The Republic of Dissent

Embracing emptiness

I feel empty...well it's summer so it's understandable.

The perils of defensiveness

I guess it takes distance to understand that America and Americans don't know how to talk about race. It is therefore not surprising that Margaret Went, writing on the Skip Gates affair in the Globe and Mail gets it right:

Why does every story about race in America turn into a screaming match? Maybe it's because so many people are on the defensive. They feel they're automatically judged guilty until proven innocent – blacks, of being lawbreakers or second-class citizens, and whites, of being irredeemably racist. Mr. Obama has promised us a teachable moment, but he surely knows the biggest lesson is for him. He won't go there again. You can count on that.

Kids as weapons

 A Taliban commander on the role of children in their holy war:

If you're fighting, then God provides you with the means [to win]. Kids themselves are tools to achieve God's will. And whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it.(...)The kids want to join us because they like our weapons.

The act and the mirror

Glenn Loury on the affair of the summer:

It is depressing in the extreme that the president, when it came time for him to expend political capital on the issue of race and the police, did so on behalf of his “friend” rather than stressing policy reforms that might keep the poorly educated, infrequently employed, troubled but still human young black men in America out of prison. This is to say that, if Mr. Obama were going to lose some working-class white votes to the charge of “elitism,” I’d much rather it have been on countering the proliferation of “three strikes” laws, or ratcheting down the federal penalties for low-level drug trafficking, or inveighing against the racial disproportion in the administration of the death penalty.

Obama can't win on this issue and that's why he shouldn't have commented on it in the first place, especially the way he did by making an assumption that he didn't have the guts to defend because it would have Sharptonized him. He lost ground because he wasn't willing to stand his ground and to lead on this issue rather than to just comment, make a speech, and say the words that make people feel good about themselves by confirming that they are good and decent americans (the large majority of americans are) for having voted for him. In short, Obama was very Sarkozy-like on this issue, he started with a strong appeal to emotions then backed off when he realized that these emotions didn't make his electorate feel good and actually reminded it everything that it hates about what Shelby Steele like to call "race people."  It is difficult to act if one always do it in front of a mirror and in front the gaze of a public (which includes the press) that can be so fanatically adoring.

Legitimacy and politics

Stanley Fish on Gates, Obama, race, and the whole nine yards:

It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House. Just as some in Durham and Cambridge couldn’t believe that Gates belonged in the neighborhood, so does a vocal minority find it hard to believe that an African-American could possibly be the real president of the United States.
Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Humh, I would love to say that Fish is wrong,but in good faith I can't, but the trouble that I have is that this realization doesn't get me anywhere, it doesn't even get me started because it emphasizes something, which I think few are willing to acknowledge: politics is never going to solve America's race problem.That partly explains why I don't believe in identity politics and why I just can't fall in love with Obama no matter how much I want to, no matter how hard I try (it would make my life so much easier, more fun, it is never easy to be a gadfly).

Attitude américaine

Falling out love with narcissism

From Andrew Seal's review of Midnight Children, Salman Rushdie's classic:

I guess I lost my taste for narcissism when I fell out of love with Woody Allen.

I envy Seal because I'm still stuck and lost in the wild jungle of narcissism. To talk about Midnight Children, I have to admit that it is one of the few Rushdie's books that I haven't been able to finish because I never got into it mainly because the magical realism felt too real to me, but never had enough magic.

L'héautontimorouménos

For me the summer isn't just hot, but cruel because I'm trying not to be too Baudelairian, not to be too much of masochist and poetically self-absorbed. It's a challenge. I'm reading a great book, which puts a lot of what matters at the forefront of my existence, it's Little Bee by Chris Cleeve. It's very well written, but what impresses me most is that Cleeve has found a way not to talk about Africa, as a place out there, alien, sub or non human, but as a place where things ought to make sense and where people, orphans, or whoever else are just people struggling the complexities of their humanity. So far, it's deliciously complex and it's a blast!

The correlation between sexiness and victimhood

I have to admit that I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the Erin Andrews story, which is the one of ESPN anchor who was videotaped in her hotel room  because I didn't think that it will become another case of woman on woman violence where she will be blamed once again for what happened to her because she is attractive and is too sexy while doing her j.o.b. Tracy Clark-Flory writes on this sad affair:

No matter, we are now back in victim-blaming land where the motto is: "Don't wear such a short skirt next time, honey." No hyperbole here: While discussing the peephole video on-air, Brennan made sure to mention how Andrews, "America's Sexiest Sportscaster" according to Playboy, once wore a too-short skirt into a men's locker room and touched one of her interviewees. (Touched an interviewee while wearing a skirt -- that hussy!) This truly isn't so unlike the character assassination that can go on in rape trials.
It's truly worth listening to Brennan tie herself into a knot attempting to appear sympathetic while clearly reprimanding Andrews for her on-air persona. "She doesn't deserve what happened to her, but part of the shtick seems to me is being a little bit out there in a way that, then, are you encouraging the complete nutcase to drill a hole in your room?" Shorter Brennan: She didn't deserve it, but maybe she was asking for it? She also added: "I don't think anyone is going to drill a hole to look into my room" -- because, of course, she appropriately guards against such attacks by presenting herself in an appropriate, asexual manner. "We all do things to make sure these kinds of things don't happen --so, hopefully, she will do that so that it will never happen again," she said. The male radio host offered, "You have to be aware that something like this is going to happen eventually, where someone is going to cross the line." Brennan quickly replied: "Yeah, you do ... in this wacky world there is going to be that potential."

