The Republic of Dissent

Time is on my side

Ending a long, long day. I hate the Rolling Stones ! Well no, I just have a problem with Mick Jagger, but I guess it's the same thing. In any case, for some reason, a stones' song expresses my state of  mind except that I still feel anxious about the whole living thing. Ah, it's hard to focus on doing the right things instead of doing things right.

Covered women

Pic of the day from DVIDSHUB

Burqa-free Belgium

Belgium has moved closer to passing a law banning the burqa:

Belgium today moved to the forefront of a widening campaign to restrict the wearing of the Muslim veil by women when a key vote left it on track to become the first European country to ban the burqa and niqab in public.
The home affairs committee of the Brussels federal parliament voted unanimously to ban the partial or total covering of faces in public places.
"I am proud that Belgium would be the first country in Europe which dares to legislate on this sensitive matter," the centre-right MP Denis Ducarme said.

I would give this more than a thought except that it's all for show for the European Court of Human Rights will strike it down if it is even passed and becomes a law. In short: the law will never be applied and is a political version of showing off. I will take this ban seriously when I hear that the Belgian police arrested a woman for daring to provoke/shock the poor streetwalkers by wearing the burqa.

Non-policy changing terrorism

Provocative point by Julia Ioffe on the Moscow bombings, provocative, but I'm wondering whether she's right, I suspect that she is

(...)when taken in the broader context of Russia and the slow-motion conflict in the Northern Caucasus -- the 2004 explosion in the market in the southern Russian city of Samara (10 dead, 60 wounded), the two Russian passenger planes that simultaneously fell from the sky that same year (89 dead), the suicide bombing that nearly killed the Ingush president in June -- the blasts in the Moscow subway by two female jihadis were just another parry, and not a very damaging one at that.

The bigger point is that there always come a time when terrorism stops to matter in the sense that it no longer has a significant affect either on politics or politics because it has happened before on a bigger scale and that people, more importantly politicians have integrated within normalcy.  One only has to hear Putin speak to realize that the Moscow bombings neither changed his mindset nor his politics.

The everlasting Dreyfus affair

Sugary excerpt of the bet article I read last weekend which Donald Morrison's review of a  few books about the Dreyfus Affairs and its relevance in Modern France:

Dreyfus’s ordeal was the first big test of a modern justice system, and it defined one of the central issues of democracy: should the rule of law be applied consistently, or are there cases in which it should be bent to fit a current crisis or pressing national concern? Even today, hardly a month passes without an alleged misstep of justice somewhere in the world being labelled a “new Dreyfus Affair”.
In France, the original case still incites debate. There are people who still believe that Dreyfus was guilty, or that national preservation excused his treatment. Those who celebrate his innocence fear that the kind of state-sponsored injustice he endured has not been eradicated, and that the clubby world of French officialdom continues to act arbitrarily, secretly and sometimes illegally without penalty. For both sides, the Dreyfus case was a watershed in modern French history. The divisions it created resurface periodically – in the debates over wartime collaboration, France’s struggles in Vietnam and Algeria, anti-Semitism, official corruption, immigration and other failures of governance.

My only comment is that to wonder how the Dreyfus would have ended not only in modern France, but also in modern America. I ask myself whether with today's instant and intense collective hysteria, it is possible to use reason and to repair undue harms after public lynchings.

Journalists, conflict of interests and the White house

I agree with Glenn Greenwald's on his reaction to Howard Kurtz's article about the fierce competition among journalists covering the White House to get inside stories to write books:

The conflicts in having "journalists" report on the administration while simultaneously begging top White House officials for highly lucrative book-access are as self-evident as they are corrupting.  Richard Wolffe covered the Obama campaign for Newsweek at the same time he was writing an access-dependent book on Obama; when he left Newsweek, even Newsweek staffers complained about the prospect that he had used magazine funds to cover the campaign while withholding key stories from the magazine so he could use it in his book instead (the same controversy that has plagued Bob Woodward in the writing of his Bush-glorifying books while also working for the Post). 
(...)Is it even remotely conceivable that this stable of access-desperate reporters would write negatively about the White House or the President, or conversely, refuse to do their bidding?  Look at what Ryan Lizza writes to get the answer.  They're all vying for the lucraticve position of unofficial royal court spokesman (which Bob Woodward occupied in the prior administration).  How can one possibly purport to be a "watchdog" over the very political officials on whom one's livelihood and hope for riches depend?

Journalists are always reluctant to call each other out when one of them crosses the line. They would rather point their critical glare to others; this lack of consequential self-criticism and of the lack of mandatory ethical guidelines to put things awkwardly are one of the main causes of  the problem. Journalism in America has become first and foremost a business.

American TV has a problem with vaginas

Funniest and most on point stuff I read this week from a post over at Bellagerens:

If you ever doubted that the United States is a bizarre place, think again. Three major television networks (unnamed, naturally) have refused to air a tampon advertisement containing the word ‘vagina,’ reportedly because use of the word is ‘a bit too frank.’

On the same subjects, I  have never understood why male frontal nudity was considered a big no no as if the penis is the most sacred body part that has ever existed.

Terror and retaliation

Quote of the mid-day from a Muscovite touched by the Moscow metro suicide attacks:

To be honest I don't know anything about Chechnya. I just know they are dangerous people. They should all be kicked out of Moscow.

