The Republic of Dissent

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.

The American government, foreign policy and Anti-Americanism

For some reason reason, this point on anti-Americanism from Mehdi Hassan troubles me:

Noam Chomsky, bête noire of the right, has long argued that the notion of anti-Americanism itself seeks to excuse the crimes of US elites and "identify state policy with the society, the people, the culture". It is an important point. I condemn the actions of the US government in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, without attacking my American friends in Houston, LA or New York.
“I am willing to love all mankind," Samuel Johnson said, "except an American." I cannot agree. I may be considered anti-American, in that I abhor many US foreign policies, but the person I love most happens to be an American. America is not the American government. Nor is it the US border patrol.

I'm wondering whether America is the only country in the world, which isn't allowed to defend its national interests and which is always viewed no matter what it does as a bully because it is first and therefore people assume that it shouldn't be always victorious. I'm reminded of the tennis matches between Serena Williams and Justine Henin. During those matches, commentators , even when they are American, root for Henin because she is smaller, more skilled and tacitly argues that she is smarter and the better player while deploring that Williams is solely physically stronger and implying that she is lazy and bully.

Rehabilitating Social Democracy

Oliver Kamm on Tony Judt's latest book Ill Fares the Land: A Treatise on Our Present Discontents:

Judt claims too much from limited evidence. That would matter less if his account of the breakdown of social democracy and the rise of free-market economics were reliable. But it’s flawed. Throughout the book you struggle to gain an insight into why expansive welfare states and interventionist industrial policies fell out of favour in the 1980s. The nearest you get to an answer is the power of ideas — malign and acquisitive ones, in Judt’s depiction — and the rise of individualism. This is not wrong, and Judt is astute in noting parallels between the counterculture of the 1960s and the appeal of economic libertarianism. But it is question-begging. Why, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, did some ideas gain political traction and some fall out of favour? The reason is that social democracy appeared to have reached natural limits. Economic planning had turned into an unaccountable system of corporatism. Legal immunities had turned the trade unions into “insiders” against the interests of the public. The quadrupling of the oil price in 1973 by the Opec cartel and wage claims by powerful unions caused accelerating inflation. It is extraordinary that the word “inflation” appears only twice in Judt’s book, and each time in a specific technical context (the effect of inflation in pushing workers into higher tax brackets). The notion that the great inflation of the 1970s damaged working-class living standards and was a source of social discontent is absent from the book.

My only observation is that the biggest trouble with social democracy is that it has  lost its meaning and that social democrats in order to circumvent this limitation have try to become all things to all people and more importantly by solely defining themselves against a Right that knows what it is and what it will never agree to be.

A win is a win is a win

Clive Crook on Obama's victory for it is his:

Thanks to the unrewarded exertions of conservative Democrats, this healthcare plan has moderate, centrist ambitions. It is not socialism in disguise. Shame on liberal Republicans (if there are any) for failing to support it. Even so, the Democrats’ claims for the reform have been dishonest in one crucial respect, and most voters understood this. It is right to provide guaranteed health insurance, but wrong to claim this great prize could be had, in effect, for nothing. Broadly based tax increases and fundamental reform to healthcare delivery will be needed to balance the books. Denying this was a mistake. What was worse–an insult to one’s intelligence, really–was to argue as Obama has in the past few days that this reform was, first and foremost, a cost-reducing initiative, and a way to drive down premiums.
The guarantees are so valuable that honesty about the cost was worth trying. Eventually, perhaps, the Democrats will come clean about this, though doing so before November would be a little abrupt. Between now and then, the country may come around to liking the plan anyway, as Democrats hope. As I say, the guarantees are so valuable. But obviously this could go either way.

As I said, to the contrary of most, I'm not jumping up and down about healthcare reform for I know that the victory is essentially a political one for Obama and I'm wondering if it is a victory for Americans who needed a better health system. To put it another, I'm wondering whether what we got was Obamacare or Obamanuts. I'm reminded of my childhood when my mother used to want me to eat bananas even though I hated because she said that it would me taller, I hated bananas, I still do and I'm shorter than Sarkozy so when I think of all of those bananas that I hate during my childhood hoping to be as tall as Steffi Graf, I want to puke. Let's hope that America doesn't feel the same about healthcare a few years from now.

America and sin

I don't agree with Stephen Kinzer on this:

Rather than embrace Mitt Romney's aggressively ignorant view of the world, Americans should try to accommodate themselves to history. That means accepting the reality that every nation, like every human being, has sinned. Nations have the moral authority to point fingers at others only if they also reflect on how their own policies have contributed to the suffering, rage and violence that is shaking the world. "We abominate in others those faults which are most manifestly our own," Montaigne wrote five centuries ago. Then he quoted one of his favorite Latin proverbs: Stercus cuique suum bene olet. Everyone's shit smells good to himself.

My problem is with Kinzer's use of the word "sin" which is too religious and too absolute and negates the reality that Nations, countries aren't godly. I prefer to use  the term "error" or "mistake" for one of the things that plagues our time is the religionization of history and politics, which leads too many to ask for apologies and to divide humans incessantly, cunningly, and spitefully between victims and sinners. America has never committed any sin. It has made mistakes, outrageous and reprehensible mistakes that apologies or atonement cannot erase, but which acknowledgment can enable it to uplift itself above the unnecessary guilt by enabling it to avoid to repeat them through responsibility and the acceptance of the obligation to do and to be better.

Terrorism and wimpish politics

I agree with Sean Collins on this:

But this ‘Republicans strong, Democrats weak’ discussion obscures a more fundamental consensus between the two parties. Both establish anti-terror polices on the premise that the country is vulnerable and at risk. And both therefore overplay the threat posed by possible terror attacks.
The common assumption is that the American people are afraid, worried about the next explosion, and therefore in need of heavy state protection. And since, therefore, all it takes to traumatise the masses is an isolated bomb, it is taken as a given that any party in office at the time of an attack would be severely damaged in political terms. In this, both parties have agreed to allow the terrorists to define success, and have collaborated in reorganising US life around tiny groups.
When American politicians talk about getting ‘tough’ on terrorism, about pursuing a ‘war’ on it, they are actually using code-words for saying ‘we are scared shitless’. And in that respect, both parties are wimps; in fact, if anything, the noisier Republicans are the biggest wimps of all.

The frightening thing is that the question is never asked whether tough talk on terrorism followed by bad policies is effective because it is assumed that it is better to talk tough and to fail rather than to talk softly and to success. In short, tough talk sells because it is flashy and wimpish politics is prevalent because the worst fear of an American politician is our age is to perceived as girly and therefore unwilling and unable to protect Americans.

Democracy and genocide

I find this bit by Geoffrey York about a Rwanda's official and his arguments against democracy alarming:

With an election looming in a few months, Rwanda’s authoritarian government has made an astounding claim: democracy leads directly to genocide.
The claim is made in an article this week by Jean Paul Kimonyo, an advisor in the office of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He argues that Rwanda has only had “plural politics” for two brief periods in its history, and both times it “led to mass killings.”
He also makes the sweeping statement that “political parties and independent media” were a big reason for the killings. All parties and all media, in his view, are just as dangerous as the hate-spewing radio stations and politicians that fuelled the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
His conclusion, apparently, is that Rwanda needs to suppress its political parties, restrict its independent media and tightly control its elections, even though it’s been 16 years since the genocide. Democracy – or “confrontational politics,” as he prefers to call it – would “almost certainly lead to renewed violence.”

The questions that I ask myself is whether there isn't a false dichotomy created between democracy and genocide in order to justify the unjustifiable, and finally, the second, which the more complex question, is whether Kagame is doing as best as can best expected given the fact that things could be worse or whether adding that caveat is stopping too many for either giving him either the credit or the criticism that he deserves. I have neither have a Manichean view of Kagame nor an absolutist one because it is undeniable that he has a number of  successes, which can not be dismissed, but it is also true that as with all politicians, he is a complex figure, who neither be divinized not vilified without understanding the importance of the context, but also by without indulgence when it comes to principles such as human rights and democratic ones.

Niqab, assimilation, integration, Québec, Canada,

Interesting: explanation of the different visions that Québec and Canada have on the Niqab, and more importantly on integration:

(...) English Canada embraces a multiculturalist ideal: Come to Canada, and bring your differences with you. In French Canada, you can have your differences, “but please do become a Quebecker.”
Quebec's francophone majority identifies itself as a fragile minority that must be ever vigilant against cultural erosion. In that context, collective rights often outweigh individual ones, especially when it comes to language or schooling. Quebec, like France, is also fiercely devoted to secularism. “We've had a long and painful struggle with the place of religion in this society, and a lot of people feel strongly about the separation of church and state,” says Mr. Lagacé.
The Quebec-English differences over immigration and integration echo those between France and Britain. France is contemplating a ban on the burka and niqab. In Britain, any politician who'd dare suggest such a thing would be denounced as a fascist.
In English Canada, provincial government officials are only too eager to distance themselves from intolerant Quebec. “We are an open Ontario,” said a spokeswoman for that province's immigration minister. “In Nova Scotia, people have a right to express themselves any way they wish around their faith,” its immigration minister said.