It is important to mention here that I'm assuming and it is a big assumption to make that Brennan really said what Flory is asserting that she said, but in any case I'm not personalizing the issue because it is too important to be solely about Brennan and Andrews. I just can't believe that no matter how modern a society becomes a woman always has to be responsible for the sexual deviance of others because her body is always perceived as a sexual object that is never really hers, which therefore she has to hide or rather to be careful about not enticing creepy people to violate her. If Erin Andrews had been a guy, no let's have more imagination a  sexy gay guy, nobody  would have dare to suggest that by being sexy she had cause peeping toms to  victimize her. If the majority of societies believe this, then I think they should just vote a law that would require women to wear the Burqa instead of forbidding it. However that even then this will not solve the problem for people in cases such as these will always find a way to argue that the woman was too sexual while walking with the Burqa or that her eyes were enticing and showed that she wanted it, no matter how debasing and violating the it is.

Private lives and issues of state

Daniel Finkelstein on why private matters (sexual matters for the most part) are issues of state:

(...) anyone advancing the idea that people’s private lives and what they reveal about their character should remain private, always receives in response three initials: JFK. We now know — journalists knew at the time but didn’t report it — that John F. Kennedy was an inveterate womaniser. And yet his reputation is as a great president. His womanising and party lifestyle? Irrelevant tittle-tattle.
Except that it wasn’t. One biography after another has revealed how Kennedy’s inappropriate behaviour was a security risk. His relationship with a gangster’s moll corrupted his election effort. And David Owen makes a compelling case, in his book In Sickness and in Power, that JFK’s out-of-control drug use influenced his conduct in arms negotiations.
Silvio Berlusconi is an ally in receipt of state secrets. He is the dominant Italian politician of the era. So of course his character matters. And of course the answers to persistent questions about his conduct can help us to understand his character.
You cannot behave as Mr Berlusconi has behaved and argue that it is a private matter. The parties, the girls, the gifts — they are issues of state.

For some reasons, this argument by Daniel Finkelstein bugs me not so much because I don't disagree with it but because it cements the modern conventional wisdom that politics is about character, about the personal, and not much else. I'm repulsed by the Anglo-Saxon (I hate this word) idea that what a politician does sexually, that her/his marriage, her/his sex life tell voters essential things or rather everything they ought to know about her/his public life. I agree with Finkelstein that Berlusconi has crossed the line as he always takes pleasure in doing, but I think he has crossed it not so much by his personal behavior than by his refusal to accept the fact that the Prime Minister of Italy shouldn't embarrass his country by acting recklessly and lewdly in a context that made it likely that his actions were bound to become public. Is this latest sexual scandal the reason to get rid of him? In my opinion, sexual scandals and resignation are always about the ability and the willingness of the politician to survive/withstand public humiliation and the value s/he places on doing her/his j.o.b effectively. Berlusconi  doesn't seem to be affected by all of this and we all know that he isn't in politics to get things done.  Most Italians are neither ashamed nor surprised of his behavior. They know his faults and  they have decided that in spite of them, he is fit to lead them and to represent their country on the world state. That is the key fact. I'm tired of the notion that citizens who have the awesome chance to vote for their leaders should also have the power to get rid of them before the time comes or the right to force them to resign when they fall out of love or when they realize that they feel to take their duties as citizen seriously and elected the wrong person. Elections matter and if people of democratic countries don't want politicians such as Berlusconi in power they need to take seriously their civic duty and make public political debate matter rather than go along with the increasing popular notion that elections are about fashion, glitz, and falling in love. To put my argument in one long, but I hope coherent sentence: the obsession of citizens of democratic countries with the private lives of their politicians and their morbid willingness to erase the line between the private and the public just demonstrates their visceral hate of politics and the fact that they have been so spoiled by their state's democratic institutions that they want everything to be either about the divine, and the divine-like or about entertainment.