Chechnya and suicide bombings

Informative conclusion to an Op-ed in the New York Times written by Robert O Pape, Lindsey O'Rourke, and Jenna McDermit on the Moscow metro bombings and what it says about Chechnya suicide terrorism

(...) the picture is clear: Chechen suicide terrorism is strongly motivated by both direct military occupation by Russia and by indirect military occupation by pro-Russia Chechen security forces. Building on the more moderate policies of 2005 to 2007 might not end every attack, but it could well reduce violence to a level both sides can live with.
Because the new wave of Chechen separatists see President Kadyrov as a puppet of the Kremlin, any realistic solution must improve the legitimacy of Chechnya’s core social institutions. An initial step would be holding free and fair elections. Others would include adopting internationally accepted standards of humane conduct among the security forces and equally distributing the region’s oil revenues so that Chechnya’s Muslims benefit from their own resources.
No political solution would resolve every issue. But the subway attacks should make clear to Russia that quelling the rebellion with diplomacy is in its security interests. As long as Chechens feel themselves under occupation — either directly by Russian troops or by their proxies — the cycle of violence will continue wreaking havoc across Russia.

It's troubling to admit, but it don't think that reason matters here for the Russians are going to retaliate. They live in a world where not doing so would be a form of capitulation and a sign of weakness. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting terrorism manliness is the way to go..

The Vatican and the fear of reform

I agree with Henry Farrell on this:

The church is faced with a very tricky set of organizational trade-offs. It seems to be opting for a bare minimum of external accountability (acknowledging that there is a problem, and apologizing for it, while refusing to undertake substantial reforms or to admit that the rot has spread to the top), combined with an appeal to the loyalty of the faithful. This plausibly shores up the position of those at the top – but at the risk of provoking mass exit (at least among churchgoers in industrialized democracies – I don’t know enough about the church in the developing world to speculate). Senior figures in the church have been muttering for years that, if it comes down to it, they would prefer a smaller and more orthodox church to one which had more members but had to accommodate greater heterodoxy. I suspect they are about to get their wish, although I imagine that they would prefer that it occurred under somewhat different circumstances.

For too many within the Catholic Church, its archaic organization is what makes it authentic. To reform means to modernize, which is still the most feared enemy because it leads to change and the admission that the ways of the past were not always good. In fact, Joseph Ratzinger became Benedict XVI to preserve the status quo while making sure that the moderns remained a minority and that the church went back to its strict rules. 

Ideologizing the Catholic sex abuse scandals

Ross Douthat finds a way to make the Catholic sex abuse scandals about ideology:

The lesson of the American experience, now exhaustively documented, is that almost everyone was complicit in the scandal. (...) This hasn’t prevented both sides in the Catholic culture war from claiming that the scandal vindicates their respective vision of the church. Liberal Catholics, echoed by the secular press, insist that the whole problem can be traced to clerical celibacy. Conservatives blame the moral relativism that swept the church in the upheavals of the 1970s, when the worst abuses and cover-ups took place.In reality, the scandal implicates left and right alike. The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’s overemphasis on therapy. (Again and again, bishops relied on psychiatrists rather than common sense in deciding how to handle abusive clerics.) But it was the church’s conservative instincts — the insistence on institutional loyalty, obedience and the absolute authority of clerics — that allowed the abuse to spread unpunished.

It is very difficult for the pious to admit to see that their church wasn't corrupted by a permissive culture, but rather by its own flawed structure, and by the fact that priests became more important than values and chidlren. In short, there is something rotten within the Vatican and the Catholic establishment.

Sarkozy is in DC

The ego has landed and has met his match!

There is no longer a middle in American politics

Revealing bit from George Packer about a Republican primary for a congressional seat in the Fifth District in Virginia (a state, which Obama carried in spite of the fact that it had been a Republican stronghold):

The Republicans have held several debates, each a competition in claims to purity. At one, [Laurence] Verga said that the biggest threat to the country’s security was the Americans who voted for Obama. “That was political correctness gone awry.” 

I have the alarming feeling that today in America you can't win if you can't raise the blood pressure of crowds either with eloquence or provocation.

The freedom to wear the niqab is as simple as...

Clifford Orwin has a blunt take on the whole niqab controversy in Québec:

Yes, Canada, some of those fellow citizens, being Muslim, dress so as to conceal more of themselves than do their sisters of other faiths. And yes, their veil bears a name so unfamiliar as to sound downright un-Canadian. They pay taxes, however, in the very same currency as we do, and are entitled to the very same services. They cannot be denied these for exercising their religious freedom.
Yes, their religious freedom. Forget about “multiculturalism”: The issue here is both older and more fundamental. It's the right of every resident of a liberal state to conduct herself as she thinks pleasing to God, on the sole condition that such conduct not violate the rights of others. And while wearing a niqab may send some observers into a high dudgeon, it impairs neither their civil interests nor their religious ones. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, whether their neighbour wears no niqab or three niqabs neither picks their pocket nor breaks their bones.

