with the journalist by for example taking her note pad. To me, that poses the question of the relationship or rather of the distance that should be between journalists and politicians. In France, it is known and even accepted that Sarkozy like to have close relationships with political journalists, that he calls them by their first names and even uses “tu” instead of “vous” with them. The problem is that this lack of distance makes critical reporting difficult. Sarkozy takes criticism as a personal attack. Journalists whom he treats as personal friends know that by asking tough questions not on his personal life (which is hypocritical for they all try to find a reason to violate this French rule when the story is juicy) but on his policies, that they will be chastise. Journalists know that they will to pay a steep price by losing both access, and the complicity with the King of France, which is necessary to get important stories.

At the end of everything, I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth. After if not even a serious new magazine such Sixty minutes can’t do a deep and serious piece on Sarkozy, then we are condemned to content ourselves with images and other sweeties, which have nothing to do with substance. If Sarkozysm is indeed a revolution, shouldn’t the focus of news coverage be on its consequences instead of obsessing with the image of the revolutionary?

The sixties and the necessity for absolution

“Bolshevism and the Russian revolution may have disintegrated in ruins but the generation that raised its toast in the direction of the Kremlin 40 years ago has triumphed. Leninism has been defeated almost everywhere in the world, but the postwar generation of baby boomers who went so far left in the 1960s now control this country’s leading institutions. Their taste for totalitarian simplicities and weakness for millenarian terrors has been digested into modern feminism, environmentalism and global warming. Many remain absolutely unrepentant about their past because they have been so successful in the present (one of the sweeter fruits of victory is never having to apologise).

While Günther Grass, the German author, is excoriated for having joined the Waffen SS at 17, Alan Johnson, the health secretary, is benignly patted on the back for admitting that he was once ideologically aligned to the Communist party of Great Britain. While the Daily Mail is routinely vilified for its prewar support for the Nazis, The Guardian’s role in cheer-leading for a succession of Marxist tyrants from Mao and Pol Pot to Cas-tro and Mugabe is rarely questioned.

Joschka Fischer – former German foreign minister and vice-chancellor – may have apologised for his actions when he was a member of the “proletarian union for terror and destruction” in Germany, but his friend Daniel Cohn-Bendit – co-president of the Green group in the European parliament – has been less forthcoming about his links with Hans-Joachim Klein, the Baader-Meinhof terrorist.

[…] For every one of those randomly chosen names 10m more members of the same generation in Europe and America share an equal shame. We were all deluded. We were all mistaken. We were all – to varying degrees – off or out of our heads. We owe the world an apology and some acts of contrition. The 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution might be a good moment to make a start.” The Sunday Times, “I was stupid too-but at least, I admit it comrade.”

New wave politics and bling-bling

I just read an article in the Daily Telegraph on Nicolas Sarkozy and his bling bling revolution. It talks about the fact that Sarkozy is the symbol of a new French generation who not only likes wealth, but also likes to show it as rappers do in their music videos to show that they are self-made millionaires. Sugary excerpt:

"Initiated by new Russian and Chinese millionaires, it's now spreading to the street because it breaks with the current depression. People want to identify with uninhibited success," said Dominique Cuvillier, whose book Future of Fashion analyses such new social trends. "Nicolas Sarkozy symbolises this generation where people want to overdo it."

Mr Sarkozy is known to spend tens of thousands of pounds on large Breguét, Breitling and Rolex watches, which he ostentatiously wears over his shirt cuffs. A rap song has even been composed about his watch obsession.

He spectacularly broke with French presidential tradition just after the election by flying off in a billionaire friend's private jet for a short holiday on his huge yacht off Malta. He is said to have taken great pleasure showing off his Rolex to Socialists visitors to the Elysée while smoking a cigar, asking them to guess how much it cost. The discreet Gauche Caviar (Champagne Left) of former premiers has now given way to Mr Sarkozy's showy Droite Bling-Bling (Bling Right), according to Mariane magazine.

Bling is reaching Mr Sarkozy's cabinet too. Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, suggested that politicians mug up on the latest rap lyrics, while presenting a £10 billion tax cut package in July that the Left described as a "gift to the rich".

I don’t object to bling-bling in politics. What I object is the idea that wealth is everything and that the people who can afford bling-bling are better than the ones who cannot. The motto of France is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, equality, and Fraternity). One of my problems with Sarkozysm is that the emphasis is not only placed on liberté, but that égalité almost becomes a taboo because it almost implies sacrifices, which become sacrilegious because they are seen as punishing the best people that is the people who work more and thus have more. I am a strong believer in free market and in the Thatcherite idea that as many members of a society need to become owners. However, I also know that a society, which glorifies wealth is a society which runs the risk of becoming one without values and culture because everything becomes a commodity since what matters is what and how much can buy. Can we really argue that the best societies are the ones who consume the most and which believe that wealth is the most important indication of an individual’s worth?

Atheism as an identity

Dolan Cummings makes a good point about the desire of some atheists to “religionize” Atheism by establishing as an identity:

Of course, the resurgence of interest in atheism is a reaction to the perceived rise of religion, whether in the form of Islamic fundamentalism or US-style Christian conservatism. But in taking their cue from resurgent religions, atheists also adopt something of their inward-looking focus. From attempts to popularise the term ‘bright’ as a positive identity to calls for atheists to be included on the roster of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’, it seems that some want to establish atheism as an alternative, non-religious camp for people to belong to. But atheism itself ought to be the least interesting thing about atheists, who surely have various and often conflicting beliefs and passions of their own.

[…] The desire to establish atheism as an alternative identity is ultimately conservative. Rather than joining together with others who share a positive vision of the future, self-styled atheists define themselves against an external threat. Worse, it is no longer the conservatism of religion that worries non-believers, but its radicalism, its seemingly irrational passion. Where once religion was disdained as ‘the opium of the people’, today it is seen as more akin to the alcopop of the people: a dangerous and toxic influence that makes people behave in irrational ways.

Atheism loses its pertinence when it becomes religionlike and cheap. The point of saying No to religion is to remain faithful to the idea that it isn’t just the beliefs that are problematic, but the worshipping.

A classic

This video is an excerpt of Les 400 Coups (400 Blows) one of the best films from François Truffaut. One makes this excerpt striking is how estrange the adults are from the children and that it seems that the distance between them seems unabridgeable.

Sarkozysm, trivialities, and french particularities

The Economist’s Paris Bureau Chief has a short and funny post on the French Education Minister to deal with the most important issue of our times: the lightening to the weight of the backpacks of French students:

AT LAST, a French education minister has decided to take on the weightiest of all scholarly matters: the absurdly overloaded backpacks that French pupils stagger off to school under each day. Xavier Darcos today set about demonstrating, with scales to hand, how unweidly, and unhealthy, these have now become. […] Mr Darcos has all sorts of good ideas for improving matters. He has launched a competition to design a lighter empty backpack: most of the models sold in stores in France are heavy even without anything in them, since they have to be reinforced in order to cope with the quantity of stuff put in them. He also wants schools to pay more attention to ordering lighter text books and thinner note-books, and is thinking about ways of using e-books more in schools.