Something other than a prostitute

I somewhat share this sentiment expressed from Rebecca West:

I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Divided we fall

Disturbing story, I have to say that it's difficult not to believe Henry Louis Gates Jr. but I'm trying to imagine if he were less likable and less educated, what would have happened and what the perception would have been

Mass vetting

Josie Appleton on why it is important Philip Pullman's and other children's authors refusal to submit to the exhaustive vetting of their criminal records to give talks to schools in the UK:

For these adult volunteers, as for Pullman and fellow children’s authors – including Anne Fine and Michael Morpurgo – the demand that they be police-checked to have contact with children is intrusive and insulting. The vetting database is an instrument of bad faith: it assumes that everybody is tainted as a paedophile, unless proven otherwise. Only by being on a state database are we deemed purified; that is, authorised as ‘safe adults’.
The main result of mass vetting is to turn good people away from helping children: it breeds suspicion and erodes the informal relationships that are so key to children’s happiness (and indeed, their protection). As Pullman says, mass vetting ‘corrupts a child’s view of the world’, making children think that ‘the basic mode is not of trust but suspicion… It assumes that the default position of one human being to another is predatory rather than kindness.’ What kind of adultDisplay Optionss will these children become?

Unfortunately, I think it is going to be increasingly impossible for Appleton's points to be heard (I agree with her) because we live in times where suspicion is a prized skill and where trust is considered naïve. We live in a age where paranoia is reassuring and even heart-warming because it gives us the sense that we have safe-proofed our environment and prepared for every possible threat.

Berlusconi is everywhere

While Martin Amis compared Ahmadinejad to Reagan,  Slavoj Žižek compares him to Berlusconi:

To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the ‘return of the repressed’ of the Khomeini revolution.
What all this means is that there is a genuinely liberatory potential in Islam: we don’t have to go back to the tenth century to find a ‘good’ Islam, we have it right here, in front of us. The future is uncertain – the popular explosion has been contained, and the regime will regain ground. However, it will no longer be seen the same way: it will be just one more corrupt authoritarian government. Ayatollah Khamenei will lose whatever remained of his status as a principled spiritual leader elevated above the fray and appear as what he is – one opportunistic politician among many. But whatever the outcome, it is vital to keep in mind that we have witnessed a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit within the frame of a struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If we don’t see this, if as a consequence of our cynical pragmatism, we have lost the capacity to recognise the promise of emancipation, we in the West will have entered a post-democratic era, ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.
Is there a link between Ahmadinejad and Berlusconi? Isn’t it preposterous even to compare Ahmadinejad with a democratically elected Western leader? Unfortunately, it isn’t: the two are part of the same global process. If there is one person to whom monuments will be built a hundred years from now, Peter Sloterdijk once remarked, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who thought up and put into practice a ‘capitalism with Asian values’. The virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. Deng Xiaoping praised Singapore as the model that all of China should follow. Until now, capitalism has always seemed to be inextricably linked with democracy; it’s true there were, from time to time, episodes of direct dictatorship, but, after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself (in South Korea, for example, or Chile). Now, however, the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.This doesn’t mean, needless to say, that we should renounce democracy in favour of capitalist progress, but that we should confront the limitations of parliamentary representative democracy.

I don't shared this view point, but it is difficult to disagree with the assertion that the link between democracy and capitalism is been broken or at least is no longer self-evident. It is so sad to say and surely not sympathetic enough to say, but so far nothing that has happened in Iran has surprised me. The script has been followed. I think that the spectators are just waiting impatiently for the end of the movie while the actors still have to figure out how much they are willing to risk to change the script.

Obama and Africa's future

Alexander Cockburn on Obama and his speech in Accra asserting that Africa's future was in the hands of Africans:

It was even worse in Ghana, where Obama (pictured above after speaking to their parliament) used his podium to lecture the whole of Africa on the correct moral and political path to a better future. Of course, this was really aimed at those same folks back home who thrilled to Obama’s strictures on the campaign trail, using Father's Day a year ago to tell black dads - only black dads - to shape up."Africa's future is up to Africans," he said in Accra. For an educated man in the 21st century, not to mention one with some knowledge of Africa's history, that's easily as ludicrous as Palin's supposed ignorance of Africa's status as a continent. (I say "suppposed" because that Palin blooper turned out to be a hoax.)
Africa's future is to a pervasive extent up to the World Bank, the IMF, international mining and oil companies and the US Congress (which, for example, votes cotton subsidies to domestic corporate farmers, thus undercutting and laying waste the cotton economies of Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and Chad).

I'm wondering whether it isn't always better to focus on voluntarism, on self-actualization and on free will even when those beliefs aren't always based on the realities on the ground. In other words, I have the strong suspicion that it is always to believe in one's power to decide one's destiny than to believe the contrary. Thus, in my opinion, as long as Obama doesn't believe the religiosity of his own rhetoric and is able to acknowledge, when it is time for to make and to implement policies, the realities which Cockburn is blaming him for not acknowledging in his messianic visit to Ghana I will give him a pass on his decision to give a Sarkozyst speech to Africans. After all the fact that Obama has African blood doesn't mean that he should, automatically ,get Africa and identify with Africans (He doesn't have to for after all, he doesn't know Africa). My only complaint about Obama's trip is that he played with the strong racial, ethnic, and tribal identities of Africans to make his political message more potent when all that it is, at the moment, simply the hopeful words of an American president who is believed by the people who listened to him in Accra to be capable on walking on water because he looks a little bit like them and yet is the king of the world.