I agree with Orwin. However, the matter to me isn't about religion. It is about women's choices and their right that they have, as individuals, to do whatever they choose with their body, to dress however they choose even it means sending messages society is not comfortable with.  I have never bought the whole sacredness of religion argument it isn't very convincing. I believe in individual rights for everybody even people who are still viewed as sexual objects or as people who either have to be invisible, transparent, hidden or just good to look at  In short, the niqab/hijab/burka/burqa/veil is about equality and liberty

Laughing off sex addiction

Reading August Kleinzahler's post on his visit with Doctor Himmelfarb has me convinced that I'm right to laugh at this whole sex addiction thing. Sugary excerpt

(...) one question I asked the doctor, and whose response was most thought-provoking indeed, was why there were no women in the programme, unless they were at a separate, gender-restricited facility. The doctor assured me there was no such separate facility and that the Darkness, Be Gone program was not designed for women, only for men. ‘Why is this?’ I asked the doctor. He seemed impatient with the question, as though the answer were obvious, or should have been. ‘Because the human female has not the capacity for sexual remorse. Without this, my Darkness Be Gone 12-step program is useless.’ There followed a long silence. Finally, I asked: ‘Dr Himmelfarb, how did you arrive at the conclusion that women have not the capacity for sexual remorse.’ The doctor turned abruptly in my direction and asked sharply: ‘Are you fruit?’ By which, I gather he meant, given my acquaintance with low speech, was I homosexual. ‘No, doctor,’ I answered politely, but firmly, determined not to show dismay at the suggestion that I might be homosexual, or that my query to his assertion about women and sexual remorse suggested a lack of experience with women. The doctor turned to me and said: ‘Do you know why a dog or cat does not possess a sense of humour?’ I found that premise as bizarre as the other, but seeing the colour rising in the great man’s cheeks offered no challenge, thinking all the while of my generous honorarium. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because a dog or cat does not possess a soul, and without a soul you cannot possess a sense of humour.’ ’

I'm going to have to create a new addiction, just so that I can make money off of it and make people less guilty for behaving like animals. The next guy who argues that he is a sex addict, need also to castrate himself to show how guilty he feels for not being able to help himself. I hate this trend in modern societies to transform every frailty into disorders.

Scams and free speech

Different take from Bill Tieleman on Ann Coulter's visit to Canada and her assertion that she was a victim of censorship and of a hate crime:

God bless the University of Ottawa students who did something in one night that millions of Americans have spent years hoping for -- they shut up Ann Coulter!
But don't call this a "free speech" issue. Coulter -- the ridiculously rabid right-wing American commentator, and federal Conservative Party activist Ezra Levant played the media like a cheap fiddle to make it appear she was muzzled -- not at all.
Coulter and Levant -- not the police, not the University of Ottawa -- cancelled her speaking engagement last week -- not because of a riot, or because violent protesters bashed down the doors -- but because it was a great publicity opportunity.
And most media bought it, hook line and sinker -- reporting that no matter how offensive Coulter's views are, they should be tolerated in a free and democratic society, especially at a university, blah, blah, blah.
What rubbish!

I feel dirty for even taking about Ann Coulter so I'm going to stop.

The dangers of historical amnesia

Quote of the mid-day from Michael Bérubé's worth-reading on the Chomsky and Krugman lefts:

No one on the American left believes that the United States was a happy land of benevolence and ponies prior to 9/11. But I believe that the theory of the unitary executive, the practice of indefinite detention, and the justifications of torture mounted after 9/11 are, in fact, qualitatively different from the policies of the American government before 9/11 and that no good purpose is served by blurring the distinction.
Perhaps there are some historical amnesiacs out there somewhere who need to be reminded of the bombing of Cambodia, the overthrow of Allende, and the funding of death squads in Central America lest they lapse into the belief that the United States “lost its innocence” (yet again!) when the towers fell. But if you are calling for an investigation into the crimes of the Bush Administration, as Krugman was, then it is absolutely critical to understand—and to persuade your fellow citizens—why those crimes specifically are worth investigating, why they are not just the same old same old on a different day.

Banning Lady Gaga

It's been a long time since I read an op-ed as superfluous as Bret Stephens's in the Wall Street Journal. Sugary excerpt:

Which brings me back to the settlements. There may well be good reasons for Israel to dismantle many of them, assuming that such an act is met with reciprocal and credible Palestinian commitments to suppress terrorism and religious incitement, and accept Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. But to imagine that the settlements account for even a fraction of the rage that has inhabited the radical Muslim mind since the days of Qutb is fantasy: The settlements are merely the latest politically convenient cover behind which lies a universe of hatred. If the administration's aim is to appease our enemies, it will get more mileage out of banning Lady Gaga than by applying the screws on Israel. It should go without saying that it ought to do neither.

Stephens shows that some people who have nothing to say shouldn't try to write about important and serious subjects when they aren't able to make valid points without using faulty, but flashy reasoning and without highlighting properly the context.  Stephens's op-ed is ridiculous because he trivialized an important subject to hide the fact that he has nothing to say, that he has no arguments, but just a few die-hard convictions. It's a pity, because better arguments can be used to support his position.

Racism and normality

Philip Ridley on what believes to be the differences between racism of the past and the present one:

When I was at school, the two sides of the extreme right vs liberal argument were easier to identify. Every fascist wore their swastika with pride and wasn't afraid to call a spade a – need I carry on? But these days racism (and its blood brother, homophobia) has a far scarier visage: normality.