It makes sense that Québec would want its immigrants to assimilate in order to be Quebeckers first to increase its population and strengthen its special minority status within Canada and  Canadian second. The issue is whether it is framing the issue the right way and fighting the right battles. The problem is that these differences that exist within Canada are going to be increasingly difficult to coexist within the same country because they are based on very different visions of society and hierarchy of fundamentals value. The whole niqab episode has shown that even the politicians of Québec don't fully know how immigrants can become 'good ' Québécois, but they know what their fears are, which explains why the focus has been placed on the usual and weakest subjects: visibly "different" women.

Divorce is necessary in politics

I'm always happy when somebody, in this case Clancy Sigal,joins me in the Republic of Dissent by divorcing Obama and his Democratic Party:

n a bad marriage, if we're lucky, a sad, angry, unwelcome realism takes over and an existential fear invades our soul. But we do not want to be alone in a loveless world. A divorce often means being cast out into psychological darkness, exile from the "mainstream", the loss of (and even abuse from) friends, a terrifying sense of isolation and inadequacy. So, stuffing our ears and blinding our eyes to our own victimisation, we recommit to the relationship. We continue to deny, deny, deny. Life goes on, diminished and undignified. Soul-suicide.
But now I want a divorce from the Democrats, the "party of the people" versus the Republicans who with a few honorable exceptions are the party of cruelty. Are there some good Democrats? You bet. Are they outnumbered by callow, fearful Democrats? You bet.
I don't care that at the moment there's nowhere to go and hardly anybody to cheer for.

Failing sanctions and Iran

Distressing fact from James Joyner's post on the ineffectiveness of the regime of sanctions against Iran:

America's regime of sanctions on Iran are ineffective but we're likely to see more of them.

What's the point of sanctions if it's known that they don't work? Well, it is to give the appearance of action, resilience, and of strength when as the sanctions against Iraq for example showed that they always lead to the inevitable: confrontation or acceptance of the feared outcome. The US is using sanctions to gain time in the hope that the situation will either change in Iran, i.e. another revolution, or on the world stage that would force, Russia  to join the US and its allies to form a block to have Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. My opinion is that neither possibility is likely.

The power and seductiveness of Apocalypse politics

Juan Cole on the new delusion of Ahmadinejad:

Not only is Ahmadinejad the Iranian equivalent of a truther, he is also the mirror image of the Christian Zionists. That brand of evangelicals in the US believes that the establishment of Israel throughout geographical Palestine, i.e. the complete annexation of the West Bank and perhaps the expulsion of its Palestinian residents, will hasten the return of Christ.
Ahmadinejad holds the opposite. It is in his view the collapse of what he calls the Zionist regime and the emergence of a state for all Palestinians, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, that will provoke the Promised One to come. In Shiite Islam, the promised one is the return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the lineal descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. In Muslim folk belief it is sometimes alleged that when the Mahdi comes, Jesus will also return, and they will join forces to prepare the world for the Judgment Day.

Why do I have the feeling that Iran is going to be a Nuclear state no matter was the US and its allies does? May be it is because there is nothing or rather few things that states can do, no matter how powerful they are collectively when another one who cannot be bribed has decided that it was the right afforded to them by God or whatever else to get a nuclear bomb and even welcomes confrontation for nationalistic or religious reasons,

Mugabe loves the Tories

Just another sign that the Apocalypse is coming for the Brits Conservative or just rather that David Cameron can't become Prime Minister of Britain unless Gordon Brown continues to help him, Robert Mugabe is supporting his candidacy:

We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour. Conservatives are bold, Blair and Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others.

Geert Wilders as a freedom fighter

Toby Young, my favorite judge of Top Chef, defends Geert Wilders in the Daily Telegraph by arguing that he is a freedom of speech warrior:

are the Dutch people just fed up with being told they’re not allowed to criticise Muslim extremists because to do so is “Islamophobic”? As a defender of free speech, I don’t believe for one moment that the Koran ought to be banned. But if I was a member of the Dutch electorate I would vote for Geert Wilders’ party nonetheless because I don’t think he deserves to go to jail for 16 months just for arguing that it should.
Wilders doesn’t really want to ban the Koran, of course. It’s a theatrical gesture — a situationist move — designed to underline the absurdity of trying to limit freedom of speech on the grounds that certain words or phrases or images might move people to violence. What Wilders is saying is that if you believe the critics of Muslim extremism should be silenced because their words might incite religious hatred, then, logically, you ought to ban the Koran on the same grounds. It’s not a serious suggestion, so much as a reductio ad absurdum of a completely untenable, illiberal position.

It is for precisely this reason that I have always believed that European countries are wrong to attempt to censor what they consider to be hate speech or speech denying certain historical events such as the Shoah. Hate-speech laws or any other laws that try to limit free speech based on its content always make the extremist the victim. Moreover, they force people such as Toby Young who likes to provoke and who believe that freedom of speech is the most sacred of values to defend Geert Wilders without seeking to see behind the trees. Guided by his orthodoxy about free speech,  Young is convinced that Wilders can only be right because that it is always absolutely unjust to try to shut somebody hate because society doesn't like what he is saying or finds it too distasteful. It isn't an erroneous positon to take, just a limited and an absurd one because the conclusion seems to be that victims of censorship are always and absolutely right or rather they cannot be right or even extremist.

Cynicism and the political instrumentalization of 'genocide'

I agree with Joshua Keating's conclusion to his post on the political intrumentalization of the Armenian genocide by American politicians:

All in all, the level of cynicism in Washington around this tragic historical event  is pretty disheartening. Like President Bush before him, President Obama was for using the word "genocide" as a candidate before he was against it as president. Former House Majority leader Dick Gephart, who supported recognition as a congressman, is now lobbying against it on the Turkish payroll.
Outside the Armenian-American community, whose grievance on this issue is understandable and shouldn't be dismissed, most Americans would probably prefer that the congress focus its efforts on preventing and ending current conflicts.

France passed a law recognizing the Armenian genocide in 2006 and it just gave politicians an occasion to grandstand or to argue that Turkey didn't have its place within the European Union for it was made much news since or has no impact neither in France or in Europe on the important questions. The argument is that genocide should be something politicians play football will and that only historians ought to write history.

The imperial reflex and the post 9/11 world

Pankaj Mishra argues convincingly, I have to say, that the United States and the "West" still have imperial reflexes, which are preventing them from acknowledging the realities of the post 9/11 world, an era where the East and the rest of the world are no longer scared of them and have their own ideas about how things are going to be. Sugary excerpt:

Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. In proposing cash bribes for the "moderate" Taliban, the Obama administration reminds one of FDR's bright idea about the original inhabitants of Palestine: "What about the Arabs?" he once asked the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. "Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?"(...)The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. 

Reading Mishra's article forces me to ask myself whether America's most influential mark on the world was that it made it so cool and often so stylish to be a hegemon that now every country wants to be one and to exercise power in the same way. I'm coming to the realization that the post 9/11 world is one with a bunch of countries who have fallen in love, whether they want to be admit it or not with the American style of power, even as they resents it when it affects them. America is John Wayne and we know that there was a time when every man, no matter where he came from, wanted to be John Wayne even when he hated the fact that he was killing "Indians" and shooting from the hip without much finesse, sophistication or awareness of the sensibilities of others.

Deconstructing Geert Wilders

The Daily Telegraph has a portrait of Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right politician whose party is calling for the stop of the Islamization of the Netherlands and increasing its popularity with that message. Sugary excerpt:

Wilders describes his far-Right label as "nonsense".
"My supporters say: 'At last there is someone who dares to say what millions of people think'. That is what I do," Wilders said before the European elections last year, in which the PVV took four of the 25 Dutch seats.
"People are fed up with the government; the leftist elite that has failed them," said Wilders.
(,,,).Arguing that "Islam is the Netherlands' biggest problem," Wilders has urged parliament to ban the Koran, comparing it with Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
He also wants a total ban on the burqa as well as a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and the construction of mosques in the Netherlands.
He is awaiting a hate speech trial trial at home and was barred from entering Britain last year to stop him spreading "hatred and violent messages."
"I want to defend freedom, which I think will disappear into thin air the moment the Islamic ideology gains a stronger foothold on this country," Wilders, who is married to a Hungarian, told AFP.