Queen of denial

I'm trying hard to live as though my anemia wasn't affecting my life, but it is. The only way I was able to get out my apartment this weekend was to take a cab to go to my destination and to come back home, which is something I never do especially in such a beautiful day in Manhattan. What a waste! I feel like a dead woman walking.

Ahmadinejad and Ronald Reagan

I have to say that it's hard for me not to find Martin Amis interesting and even entertaining especially when he finds a way to tie together Ahmadinejad and Reagan. Sugary excerpt:

The American politician whom Ahmadinejad most closely resembles – in one vital respect – is Ronald Reagan. General similarities, I agree, are hard to spot. Ahmadinejad doesn't live on a ranch with a former starlet. Reagan didn't have a degree in traffic control. Ahmadinejad doesn't use Grecian 2000 (as his rapidly greying hair triumphantly attests). Reagan, as a young man, wasn't involved in the murder of political adversaries. And so on. But what they have in common is this: both figures are denizens of that stormlit plain where end-time theology meets nuclear weapons.
Now we can return, for a while, to dissimilarities. Ahmadinejad is not checked and balanced by democratic institutions. Reagan did not actually spend public money on civic preparations for the Second Coming, and was not the product of a culture saturated in ecstatic fantasies of morbid torment. Ahmadinejad does not have a temperament in which "simple-minded idealism" (in Eric Hobsbawm's formulation) might lead him to recognise "the sinister absurdity" of the arms race. And Reagan was not answerable to some millenarian vicar in the holy city of, say, Baltimore. Finally, whereas Reagan wielded enough firepower to kill everyone on earth several times over, Ahmadinejad does not yet have his Button.
Jesus Christ, according to both presidents, is due very shortly, but in Ahmadinejad's vision the Nazarene will merely form a part of the entourage of a much grander personage – the Hidden Imam. Who is the Hidden Imam? In the year 873, the bloodline of the Prophet came to an end when Hasan al-Askari (in Shiism, the 11th legitimate imam) died without an heir. At this point, among the believers, a classic circularity took hold. It was assumed that there must be an heir; there was no record of his existence, they reasoned, because extraordinary efforts had been made to conceal it; and extraordinary efforts had been made because this little boy was an extraordinary imam – the Mahdi, in fact, or the Lord of Time.

Grinding

I'm feeling probably just like Tiger Woods is feeling at the moment as he is about to miss the cut at the British Open. I'm grinding, struggling to survive, not to lose it, whatever "it" is.

As easy as...

It's easy to follow conventional wisdom as Sophie Elmhirst often does even if she does it better than most people:

A final thought for Sarah Palin. Perhaps it should be less of a thought and more of an epitaph, but I am trying to ignore the sense of total collapse in Palin’s career that the past two weeks have inspired. Palin’s resignation from her role as governor of Alaska has foxed everyone – apart from Fox, that is, which probably wants her to become news anchor, chief fisherwoman and all-round patron saint. The rest of us are bewildered. What is the woman playing at? Is it part of an elaborate corruption cover-up, or the first step in one of the most misconceived presidential campaigns in history? Either way, the main worry is that we might lose Palin from the public stage altogether. This would be a catastrophe; the woman is a comic genius. Following her on Twitter is like being attached to an intravenous drip of hilarity. We need people like her to brighten these dark days. So, the message to SP is clear: stay with us! Have a bash at 2012 – why not? Make some more speeches! Tweet away! You’re way too much fun.

What is it with some women and Sarah Palin that make them think that it is acceptable to dismiss her as a political bimbo? I have an idea, but it may be too analytical when this fact seems to have to do more with primitive instincts.

Expensive speech

I love India, but stories such as this one scare me:

A leading politician of India's ruling Congress party was arrested today and her house set on fire by activists after she suggested that a rival leader be raped so she can better understand the plight of victims.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the chief of the Congress party in northern Uttar Pradesh state, was placed under 14 days custody pending investigations for allegedly promoting social enmity, insulting a woman's modesty and insulting a person of lower caste. No charges have been filed yet, but the three offences are punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

No escape from race

Stanley Fish commenting on the Supreme Court's decision on Ricci v. DeStefano, which involved the city of New Haven (Connecticut) deciding to toss tests in its fire department to become lieutenants because all of those who passed it were whites and the Court deciding that its act was unconstitutional since the test in this case was legally sound:

Not only is there no escape from race; there is no possibility that those who are obsessed by it — everyone in this case — can ever find the peace Scalia imagines in some nebulous future or the complementariness Ginsburg incorrectly assumes in the present.

If Fish is right, then the world is and is going to be, for a long time, a sad and maddening place. I think it's important to wonder if Race (particularly in America) isn't about something other than race.

Distracting fixations

I agree with this:

(...) fixating on conspicuous religious symbols like the turban or burqa does not feel like an effective way to preserve French traditions and identity, especially when it keeps people out of state schools or other public institutions — just the kind of places where I imagine they have opportunities to study and participate in the culture and traditions that are part of a nation’s heritage.