I have to admit that I'm disturbed by Ridley's assumption that all racists are abnormal people who are scarier now that they are able to bear the mask of normality. My experience has taught me that racism is fact part of daily lives and it is in that sense very normal. It is the wearing of the swastika or whatever that is abnormal because it indicates that it isn't just 'racial' hatred that is behind the proud use of that symbol, but also a belief in violence and in a radical political ideology. At some point, people are going to have to accept that every single day  they make regrettable and demeaning judgments about one another based on every little thing, race, gender, appearance, and mannerism. The focus has to be on avoiding that these assumptions lead to crimes such as discrimination and to an unwillingness to accept that they may be wrong. All racists aren't created equal and most are actually normal people. That doesn't excuse their imperfection, it just makes it banal.

Russia against terrorism

James Sherr poses some excellent questions about the Moscow Metro attacks, which suggest that they might lead to a radicalization of its war on terror:

In recent years, Russia has been no stranger to gruesome attacks, including several on the Moscow metro itself. In the weeks ahead, it will be tempting to conclude that the situation is no worse than it has been up to now.
But the 29 March attack raises at least two ominous questions: is it coincidental that an attack on a metro station adjacent to the once notorious headquarters of the security services has followed the November 2009 attack on the prestigious Nevsky Express, which is widely utilised by members of the business and political elite? Those behind Monday's attack might well wish to demonstrate that the Russian state is not only powerless to defend ordinary citizens but also 'its own' and itself.The second question is whether such attacks will be intensified ahead of the 2012 presidential elections. Further attacks on symbols of state power could erode the prestige of those who rode to power in 1999 on the back of equally traumatic outrages and have staked everything on the restoration of Russia's integrity and strength.

I'm just wondering if a war on terror is going to fix Russia's Chechen problem for it seems that it is creating more terrorists willing to kill barbarically innocent people. Russia won't back down and Chechen's extremists won't either. More innocent are thus going to die, which is stomach turning.

America and delayed secularization

Quote of the end of the afternoon from Eric Kaufman:

America really is a case of delayed secularisation, what happened in Europe in the middle of the last century is happening to America now in terms of the young turning away from organised religion. Currently America is about 14 per cent secular, that is unaffiliated, and we predict this will grow to about 17 per cent by 2050, then plateau out.

The Pope as a normal being

I agree with Christopher Hitchens on this, but I recognize the rest of the world doesn't agree with us:

For Ratzinger, the sole test of a good priest is this: Is he obedient and discreet and loyal to the traditionalist wing of the church?(...)This is what makes the scandal an institutional one and not a matter of delinquency here and there. The church needs and wants control of the very young and asks their parents to entrust their children to certain "confessors," who until recently enjoyed enormous prestige and immunity. It cannot afford to admit that many of these confessors, and their superiors, are calcified sadists who cannot believe their luck. Nor can it afford to admit that the church regularly abandoned the children and did its best to protect and sometimes even promote their tormentors. So instead it is whiningly and falsely asserting that all charges against the pope—none of them surfacing except from within the Catholic community—are part of a plan to embarrass him.
This hasn't been true so far, but it ought to be true from now on. This grisly little man is not above or outside the law. He is the titular head of a small state. We know more and more of the names of the children who were victims and of the pederasts who were his pets.

Hitchens is right on principle, and it doesn't not matter here for the Pope is a powerful little grisly man who will never have to answer any question. He is the head of the most powerful church and that fact protects him. It makes him in fact above the law. There are always going to be priests, people willing to fall on their swords for Benedict XVI, believing that martyrdom will earn them a special place in paradise if someone dares to examine the Vatican's role in all the sex abuse scandals.

Democrat presidents and polarization

Paul Waldman on the fact that Obama had ended up being as polarizing a president as his supporters argued Hillary Clinton would have:

Remember during the 2008 primary campaign how Obama supporters argued that one reason not to elect Hillary Clinton was that she would unite Republicans against her? And that since they hated her so much, they'd wage a scorched-earth campaign against everything she tried to do, miring the country in years of bitter and angry conflict, full of insane and venomous charges that would force the administration to defend itself against the conspiracy theories of an increasingly unhinged opposition? And that they'd work their supporters up into such a lather of hatred that we might see a repeat of the early 1990s, with the rise of right-wing anti-government populism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing?
Good thing we dodged that one.

Waldman argues that any Democrat president is bound to be/become a polarizing figure because the Republicans believe that they are all illegitimate. I want to bite, but something is holding me back. I've seen how low democrats can sink during the 2008 primaries when it comes to taking down people they hate or believe are not of them and in fact evil, racist or just too pragmatic. The problem is that American politics has become too much about identity politics and people when they don't believe that the president is one of them feel passionately that he is illegitimate.

Obama's America as a permanent War state

I don't agree with John Pilger on the following,but what he writes shows how attractive war can become for a country such like the United States when there is a widespread fear of being attack or of losing power:

Western war-states such as the US and Britain are threatened not by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested against Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" thousands, first offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry a custodial sentence. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, such as Saddam Hussein.

What I wonder if why people who share Pilger's view believed stupidly that Obama would change that reality when their hero makes people feel better just by looking like change and thus in fact almost killing the need to push for actual change. Obama has no incentive in being different, to the contrary, he just needs to be a normal president, pass some legislation and people would that as the greatest achievement for they still believe that race is a basis for identity.

Obama needs a pal...