I'm not alarmed by the ascension of Geert Wilders because his ascension and his views are not new in Europe, Extremism, both on the left and the right, tends to rise everywhere especially in times when there is so economic, social, and political distress, which none of the "legitimate" parties seem to be able to address to the satisfaction of an increasingly impatient and radicalized electorate. One only has to analyze the short, but tumultuous and tragic political career of  Pim Portuyn in the Netherlands or even the long and flashy one of Jean-Marie Le Pen to realize that politicians such as Wilders are always very opportunistic, but that they are rarely able to leave any serious political marks or even to ascend to power without cleaning up their message or at least expanding because soon or later two things happen. The first is that their message is co-opted by other political parties who start to pay attention and to realize that they must find less "intolerant" ways to deal with the concerns of the voters who may be unsavory, but are very real. Sarkozy did it very effectively in 2007 and beat Le Pen at his own. The second thing that happens when politicians such as Geert Wilders are actually very good at politics or very ambitious is that soon or later, they come to the realization that they have to widen their message and that Islamization or any other message exploiting the fear of others and of unwelcome change is not enough to be more than a pestilent gadfly.
For these reasons, what I'm really wonder is whether Wilders is ever going to be willing to form a coalition with other Dutch parties of the right if his party becomes a political force or whether he will be content to remain on the margins believing that the system will collapse. I'm also wondering what is Ayaan Hirsi Ali's opinion of Geert Wilders.

The viability of the politics of resentment

I would love to say that I agree fully with this, but I cannot:

While sincerity is, in general, a good thing, politicians who profess to be giving voice to the common-sense resentments of regular folks often devolve into ranting sideshow barkers who are constantly coming up with new resentments to give voice to. Good politicians are supposed to do something different: channel popular desires and frustrations into effective legislation that solves problems. That's tedious work, and in times like these it requires almost superhuman patience and resolve to keep doggedly plugging away at the job.

I'm sorry to have to say it but in the current age of American politics,  a good politician isn't a effective legislator, but somebody who gets elected and yes, who, just like Jim Bunning the good Senator from Kentucky, gets attention on his state and himself. The point is that modern politics is about winning, about getting attention, making headlines, creating a movement, being loud. It isn't about legislation, concrete ideas, and results. All one has to do is to look at the last 30 years and at the politicians who have had an impact on America to realize the veracity of my argument. One of them was the former North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms who once did everything that he could to stop William Weld, my favorite Massachusetts's politician of all time (who would been a great governor for New York), to become an Ambassador because he didn't like him.

Haïti as Hell on earth

Another description of pre-earthquake Haïti, which makes it seem like a place where only Zealots Priests, religious extremists, and true believers can go to find salvation or to try to do "the work on the Lord "on Earth. This one comes from Matt Labash's article who describes the life of an American priest Father Rick Frechette. Sugary excerpt:

“Being from Connecticut,” says Frechette, “Mexico was quite a shock. But Haiti was beyond words. The dire poverty. The filth. The chaos. Everything—it was a disaster.” Without knowing a soul, or even the language (he’s now fluent in both Creole and French, along with six other languages), Frechette planted his flag, started the orphanage, and buckled his seatbelt to hurtle full-tilt through 22 years of miracles and madness, which in Haiti, are often indistinguishable. 
No one should think Haiti was done in by the earthquake. It’s a disaster of great magnitude, to be sure, but just the latest one. “You see it during a disaster,” says Frechette. “But it’s always a disaster.”

After reading this, it is no wonder that Pat Robertson and others believe that Haitians made a pact with the devil.

A miscarriage may become a murder.... in Utah

Just one comment comes to me when I read this "Only in America":

A proposed Utah law that would open women who suffer a miscarriage to possible criminal prosecution and life imprisonment has enraged feminists and civil rights activists across the United States.
Adopted overwhelmingly by both sides of the state legislature in Salt Lake City earlier this month, the draft bill is now awaiting the signature of the state's Republican Governor, Gary Herbert. It is not clear if the growing national controversy surrounding the proposed law will slow or even stay his pen.
While the main thrust of the law is to enable prosecutors in the majority-Mormon state to pursue women who seek illegal, unsupervised forms of abortion, it includes a provision that could trigger murder charges against women found guilty of an "intentional, knowing or reckless act" that leads to a miscarriage. Some say this could include drinking one glass of wine too many, walking on an icy pavement or skiing.

Sarkozy is whipped

After reading Sarkozy's semi-excuses to Rwanda, I believe that there are two explanations for the changes in Sarkozy who used to be against repentance. The cutest and less plausible one is that he discovered Jesus. The most credible one is that he got whipped by the realization that France will not remain a player in some parts of Africa and elsewhere where it has a long and sorted histoiry unless it softens its image and seems at least to be aware that it made mistakes before.
I believe hat the Sarkozy's apology tour is less about redemption or a real change in policy, but about realpolitik and competing with the Americans and the Chinese for the attention of countries who love apologies because they believe that their past is one of the few commodities that they have to bargain their future.

To attract Zealots

After reading this sugary excerpt from an article in the Daily Telegraph on Haïti , I wonder how people can be surprised when Zealots and other religious fundamentalists such as Laura Silsby go to Port-au-Prince believing that God has sent them on a mission to save Haitians from themselves or from their country, which is portrayed as the heart of darkness:

Port-au-Prince seems not like a city at all now, but a waking nightmare where even the most ordinary morning walk can turn distinctly lurid. There is a car in one of the streets behind the national palace that has been flattened by falling masonry. The driver’s body is still at the wheel.

There have been other catastrophic earthquakes in recent years – Iran (2003), Pakistan (2005), China (2008). But Haiti, all agree, represents a unique level of awfulness.

'It really is one of the worst earthquake situations I ever saw,’ says Dr Richard Munz, 56, an expert on international humanitarian aid, writer, surgeon, academic and veteran of 38 disasters over the past 20 years. 'It hit a very vulnerable population, it hit the capital city, and it hit a place without any pre-existing local response systems – all the systems that might have been there on the ground were just destroyed.’

Since independence in 1804 Haiti has endured a pattern of poverty and exploitation: crippling debts, US occupation, revolts, coups, dictatorships and 28 years of brutal repression under François 'Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ('Baby Doc’). Since the latter fled into exile in 1986, the country’s move to democracy has been accompanied by further coups and instability.

Some 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 75 per cent; foreign aid accounts for 30-40 per cent of the government budget. Even in the good times, Haiti was short on infrastructure; there are only two fire stations in the entire country. Not only did the earthquake severely dent the services you turn to in a disaster – hospitals, airport, roads, port – but it also loosed inequalities and frustrations that were only provisionally contained.

Ridicule doesn't kill, but...

Kadhafi is taking himself for Ben Laden again surely because he misses the days when he was the  enemy number one of the US and of the West:

The masses of Muslims must go to all airports in the Islamic world and prevent any Swiss plane landing, to all harbours and prevent any Swiss ships docking (...)There is a big difference between terrorism and jihad.

I guess that all one can do here is to regret that Libya has enough oil to make its dictator able to buy anything including respectability and more importantly to have the World forget that he is a dangerous Putz with delusions of grandeur.

The wonderful South Africa of Jacob Zuma

Africa Intelligence has a must-read article on what it calls "the state of Jacob Zuma." Reading it forces one to wonder how long can South Africa and more importantly South Africans can afford to have a Berlusconi as their head of state especially when they are dealing with so many existential issues.  Sugary excerpt:

Reports of President Jacob Zuma’s political demise are exaggerated. Yet what should have been a moment of triumph for him during the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison proved to be yet another tribulation in his worst week yet as President. The usually unflappable Zuma looked rattled as he arrived at Parliament in Cape Town to give the State of the Nation address on 11 February. His speech was a damp squib – too plodding to fire up his political base and too short on specifics to impress the markets.
Just days before, Zuma had been pushed into making a public apology over revelations that he had fathered another child out of wedlock, this time with the daughter of football mogul and owner of the Kaiser Chiefs club Irvin Khoza. For once, the commentariat’s talk of ‘floodgates opening’ and ‘circling hyenas’ did not seem overblown as African National Congress insiders briefed journalists that Zuma’s promiscuity was a liability to the ANC.
It was Zuma’s third public apology – the first two were about having unprotected sex with another friend’s daughter and making belligerent remarks about gay people – which raises doubts about his sincerity and his own standing. More so because, we hear, the pressure on him to apologise came from some of his most senior allies, such as KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize, leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Zwelinzima Vavi, and South African Communist Party (SACP) Secretary General Blade Nzimande.Despite the efforts of Zuma’s spin doctors to downplay the political importance of the affair, it was clear that many ANC supporters – and not just the middle class ones – were deeply critical of his behaviour. Many senior ANC people see that voters link Zuma’s lifestyle and tough economic conditions in the townships. Some poorer ANC supporters complained that Zuma’s wives, concubines and extended family get state subsidies while others must wait for government services, jobs and houses

I'm coming to the conclusion after reading a lot of South Africa that one of its problems is that it has one dominant party, the African National Congress (ANC) that will probably continue to rule for the foreseeable future. The ANC has no real incentives, no political threats to its power to do what's right to the country when those acts might be bad for the part and starts to believe that the ANC is South-Africa.