The sacredness of Dimanche

The Wall Street Journal on the possible enactment of a law making possible for some French businesses to open on Sunday especially those, which attract the majority of tourists in cities such as Paris:

For many French citizens, being able to shop and work on Sunday would improve the quality of their lives. Some workers, such as students, even prefer to work on weekends. Opening on Sunday is good for the job market too. Legislative backers say the measure could save 15,000 jobs.
France being France, the bill will not make it universally legal to trade on Sundays -- that would be too simple. It will merely allow more stores to open in tourist areas and cities of more than one million people. Businesses will need the regional prefect's authorization, and the measure makes it illegal to discriminate against employees who refuse to work on Sunday. Workers will be paid double for Sunday duty. Even so, the proposal is proving controversial. The Socialist Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, said recently: "Sunday is a day of rest respected by most citizens and it must not be sacrificed by this vision of a de-regulated economy that does not take into account the family and personal lives of workers."
Au contraire. If France is going to emerge from the economic slowdown as quickly as possible, businesses need to be free to adapt to changing times -- including the ability to serve customers when the customers want.

I have to admit that I would love it if almost everything wasn't closed in France on Sundays, but I'm wondering if it is still possible for some countries to refuse Americanization (which I love) while hanging on to what make them unique. My guess is that once that law is passed, it is the beginning of the end for in a couple of years, everything will be open on Sundays in Paris and elsewhere because the thing about Americanization is that you can just taste bit of it especially when you like perpetual movement and speed.

Un 14 Juillet ordinaire

It's Bastille day ! The good news is that it's a beautiful day. The bad news is that I have nothing else to say except Happy Bastille day!

Exploiting the exploiters

No comment necessary...:

First there was boss-napping, now angry workers at a factory in France have come up with a new tactic in their battle against mass redundancy.
Staff at bankrupt car parts maker New Fabris are threatening to blow up the plant if they do not receive compensation from the companies that provided most of the firm's business.
The 336 workers at the factory at Châtellerault, near Poitiers in central France, want Renault SA and PSA Peugeot Citroen to pay €30,000 (£25,850) to each of them, or some €10m in total, in return for the company's remaining stocks of equipment and machinery. The workers, who are currently occupying the factory, have given Renault and Peugeot Citroen until 31 July to come up with the money.

The brilliance of parliamentary government

Signs of modernity..:

Catherine is an activist at the International Union of Sex Workers, which has for years, together with other groups like the English Collective of Prostitutes, organised press briefings and public meetings. In the face of this bill they met MPs, gave evidence before committees, and presented data (which the government had not released) showing that while blanket laws against buying sex don’t stop trafficking, they do make identifying trafficked women harder. The cops say information on possible victims often comes from punters, who are hardly going to go to the police if threatened with arrest. Hookers, health workers and cops also oppose the bill’s attempt to ban brothels; working alone is a lot more dangerous than sharing a receptionist and a maid with other prostitutes.
Such lobbying seems to have done the trick. The amended bill now allows two prostitutes to share premises and take bookings through an agent, while ensuring that men who buy sex from women who sell it willingly will avoid prosecution. It still contains some elements that are unworkable, bordering on idiotic. If a prostitute tells a client she’s a willing seller and later turns out to have been lying, the client can be jailed. But with the efforts of Catherine and her friends some of the remaining silliness may get ironed out. The fact is that people who work in the sex trade are beginning to influence the laws that govern them. Some may think this is no way to run a country, but I’ve yet to see a better idea.

A posse ad esse

Libby Purves loved Obama's speech in Ghana:

Mr Obama cut across a lot of nonsense in averring that Africans are no more or less capable than anyone else of good, evil, venality, heroism and patient nation-building. Yes, they have a harder struggle than many, because of wars and wrongs. Yes, they have some terrible leaders (but they overthrew apartheid and gave the world Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu). Yes, they are made up of tribes with ancient grudges — but so is Northern Ireland and much of Europe.

I watched and read the speech. It was as almost always well written and beautifully delivered, but I'm waiting for actions, for a change in policy that would illustrate that Obama practices what he believes rather than just preaching what ought to be. I'm firm believer that policy in cases where realities are harsh matter more than divinely inspiring and inspired words. In short, I'm waiting for the possibilities to become realities.

At least he is not the other guy

When I read Krugman writing this I have to wonder whether the fact that Obama isn't Bush is enough to accept less from him, no I'm not wondering, I'm just distressed by the fact that it seems to be sufficient for too many people to continue the cult of the personality:

To be fair, Obama is nothing like Bush; the stimulus was designed to solve a real problem, and the Obamanites, unlike the Bushies, don’t go around inventing crises to solve. But I still think that Obama’s greatest strength is precisely his obvious intelligence and ability to talk to Americans like adults; it’s a shame to see him and his advisers saying something they have to know isn’t quite right.