I find this bit from Howard Lafranchi lamenting the fact that Obama doesn't pals abroad ridiculous:

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, sit down for dinner with the Obamas in the White House family dining room March 30, it will be a rare occasion for Barack Obama: a private, personal, perhaps even chatty evening with another world leader.
Fourteen months into the Obama presidency, one striking feature of an American president who took office to a swooning world is the absence of any strong personal ties – or even a go-to working relationship – with any other world leader. Where Ronnie had Maggie, and Bill and even George W. had Tony, Mr. Obama  has no one leader. Instead, the former law professor has what seems to be a preference for big-themed foreign speeches (think Cairo; Prague, Czech Republic; Moscow; Accra, Ghana) and policy gatherings (his UN nuclear summit, the Pittsburgh Group of 20 economic summit, a White House nuclear nonproliferation summit in May) bereft of the warm and fuzzy.

It takes time to make buddies especially when you are Jesus and when you win a Nobel peace prize your first year in office just for being you, you are bound to be on your own. Few leaders want to be buddies with the smartest kid in the room especially when the whole school loves him, Why would a head of state such as Sarkozy want to be Obama's buddy when that would mean accepting to be overshadowed and to play Joe Biden's role abroad.

An Infuriaiting book

Sugary excerpt form Ian Leslie's review of Dan Pink's Drive which made my day sunnier:

Daniel Pink’s Drive is one of 2010’s most high-profile non-fiction books. It has a timely thesis: that people are primarily motivated to work hard and achieve great things not by money, but by their own passion for what they do. It’s a good point, worth making. But I found Drive infuriating. This had nothing to do with its argument, or with Pink’s writing, which is fluent and lucid. Actually, it’s Drive that has the problem with itself, not me.
The author takes 146 pages to make his case. The remaining 80 or so pages, named “The Toolkit,” consist of what you might call meta-content or, in plain language, padding. Much of this padding seems to exist on the assumption that the reader won’t have time to read the first part–you know, the actual book.

I have to admit that I have a hard time reading self-help, self-motivating or whatever else they are call. More often than not, they are, yes, infuriating, because the author assumes that he is talking to someone who Isn't smarter than a fifth grader.

Europe has three heads

I agree wholeheartedly with Doug Saunders on this:

On Thursday morning, I sat before the president of the European Union, José Manuel Barroso. He explained in exuberant English that Greece's problems would be solved without the help of the International Monetary Fund.
Next, I heard from the president of the European Union, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He emphasized in brusque Spanish that Greece would require “fundamentally a European solution” with no help from outside bodies like the IMF.
A few hours later, the room was occupied by the president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy. In patient French, he explained definitively and finally that Greece would be bailed out with the help of the IMF.
Three presidents, three answers, three points of view. This is no way to operate the world's largest economy and oversee the lives of 500 million people. Brussels has failed to take a seat beside Washington and Beijing because, at root, nobody can agree who the leaders really are.

The trouble is that this is the way European heads of governments want things to be to remain the sole decision-makers. They do not want to have an unelected head of Europe that could give them orders or be their equal. The problem could have been address with the Lisbon Treaty, and it was not. The strong political leaders of Europe, Merkel, Sarkozy and others made sure that the president of the Council (Herman Van Rompuy)l and the high representative for foreign affairs (Lady Ashton) were 'nobodies so that they wouldn't be in the way of their or get the ridiculous notion that Europe has to become something other than a collection of national interests. In short, the confusion is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Obama and the redefinition of the war on terror

Interesting point from Noah Feldman on Obama and 'the war on terror':

Beyond the technical legal issues, this debate is about the fundamental question of whom we are at war with. (...) The two problems most plaguing Obama in the war on terrorism are trials for terrorists and taking the fight beyond Afghanistan to places like Pakistan and Yemen. This issue of whom we are at war with defines both of them.

The issue is that as the Bush administration, the Obama team has realized that it will crippled by a terrorist attack. It has therefore chosen to take all the power that it can get to fight terrorism or rather to keep the ones that Bush got even it means renouncing to some important principles. Obama knows that given all the hysteria (ideological for the most) around his americanness/postamericanness, his race, and his toughness, one attack is enough to kill his presidency.

Britan, America, and the rowdy relationship

Quote of the day from Bruce Anderson:

There are problems with the Americans. Because they have not spent the last millennium in a conflict-ridden continent, crammed up against potentially hostile neighbours, they have only been fitfully interested in diplomacy. They are so big that they sometimes dispense with allies in favour of global solipsism. But almost every President comes to recognise that this is not enough. At some point he wants friends and discovers we British not only speak the same language. We tend to think in the same way. We are more likely than anyone else to provide tea, sympathy and troops.
But it is never a tranquil partnership.

Angela Merkel as the leader of Europe

I agree with Josef Joffe on this:

Merkel the Mean is anything but. She has not turned against Europe, but against those whose extravagance threatens the euro. She is not breaking with the Kohl tradition, but reasserting the original deal. To save the euro, which has lost 10 per cent against the dollar on account of the Athenians, she rightly insists that the profligate must get their house in order instead of angling for multibillion-dollar handouts.
That is not anti-, but pro-European if you view the euro as one of Europe’s greatest feats on the way to a more perfect union. To draw the line against the worst offender, while Spain, Portugal et al nervously take note, should have an entirely salutary effect. The French have a phrase for it, taken from Voltaire: harsh punishment serves “to encourage the others” to remain virtuous.