The need for liberal anger

Clancy Sigal wonders why American liberals aren't more angry and more importantly why there cannot be a public manifestation of this anger in the way some Conservatives are expressing theirs through the tea parties:

The last time I remember collective anger as legitimate was in the now-much-derided 1960s with its protest marches and brazen hippie-style slogans. Ever since there's been a gradual slide – I would argue descent – into sterile politeness. Recently, I attended a meeting of my local school board where a mild, hardly-above-a-whisper grumble from a parent prompted his expulsion enforced by armed police. Who knows what might have happened if any of us in the audience had stood up and actually spoken out as in that famous Norman Rockwell painting of a town hall meeting?
Why should full-throated emotion be the monopoly of the so-called "populists" who seem to be the only people around unafraid to shout, yell, stomp and scream?

I grew up in a boisterous, immigrant, loud neighborhood where everyone had an opinion and voiced it full throttle. Somewhere along the line, maybe when I shifted from working class to middle class, I lost my rough, grating, empowered, assertive voice – and maybe the anger that had fuelled it. If so, that's a pity.
We need liberal anger now more than ever.

I would like to agree, but I think that the problem is that Liberals don't have a backbone and have content  being in power than with changing America for the better. The Healthcare reform bill is the perfect example of that fact for liberals are willing to accept less even though for once they are on the right side of an issue and have the power to  pass real reforms. Instead, they are timid because they are afraid to lose. This unwillingness to fight for the change they asserted through their vote, time, energy and money they believe in passionately less than two years ago is an acknowledgment  of their conviction that their kind of change isn't worth taking the risk to lose power in Washington, DC for power is the more potent than true reforms. Thus, the problem here isn't a lack of liberal anger, but rather the sterilization of liberalism which is solely about the glitz and the swagger. 

Haïti and cultural imperialism

Timothy Egan on the case of Laura Silsby and the other Christian missionaries who went to Haïti to save Haitian children who didn't need saving::

At the least, the curious case of Laura Silsby raises questions about cultural imperialism: what makes a scofflaw from nearly all-white Idaho with no experience in adoption or rescue services think she has a right to bring religion and relief to a country with its own cultural, racial and spiritual heritage?
Imagine if a voodoo minister from Haiti had shown up in Boise after an earthquake, looking for children in poor neighborhoods and offering “opportunities for adoption” back to Haiti. He could say, as those who followed Silsby explained on a Web site, that “the unsaved world needs to hear” from the saved.
Who says they are “unsaved?” And who says the world needs to hear from them? Haiti is a predominantly Roman Catholic country, and a nation full of passionate believers at that.
As it turns out, there was no orphanage for the Silsby children, just plans, many, many plans. And some of the young Haitians were not even orphans. As to what qualified Laura Silsby to jump into international relief work with a side of adoption services, well, she had once run something called Personal Shopper. And she was a charismatic Christian, with a golden tongue.

It is too easy and convenient to describe Laura Silsby and the others who are trying to "save" Haitians by any means necessary  as extremists and to put the blame and the responsibility for it all on cultural imperialism, whatever it is. However, the real problem is that religion, the media, politicians, and celebrities have transformed what used to be known as the White Men's burden into the Civilized People's burden, which perpetuates the idea that there exists dark places in the world where people needs to be saved from the burden of history, curses and  other forms of damnation and where modern people needs to do anything that they can to save those poor people. All one has to do is to analyse some of the commercials on television with an elderly man asking people to send money to see some poor child that will die if they are not charitable.  I really believe that Laura Silsby thought that it didn't matter whether the Haitians children that she was kidnapping had parents or not for she believed that salvation meant getting them out of the forsaken and cursed pursed that Haïti is to bring to the land of the free where God is present and where the light shines on anybody who believes.The point that it is that we live in a world where humanitarianism is mostly done by Zealots, true believers who feel in their gut that they are either doing the "lord's job" or simply saving people who needs charity and not much else.

The destruction of Mogadishu and the Somalization of the world

Tristan McConnell on Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and its permanent state of war away from the camera and thus from the gaze of the world that is destroying what used to be a beautiful city:

The current round of fighting is just the latest in Somalia's decades-old war. Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militia that recently confirmed its allegiance to al-Qaeda, is battling the Transitional Federal Government for control of the country. The TFG gets diplomatic support and money from the UN, soldiers from the African Union and military hardware from the US; take any one of these away and it would collapse like every other administration in the past 19 years. In 1991, the country's last functioning government - itself a venal dictatorship - was defeated by an alliance of clan militias. The warlords then turned on each other, fighting for economic and political control. Somalia has been a maelstrom of violence ever since.
There have been moments of respite. In 2006, the militias were defeated by the Islamic Courts Union - a political group of which al-Shabaab was the armed wing. But within months the union had been chased from power by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion.Now, al-Shabaab is back - stronger and more radical - and holds sway over much of Somalia. Mogadishu is a city of ruins, bearing testimony to the years of destruction. Roads are broken; buildings are shattered, concertinaed to the ground or lacking outer walls, like giant honeycombs.

When reading McConnell's description of the chaos in Mogadishu, I'm reminded of André Glucksmann's prediction that the world is going to be somalized, meaning that we would be seen more cities been destroyed and torn apart without much international concern and especially without any coverage in the media.Unfortunately, I fear that most of those dark holes will happen on the African continent for we know that it is easier to succumb to fatality, resignation and to  the grotesque idea that Africa is cursed  when the inconceivable and the unacceptable is happening within its countries.

The amorality of the nanny state

I disagree strongly with Alain de Botton when he writes this:

A terror of old-fashioned moralism has driven all talk of morality out of the public sphere. Who would now dare to suggest how our neighbours should be judged in the vast domain we term private life? In flight from dogmatism, we stand transfixed by the dangers of moral convictions. A democratic spirit has served to generate scepticism about authority and hierarchy in every sphere. Judgments about values tremble before the incensed question of who one person could ever be to tell another how to live. Those who profess to have answers are ridiculed in a tone adopted by furious adolescents when probing at the assumptions of their parents. In the political arena, there is no faster way to insult opponents than to accuse them of trying to undertake the impossible task of improving the ethical basis of society. They can reliably be charged with believing in that most odious concept of modern secular politics, a nanny state.

Is Alain de Botton serious ? It seems to me that we live in a time when there are few nanny states in the world and that the problem of our time isn't the world has embraced the over-expansiveness of liberty. The problem of our time is "we" are still stuck with the moral system of the dark ages, which gives the privileged class (of which Alain de Botton is a member) limitless liberties while imposing  a rigid moral structure, on the masses under the name of morality, traditions, religion, and decency. It seems to me that only a man who is at the top of the food chain would say that the modern world is too free and too secular when the contrary is true. 

The pompous sterility of state apologies

I agree with Paul Sagar when he makes this point about apologies done in the name of the state to argue that Gordon Brown should not apologized his country's past actions, that is its role in the child resettlement programs in Australia and elsewhere :

The idea that the government of the day merely represents – and speaks and acts for – a more powerful entity existing behind it, possessed of ultimate sovereignty which the Prime Minister of the day happens to wield but does not ultimately possess, comes from Hobbes. When Brown apologises to the deportees today, he apologises not for his own actions, but for that of the Mortal God, the Leviathan, which Brown presently speaks for.
That the apology will be widely welcomed, and that its bizarre logic will go largely unremarked, indicates the extent to which that artificial man called Commonwealth, or State (in Latin, Civitas) is now an integral part of all our lives. Again, how ironic that the central ideas of history’s greatest proponent of absolutism should come to have shaped the intellectual framework that we who call ourselves democrats, liberals, republicans or libertarians think within.

I agree with Sagar for two main reasons. The first is that I think that it is a religious idea that we are all guilty for the actions of those who came before us, that is the inhumane idea behind the one of the original sin and it can make people guilty and have to apologize for generations if it remains prevalent. The second is that apologies are worthless and simply propaganda tools that change neither the past, the present and the future because they simply feed a certain crowd's appetite for public shaming without addressing real issues and new realities. At some point, we mus accept that the past no matter how painful it is to do so is dead and that guilt isn't transferable although responsibility might be. That difference is critical for accepting responsibility doesn't mean having to apologize, it means acknowledging and taking some fruitful acts when it is necessary.

Europeanizing Nato

Andrew Bacevich argues boldly that the United States should let Nato become a European organization:

If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO's founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin nurses grudges and complaints, not least of them stemming from NATO's own steady expansion eastward.
So let NATO attend to this new (or residual) Russian problem. Present-day Europeans -- even Europeans with a pronounced aversion to war -- are fully capable of mounting the defenses necessary to deflect a much reduced Eastern threat. So why not have the citizens of France and Germany guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, instead of fruitlessly demanding that Europeans take on responsibilities on the other side of the world that they can't and won't?
Like Nixon setting out for Beijing, like Sadat flying to Jerusalem, like Reagan deciding that Gorbachev was cut from a different cloth, the United States should dare to do the unthinkable: allow NATO to devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs, upholding the safety and well-being of a Europe that is whole and free -- and more than able to manage its own affairs.

The trouble with bold ideas is that they remain utopias if the odds of their realization are slim to none. No American president is even going to take the chance/risk to europeanize Nato for immediately the argument will be that s/he is a coward who lost Europe. What is probably going to end up happening is that as Europe finds a way to provide for its own security by having a common security, Nato will become irrelevant and will fade without much noise or protest in the background.