And I thought naively that Sarkozy was revolutionizing France by changing water into wine and that his ministers were so anti-socialist and free market advocates that their ultimate goal was to Americanize France. Unless all of the Sarkozy enthusiasts are just that enthusiasts who don’t realize that he isn’t a prophet, but simply a politician who has to accept some of the particularities of his fellow citizens including their belief that government can be a force for good.

Praising paternalism

“[…] first, in a a democracy of equal citizens it is important to see to it that the conditions are in place for people to participate as equals; second, no-one has any legitimate interest in the protection of hate speech, as such.* If particular groups are so stigmatized and marginalized because of hate-speech messages that their members cannot get their voices heard in the public sphere (they may speak, but most people will not listen to people like them) then the freedom and equality of citizens is undermined, and the formal right that those people have to legal, civil and political equality is of lesser value than the formally similar rights of others. Far from liberty being endangered by hate-speech legislation it may—and whether it is depends very much on the specific social and historical circumstances—ensure that many people continue to enjoy effective liberty. […] Even if the elimination of bigotry were not a legitimate part of public policy, the elimination of its public expression might well be, for the reasons having to do with the freedom and equality of citizens I just mentioned. But, of course, the elimination of bigotry is an important and legitimate part of at least one area of public policy: the education system.” Chris Berthram, “The elimination of bigotry is a perfectly legitimate aim of government.”

Transcending religion

Although I don't believe in revolutions, I believe in rebellions because I think that they are a way of showing that life in spite of its absurdity is worth fighting for. Rebellion is always about Being, about what one is or rather what one refuses to be.  Nietzsche is still necessary, relevant precisely because his philosphy shows that the religious, the sacred can crush the human and that it is essential to overcome it, to transcend it. The pronouncement of God's death is vital because it reminds us that we are alone and that Godliness is just humaness refusing to accept its thirst for and its will to power.

From the age of reason to the age of derision

Josie Appleton has on Spiked one of the best articles I’ve read this week. It is about the use of what she calls the “offense card” to stop debates, which is about the use of the pretext that others are vile and offensive to attack the person to win an argument instead of debating their viewpoint. Sugary excerpt:

Discussions become a case of two sides competing to present themselves as the victim. This is all heat and no light: there is little revealed in the exchange, and indeed it is often easy to forget why people are arguing in the first place. It is also unnecessarily fractious, obstructing the possibility of a genuine dialogue, where discussants could learn from each other and clarify their differences.

[…]Prior to the epidemic of phobias, opinions – even objectionable ones – were described as ‘isms’ (as in racism, sexism), which could be engaged with and argued against. If you did not agree with somebody’s views, you had to explain why, and illustrate their errors. Accusing critics of ‘hate’ or ‘phobia’ suggests that they do not have ideas worthy of recognition, only beastly black bile. Discussion would be like talking spider anatomy with an arachnophobe. They don’t need conversation: they need treatment!

The focus on crying ‘hate speech’ means that lobby groups become organs for complaint. Their role is less to celebrate their own cause, than to present themselves as the victims of their opponents. Muslim organisations now spend very little time talking about the virtues of Islam, or offering moral guidance for a good Muslim life: instead, many have dedicated themselves to unearthing Islamophobia in every nook and cranny, analysing TV coverage and the subtexts of newspaper reports.

I agree with Appleton’s main point on hate speech and on the fact that increasingly in democratic and modern societies, it is becoming impossible to have a debate on any subject. Nowadays, people don’t know how to talk to each other, how to engage in a civil discussion without shouting and badgering the other by forcing her/him into submission and beating her/his brain out. With modernity and with the popular notion that all issues have been settled and that old consensus, which took human beings from the dark ages to Enlightenment, societies have forgotten that a debate isn’t a war. Today, having a debate means to fight an enemy, who needs to be annihilated, when it needs to be again a process where the people who argue that they are on the side of righteousness or of reason have the responsibility and even the obligation to persuade, to convince. Intellectual laziness is leading people to resort to emotions to avoid doing the hard work of thinking through an issue and of making arguments that would take discussions from the “You are mean and evil” to the “I will prove you wrong.” We like in a world full of presumptions, assumptions, and received ideas because the pretext that history has ended has been used as an excuse to stop thinking, to stop listening and to stop debating since everything has not been said already and all debates have been settled.

I have always found the idea of hate speech problematic because speech is supposed to be free and because once you put the epithet “hate” in front of it, you are implicitly saying that it isn't free unless it expresses a lovely and beautiful sentiment and that there is only place for love in the world. The inability of those who defend great causes to defend them without becoming mindless and fierce zealots frightens me. These noble “fighters” almost always end up convinced that their adversaries are not only wrong, but evil, which means that they cannot change and that for that reason, debate is useless. Modern societies for all of its Enlightenment values and for its secularism have been evangelized in the sense that everything has becoming sacred. For  that reason, debate is blasphemy and people who go against the norms are treated as sinners who ought to be excommunicated. Thus, the modern world is a sect where all questions become challenges to the sacred. Discussion is impossible because it is sinful to question the sacred and to take the viewpoint of the unbelievers and  the sinners seriously by debating rationally with them. Our time is one where the righteous are always victims and saints or the mighty and strong believers in the fact that might makes right and unchallenged authority.

This sad reality takes me back to André Glucksmann’s argument that the world is being “somalized” and I wonder whether it is possible to stop this Somalization if the only tools at the disposal of those fighting it are force and moral outrage. Voltaire, no not Voltaire for I don’t like him. Camus didn’t become Camus by just dismissing Nazism and Fascism as evil and by refusing to take on Nazis and their absurd absolutisms. Camus became Camus because he took on the challenge to think in an age where thought was believed to lead only to alienation and nihilism. He showed with the force of his arguments that ethics matter and that even if God doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean that nothing is forbidden. At the end, the challenge of our time isn’t just survival and Somalization. The challenge of our time is never to forget that to remain modern, moral and rational, our societies must never renounce debate and accept divinization to run away from its duty to perpetually justify its principles and its actions. Thus, they should welcome challenges because they give it the opportunity to convince. What is sad and dangerous is that today, most people have accepted to become little Gods or rather semi-Gods to be able to just issue condemnations, fatwas, without judgments, without trials, without debate.

Pacifism and Over-simplifications

Roger Cohen in his column writes:

Remember the Wehrmacht? It was a formidable fighting force. The modern German army, the Bundeswehr, is also very effective. Thing is, it is reluctant to fight or even place itself in danger.

[…] Some of this counterinsurgency toll is the work of U.S. and other special forces in the separate American-run Operation Enduring Freedom — the more secret of the Afghan campaigns. Still, NATO is at war here.