We shall see, for little that Europe ever decides is cast in concrete — especially if Greece does default. But there is still the larger issue that vexes minds: have the Germans, almost in a fit of absent-mindedness, stumbled into a new role on the European stage? If they have grabbed leadership, the foot-stomping is defensive rather than aggressive, as in the ways of Wilhelm or, God forbid, Adolf.

It was about time that somebody played the role of the enforcer within the European Union instead of solely grandstanding.Chancellor Merkel is playing that role well, but is it enough it seems to me that for her leadership to matter, she is going to have to go beyond toughness on Greece and actually propose a way for Europe to move forward while keeping Germany at the center of everything.

Cool

Ambiguously deep thought: Sometimes, it is more important to keep one's cool than to be smart and skilled because with a hot head, it's difficult to make good decisions.

Still waiting for Jesus

Well, no comments necessary (hat tip: Alex Massie) Why am I seeing Obama instead of Jesus?

Pakistan, Drone attacks, and the Obama administration

For more on the use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere by the Obama administration and its implications, read Professor Anderson's excellent article on the subject, Predators over Pakistan. Harold Koh gave a speech defending the Obama administration and its positions on international law. Kevin Heller offers a convincing rebuttal to Koh's arguments.

The merits of free hate speech

I agree in part with Rick Salutin on this::

The best response to Ann Coulter is – to respond. Tell her to piss off, not shut up. Challenge her, as a Muslim student in London, Ont., did, saying she has no flying carpet (a Coulter witticism) to “go back home” on. So get a camel, says la Coulter. Then it's the protesters' turn; they can hiss, walk out, pie her – I don't consider pie-ing violence, I consider it symbolic speech. It's what you do when you don't have the podium and a mic. Think shoe thrower of Baghdad. That was a shoe (or two) heard round the world.
Nor do I feel like joining in the ritual statements that find Ann Coulter's views appalling. The only point of free speech is when it's about views you find appalling. Otherwise, it's “allowed speech,” because it doesn't offend you.
One Ottawa student protester said a campus should be a safe and positive space. I agree with safe but not so much with positive. I'd even say a university should be a safe and negative space, in the sense used by Herbert Marcuse, whose student I was. He praised the power of negative thinking, by which he meant learning to be critical of the way things are. Little kids deserve a safe and positive space, largely so they can gain the self-assurance to deal with all the negative space they'll meet later on. In fact, one of the unheralded merits of free hate speech is that it can give those vilified and maligned a sense of their own strength.

What amazes me is that Ann Coulter manages to irritate and to unnerve too many people when it should become obvious to almost everybody that wrestling with a pig in the dirt is pointless because it likes it, pigs like dirt.

The bonding value of sexual tension

I agree with Kirsten Valentine Cadieux on this:

(...) sexual tension is often the bond that holds much more prosaic associations together, and that simultaneously appears to provide some of the motivating sparkle and also to fluster people

I have to admit that I  wonder increaingly how many human connections would be improbable without sexual tension whether conscious or unconscious. It seems that it explains in great part  that the fact that woman is first and foremost and object of sexual desire. The trouble begins when she starts to want to be something more or someone else or rather use her sexual objectification that to her own advantage. It is sad to acknowledge that even 'civilized' beings still think that sex is bad if it isn't conventional and more importantly if the non-male isn't being dominated or when the manly male accepts to be submissive only for a while and uniquely for his own selfish pleasure not because he likes it (that would make him a woman).The point is that how one deals with sexual tensions has to do with how one feels about sex and about the one s/he is attracted to.

Sarkozy as the product of a good sex night

Quote of the day from Pál Sarkozy,the father of the French President:

When people ask me what I felt on the birth of Nicolas, I reply that he was the logical conclusion of a very good night spent with my wife

Obamacare and the Europeanization of Americans

After reading Mitch Daniels's op-ed (the Republican Governor of Indiana) in the Wall Street Journal, I'm realizing that it is increasingly dangerous for America to have a political elite with no knowledge of the world or of just solely Europe or rather willingly constantly to appeal to America's fear of becoming something other than exceptional for political purposes. Daniels is worried that Obamacare means that America has to become Europe, which to him means that Americans have to become good Europeans, that is to accept that government is a part of their private life. Sugary excerpt;

Congress could have done what Republicans should suggest now: Shift to a system that allows individuals—not businesses—to buy health insurance tax free. They could also create tax credits for buying health insurance based on income and health status to guarantee everyone coverage and encourage medical care and insurance competition. Republicans should push to lower barriers for buying insurance across state lines, create incentives for states to repeal mandates, and limit frivolous lawsuits that increase the price of insurance.
But for the moment, our federal overlords have ruled. We better start adjusting to our new status as good Europeans.

Something tells me that Mitch Daniels is going to run for President in 2012. Because he has to know better or is that wishful thinking on my part?

Costs without quality

Sugar y excerpt from the Economist's article on Healthcare reform:

All this points to the only certain thing about Obamacare: that this is just another episode in the long saga of health reform. Indeed, by adding tens of millions of people to an unreformed and unsustainably expensive health system, this reform makes it all the more urgent to tackle the question of cost.
On that, at least, left and right seem to agree. Paul Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton and a liberal booster of reform, wrote on the eve of the votes: “There is, as always, a tunnel at the end of the tunnel: we’ll spend years if not decades fixing this thing.” Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank opposed to the effort, agrees, albeit in darker terms: “This marks the beginning of the next phase of this hundred years war.”