Precarious states and instability

I agree with Lauren Gelfand on this:

The situation in Niger is a sobering reminder of the precarious state of democracy and good governance in a region all-too-familiar with the replacement of an ostensibly elected president by a military regime. Next month brings with it the one-year anniversary of the assassinations of the president and the head of the army in Guinea-Bissau, which has deteriorated into the world's first genuine narco-state. Guinea is only barely back on track towards civilian leadership with a transitional government comprised of both political and military figures, while Mauritania has struggled to regain its legitimacy after two coups in three years executed by the same military officers.
Add the ongoing leadership crisis in powerhouse Nigeria, the rising tensions in Ivory Coast ahead of elections now five-times postponed, and the slow and unsteady progress towards post-conflict reconciliation in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and there is no mistaking the fact that good governance and strong civilian institutions are needed more acutely than ever in West Africa.

The revenge of the Euro critics

Der Spiegel on Greece, the Eurozone's troubles, and the revenge of the "Euro critics":

The euro has been a success story until now. During the recent financial crisis, the common currency proved to be a blessing at first, particularly for the smaller countries. But as debt levels increased, the problems, previously suppressed, became more and more evident, including the debt-based economy in the Club Med and the imbalances in terms of competitiveness.
Even before the common currency was introduced in 1999, Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman was warning that the euro would not survive its first economic crisis. He predicted that the euro zone could break apart after just 10 years.
Ever since the Greeks were forced to admit that their national debt was much higher than originally claimed, the critics of a common European currency have felt vindicated. They had always warned that the northern countries would eventually have to vouch for the debts of the south, that the differences in economic development within the euro zone were too great and that a common currency could not function without a common economic policy.
At the time, politicians ignored the concerns of many economists. Now they realize that this may have been a mistake. The European agreements that define the legal framework of the currency union do not include any provisions to account for the kind of crisis the euro is currently experiencing. For that reason, there are no instruments available to combat such a crisis.

One factor that is always going to be key to the continuing relevance of the Euro is the Dollar and the value that the US places on its supremacy (I don't think that there is going an American administration that is going to make a strong Dollar a priority anytime soon). If I had to make a bold bet, I would say that the current crisis is going to last a few months until the Euro stabilizes and at last stops to be overvalued. However, I think that the Euro will always be saved from the structural problems of the Eurozone and its political problems by the fact that it has become the main rival of the Dollar, that is the currency of those who don't trust the Dollar or rather America's economical policies and believe in the upcoming end of the empire.

Obamacare

The Guardian's editorial on Obama's health care proposal:

The president's proposal was presented as an opening bid of a bipartisan debate, part of which will take place on television tomorrow. In reality, all thoughts of getting Republicans onside have been abandoned. So a public debate is a way of turning the populist tables on the Republicans, of challenging them to produce their counter-proposals or appear obstructionist to a nation calling for answers in an election year. Mr Obama's problems lie not just with an opposition whose mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote. They lie also with his own party, which comprises such a variety of wildlife, from the radical reformer to the rabbit transfixed in headlights, as to make the very words "healthcare reform" optimistic.
Mr Obama now has a policy, but it remains to be seen whether he has a process that would survive the centre ground of his own party. In any event, there is no way back for him and no obvious tactical retreat. If this attempt fails, his presidency will be bogged down.

I have to admit that I'm dizzy by all the manoeuvrings on this issue who is so essential to many Americans and needs simplicity rather than players willing to play chicken or worst three dimensional chess. My conviction is that if Obama isn't willing to make health care reform Obamacare then he should the courageous thing and move to something that he cares about for what is needed right now is both clarity and to use a vulgar term, cojones. Candidate Obama gave a speech in Iowa just before its caucus in which he said boldly to the audience that Democrats shouldn't be afraid to lose, he should follow his own advice and enunciate his vision in simpler terms by giving a speech (yes another one) that will for once have to be more concrete than poetic about what healthcare system he believes Americans deserve. Thus, my contention here is that Obama has always been reluctant to make the health care reform his because even during his campaign, it was never one, which moved him or would could lead him to move the crowd. This reluctance explains why his Congress, for it is his, is stuttering on the issue. Members of Congress from his own party know that the POTUS doesn't care enough to hold a grudge if they don't follow his lead. I'm waiting to see how much Obama is willing to lose to own the healthcare reform bill by making it his for that is the only it will be worth something. America needs Obamacare, but does Obama care?

Euro-American tensions

Kurt Volker explains why some tensions remain between Europe and the United States in spite of the "Obama" effect and the end of the Bush administration:

(...) both European and American complaints reflect long-term underlying challenges, and that these have come into sharper focus because it is no longer possible to blame them on the Bush Administration. For one of the major effects of the Obama presidency is that by taking the Bush Administration out of the equation, some uncomfortable truths have been exposed.(....)The “Obama effect” has thus lifted the veil on a host of deep-rooted problems; just because the United States has a different president, global and transatlantic challenges have not gotten any easier – only more visible. And while overcoming these problems should be the task that Europeans and Americans set for themselves, the natural tendency of both will likely be to exacerbate them. The EU will be drawn toward an extended period of inward-looking institution-building now the Lisbon treaty is in force and a new EU leadership is settling in. The U.S. will be inclined to focus its energies elsewhere – regional crises and rising powers – rather than investing further effort in Europe. Atlanticists on both sides need to work to reverse these trends.

In my view, there is nothing new under the sun. Europe is still answering existential questions and the United States is solely only interested in Europeans when it needs allies for its other projects (such as more troops in Afghanistan). The simple truth is that Obama feels that he has nothing to gain by making Europe his priority for it will bring him more headaches than anything else. Moreover,  he already has what American presidents work hard for and almost never get: both credibility and popularity in Europe. Thus, Obama can afford to put Europe in the back-burner unless the Euro becomes a greater problem for America, but if it doesn't, he can  wait and see and to let Europeans leaders discuss their future among themselves and agree on a few things before he rings the bell.

Europe and the fear of the clash

Great article in the Boston Review from John R. Bowen refuting the arguments of those who argue that Europe is becoming Eurabia and that it has everything to fear from its increasing "Muslim population." It is a must-read; here is a sugary excerpt:

Some Islamophobes claim that differences in civilization and religion between Islam and Europe will last because a fast-growing Muslim population is poised to take over European cities and establish political control in the name of a global ummah. This argument disputes the notion that Muslim immigrants (and, a fortiori, their children) will do what most immigrants do: adapt. To the contrary, the argument says, multiculturalist—as opposed to assimilationist—policies isolated Muslims just as ummah TV was reaching youth with calls for jihad, and the new generations will continue to be motivated by radical Islam in all areas of their lives: as they plan families, build schools, and riot, all with Islamic political victory as their goal.
(...)In creating sharia councils, British Muslims began to look “separatist,” and some do call for greater authority for sharia mediation. Against that British institutional background, a good number of younger Muslims call for governance “by sharia,” whatever that might mean. French Muslims began to look “corporatist,” as national organizations sought control over local mosque financing; everyone—Muslims included—calls for laïcité (secularity) to be applied equally. Throughout Europe, some Muslims developed ties with transnational groups: intellectual ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, spiritual ones with West African Sufi orders, financial ones with Gulf sheikhs.

In other words, these Islamic political actors have adapted to national opportunity structures with more or less success: more in the cases of British, French, and Belgian Muslims, less in the cases of German, Dutch, and Swedish ones. The organizing that ostensibly proves Islamism is on the rise in fact shows that these immigrants are following the examples of their predecessors. Like Catholics and Jews before them, Muslims build religious schools and associations—usually with external financial aid—and get involved in elections. (...)  Muslims are adapting like everyone else and are divided like everyone else.

French Halal Burgers

Charles Bremner analyzes the polemic created by the decision of Quick, a chain of fast-food in France, to sell Halal burgers in order to cater to observant Muslims:

The burger fuss is of course just the latest manifestation of anxiety over what is perceived to be an assertive Muslim population. The sense of threat lies behind the popular steps to outlaw the full Muslim veil on transport, universities and other state-run services. It also fuelled Sarkozy's four-month great national debate on the nature of French identity. The exercise was called off this month after focusing only the six-million Muslims in France's midst.
(...) The opponents of Quick fastfood and Muslim veils draw on high-minded principles which go back to the equality of the 1789 Revolution and the Republic's more recent principle of laicité, the strict separation of religion from public life.