Preachers and blindness

Desmond Tutu on the West and its right to criticize Africa:

The West should in general, he warns, beware of preaching about corrupt African dictators. “You could say the same about Europe. You get a Churchill and then there’s a long wait . . . What gives me a great deal of hope for Africa is looking at the history of Europe. Very recently you had two world wars, you had the Holocaust, you had dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece. There was a time when Italy was changing governments like you change pairs of socks. There was the Soviet Union, Stalin’s gulags. You forget that you really made a mess of things. It was a Western country that was the first and only country to use weapons of mass destruction. [Africa] is not on a level with Western people.

Tutu is not only wrong, he is dead wrong. I cannot believe that it is still possible to use the old foolish excuse of Africans and Africa being different to shelter them from criticisms (both legitimate and illegitimate) as if they would deadly wound them, as if they are so lost in the heart of darkness that strangers ought to just shut, accept or respect differences even when they are atrocities and unacceptable.

Traveling with a Nigerian passport

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Financial Times on the difficulties of Traveling with a Nigerian passport and getting an American visa:

I have many stories of travel on my own Nigerian passport. The immigration official in Copenhagen was convinced I was a prostitute, for example, because there had been a recent influx of Nigerian sex workers into Denmark and I was travelling alone on a Nigerian passport. I have learned to laugh at these stories, and to use them as dinner party anecdotes. Of the people who will potentially interview me at embassies and airports, I always hope that they haven’t fought with their lover that morning, that they don’t have a headache or a bad back or PMS, and that they have never received one of those poorly-spelled bank advance e-mails from a Nigerian pretending to be a government official because in my experience these, even more than whether I have the proper documents, will determine my luck.
Years ago, my mother, who had visited the US in the past, was inexplicably refused an American visa to attend my sister’s wedding; it was not at all likely that the mother of the bride would become a dependant of the American state as she had a good, long-term university job in Nigeria and her daughter worked as a physician in America. Her mouth still tightens whenever she looks at photographs from the wedding.
It is no doubt a difficult job to have to deal with so many visa applicants, some of whom must be obnoxious, but that a person can, by doing their job so poorly, cause the kind of aching sadness that has great emotional significance in people’s lives requires a greater sense of responsibility in some visa interviewers.
In the endless American public debates on how to handle illegal immigration, much has been made – and rightly so – about how important it is for immigrants to apply the right way and “get in line.” Perhaps immigration reform should also involve looking at the realities of that line, and should ensure that visa issues to people from countries on the economic periphery of the world are not based on the caprices of the visa officer but instead follow clear rules. Talk about one way to bolster America’s soft power.

Child-like culture

hummh:

As Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher represented a child’s vision of strong political leadership (‘the smack of firm government’), Michael Jackson perfectly embodied a child’s eye view of sophistication.

Total trust in power

Sugary excerpt of the day:

Even now, defenders of Obama's preventive detention policy (i.e., indefinitely imprisoning people with no charges) insist that this is necessary because those in Guantanamo are "too dangerous to release" and we cannot convict them in a real court.  What's their basis for believing that people who have been convicted of absolutely nothing are nonetheless "too dangerous to release"?  The Government -- our trusted leaders -- claim it's true, so it must be. 

Change, bling, and fitness to lead

The Guardian Editorial on Berlusconi, Bling, Italy, and the G8 Summit:

Mr Berlusconi is the symptom but not necessarily the entire cause of his country's drift. Italians are not scandalised by him. They are dismayed about being criticised in the foreign press as a result of his antics, but they are not calling for the man himself to go.
Other European countries have coped with charismatic populists. France had a heavy dose of Nicolas Sarkozy in his bling phase, until the French said "ça suffit" and the president changed tack. But that is not happening in an Italy which secretly admires the agility of its leaders in escaping from the tightest of political corners. Until Italians start demanding serious standards from their leaders, the country is perhaps not the best venue for serious world summits.

I'm not buying it and I'm puzzled that all that the Guardian finds wrong with Berlusconi is his bling and clownesque behavior when his different times as the prime minister of Italy has shown that they are just a side show designed to distract attention away from his politics and policies. It is ridiculous to focus on Berlusconi the clown because such a distraction enables him to flirt shamelessly with Neo-Fascism groups and to concentrate his power while entertaining Italy and the world.

Minor n'important quoi

I like Jennifer Hudson, which surprises me because I have stopped liking RnB. She has something, which makes her universally likable and she isn't over the top. I watched her performance on the MJ thing ( I don't know how to call it, but I don't want to disrespect it either) yesterday and it was just right.