The more I read about healthcare, the more pessimistic I become. I realize that since this bill has been widely described as the most important bill in the last 30 years, nobody is going to dare to touch healthcare for the next few years for healthcare is going to be one of those complex issues where trying to find political solutions offer no rewards, but solely headaches and unneeded uncertainties. Healthcare is thus going to remain Obama's thing for better or worst for a long time. The only possibility (not probability) for change I see is the next election and it being worst than the 1994 one for the Democrats. True Republicans believers would then feel that they have the mandate to repeal healthcare. However, even then I don't think that they would change for the pragmatists Republicans, those who believe in winning elections especially presidential one will let the true believers act, they will them try, pick a fight with Obama and then retreat point the fingers at the broken politics of Washington, DC. They want the issue not the fix the system for now that the cat is out of the bag, you can can simply put it back in without creating something better than the sub-par system America still has.

Canadians and what used to be American Healthcare

Quote of the evening from Jonathan Malloy:

Canadians love American healthcare debates because it means you notice us.

If I were a Canadian, I wouldn't worry about 'Obamacare' for it is still  far inferior to Canadian healthcare. Canadians will always get to feel and to brag about the fact that they get better healthcare than citizens of the world most 'powerful' country.

A good European

Angela Merkel, German's Chancellor who is so unSarkozy that it makes her likable, on what it means to be a good European:

A good European is not necessarily one who offers help quickly. A good European is one that respects the European treaties and national rights so that the stability of the euro zone is not damaged.

My only issue with Merkel's pronouncement is that I don't think that Europeans care being good Europeans for most of them believe still that Brussels is far away from them and has taken away from their government the ability to affect their lives for the better.

Defending Israel well

Norman Geras on the recent crisis between the US and Israel:

Defending Israel against hateful and slanderous attacks is an almost daily necessity in these times, but I part company with those of Israel's friends unable to see, in the round, where the Israeli government is acting unjustly and against the interests of its own people.

The question that I ask myself is whether it is still possible to be rational on this issue and to focus on the/a just end. I think that it is becoming increasingly impossible. I don't believe that Obama can be a peacemaker here because of the context and because of who he is perceived to be when he is solely a normal president American.

It takes a nut to change the world

Paul Sagar's latest post disappoints me because it is narrow-minded and more dangerously, it is expressing the self-fulling prophesy that a nut guided by Sarah Palin can destroy Obama and his plans for America

Remember: One lone nut got to Abraham Lincoln. One lone nut got to JFK. One lone nut got to Reagan and was unlucky not to succeed.*
It only takes one lone nut. My guess is that, right now, there are a great many nuts – lone or otherwise – laying their plans.

I'm disappointed because it seems to me that Sagar and others would have never expressed the same views about virulent and fanatical opposition to George W. Bush and to Ronald Reagan who got shoot by a nut. My complaint isn't that Sagar isn't right that there was a lot of nuts willing to harm Obama, it is that he implies both implicitly and explicitly that the America and the Americans who oppose Obama are nuts and willing to kill him.  These views coming from a man as honorable as Paul Sagar who knows better is disappointing and willfully ignorant.

America as a normally vicious country

Quote of the day from Damon Linker:

The truth is that in many ways the United States is not exceptional at all. The world is a nasty, vicious place, and we’ve contributed our share of nastiness and viciousness over the years.

Sarko shrunk

John Lichfield offers an on-point explanation of why Sarkozy has shrunk from Superman to mini-Me, a caricature of a superhero who can't get anything right:

What has changed is that core Sarkozy supporters have lost faith, and patience, with the style and personality of Sarko himself. Two events, above all, have angered them. The first was the promotion to culture minister of Frédéric Mitterrand, the late president's nephew: not only another leftie but also a homosexual and writer of dubious autobiographical books about cruising Thai boy-bars.
Worse, there was the egregious Jean Sarkozy affair. Here was a President who spoke of equal opportunities for all and his determination to break down the French elites. Here was the same President pretending it was quite normal for his unqualified, handsome, law student son to be promoted to political head of the vast La Défense office ghetto on the outskirts of Paris. Mr Sarkozy's claim to be a different kind of politician, closer to the thinking of real people, died in defence of his overhasty son's right to be boss of La Défense.

I believe that one of the main sources of Sarkozy's problems is that he was so successful in killing the opposition that he believed that he could do everything, sell anything and that nobody would dare to challenge, After all, none of the members of his expansive court dare to say to him that he had stop to be able to read the French because he was isolated in the Elysée palace. But Sarkzoy isn't dead for as Obama, he has the advantage of having no credible adversary to personify the growing discontent against Sarkozysm.

Curry as the positive aspect of immigration

Here is Nick Griffin's answer, the Chief of Britain far right party, the BNP the British National Party)  to put things mildly, to the question put to me by Iain Dale about the positive side of immigration:

Well, a wide range of curries is a plus. But there again, I've got the recipes.

I'm not appalled, just reassured that I'm right not to take Griffin seriously for he reminds me of Ann Coulter. He has a backbone or a little bit of political culture, he would have put things differently, Neither Geert Wilders nor Jean-Marie Le Pen, who are as far right as Nick Griffin, would have given that answer. In short, Nick Griffin is a clown.