These "valeurs de la République" are cited by leftists and intellectuals as well as rightwing politicians to deplore the more visible practices of Islam. The argument is that religious behaviour outside the mainstream culture amounts to an act of separateness and should be discouraged (For the ideal of the mainstream, see yesterday's post on white Marianne, symbol of the Revolution). By setting themselves apart from traditional French life, Muslims are being "identitaire" and committing "communautarisme". Equivalent to sectarianism, this means putting one's ethnic or religious identity ahead of Frenchness.
Britain and the United States, with their supposed ghettos, are seen as examples of the ill. Anne Fulda commenting in today's Le Figaro, complained that France has imported communautarisme from the United States along with hamburgers and now it is too late to stop it. 
The problem is that the sin of communautarisme has a flexible definition. That is what makes it dubious when applied to Muslims. With France's record in world war two, no-one would publicly accuse the Jewish population of communautarisme, let alone complain to prosecutors. No-one protests against kosher restaurants -- or says Chinese or Italian ones discriminate because they do not offer French cuisine. Try substituting kosher for halal in the complaints over Quick burgers and the effect is offensive.

One of the problems is that France has already americanized on the question of race, religion, and society for it is indeed ghettorized. There are parts of Paris, Marseilles, or Lyon where only members of a "community" and where they do so trying to recreate not only the atmosphere, but the norms of the place that they or their parents left behind. At the crux of the issue is that France no longer has a workable integration model and that instead of accepting and creating a new one, the French elites and bien pensants are improvising according to their ideology, which means either importing parts of the American/British model or trying the impossible by reverting to the "assimilating" one that worked when there were no visible differences between new and old France. It is for that reason that I am one of the very few people who regret that the debate on French identity was a failure. I had believed that it could have been useful not in defining what it means to be French, but to find common ground on the limits of tolerance and at the very least to make once again essential the principle that not citizenship is about both rights and inescapable obligations.

Motherly warriors

Two questions come to my mind when I read these arguments from Mary Eberstadt against the inclusion of mothers in combat, are we really in 2010? Do women really still have to live for their children as soon as they become mothers::

Nevertheless, it needs to be said: The argument that “women, including mothers, have served in the military, therefore women, including mothers, should serve in the military,” remains a blatant non sequitur. Of course women have, and can, and will serve bravely in all walks of life — including in combat and other violent situations if necessary. As news stories emphasized, for example, the murderous rampage by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, also in November 2009, was interrupted by the courageous intervention of a female soldier — Sergeant Kimberly Munley, who charged him at point-blank range and fired her weapon till eventually he went down. Sgt. Munley, incidentally, is also a mother. Where was it ever written that men have a monopoly on courage, and if it has been, who knows so little as to believe it? The history of humanity and its literature and art abound with examples of extraordinary valor exercised by mothers in particular — typically, on behalf of their children.
In fact, for that very reason, the ideological fervor over the years by feminists demanding women in the military betrays a bizarre kind of anxiety on the part of those exhibiting it. The literature advocating for female soldiers is shot through with breathless, romanticized insistence that women can indeed behave like men — changing truck tires, crawling through mud, urinating standing up, and killing and wounding as necessary. It is a pattern of protestation that raises questions of its own about the convictions of just such advocates. Did feminists and their allies think somewhere deep inside that women couldn’t do these very things — and more?
Yet again, however, this question of whether certain people can tote guns and endure physical discipline and die for their country too is not the same as asking whether they ought to. Many children and teenagers, for example, could work competently through the workday doing menial labor — as many did throughout the centuries leading to relatively recent laws protecting them from child labor. But most people today would not champion that fact to invalidate the laws against child labor or truancy. And for those who might object that this analogy conflates women with children, consider a few more examples of activities that American law puts the brakes on, even though all involve potentially consenting adults: drugs, prostitution, gambling, suicide, assisted suicide, selling oneself into slavery, having sex in public. In all kinds of ways, the law imposes limits on what consenting adults can do.

The past can kill the future

Aaah, it never stops, but "it" I mean the paternalist and irresponsible assertion that Haïti has been a country doomed from the very start of its existence (unlike the US?) and that its sad present is the fateful consequence of its cursed history. Here is another example from Christophe Wargny in Le Monde Diplomatique:

Haiti continues to pay dearly for the circumstances surrounding its unwanted birth, between 1802-4. The West, led by Napoleonic France, attempted to kill this bastard child of the French Revolution, and it endured a terrible war of independence. Haiti had the only slave revolt that led to the creation of a state, born through rejection of French colonial power.

France could not accept such defeat, which represented a stain on Napoleon’s reputation as well as the loss of commercial revenues. Saint-Domingue, as it was known, was in 1789 France’s wealthiest colony, producing half the world’s sugar. Nineteenth century Europe could not tolerate such emancipation. Nor could the infant US, a land of slave owners, cope with the idea of such a nation at its gates. There was only one solution: to forbid it to exist.

The persistent EU coordination question

Not fresh, but relevant news from Nicolas Nagle which illustrates that the Euro difficulties are probably just symptoms are a wider/deeper/ enduring problem:

Historically, there have been two opposing tendencies within the EU -- Atlanticism and Europeanism. The first, traditionally supported by the U.K., favors continued U.S. engagement in Europe, considers NATO the only necessary European defense institution, and remains wary of the rise of a continental power. The second, expressed most vigorously by the French, favors the development of a common EU foreign policy and stronger cooperation in military affairs so that Europe might become an actor on the global stage.
The recent earthquake in Haiti illustrated both tendencies in action. The French were quick in trying to organize an aid response under the EU banner, initially proposing to send 1,000 paramilitary police officers from the European Gendarmerie. But lack of support from other member states ultimately forced Paris to downgrade its aspirations, and only 300 men were sent. Throughout, London remained skeptical about the need for a European military presence in Haiti at all, since the U.S. had already sent troops to the island.
Later, when Ashton refused to fly to Haiti -- as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had immediately done -- Europeanists argued that her absence undermined the EU's international visibility. Subtle and not-so-subtle criticisms came from high-ranking French officials in particular, including EU Commissioner Michel Barnier and Secretary of State for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche.
The picture suggests that little has changed in European foreign policy: Old rivalries and lack of coordination remain.

Continuity always trumps Change

It seems that more people, in this case Tariq Ali, are making the argument that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's policies in the area of foreign policy:

If a textbook illustration were needed of the continuity of American foreign policy across administrations, and the futility of so many soft-headed attempts to treat the Bush–Cheney years as exceptional rather than essentially conventional, Obama’s conduct has provided it. From one end of the Middle East to the other, the only significant material change he has brought is a further escalation of the War on Terror—or ‘Evil’, as he prefers to call it—with Yemen now being sighted as the next target. Beyond, the story is much the same. Renditions—torture by proxy—are upheld as a practice, while their perpetrators continue to lounge at their ease in Florida or elsewhere, ignoring extradition warrants under Obama’s protection. Domestic wire-taps continue. A coup in Central America is underwritten. New military bases are set up in Colombia.
(...) If sonorous banality and armour-plated hypocrisy are the hallmarks of this Presidential style, that does not make it less functional for the task of servicing and repairing the imperial institutions over which Obama and Clinton now preside. Nothing grated more on international opinion than the lack of requisite unction with which Bush and Cheney all too often went about their business, exposing allies and audiences otherwise well-disposed towards American leadership to inconvenient truths they would have preferred not to hear. Historically, the model for the current variant of imperial Presidency has been Woodrow Wilson, no less pious a Christian, whose every second word was peace, democracy or self-determination, while his armies invaded Mexico, occupied Haiti and attacked Russia, and his treaties handed one colony after another to his partners in war. Obama is a hand-me-down version of the same, without even Fourteen Points to betray. But cant still goes a long way to satisfy those who yearn for it, as the award to Obama of what García Márquez once called the Nobel Prize for War has graphically shown.

I have to admit that I'm baffled that people did think that Obama wouldn't pursue America's national interests with the same means as Bush if he thought that it was in his own political interests. Why did so many assume that Obama was different and wouldn't be a conventional America's president? Oh that's right I forgot in America and elsewhere being black, biracial, means being different or rather possessing such a different identity that it cannot make one see the world or rather America the same way as members of the old boys network and be simply a typical member of the American Elites and that what Obama is just like most presidents before him. In other words, Obama is showing America everyday that "White" is the new black, which in a way is great news for it shows that one can have "black blood" and be a plain and normal American and not a mythical and exotic creature that has to change America and the world.

Bush isn't dead, he lives in Obama

Unsurprisingly, I agree with John B. Bellinger III  (hat tip: Julian Ku) when he makes the following point:

President Obama may be able to do more to translate his words into action with respect to international law and institutions in his second year in office. But given the continuing threat of terrorism against the United States and election-year politics, we should not expect dramatic shifts in U.S. policy. When it comes to international law, the international community may find that there will be more continuity than change between the Bush administration’s pragmatic second term and the Obama administration.

I'm starting to believe that the problem has never really being Bush (on the issue of international law), but rather that for too many American policy makers international law doesn't matter unless it serves uniquely American interests and that it can be superseded when it doesn't. It is neither a controversial nor an illegitimate point of view to have, but the trouble comes when the world becomes more interdependent and that it becomes necessary to have less American-centric arguments to defend international actions. The problem with the Obama administration now is the same as it was with the Bush administration: it believes neither in the relevance nor in the universality of International law, which in its eyes is solely the weapon of those fighting evil to humble/crush their enemies.