Illiberalism and the ban of the Burka

For some reason I can't seem to stop quoting Norm Geras or even to disagree with him so I will stop trying especially when he is expressing perfectly my sentiments on France, and its potential ban of the Burqa:

(...) Banning the burka itself is an indirect way of getting rid of such coercion, and the cost to individual freedom, the freedom of those who wear the burka by choice, is a price that must be paid - by them. OK. Then say that - but acknowledging the illiberal nature of the measure, illiberalism for the greater good so to speak. And, even saying it, one must first produce the evidence that amongst women wearing the burka the proportions are as they need to be, between those forced or pressured and those who wear it by choice. If these proportions aren't heavily weighted in the direction of establishing that there is coercion at work, then Oliver and others of his view have no case.
Another question that I'll just mention in passing. Does the law need to intervene in this matter at all? Why may it not be dealt with by the influence of education, social criticism and the like? Many in Western societies find it an obstruction to interacting with people if their faces are hidden. There is nothing to stop those who feel this way from expressing their preference as and when appropriate.

Second-hand grief

I agree with Roy MacGregor on this:

They have written scholarly books and journals on the outpouring of grief that followed the assassination of John Lennon and the accidental death of Princess Diana in that Paris automobile accident.
Both may pale, however, depending on what happens today in Los Angeles, where Michael Jackson, who could find no rest on earth, will be said to have finally found peace. In truth, it will be nothing of the kind – his brothers already spatting over whether to involve religion in the hockey-rink memorial and police concerned that the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of fans who find themselves without “tickets” to the funeral will attempt to storm the Staples Center.
No one fully comprehends what it is that makes certain people more upset about the death of a celebrity they have never met than they might be over the passing of a grandparent. Some experts have speculated that this faux mourning, or long-distance mourning, whatever it might be called, is actually the mourner mourning some aspect of themselves.
(...)The truly incredible thing about long-distance mourning is that it seems, somehow, to make people feel good about themselves rather than badly for themselves, as in the case of a death of someone truly in the family.
It’s an easy, and largely harmless, emotional hit – you see a far smaller version of it around baggage carousels in large airports, where voyeurs will openly stare at a teary reunion, simply imagining what such joy or sorrow must feel like.
And, of course, there is always the chance that you or your handwritten note or even your bouquet of flowers will appear on television – thereby proving you were a legitimate part of the event.

The real clowns

Stanley Fish has a great article on the troubles of Mark Sanford and the resignation of Sarah Palin and the way Journalists are covering them. It is a must-read because it shows that it is impossible to cover the circus without becoming a part of it. As I said last fall, I like Sarah Palin just as I like Obama and Sarkozy for that matter (I was never able to hate Bush because I believe that he wasn't the issue, that his politics were), after all, how can you not like people who work so hard at being liked and who believe that they have a destiny. However, the fact that I like Palin isn't enough for me to ever vote for her, for them because politics isn't about liking or hating the politicians, it isn't about the personal, it is about the beef not the  syrupy fluff, which is what the media seems to think that it is. It is sad that in era when seriousness is needed, the world is dominated by the politics of me where politicians believe that being liked, beloved, venerated is everything. To come back to Palin, it was sad for me to see how easy it became/is for people, women especially to hate her/ despise her as if she didn't have the right to exist, as if she is an abomination, as if the only possible way to fight her ideology is to smack her down as manly guys mount a bitch in heat to remind her that she was only created for one thing, to be taken and to be bred.

Change you can believe in

Aah, chassez le naturel:

Sarkozy said he would no longer reply sarcastically to the newspaper editor who provoked him at a press conference, “not only because of my respect for the person in question, but because of my concept of my function . . . When one is president of the republic, one is never right to be aggressive. I think of it constantly.”
The old Sarkozy was determined to impose a “rupture” in French mentalities and habits. The new Sarkozy says: “I must take account of criticism, of difficulties and failings, try to do better. I want to carry out reforms by seeking broad acceptance, by developing discussion. I’m listening. I’m learning. Perhaps I’m making progress.”
(... )Commentators are unanimous in attributing the new, improved image to Carla Bruni Sarkozy. Le Nouvel Observateur did not ask Sarkozy about Bruni’s influence, perhaps because Denis Olivennes, the director of the magazine and an ex-boyfriend of the first lady, was one of two journalists who conducted the interview.
In an interview last year, Bruni told this correspondent that her husband “is not very aggressive. He’s impulsive”. She is a great believer in correcting character flaws through psychoanalysis. Thanks to Bruni, Sarkozy has reportedly abandoned the worst of French pop culture to read Borges and watch film classics by Kubrick, Chaplin and Capra. He has invited Woody Allen and Michel Houellebecq to the Élysée Palace.

I'm counting the seconds until this change lasts and I can't wait to hear Obama say that he has grown or rather evolved for after all he does't have any reason to sing the I have change pitiful tune for now America and the world love him while they are weary of my Sarko.

On vengeance and justice

I find Norm Geras's following point on vengeance and justice thought-provoking:

(...) justice is not exhausted by the aim of retribution, by its punitive purpose. It must pay attention to the possible rehabilitation of the wrongdoer. Furthermore retribution, and therefore the retributive element within remedial justice, is not the same as revenge. The desiderata of proportionality and, where appropriate, mitigation mean that just punishment may not be excessive, where revenge sometimes is excessive. It 'may' not be, in the sense both that it isn't justified if it's disproportionate and so must not be, and that in certain circumstances it is permitted to be less severe even than what would be proportionate and so could well be.