That, however, is a fact Europeans are reluctant to accept, just as the link between slaughter in Madrid, London or Amsterdam and the Afghan-Pakistani terror nexus seems unconvincing to many Europeans floating on an Iraq-comforted wave of moral smugness.

[…]  One German retort I’ve heard is that it’s no good having the United States demand that its allies fight and die in southern Afghanistan when Washington refuses debate over the role of its pampered friend, Pakistan, in the violence.

That’s a fair point. Still, it’s time to bring on the Bundesmacht and past time for continental Europe to overcome its pacifist mirage and accept that these are dangerous times demanding serious defense budgets and sacrifice.

Well, what else is there to say after reading that? The problem with Cohen is again that one gets the impression that history is destiny and that there is fundamentally wrong with Europe because it has been so many times on the wrong sides of history. I think that it is shameful always to come back to World War II when one needs to slam the Germans and the Europeans for what is perceived to be at best pacifism and at worst cowardice. I believe that it is impossible to dissociate Afghanistan from Iraq and then not to focus on the central issue, which is one of American leadership. Europeans didn’t become Europeans yesterday, and yet the world didn’t come explode and the west managed more or less well to stay united. To me, the issue is therefore not what not the Europeans are not doing in Afghanistan, but why the Americans are unable to use Nato effectively in that region of the world and to lead. Maybe the proper answer to the Afghanistan situation is that in spite of Merkel and of the Sarkozy’s revolution, Europeans don’t trust the American’s leadership because there is a competence crisis. My guess is that for all the glamorous images of the reconciliation between American and Old Europe, things will remain at a stalemate until the next US administration.

Malthusianism is back with a vengeance!

“The world's population is now 6.7 billion, roughly double what it was when I was born. If I live to be in my mid-eighties, then it will have trebled in my lifetime.

[…] We seem to have given up on population control, and all sorts of explanations are offered for the surrender. Some say Indira Gandhi gave it all a bad name, by her demented plan to sterilise Indian men with the lure of a transistor radio.

[…] As for the Left, they dislike suggestions of population control because they seem to smack of colonialism and imperialism and telling the Third World what to do; and so we have reached the absurd position in which humanity bleats about the destruction of the environment, and yet there is not a peep in any communiqué from any summit of the EU, G8 or UN about the population growth that is causing that destruction.

The debate is surely now unavoidable. Look at food prices, driven ever higher by population growth in India and China. Look at the insatiable Chinese desire for meat, which has pushed the cost of feed so high that Vladimir Putin has been obliged to institute price controls in the doomed fashion of Diocletian or Edward Heath.

Even in Britain, chicken farmers are finding that the cost of chickenfeed is no longer exactly chickenfeed, and, though the food crisis may once again be solved by the wit of man, the damage to the environment may be irreversible.

It is time we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country and on this planet. Do we want the south-east of Britain, already the most densely populated major country in Europe, to resemble a giant suburbia?

This is not, repeat not, an argument about immigration per se, since in a sense it does not matter where people come from, and with their skill and their industry, immigrants add hugely to the economy.

This is a straightforward question of population, and the eventual size of the human race.

All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control. Isn't it time politicians stopped being so timid, and started talking about the real number one issue?” Boris Johnson, “Global Over-population is the Real Issue.”

Amateurism and self-improvement

Sophie Gee writes about the social trend that is disposing of experts in favor of amateurs. Gee argues that self-help books are now written by amateurs because society is not only more forgiving, but also ruled by amateurs thanks to phenomenon such as Facebook and YouTube:

Now amateurism is back. Let's call it Renaissance Idealism. Books have titles such as Alan Greenspan Grills or Lumbar Punctures with the Naked Chef, and they are selling fast. The amateur "improvement memoir" is self-help's new success story. Books such as The Year of Magical Thinking, Eat, Pray, Love and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are big bestsellers.

Joan Didion describes the aftermath of catastrophic loss, Elizabeth Gilbert joyfully reconstructs her life after bleak depression, Barbara Kingsolver chronicles a year of sustainable farming with her family. None is an expert. That's the whole point - these books start with the writers not knowing what to do. And what's notable about each of them is how much attention they pay to the description of frustration, failure, error and misunderstanding.

It's self-help for "generation Facebook". Instead of an expert telling you how to live your life in a better way, you live your own life, then you write about it. At first glance, the turn to amateur self-help might seem retrograde, of a piece with MySpace and YouTube and other user-generated sites of dubious cultural authority.

[…] Historically, self-help was written in the form of religious conversion narrative. Texts such as St Augustine's Confessions and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. There, failure was crucial: people go wrong, many times, before they finally go right.

Then, during the Enlightenment, positivists began entertaining the idea that humanity was actually getting steadily, limitlessly better. Not just getting better at doing stuff - but actually becoming better people. It began to look like humans might stop making mistakes, which was scary for all the people who still felt frail and erring. But these days we are more forgiving of human frailty. After all, we figured out the mystery of flight, but we managed to melt a polar region in the process.

What does the new generation of self-help tell us about ourselves? It tells us, first of all, that we know we need help. That it is not just for other people any more. It might not be our fault when things go wrong - but that doesn't mean it is not our problem.

So self-help, version 2.0, brings good news. The good news is that you don't have to be an expert to start solving your problems. Just help yourself. Or wait - is that the bad news?

I happen to like the fact that “amateurs” are providing self-help tips and are talking about their personal experiences. Generally, I dislike self-help books for the simple reason that I don’t believe that there is such a thing as an expert in how one should live one’s life and that I hate it when someone claims to have find the answer to an existential question. It just seems too foolish religious to me. At least, amateurs have more humility than the so-called self-help experts do. Amateurs don’t claim to have found the miracle solution to day-to-day problems that will make people live their best lives today. They talk about themselves. They tell a story. I believe strongly that stories, literature teach us more things than self-books will ever be able to do.

Bobby Jindal and Sonia Gandhi, the American dream and the Indian dream

Tarun Vijay has a great essay in the Times of India in which he compares Bobby Jindal’s successful run as the Governor of Louisiana to Sonia Gandhi’s successful ascension into Indian Politics. He argues the point that Bobby Jindal represents the American dream because he adapted to American society by espousing his values and by yes, even converting to Christianity. However, he argues that Sonia Gandhi doesn’t represent the Indian dream because she has never had to become truly “Indian” and has never come to respect and to understand Indian sensibilities. Sugary excerpt:

While being happy seeing Bobby Jindal working so completely to realize an American dream, see homeward and feel how ecstatic the Italians must have felt seeing their daughter reigning supreme in an ancient land of a great civilisation making decisions affecting a billion citizens with many of their leaders prostrating before her for material gains and political space. She is a Roman Catholic of an Italian origin, yet ruling over majority Hindus and gets support from her party and media with a big chunk of Hindu editors, workers, ministers and voters. To understand the importance of it fully, it's like an Indian Hindu lady, sporting a big bindi, born in Bhopal who never had a graduation degree, becoming chief of the ruling Republicans in Washington through dynastic route in such a manner that NYT would write-she is the super President and not the one who has been nominated by her to occupy White House!!
That's what India has done and look what she has done to Indians. Does she represent an Indian dream?
She could get away doing a favour to Ottavio Quattrocchi and pushing the button to demolish Ram Setu, a bridge so deeply revered by the majority and have no remorse on seeing her colleague questioning the identity of Ram in the land where Ram symbolizes the nation and the all inclusiveness and abysmal plurality of the Ram Bhakta Hindus allowed her to come on top through a family Para- drop.
In the land of Statue de la Liberté Bobby can't even dream to do that to any Indian caught in his state for violating US laws or sanction a plan to defile places related to Jesus or George Washington while aligning with Communists, the fountainhead of anti-American hate. He has to prove, at every step, that he is a better person to honour and protect American sensitivities and dreams than those who are 'Americans of American origin'!
That's the difference between a powerful nation and her awakened, conscious people and a weak society living in self-denial so painfully visible from Kashmir to Kohima.