Greece and the integration question

Interesting stuff from Norman Tebbit on Greece, the Euro, Brussels, the European Union:

Gradually, bit by bit, the Greeks and the Germans are discovering that while they have a currency in common, they have absolutely no common economic policy.(...) Already, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, leaders of the member states who really matter in the Eurozone, are dictating instructions to the Greek government – but they are utterly unaccountable to the Greek people. The Greeks are, of course, responsible for their own predicament, but their masters in Brussels also bear a heavy responsibility for having misled them into the trap of membership of the euro and knowingly allowed the Greek government to falsify its statistics to qualify for membership.
Now the Greeks cannot afford to stay in the euro and the Germans and French (and indeed to a lesser extent we British) cannot afford to see the Greek economy collapse.
For our masters in Brussels, this is a moment of great danger and of great opportunity. Their solution is simple. Not just a single currency and a single central bank, but a single finance minister administering a single tax and spending system, and a single government across the EU. Without that, either the Eurozone will shrink to a hard core of states around Germany and the Deutschmark will be reborn under the name of the euro, or the euro will cease to be.

I'm starting to wonder whether European monetary integration can continue, successfully, without more European political integration (deepening that is) and whether more vigorous central institutions (The European Central Bank doesn't seem to be enough to fix  crisis.) aren't necessary for Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European council has not only been invisible, but is becoming irrelevant.
Nouriel Roubini has a different take on Greece in the Globe and Mail.

Fukuyamism 2.2

Francis Fukuyama in the Spectator on current events, history, and the future of democracy (hat tip: Hattie Garlick):

I think that even in the wake of the Ukrainian election and other recent reverses, the future of democracy is not so bleak. In the first place, democracy remains, in Amartya Sen’s words, the ‘default’ political condition: ‘While democracy is not yet universally practised, nor indeed universally accepted, in the general climate of world opinion democratic governance has achieved the status of being taken to be generally right.’ Very few people around the world openly profess to admire Putin’s petro-nationalism, or Chavez’s ‘21st-century socialism,’ or Ahmedinejad’s Islamic Republic.
(....)The next phase of global history will be a challenging one, as America and Europe stumble to get back their economic balance. It seems doubtful that either the US or Britain will achieve the degree of growth in the next generation that they did in the previous one. But one of the great advantages of democracy is that it does not depend for its legitimacy on continuing high levels of economic growth, as the Chinese system does.
As we move forward, it is important to keep in mind the simple power of the idea of a government by, for, and of the people. We need to match those high ideals with unglamorous but steady investments in institution-building if liberal democracy is to deliver on its promises.

It is good to see that since The End of History, Fukuyama has become timid about making bold and grand predictions about the future. However, the problem is that he has become so timid that he is no longer original so busy that he is to cleanse his reputation from his original sin, which was to have the arrogance to assert that history had ended, and from the fact that he, maybe in spite of himself, inspired Neoconservatism. To come back to his essay in the Spectator, the problem that I have with it is its shortsightedness and its author's unwillingness to ask the grand question, which is whether societies who are dominated by the market can remain Democratic no in the superficial sense of the world, but in Tocqueville's sense of it. If corporations are people and can greater influence in politics because they have more money, if the electorate's vote is solely based on identity politics,  if not all voices are represented in a representative Democracy, is  such a political system still democratic and can we really ignore its shortcomings by arguing in a Thatcherite and autocratic fashion that there is no alternative? Unfortunately, Fukuyama, in my opinion purposely, offers no answers and furthermore and that is most disappointing, he doesn't even allude to those problems by pretending that the crux of the future legitimacy of democracy is elsewhere.  

Short-termism and foolish pride

Ah, finally, some common sense on Jacob Zuma and the lack of outrage over his conduct and the gullibility of too many South-Africans and Africans:

(...) We are all guilty of "short-termism". And we are all so malleable. We are interested in the here and now, and are so quick to consign history to the dustbin.
We are momentarily outraged that the country's president, Jacob Zuma, has with a friend's child sired yet another child out of wedlock. We are then even more dumbfounded by his logic -- that once he has paid inhlawulo, he has taken personal responsibility and that should be the end of the matter.
We fall just short of asking him to resign, but are all mortified by South Africa's international reputation as represented by this first citizen. But ever the strategist, Zuma releases a statement apologising on a Saturday, essentially dictating the content of the country's largest newspapers on Sunday. He gets the front page on his terms and we all move on.
Moving on means mechanically changing gear -- disconnecting from the discourse of Zuma the philanderer to speculate on his state of the nation speech.
We are so easily gratified and gullible. It reminds me of how former president Thabo Mbeki was crucified for a very long time for not speaking out against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. And once he had muttered a reluctant, incoherent disapproval, we were left with nothing to say other than "too little, too late".

Vocabulary, Good intentions, and self-satisfaction

I'm always happy when Nicholas Kristof learns new words, especially when he learns in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, and loves himself a lot more for it :

I’ve learned some new words.
One is “autocannibalism,” coined in French but equally appropriate in English. It describes what happens when a militia here in eastern Congo’s endless war cuts flesh from living victims and forces them to eat it.
Another is “re-rape.” The need for that term arose because doctors were seeing women and girls raped, re-raped and re-raped again, here in the world capital of murder, rape, mutilation.
This grotesque vocabulary helps answer a question that I’ve had from readers: Why Congo?

I have to admit that I have a problem with Kristof. He rubs me the wrong way because I can't shake the perception, solely based on my reading (which may be, I admit bias) of his op-eds in the times, that he is the Albert Schweitzer (Sartre's great- great uncle) of Journalism. He goes to strange places in Africa and elsewhere armed with nothing more lethal than his good intentions, observes, writes, and returns filled the self-satisfying and aggrandizing belief that he has changed the world. Because I know that may be unfair to Kristof I'm going to continue to beat up myself about my dislike and suspicion until I find a way to like him. However, to return to the most important subject, which is Congo, I have the feeling that Kristof's reporting is part of the problem precisely because it adds to the sad and desperate mythology of the place by sending the message that normalcy means aid, more reporting, instead of the acknowledgment of the harsh reality that the Congo is the Congo because nobody has an interest in it becoming something else and because what it is works for everybody including people filled with good intentions and interested in learning new words and things such as Kristof.

Existential questions about the European Union

Interesting stuff from my second favorite law professor Kenneth Anderson on the future of the EU and its lack of a clearly defined political ideology, which impedes cohesion and may put into question its viability:

I am mostly an admirer of the EU and what it has done in many things, starting with the long term transformations in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, to start with, let alone the expansion eastwards.  But that does not lead me to any belief that it has worked out the deep internal contradictions in the political governance project, and less still any view that the EU points the way to some genuinely new kind of governance structure in human affairs.  It might, I suppose — I’m not ruling it out.  But let’s give it, say, a hundred years to see if it has staying power before we draft up too many theories of its historical inevitability.
In any case, how much does it matter? I’m not referring to myself — I mean simply that the Obama administration’s pooh-bahs seem to have written off Europe as the past, Asia is the future.  The irony is that it is precisely on account of striving so desperately, so mightily, to become a Western European democratic socialist state that the Obama administration feels no need any longer to look to Europe.  It has already priced-in internally anything of ideological value Europe might have to offer, on account of the transformations under way in the US.  We’ve now got — thanks to the decension of Bush and the inclension of Obama –anything of value Europe might offer in the way of values, so why pay attention to those losers?  What could Europe possibly teach President Obama about community, fraternite, welfare, socialism, social safety nets, unions, public sector employment, all the rest of the stuff in which Europe ideologically specializes?  This is President Obama, after all — on all of these things, O Europe, you should learn from him.  And from Rahm Emanuel.

I think that Professor Anderson is partly right but fails to realize that the biggest threats to the EU existence are its increasing democratic deficit (the Lisbon Treaty is an example) and its enduring inability to have a common foreign and security policy. As for the increasing disinterest of the Obama administration for Europe, it is, I believe, solely temporary and due to the fact that Obama doesn't believe that the United States needs the EU as much as it needs the United States, this explains why he believes that it can wait for him to it  in his second term.

The refusal to bury the dead Françafrique

Stephen Smith has, as almost always, an essential article in the London Review of Books on Françafrique. He argues, and I agree with him,  that it has been dead for a long time despite the fact that both France and African leaders, because they need to maintain the illusion of a special relationship, refuse to bury it. Sugary excerpt:

Then why not issue the death certificate of Françafrique and turn the page? Because neither successive French presidents – from the Socialist Mitterrand to the post-Gaullist Sarkozy – nor francophone Africa’s heads of state, especially the remnants of the old guard, want to let go. Too much is at stake, namely the political survival of the heads of state and the status of French diplomacy. France remains a last resort for weak regimes under threat in Africa, while francophone Africa is still an echo chamber for France’s international pretensions.
(...)A general I spoke to recently in Paris – a figure whose long history of postings and interventions resembles a political map of the continent – thinks much the same. ‘During the Cold War, we were a power to reckon with in our part of Africa,’ he said. ‘Since the 1990s, we’ve been moving out. That’s now visible to the naked eye. There’s not much left to show for our presence and no political will at home. And we no longer have the means. But we maintain the fiction of our “presence” and endorse the course of events we no longer determine. Which is the worst of all policies.’In a handful of European countries – Germany, Holland, Poland or Spain – where a bad Africa policy is thought to be better than none at all, France’s leverage on the continent is still admired. Their own approach is confined to the ritual expression of ‘grave concern’ in government press releases and the application of humanitarian band-aids to the continent’s open wounds. But seen from Paris and put into perspective, France is bound to become as irrelevant to its former colonies as Belgium is to Congo, 80 times bigger and seven times more populated than its former coloniser.