Assessing Sarkozy's failures and the rise of far right

I  agree in part with Jim Wolfreys on this:

Sarkozy came to power on a promise to break with the compromises of previous governments. One apparent measure of his determination to do so was the trenchant language used on immigration. It is this combination of authoritarianism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has contributed to Sarkozy's undoing at the expense of the FN.
This is largely due to the demagogic nature of racism in the political arena. Since it is based on the myth that immigrants (or ethnic minorities in general, or Muslims) are to blame for unemployment, crime or other aspects of social decay, it has become a self-defeating tool for the government.
Under Sarkozy, unemployment stands at its highest level for a decade, at 10%, and France has one of the worst youth unemployment rates in Europe. Here, the link between racism and authoritarianism is important. The debate over national identity engineered by Sarkozy's UMP has seen Islamophobia reach a new pitch – at one point the party spokesperson compared the burka to a "Mickey Mouse mask".
Yet however shrill the scapegoating of Muslims, it has done nothing to obscure the government's impotence in the face of serious social and economic problems. Moreover, the realisation that Sarkozy is not an enforcer but a rather insecure figure in thrall to wealth and celebrity, has strengthened the claims of Le Pen to be the real authority figure in French politics.

One of Sarkozy's biggest failures is that he has legitimated the arguments of the French far right by using its language and that by not providing results,he has lead a part of the electorate to conclude that they may as well vote for the real dea forl when they were voting for Sarkozy they thought that, contrary to the far right, he would do what he preached since he would have the power to do it.The trouble is that Sarkozy's rhetoric is likely to get tougher.  He needs the vote of his right whether it is extreme or not to get reelected. This reality explains why yesterday, in his first public intervention after the Sunday's elections, he put back the Burka/burqa in the center of the political debate, but saying that it was one of his priorities to have the parliament vote a law to ban it.

Experiencing the harsh realities of healthcare

I went to the Doctor this morning. It was an unpleasant experience because of the long wait in spite of the fact that I had an appointment, because I felt that my needs weren't met and finally because of the cost. It led me to wonder whether the problem of the American healthcare system isn't precisely the fact that the emphasis is placed on cost and not on quality and that in the middle of it all, patients get lost and the importance of quality is forgotten.

My worry about the watered-down version of Obamacare is that it doesn't place the patient back at the center of the process and instead assumes that Americans will be happy about whatever healthcare they get as long as it is affordable and that they get to go to the doctor. I may be too French on this issue, but I believe strongly that on some subjects, quality is priceless (especially for rich countries) and that focusing on costs and on whatever else is a mistake. However, this view is based on my limited experience, which is the one of a person who is lucky enough to be able to pay for good care and who still feels that she isn;t getting it.

Obama and post-Americanness:

I agree in part with this:

There is a difference, of course, between arguing that Obama’s policies are somehow post-American-exceptionalism, and saying that Obama himself is post-American. The insinuation blatantly is that he is not really American, a notion that will doubtless give succour to “birthers”, racists, and other nidiots. Indeed, one might even suspect that the phrase is designed to do just that, to act as a little slow-fused bomb of hatred and contempt secreted within an ostensibly rational discussion of foreign policy in a broadsheet newspaper.

Obama is  not a post-American exceptionalism president. He is a normal American president trying to capitalize on his best asset that is his popularity in the world, and the belief that he is special because of what he symbolizes because he looks different.  He will always do whatever he has to do to protect American interests. He is a firm believer in American exceptionalism whenever that belief suits his political purposes and advances them. It is disturbing that race and the fact that America and the rest of the world sees Obama as 'black' make it difficult/impossible for them to realize/accept/acknowledge that he is a typical American president and not some kind of exotic or eccentric creature that got to the White House.

The Hurt Locker's American-centrism

Astute observation from Chris Bertram about The Hurt Locker:

Purely as a piece of cinema, The Hurt Locker is probably the better film [better than the Green Zone], but politically it is nowhere, and indeed it suffers from the same syndrome as many Hollywood Vietnam pictures – they are all about Americans and how they feel, and the poor natives appear as mere ciphers.

South Africa, violence and the demons of the past

S'Thembiso Msomi on the difficulty of many South Africans including members of the majority party, the African National Congress to accept that Apartheid is over and that political violence is unacceptable in a democracy:

Just this weekend, a number of shacks and dozens of poor families were left homeless in Claremont, Durban, after a mob went on a rampage "evicting" supporters of the Congress of the People from the area.
Why ANC supporters would be so threatened by the presence of a few Cope members in the area that they feel the need to engage in violent acts escapes me.
But the problem is much bigger than political intolerance.
It has to do with the unintended consequences of the militant mass struggles of the 1980s and 1990s, which helped bring apartheid to its knees.
(...)Though the repressive political environment of the time necessitated the use of militant methods to achieve political objectives, it also had the unfortunate consequence of convincing certain sections of the disadvantaged that nothing can be achieved without violence.
Political leaders, especially those of former liberation movements such as the ANC and the PAC, have a duty to undo this damage by teaching their supporters that violence has no place in a democratic society.

One has to wonder whether South African, in spite of its strong institutions and civil society, can survive without strong and fearless political leadership exercised by people who will resist populism, but realizing that for South Africa not to become Zimbabwe, the many will have to learn to accept the few in spite of the attractiveness of identity politics.