Observing things from a distance, I think that the rise of Sonia Gandhi showed on the contrary that India was even more tolerant than any Western country could be. After all, Sonia Gandhi could never have had the political career that she has had anywhere else without having to wrap herself in the flag and having to espouse very nationalistic views to erase her Italian origins. Once again, I take the example of Sarkozy who had to run a campaign based on the protection of the French identity and on patriotism to be elected to avoid a trial on his “Francité” even though his mom is French. It is always healthy when people follow a leader in spite of her/his ethnicity, of her/his origins, and especially without s/he having to cover their “foreignness” by taking extreme positions so that it can be said that s/he is more patriotic and nationalist than the natives or those with “pure blood.” There is no doubt that Bobby Jindal represents the American dream, but when I close my eyes to forget to be blinded by his origins and to focus on his politics, I don’t like what I see. I don’t like the fact there is no separation between his Christian faith and his politics. Politics isn’t religion and faith when it becomes the center of political philosophy becomes inevitably toxic. What politicians do matters more than the glitz. If Sonia Gandhi is a terrible politician, it is not because she doesn’t represent the Indian dream or doesn’t understand Indian sensibilities, but rather because her politics and policy are wrong (I don’t believe that). In a healthy and democratic society, politics and policy are more important than ethnicity, race, imagery, symbols, and even dreams. The American dream has sustained the challenge of time and of politics, because it is about more than one-time accomplishment and fairy tales ending, but about the idea that at the end, you are what you do which means that in America, you are not born great, you become great, you become an American, you become successful.

The fight against the Somalization of the world

“When the naive, the falsely naive, and the downright evil blur categories in support of their ideological prejudices and christen the killer of innocents a “resistance fighter,” more lucid minds disclose a different landscape. […] We have entered another world. The threat of a new Ground Zero, small or great, advances behind a mask. The human bomb claims the power to strike anywhere, by any means, at any time, spreading his nocturnal threat over the globe, invisible and thus unpredictable, clandestine and thus untraceable. The terrorist without borders makes us think about him always, everywhere. […] The fight to avoid the Somalization of the planet is just beginning, and it will probably dominate the twenty-first century. If they resist the sirens of isolationism, Americans will learn from their mistakes. Europe will either resolve to help them or abandon itself to the care of the petro-czar Vladimir Putin, who stands ready to police the old continent, while preaching antiterrorist terrorism, with his devastation of Chechnya as a case in point. […] From the beginning, human civilizations have existed alongside analogous moral abysses, which foreshadow an end of all things. According to tradition, such annihilation suggests a jealous and vengeful divinity, or malevolent demons.

In their endeavor to understand the black holes that threaten societies, the inventors of Western philosophy, comparing them to natural cataclysms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and epidemics, refused to see in them a supernatural sanction or to deny the responsibility of mortals. If God is not a cause, the darkness that threatens to overtake humanity is human, irreducible to an impersonal fate. The destructive principle inheres in us, whether we know it or not—this is the persistent message of the tragedians. Hate moves like Thucydides’s plague, not a purely physiological condition but an essentially mental disorder, which takes over bodies, minds, and society. The idea of a contagion of hatred must be taken literally: hatred spreads hatred, an outbreak that inoculates itself against all who oppose it.” André Glucksmann, “From the H-bomb to the Human Bomb.”

Libertarians as parasites

George Monbiot slams Libertarianism by arguing that Libertarians are social parasites. He argues and free riders which are dangerous for a society. According to Monbiot, the trouble with Libertarians is that the State always has not only to sustain them, but also to pick up after to make sure that their destructive indulgences don’t wreck up society:

Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people's resources, they will dump their waste in other people's habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves, and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.
The democratic challenge, which becomes ever more complex as the scale of human interactions increases, is to mimic the governance system of the small hominid troop. We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time we must ensure that the state is also treated like a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.
[…] Unless tax-payers' money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people's savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidised by responsible citizens. As biologists we both know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution.

Hopelessly waiting for Apocalypse

The Oxford University Press Blog has an interesting post on an Apocalypse that was expected and that didn’t happened. The world was supposed to end on October 22, 1844. On that day, more than 160 years ago, many Americans waited hopelessly for the world to end and for Jesus. Sugary excerpt:

On October 22, 1844, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty thousand people gathered in groups all over the United States to watch the sky. They stayed up until after midnight, straining to see Jesus Christ coming out of the heavens. A Vermont farmer named William Miller, undeterred by his lack of knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, had applied his naive ingenuity to biblical study. Calculations based on prophecies in the Book of Daniel had convinced him and his disciples that the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ would occur on this day.

How would people behave if they were convinced the world was coming to an end on a known day only months away? In 1844, many paid their debts, quit their jobs, closed their businesses, left their crops unharvested in the fields. Some who felt guilty about past frauds and cheats turned over money to banks or the U.S. Treasury. Others simply gave away money keeping no accounting of it. There was a rush to get baptized. On the appointed night, thousands gathered in many locations outdoors to watch the sky. But Jesus did not appear to them, and October 22d became known among Adventists as “The Great Disappointment.” The legend that Miller’s people had donned ascension robes for the occasion was one of the many humiliations heaped on the Adventists over the next year by a laughing public that had not quite dared risk scorning them until after the fact.

William Miller had never formed a denomination while expecting Christ, for there would have been no point in any long-term planning. But after the Great Disappointment his followers, many of them were expelled from their previous churches, kept their movement alive by differentiating themselves more sharply from mainline evangelicalism.

[…] Many Americans of that time and since have believed in their country’s special destiny to help prepare humanity for the Second Coming of Christ. Faith in democratic progress, in equal human rights, and even in economic and technological improvement have all been expressed in terms of paving the way for Christ’s return.