Last week, I wrote that I thought that the Madoff's sentence wasn't punitive. What I meant wasn't that he should have received more time in jail, but rather that the condemnation didn't punish his crime in the sense that it was inadequate and that it didn't serve any purpose other than to shatter the few years that he has on earth. The American system of justice is so obsessed with the idea of retribution that it focuses rarely on doing the right thing or rather on incorporating other ideas such as remedial and reformative justice in its sentencing on the people found guilty. I don't think that that Madoff spending the rest of his life in justice accomplishes anything moreover, I think it jut shows that America doesn't know how to deal with his crime and encourages that the idea that white collar crimes are crimes that can pay.

Kouchner, the Anglo-Saxon problem, and international politics

Christophe Caldwell reviews Pierre Péan's book on Bernard Kouchner, France's "Foreign Minister" Le Monde selon K:

Throughout the book, nothing is cast in a more nefarious light than the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ aspect of Kouchner’s ideology. Péan quotes an old friend of Kouchner’s saying: ‘He often says he wishes he were born American.’ He places Kouchner’s Rwanda diplomacy in the context of post-Cold War ‘operations of Anglo-Saxon reconquest’. He faults Kouchner and John Garang, the leader of the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, for undermining a joint Franco-Sudanese strategy to counter ‘Anglo-Saxon expansionism in the region’ in the early 1990s. He sees a ‘total convergence of Kouchner’s actions in the Balkans with those of the Americans’.
The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ problem has less to do with capitalism than with foreign policy, although Péan does make a connection between the two. He approvingly quotes Humanité’s description of the American world order as ‘the right of the rich and powerful to set themselves up as international policemen’. But he believes the main US (or Anglo-Saxon) goal is ‘to fragment those territories and nation-states still standing, to chop up their spheres of influence and retribalise their populations’, in order to remove rivals to its hegemony. The American empire, for him, is like the Empire in Star Wars: any member of a local population who thinks its influence a good thing for his country is a fool, a coward or a traitor.
But there is a very different way of looking at the role Kouchner has played in the spread of US hegemony. Very few of the people described in their own countries as ‘lackeys’ and ‘poodles’ of the US new world order appear that way to Americans. (This includes Tony Blair.) Like it or not, Kouchner’s co-operation with the US has not meant knuckling under to US military might, but rather borrowing it for European purposes, which are often idealistic ones. Consider the interviews Kouchner gave this spring about France’s reintegration into Nato. Full membership, he told Le Figaro, allows France to get in on the planning stage of the kinds of operation – Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan – that it would join anyway. Furthermore, it would let Europeans ‘more easily conduct foreign operations without the agreement or the participation of the Americans’.
(...)As Paul Berman put it a few years ago: ‘If Kouchner was doing a good thing by sailing the seas of East Asia in a rented ship with six doctors . . . why stop there?’ Putting human rights first leads to a much more intimate military engagement with the world’s danger zones than most citizens of democracies would think prudent. It also leads to a depoliticisation of military operations in the first place. Although it is not always easy to tell what the French mean when they use the word ‘neoconservatism’, Péan is quite right to say that neoconservatism is merely Kouchnerism taken to its logical conclusions.

I have to admit that I'm puzzled and disappointed by Kouchner. As Common, a good rapper, would say I used to love him but now I don't dislike him or even disrespect the choices that he has made, I questioned because it forces me to rethink this idea that I had that he understood nuance and principles and believed that there are things that politicians cannot threat on even for power or rather especially for power. I didn't like Pierre Péan's book because his tone implied that Kouchner was an unsavory character and that his contradictions made him vile. I think the picture is more complex. I wish that it was but it is. I think that Kouchner is in an epitome of the fact that it is difficult in politics to be faithful especially if fidelity and  loyalty aren't rewarded. What strikes about the views of Kouchner and Paul Berman (sometimes Bernard-Henri Lévy) is that they make every single decision on the international scenes a moral one, which often separates the world between good and evil without acknowledging shades of gray. I think that an obsession with goodness more often than not leads to catastrophes after all, the road to hell is...

Quality of life

I had a great Fourth of July Weekend ! It reminded me how important it is to turn off my laptop sometimes and to relax. Sometimes less is more.

Wanton up!

I'm taking the long weekend off. I'm just going to be a physical being. I will eat, drink a lot of wine (a lot of Chablis), read some French and spanish poetry, watch a few movies, and enjoy all the pleasures of the flesh imaginable and even unimaginable. See you Monday if I don't die if I don't die of pleasure!

Attention grabber

Ah, ah, ah, and ah:

Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, he certainly knows how to capture your attention.  At a meeting in the Elysée Palace last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears that the French president recommended in no uncertain terms that Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, should be dropped from the Israeli cabinet and replaced with Tzipi Livni, the less abrasive opposition leader.