The key point here is that the illusion that there is a special relationship between France and Africa where sentiments, a long common history and in many cases a shared language are most important national interests is false and truncates the essential debate of the future of those countries and of their relationship with the rest of the world. In other words, la Françafrique is useful because it gives France the pretension that it still has its Gaullist grandeur while maintaining Africans under the self-satisfying but emasculating illusion that the French are in charge of their future and that they are the one enriching France.

America's infatuation with war

Thanks to John Quiggin’s post at Crooked Timber, I was able to read a worth reading article on the American conservative on American wars written by Andrew C. Bacevitch.  He makes the point that America is good at starting war because it is a political tool, which influential ideologues love to advocate , and yet it is also at finishing them for precisely the same reasons for  with gruesome realities, comes the realization that war cannot be an end and itself and a fix all for everything tough foreign policy question. He isn’t wrong. Sugary excerpt:

An alternative reading of our recent military past might suggest the following: first, that the political utility of force—the range of political problems where force possesses real relevance—is actually quite narrow; second, that definitive victory of the sort that yields a formal surrender ceremony at Appomattox or on the deck of an American warship tends to be a rarity; third, that ambiguous outcomes are much more probable, with those achieved at a cost far greater than even the most conscientious war planner is likely to anticipate; and fourth, that the prudent statesman therefore turns to force only as a last resort and only when the most vital national interests are at stake. Contra Kristol, force is an “instrument” in the same sense that a slot machine or a roulette wheel qualifies as an instrument.
To consider the long bloody chronicle of modern history, big wars and small ones alike, is to affirm the validity of these conclusions. Bellicose ideologues will pretend otherwise. Such are the vagaries of American politics that within the Beltway the views expressed by these ideologues—few of whom have experienced war—will continue to be treated as worthy of consideration. One sees the hand of God at work: the Lord obviously has an acute appreciation for irony. […] The impetus for weaning Americans away from their infatuation with war, if it comes at all, will come from within the officer corps. It certainly won’t come from within the political establishment, the Republican Party gripped by militaristic fantasies and Democrats too fearful of being tagged as weak on national security to exercise independent judgment. Were there any lingering doubt on that score, Barack Obama, the self-described agent of change, removed it once and for all: by upping the ante in Afghanistan he has put his personal imprimatur on the Long War.

The problem comes from the fact that America is a hegemon and that it has had that status for a long time. Few countries (not to say no country) become superpowers, hegemons without believing in the use of force and without using it to protect its interests and enforce its vision of the world. America is in the unique position of being a hegemon with a few ascending powers, but no equals for the most. Too often, because it doesn’t have to compromise or to take into account the sensitivities of an equal, many of its ideologues with clout assume that its incredible military might can quickly and inexpensively resolve every issue. They take the view point that that even if it isn’t successful, the use of force is a way to dispel the notion that America is weak, a power in the decline , or an nation that can messed with. Thus, they always support the notion that war even when it doesn’t solve any issue is almost always a more effective tool than the exercise of any kind of soft power.  The problems is that America faces a dilemma every time it finds itself within a war, which might be unwinnable; it has to decide whether surrender is a defeat and within American political culture, it almost always is and costs a president all of his political capital. This fact explains why it is nearly impossible for any president given those facts especially when he is a Democrat easily be tarnished by the cowardice accusation, not to fall within  the trap of forgetting that wars almost always have no positive consequences when the objectives are unclear or constantly changing and more importantly when victory is solely defined as avoiding defeat and humiliation.

A lethal sentimentalist education

It is rare for me to say, but Melanie Phillips is absolutely right when she writes this:

Cynical as this may sound, there is no doubt that appealing to public sympathy is now a way to score political points or a 'get out of jail free' card in public debate.
We see this when politicians use personal adversity to tug at the heart-strings. And what all but silences any cynicism is that such politicians' personal anguish is all too real.
We saw it over David Cameron's disabled young son, Ivan, who, before he died a year ago, featured in many moving interviews with Cameron and accounts of his family life.
Some found this tasteless and exploitative; Cameron himself simply said that Ivan was a part of his life he was not prepared to conceal.
What was undeniable was the wave of public sympathy this engendered for Cameron, and the way this humanised the hitherto callous and uncaring image of a Tory politician.
Now we learn that in a forthcoming TV interview, Gordon Brown is overcome by emotion when talking about his daughter who died in 2002, ten days after being born prematurely.

The politics of the Me era is about feelings and images (the two are interrelated). People both want to watch grand spectacles, which explain why politics is more theatrical and to feel/get "the self" of their politicians so that they can be reassured that later s/he will feel their pain. It's not about empathy, it's about egocentrism and the increasing difficulty for uncultured or discultured electorates to resort to cold analysis when it comes to politics.

The neverending culpability of the West

What is wrong with Karen Armstrong? When she writes about her experience at a conference in Cairo, I have to wonder in what she lives:

(...)if the professors felt so enraged, what on earth could it be like on the streets of Cairo, where this level of frustration, aggravated by economic and political discontent, could make many people easy targets for extremist propaganda?
But the mood of our conference changed. During the last session an American theologian managed, with some difficulty, to take the floor and spoke on behalf of us all. We had, he said, been deeply impressed by the pain in the room; we knew that "the eight horrible years of George W Bush" had inflicted grave damage on the region, and would do everything in our power to work with Al-Azhar for a better future. Immediately, one of the most vitriolic of our assailants responded with generosity and the conference was finally able to issue a firm and positive joint resolution.
So far, Obama has not given the concrete sign that we felt was essential. But the Chilcot inquiry has also raised hopes. If there is any hint of whitewash or cover-up, the consequent disillusion will only exacerbate an already inflamed situation. In Cairo, we discovered that a frank acknowledgment of culpability could turn things around. In our dangerously polarised world, we may not get such an opportunity again.

Wow....I think that for one Karen Armstrong is way to religious to understand the Camusian difference between culpability and responsibility, and she fails to get the fact the problem here isn't for the west to acknowledge some type of culpability to turn things around in the streets of Cairo or Islamabad, but rather to live by its own ideals while stopping to treat the poor as victims and as incapable of taking control of their own destiny.  Karen Armstrong has a Mother Theresa like view of international affairs for she believes in guilt, in atonement and in all the disturbing sentiments, which always to Imperialism, paternalism, and just wars, which are later found to be unwinnable. The point here is that the "West" which doesn't exist except in the mind of those who love to divide the world into archaic categories doesn't have to bear a cross for the fact that shit happens and that more often that not, it strays away from the least unjust path because it is too complex and because it believes that national interests justify the use of any means. Thus, the question here is solely one of responsibility and of the continuation of Hobbes's state of nature in spite of progress and modernity. To put things simply: should we just accept that we are all barbarians and be done with ethics and accept that might makes right.
The goal of the Chilcot inquiring shouldn't be the same as those Witch trials in Salem that is to burn the guilty to appease angry mobs. The aim should be to make those who had power to assume responsibility of their mistakes in judgment and more importantly to force the electorate to realize that democracies only function when they realize that  they shouldn't be waiting for "the one" but rather should force the imperfect leaders that they have to live by the principles that make their country what it is.

Different realities

The following criticism of Bernard Kouchner (French foreign minister) by Evelyn Gordon,  shows how wide a gap there is between Americans and the French on the Israel-Palestine Question for Kouchner in France is considered to be pro-Israel when here in the US, he is considered as a leftist ideologue who doesn't understand facts and hate force even though he supported war in Iraq, supports the one in Afghanistan and has somewhat of a tough stand on Iran (less tough than Sarkozy's); that being said, I agree that he has been a terrible foreign minister in part because he is too emotive and too willing to take criticisms as attacks on his sublime aura; I have the feeling that Kouchner likes too much the role of the martyr, he liked being the martyr of the socialists throughout much of his career and now he is enjoying being the one of Sarkozysm:

Bernard Kouchner is “hurt” and “shocked” by Israelis’ “vanished” desire for peace. Israelis of all political stripes would undoubtedly be equally shocked at the French foreign minister’s ignorance — and at his willingness to hurl false accusations without even a minimal effort to check his facts. (...) But Kouchner couldn’t be bothered with the facts; he preferred to simply accuse Israelis of not wanting peace. Perhaps it’s his background as a human-rights activist showing: hurling accusations at Israel without checking the facts is practically de rigueur among human-rights organizations these days.