I may be too insensitive and too cynical, but I don’t know whether to laugh and to be afraid when I hear someone saying that s/he cannot wait for the end of the world. The frightening is that the belief that the world is terrible and that people should anticipate with ecstasy the end of the world is very common in America and expressed regularly without those expressing it realizing how fanatic and scary they sound. Even American politicians aren’t afraid to say that they are awaiting the return of their lord as to conform the fact that politics can never improve the lives of the citizens because only Jesus God. My question when I hear things like is what is the point of living then and actions if Apocalypse will make everything better. Why not just hasten the end of the world by encouraging wars around the world or just having a nuclear war that would annihilate this terrible world? I always wonder how people can rationally expect Jesus to make the world a paradise when he couldn’t do it the first time. How many comings does Jesus get to make things right? Doesn’t the fact that he needs more than one try shows that something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark and that human happiness and the health of the world out of his hands?

How to learn to speak English in French

The globalized religious market

“In the meantime, however, we have entered the "post-Westphalian era" of the globalized religious market. The global market has perforated all territorial borders; migrants with religious baggage have created diaspora communities, which in the case of Islam are increasingly seeing themselves as parts of a borderless 'umma and developing loyalties that belong neither to a particular country of origin nor to an ultramontane Church. This religious transnationalization is particularly serious for Europe because, despite the formal separation of politics and religion, national Churches have survived and are now coming under tremendous pressure. Religion and (national) culture have not only become uncoupled in the case of Islam: Protestant sects in particular also clearly demonstrate a global character that is not bound to ethnic-national origins.
Why is everyone talking about the "return of the religion" when simultaneously there are complaints about empty churches and a shortage of priests? Clearly, secularization and de-secularization are progressing side by side. In order to understand this, one has to differentiate between three aspects and two routes of secularization: the European route has only separated Church and State (even in secularist France) in a half-hearted manner: Christian religious communities have retained their monopoly on religious assembly and mobilization, the conclusion of which is the comprehensive privatization of religion and the extensive de-Christianization of Europe – a fact that is only apparently paradoxical.
In America, the picture is very different: there, the dividing line between religion and politics is clearer, but religiosity has remained in the public sphere and works as a "civic religion", with the variety of denominations growing as fast as the number of believers. Here the result can also be seen: American religious diversity has survived numerous waves of doubt and still permeates public life and shapes accepted morality – and this without "state dosh".” Claus Leggewie, “Between National Church and Religious Supermarkets.”

Zizek on Kouchner and militaristic humanism

Slavoj Zizek has an essay on Turkey on Comment is Free in which he argues that it is a thorn on the side of a hollow Western consensus on intervention and that it is challenging the notion of European identity. He makes the following statement about the French Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to elaborate his view that there exist a new global order:

When the newly elected French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, nominated Kouchner, the great humanitarian, as the head of Quai d'Orsay, even some of Sarkozy's critics hailed this as a pleasant surprise. Now the meaning of this nomination is clear: the return of the ideology of "militaristic humanism". The problem with militaristic humanism resides not in "militaristic" but in "humanism". Under this doctrine, military intervention is dressed up as humanitarian salvation, justified according to depoliticised, universal human rights, so that anyone who opposes it is not only taking the enemy's side in an armed conflict but betraying the international community of civilised nations.

This is why, in the new global order, we no longer have wars in the old sense of regulated conflict between sovereign states in which certain rules apply (the treatment of prisoners, the prohibition of certain weapons, etc). We instead confront violations of the rules of universal human rights; they do not count as wars proper, and call for the "humanitarian pacifist" intervention of the western powers - especially in the case of direct attacks on the US or other representatives of the new global order. One can hardly imagine a neutral humanitarian organisation such as the Red Cross mediating between the warring parties, organising the exchange of prisoners, and so on. For one side in the conflict already assumes the role of the Red Cross - it does not perceive itself as one of the warring sides but as a mediating agent of peace and global order.

The key question is, thus: who is this "we" on behalf of whom Kouchner, Blair et al are speaking? Who is included in it and who is excluded? Is this "we" really "the world", the apolitical community of civilised people acting on behalf of human rights?

I hope that Zizek is wrong about Kouchner. I have the feeling that the Iran Nuclear crisis is going to show whether he is reading our world right and whether militaristic humanism has made a long term comeback and is creating a new global order.

DNA and French immigration politics

The New York Times had an editorial yesterday denouncing, a proposed amendment, the Mariani amendment to a new French immigration law that would make it possible for immigrants to “voluntarily” use DNA to prove that the people they want to join them in France are indeed related to them by blood. The New York Times writes that this amendment is abject. Sugary excerpt:

Immigration issues bring out the worst instincts in politicians who should know better. DNA testing can be a useful tool in establishing criminal guilt or innocence. But it has no rightful place in immigration law. Modern French families, like modern American families, are constituted on many bases besides bloodlines and genetics. This is something most French politicians and voters should be aware of.

They should also be aware of the cautionary lessons of modern French history. Under the Nazi occupiers and their Vichy collaborators, pseudoscientific notions of pure descent were introduced into French law with tragic consequences.

[…] Though himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant, Mr. Sarkozy has made his political name with harsh criticism of more recent immigrants, especially North African Arabs. His pandering on this issue helped win him votes that used to go to far-right extremists like the perennial presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Immigrant bashing is an effective vote-getter. Unfortunately, it leads to bad laws, bad policies and needless human suffering for the individuals and families it targets and exploits. Mr. Sarkozy wants to be seen as a statesman. He should act like one.

The problem is that politics in France is the same as it is in the United States and French politicians, even when they have superhuman power as Sarkozy does, govern by appealing to their political base. Sarkozy was elected by tying together immigration and national identity and by promising to be tougher on people who dumbed down French identity and culture. He cannot, now that he is president govern, as the New York Times wants it to govern. In other words, what I am suggesting is that the time for the New York Times to give lessons to Sarkozy on how to be a statesman was before the French elections when he was using immigration and immigrants to get himself elected. It is too late now to criticize for doing what he got elected to do especially that the times has been singing his Atlanticism and pro-American stance by arguing that he was going to revolutionize France.

Bin Laden and Che Guevara

“Both Che Guevara and Osama bin Laden became one-dimensional media icons: brown soulful eyes and a non-bourgeois beard. But, under the influence of much better thinkers than themselves (Debray in the case of Guevara and Zawahiri in the case of bin Laden), both of them planned a revolution on behalf of the downtrodden. Very different revolutions to be sure, but revolutions all the same: both were engaged in propaganda by action, Che with his small guerrilla band (focos) in the countryside, and Osama, after losing his base in Afghanistan, with small urban cells. What ultimately makes a Bin Laden-kind of phenomenon important and a Che Guevara-kind of phenomenon colorful but unimportant is that Bin Laden acts within what seems to me a real revolutionary situation in the Islamic world. I do not believe that this was the case in Latin America, where the subjective elements were missing. Because of that a Bin Laden-kind of idiom has a better chance of capturing the imagination of the masses in the Islamic world. An important and seductive element in the ideology that can capture the imagination in the Islamic world is the virulent Occidentalist picture that Bin Laden is so good in promulgating.” Avishai Margalit, “The West by the Rest.”

On the New York Times and France

The best post I read this week was written by my second favorite law Professor (after Jamin Raskin) Kenneth Anderson on the New York Times’s coverage of France. Professor Anderson points out that the New York Times focuses purposely on trivialities and avoids discussing real subjects. Sugary excerpt:

My French friend, who doubtless would prefer not to be named, finds the coverage of France by the New York Times utterly insipid and infuriating. "Does the Times think we are children?" he asked me (I paraphrase from memory) back at the time of the election. "America's leading newspaper seems unaware there are serious issues of economics, politics, state policy, and all its Paris correspondent thinks about is making cliched comparisons between France and the United States about women, divorce, affairs by politicians. Does she know anything else? New York liberals think we are Disneyland. At least American conservatives want to talk about real things."
[…]. He describes himself as a center-left Gaullist - but what matters, he says, is the Gaullist part. French Gaullists and American Gaullists clash, he says, because what they share is that neither one is in the least bit apologetic for speaking for the interests of his country and, more importantly, its honor. He adds, still annoyed, that the "best way America and France could immediately improve relations would be for the Times to replace Elaine Sciolino with someone who understood more finance and less fashion." Banish her, he said, to where she really belongs, in the "Style section and Travel."
I doubt he has yet seen today's Week in Review in the Times, in which Sciolino has a major front page story on - the reform of the French economy? Non. The impending strike and its consequences? Non. Olivier Roy's new book on Islam and French secularism? Non. It is, instead, yet more cultural trivialities about Sarkozy and divorce - always the same shtick - the sophistication of the French versus the vulgarity of the Americans. "L'Amour Has Little to Do With l'Etat." The justification at the offices of the Times, I suppose, is that it has calculated, probably correctly, that this blather is what its Manhattan readership, and its cognates across American cities, want to read over Sunday brunch.

The problem with the New York Coverage of France is that it is covered by journalists who never integrate French society and remain purposely on the periphery in order to remain as Gene Kelly, Americans in Paris and for  France to remain exotic and foreign to them even if it means never really knowing it. Good examples of this phenomenon are Roger Cohen’s columns on France, which are so predictable and mundane that they could have been written in the 50s. My point is that clichés are easy especially when the reality is difficult to grasp especially for Americans journalists who like nothing more than to feel at home away from home. I am reminded of Tom Friedman, which explained in the Lexus and the Olive Tree that when he was the foreign affairs columnist or the New York Times what he was able to be a tourist with an attitude and to request that the world adapt to him. Friedman liked to export his own homely comfort, which meant that he likes to stay in the same fancy international hotel chains and to eat the same food, which included oranges, which he wanted to be cut the same. What is the point of knowing the world and of experiencing new things to get beyond clichés and stereotypes if you can get a taste of America anywhere?

I think that the coverage of France by newspapers such as the New York Times would be better if they took the risk to hire French Journalists who have an American education or Francophone people who have been educated in France and who understand American society. The point is that for some reason, American journalists are unable or unwilling to get beyond the glitz because they believe, I am making a gross over-generalization here, that the world has been Americanized and only trivialities matter.

Another British invasion

Melanie Reid writes in the Times of London about the British invasion of rural France. Many Brits are buying property in French villages attracted by the allure of traditional France and also by the fact that the land is extremely affordable.  The low price of the French country side makes it possible for many Brits not to buy their own farms and other pieces of land, but also to own a piece of the soul of the region and to make an immediate mark on its culture and identity. Sugary excerpt:

Meanwhile, back in the invading nation’s home territory, property investment brokers are stoking the fire. Searching for clever, undiscovered areas in France to buy? Look no further than the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, say the experts. Such areas are “highly accessible and attractively priced” . It’s easy, see? Adopt a general’s ruthless battle strategy for this bloodless invasion. Feel no guilt, question nothing. Don’t waste a minute worrying about the negative impact on poor old France. Just relish the almost sexual thrill of such disproportionate spending power. A ruined farmhouse for how much? Only €90,000? No wonder they call it property porn.

And so the British rush to the French countryside has become unstoppable. At a very conservative estimate, Britons now own 200,000 properties, with more than 100,000 residing full-time – double the figure of five years earlier – but the numbers are out of date almost as you quote them, for British migration to France is believed to be running at just over 40,000 a year. As a result, the average house price in France has risen by 120 per cent over the past ten years.

There is anger. My niece expresses a very moderate form of what is an unmistakeable mood. Even as the French appreciate the affluence that the British money brings, they resent the power of the invaders to displace their young and change their traditions. Who wouldn’t?

In some villages in southwest of France, a third of the houses are British holiday homes, and a lot of the rest are Dutch. For the deeply rural French, the immigration is insensitive and offensive, and some liken the British to the Algerians, gathering in ghettoes in the city suburbs. In some villages there has been an increase in votes for the far Right.

The important issues are ones of culture, identity and money and the question is whether everything ought to be for sale even in a free market society. The most alarming issue isn't that the Brits are “invading” rural France, but that they are the only ones able to afford a piece of the French soul and that the natives cannot. I am a strong believer in Globalization, but as I like to say one of its most disastrous consequences is that it has made some of the citizens in the “developed” world feel and almost (it is an exaggeration) like the ones of the “developing” word. The point isn’t that there exists a super-rich class or that some are able to buy cheap lands in different country, but rather that the gap between them and the rest is so wide that it enables them to buy culture and the best of life, while too many people can afford to do the same. In other words, I am not worry about the Brits in the Pays Basque, but rather about the natives who can no longer afford to keep lands that have been sometimes in their families for generations.

Diversity, inequality, and “liberal” institutions

“But you don't have to be a liberal to disapprove of racism and, actually, the Times is deeply mistaken in describing Columbia as a bastion of liberalism, as are the conservatives who love to criticize the liberalism of all American universities and the liberals who leap to defend it. In fact, American universities are profoundly conservative institutions, and never more so than when their students are chanting, as the Times reports the Columbia students did in protest against the noose, "no diversity, no university."

To see why, you need to keep in mind two facts. The first is that the student bodies of American universities today are more diverse than they've ever been. The second is that they're also richer. In fact, as affirmative action has become a centrepiece of the supposedly liberal effort to get more people of colour on campus, poor people – indeed not just poor people but people not in the top quartile of American wealth – have become increasingly invisible.

[…] This is a problem that the commitment to diversity cannot address; indeed, it is a problem that the commitment to diversity obscures. The U.S. in general is a less equal society than it once was. […] The greatest cause of injustice in the U.S. today is not racism but the unfettered capitalism that we call neo-liberalism. The greatest challenge is narrowing the gulf between the rich and the poor, not making sure that the rich people come in politically correct colours.

And how do our universities respond to this challenge? When confronted by increased inequality, their response has been to demand increased diversity. So instead of fighting for a system of education designed to produce equality of opportunity, our most liberal institutions have fought for a system in which inequality is tolerated as long as its benefits are distributed without recourse to racism or sexism.” Walter Benn Michaels, “Diversity just Obscures Inequality.”

An old song on a slow day

This is a song from my mother's time and the fact that I enjoy it makes me realize what an old soul I am. Anyway, the singer is Sheila and the title of the song is Pendant les Vacances (during the holidays).  I keep waiting for the fall to start in DC, but it is still too  warm, and yet, the summer and the holidays are over.

The beauty and ugliness of Irony

“Four years of European diplomacy have given the Iranians the one asset they could not have purchased – and that was time. And now, irony of ironies, after fiddling around with all this futile diplomacy, we finally have a French president who sounds just like we do on Iran.” John Bolton.

The Nymphomania trap

Rosemary Neill writes about Women, sex, televisions, and societal norms in the Australian. She makes the point that all women are expected to be closet nympho no matter who they are and what they do. Sugary excerpt:

Whether you are a glamorous singleton living the high life in New York (Sex and the City), a stressed-out trainee doctor (Grey's Anatomy) or a polygamous Mormon housewife swamped by children (Big Love), you are meant to be up for it all the time.

Clearly, the nymphomaniac -- the woman who ecstatically drops to her knees at the sight of a male lead's flies -- has colonised prime time.

From hottie housewives to ex-call girls who write books on how prostitution is empowering, Western culture relentlessly pushes the myth of the nympho, confusing the sexually available or desperate woman with the sexually liberated one.

I agree partly with Neill, but my conclusions from this alarming truth take me somewhere else. Society has trouble separating women from their sexuality or rather from it would like it to be. It is for this reason that the most disliked women are in general the women, whom both men and women imagined wouldn’t say yes to sex and would take a pass as a personal offense. More often than not, when a man or a woman dislikes a woman, the image that they will project with the words they use to describe her is one of a frigid woman, one who wouldn’t enjoy getting it, one will only allow someone to use her body to get something or whom a man/woman wouldn’t enjoy give it to because she takes herself too seriously to accept that sexual appetite and just do it. To take a controversial example, I have been reading a lot of Andrew Sullivan’s anti-Hillary Clinton posts and I’ve realized that although he dislikes everything about her, what really gets to him is what he perceives as her high-minded frigidity, which seems to him hypocritical because he believes that she owns everything to her husband thus to sex. All one had to do is to read Sullivan’s posts on Hillary, to wonder what his point is, to understand that the image that he has in his head is the one of the condescending and manipulative woman who always says no and only says yes when she wants something more than sexual pleasure, the prostitute who doesn’t even have the decency to do her job right even though she got paid. That said I like Sullivan and I take him seriously except when he talks about Hillary Clinton because I’ve learned that you can’t take seriously a man who is stuck on the “sex” of a woman.

The alarming thing is that when it comes to sex, women can’t win because they are only allowed to serve, to give, not to take, and to dominate. Ségolène Royal lost to Sarkozy in part because although she was sexually desirable, men voters could only imagine her saying no spitefully to them and women thought that sex to her was a weapon, which meant that she was taking and dominating, but never giving and submitting. A nympho may like sex, but she is first and foremost a slave to her desires, which means that someone else or rather something else is her master and owns her.

Science and reason are not enough

“Much current literature is based on the claims of a new kind of atheism, one that often lacks the intellectual rigor of more classic forms. The confidence of modern atheism does not face the strange correspondences between mind and reality that even science cannot avoid.
The problem with science is not only what it is, but what are we going to do with it? The classic Greeks were said to have known all sorts of inventions but chose not to pursue them because they understood the dangers they might entail for human living itself.
The Regensburg lecture gives science and technology their due by pointing out that they are not everything, but what they do is valid for a certain aspect of things. They can only explain what falls to their competence.
Philosophy, ethics, theology and poetry all reach to realities that are not direct objects of science, to things that are essentially spiritual and nonmaterial. The human intellect transcends its own being to be concerned with all that is.
We are bewildered if we think that science can explain everything, but this does not mean that what it cannot explain is therefore not explicable. It rather means that other insights and ways of knowing have their own validity.
The word of the Pope to science is not "don't be scientific" in the proper sense. It is rather to stop limiting itself to only one concept of reason, a very narrow concept. This concept is good as far as it goes. But it is one that excludes by definition most of the important things men are concerned with.”Father James Schall.

Torture and ordinary people

Martha Nussbaum reviews Philip Zimbardo’s book about torture and Abu Ghraib, The Lucifer Effect in the Times Literary Supplement. She makes following about torture and Zimbardo’s thesis, which I believe is essential in the current debate about the use of torture to protect society from Terrorism:

Research has amply confirmed that people of many different kinds will behave badly under certain types of situational pressure. Through the influence of authority and peer pressure, they do things that they are later amazed at having done, things that most people think in advance they would never themselves do.

Zimbardo’s first plea, appropriately, is for humility: we have no reason to say that atrocities are the work of a few “bad apples”, nor have we reason to think that they are done only by people remote from us in time and place. We should understand that we are all vulnerable, and we should judge individuals, accordingly, in a merciful way, knowing that we don’t really know what we would have done, had we faced similar pressures. His second appropriate plea is that we learn to “blame the system”: namely, to look at how situations are designed, and to criticize people who design them in ways that confront vulnerable individuals with pressures that human beings cope with badly. Zimbardo served as an expert witness on behalf of one of the officers accused of presiding over torture at Abu Ghraib, and his point was that we must not think that this is the work of a few unusual “defectives”. We must understand that good people can do bad things under pressure, and we must learn how to structure situations so that they do not put such pressures on individuals. In short, he calls for collective responsibility – not as a total replacement for personal responsibility, but as its necessary concomitant, if people are not to be faced, again and again, with demands to which they are very unlikely to respond well.

Zimbardo sometimes speaks as if situations are all that is important, and the insides of people explain nothing at all. That is clearly a wild over-extrapolation from his data, which support a much more qualified view. Even if people in these experiments had all behaved in precisely the same way, we could not conclude that their inner psychology supplies nothing at all: for they might be motivated by common human emotions and tendencies, one or many, and it would then be extremely important to know what these forces are.

Science as a defense to racism

James Watson offers his defense to the claim that he is a racist for saying that Blacks may be less intelligent because of their genes. He writes that he is a scientist and that as such, he is obligated to explore every hypothesis no matter how despicable and controversial it is. I’m not sure that I’m buying his defense, but here it is:

The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding.

[…] We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.

To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers. It is very likely that at least some 10 to 15 years will pass before we get an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives. Until then, we as scientists, wherever we wish to place ourselves in this great debate, should take care in claiming what are unarguable truths without the support of evidence.

I am not buying Science as an excuse for expressing not only disturbing, but also dangerous views. However, I think that we are living in a time where discussion is becoming impossible precisely because increasingly people have stopped to believe that education and that interaction makes a difference. Let’s assume that James Watson is a racist, what should we do with him? Should we ask him to apologize, shame him, and then ban him from society or should we engage him and challenge his views to show that we are the facts on our side and that he doesn’t? The point is that modern societies have ceded to the temptation to believe that there exist the right and the wrong kind of people and that between them, dialogue is meaningless because someone who is born bad or who is a racist will always be bad and will remain a racist no matter what we do. That belief is a coop-out because it enables the rest of society to escape the responsibility that it bears for the least virtuous of its members. Racism isn’t the end of a conversation, it is its beginning. Society can just ostracize and sanctions its racists. It bears the responsibility to attempt to change their views not for their sake, but other people who like Watson share the same views on race and innate stupidity especially those who are younger and less educated.

Senselessness

Is it really possible to justify this? Should one even want to?

The blast in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto and provoking terrorism

The attempt to assassinate Benazir Bhutto yesterday shook me. Why? Although I have no ties to Pakistan, I love Benazir Bhutto. She was one of the idols during my childhood. Many will say that she never lived up to the expectations and instead became just another corrupt and incompetent politician. They wouldn’t be wrong, but what can I say, I love flawed people especially flawed women because they are never allowed to be human beings and to sin. So yesterday, I was enjoying her return to Pakistan and when the news of the carnage came, I feared that they have killed her since it was obvious that they had killed hundred just to get her. Then, I wondered why she came back. I ask myself angrily why didn’t she could just remain in Dubai and live a comfortable life with her children without taking risks while still being revered by her partisans. I realized that for all of her flaws, she is willing to die for something because after all, she has to know that she will never be safe anywhere in Pakistan and that there is a good chance that this will  all end badly.

Throughout the day, I was reading comments on a post by Amar Deep on Sepia Mutiny , which implied that she bore responsibility for somehow with her “irresponsible statements” causing the terrorist attack. Many talked about silly things, her physical appearance, and the fact that she had provoked the attacks by refusing to shut up as if suicide bombers needed encouragement to strike and if they would have not killed anybody had she said that she loved them because they were all Muslims. It made me realize that there is something rotten in our world. Too many of us, when faced between choosing a suicide bomber and his/her victim no matter how dirty her/his hands are, hesitate in deciding who the butcher is. Some even chose to look at the dirty hands instead of looking at the pieces of human flesh which someone voluntarily shattered with an explosion and saying “that will never be acceptable!”

France, code of silence, and the private lives of politicians

Nicolas Sarkozy got divorced on Monday and I don’t care! I think that it is about time that France and other countries admitted and accepted that a politician doesn’t have to be married to be a good Head of State. The need that modern democracies have to have political spouses play the ungrateful and objectifying role of first mate is ridiculous, anti-modern, and even cruel . This gruesome need reminds me of the appalling notion of human sacrifice. Sarkozy is entitled to a private life.

However, what bugged me about the whole episode was the attitude of the French media who flatters itself of being more ethical and more respectful than the Anglo-Saxon media when it comes to the private life of its politicians. They violated their self-imposed code of silence when the information about the state of the French president’s private life left their control and that French bloggers got a hold of it. French Journalists feigned surprised and suddenly pretended that the French had the right to know about their president’s private life when it was clear that it had no impact on his ability to govern the country. The whole affair became needlessly a spectacle because there was a competition between journalists, newspapers, and bloggers to be the first to provide the juicy details of a personal matter. I didn’t like this tabloidization of French politics because it placed the emphasis on the personal as if it was more important than politics itself and the day to day duties of the president.

Although I hate the fact that in America, journalists are free to prey on the private lives of their politicians and to hound their spouses, I hate it even more when the fact that in France there is a code of silence that is willingly broken when the information is juicy and sexy and thus, sells papers.

I hope that I will never have to write, even indirectly, on the private life of Sarko again.

Central Europe and the EU

Stefan Wagstyl writes in the Financial Times about the great divide in Central Europe. He argues that the political malaise that exists in Poland and other central European countries is due to their weak governments and public institutions and to the sharp divisions that exist between anti-communists and former communists. Sugary excerpt:

The malaise of weak government extends across central Europe. In Slovakia, a leftist coalition holds power only through the support of the far-right Slovak National party. In Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Socialist prime minister, is pushing reforms in the face of popular protests and attacks on his credibility after he admitted lying to the electorate over the public finances. The Czech Republic endured six months without a government after last year’s inconclusive elections, before the centre-right Civic Democrats put together a three-party coalition.

To some extent, these governments’ weakness is the inevitable result of the proportional representation electoral systems introduced after the fall of communism. Even in the more stable political world of western Europe, PR systems are often associated with weak short-lived governments, as in Italy.

In central Europe, the problems are compounded by deep divides between former communists and former anti-communists, which hinder political development, especially the flexible formation of coalitions. The splits were partly concealed in the years before the 2004 EU enlargement, as mainstream parties pulled together to secure accession. But in the past three years the conflicts have re-emerged with a vengeance, often fuelled by widening access to communist-era archives. A few enterprising politicians try to bridge the gap but for many central Europeans, it could be another decade before such alliances become normal.

Public institutions are still too weak to act as a check on politicians’ excesses. The courts, for example, are susceptible to corruption and political influence. Bureaucracies are often too interested in defending their privileges to contribute effectively to policy debate. The media and non-government organisations plug some of the gaps but their resources are often limited.

Wagstyl’s analysis leads unavoidably to an examnination of the enlargement of the European Union and  to the question of whether not only it was done not only too soon, but also in the right manner. The most convincing argument in favor of the quick integration of Eastern and Central European union countries within the EU was that it would ensure that the stability of Europe and facilitate their transition ito a free-market economy and a democratic society. However, one has to wonder whether by moving too fast the EU didn’t give these countries the illusion that it was going to solve all of their problems.Thus, it isn't grotesque to argue that enlargement not only weaken European Integration by increasing the differences between its member-states tby making the EU more difficult to manage, but that it also increased both the demands on and the suspicion of Brussels felt by its citizens.

Neo-European Populism

“The reality of today’s Europe is that politicians do not know the consequences of the laws they approve, because the European Court of Justice can extend the scope of EU powers in so many ways. The US Supreme Court, on which it is modelled, has extended its power far beyond that ever envisaged by the Founding Fathers. But at least America has a culture of judicial restraint. The EU has none. The British cannot evade this by saying that no Parliament can bind its successors. We voters cannot throw out EU laws by changing government.

Those who want the new treaty argue that it is just another step in the process of centralisation. But just because ordinary people are only gradually waking up to the drip-dripping away of their power does not mean that they should be denied a say in it. Some argue that a referendum would end up being a vote on the direction of the EU. But it should be. The EU needs to change direction, and its citizens want it to. The battleground is not Britain versus Europe, it is the elites versus the people.”Camilla Cavendish, “We must stand up to this cynical stitch-up. It’s the elites of Europe versus the people.”