The Republic of Dissent

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.

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.

Haiti and Avatar

Thought provoking and more importantly necessary statements from Giovanni at Bat Bean, Beam (hat tip: Daniel Trilling) comparing Haiti and Avatar (which I haven't seen because I don't want to, I still haven't digested the overkill that there was for Titanic):

The comparison may seem outrageous, but note what these two sets of comments have in common: the idea that analysis is inappropriate, criticism and a sense of time or history not befitting the moment. A large-scale human tragedy calls for immediate action; a spectacular movie calls for immediate enjoyment. In both instances, reflection is grossly inappropriate, even offensive; thus Hallward and Calder are not chastised for being wrong, but for speaking out of turn.
I guess this would also not be the time to reflect on information as spectacle and entertainment, a concept so naturalised and ingrained that raising it in the most innocuous of circumstances is bound to get you labelled as a Neil Postman wannabe, or worse. Let alone at this moment, when the circumstances are all but innocuous. So I probably ought to refrain from pointing out what everybody knows, namely, that Avatar is owned by a company called News Corporation, whose principal, one Rupert Murdoch, is a fanatical supporter of Western imperialism, both military and economic. Yet the film passes, at least amongst a significant proportion of the people who - unlike Calder’s detractors - chose to take it seriously, precisely for a critique of imperialism. Regardless of the merits of that argument, which is not my intention to discuss here, did James Cameron just a few hours ago, in accepting his Golden Globe for best director, really speak Na’vi? What kind of gesture was that? What does it mean to pay homage to the struggles of a people that does not exist, and to do so right now, at this moment in history, when it is bound to be preceded in the news bulletins by footage from Port au Prince?
Now this obviously is a coincidence, and the release of Avatar was never meant to overlap with the Haitian earthquake. But what if it dulls its reality? What if that appeal to fictional indigenous rights criminally distract us, by creating a warped space of reflection on plights that aren’t real?

It is sad to assert but in our times, disasters and everything else need to be able to produce nice pictures, infomercials to catch and to keep the attention of America first of all and of Hollywoodized world. What has bothered about the continuing Haiti saga is precisely the lack of analysis and of thoughts because we are too busy feeling, being overwhelmed by the pictures of Anderson Cooper looking tanned in the middle of glamorous misery. 

Israel as a European country

I would have taken the following statement seriously if it had come from a political leader other than Berlusconi:

My greatest desire, as long as I am a protagonist in politics, is to bring Israel into membership of the European Union.

Assuming that it were possible, why would Israel join the EU? To be protected by it? Right, let's be serious!

Legalism and the definition of just wars

Brendan O'Neill has a thought provoking article on Elizabeth Wilmshurst and her arguments for the illegality of the Iraq war:

There are three irritating things about this strictly legalistic opposition to the attack on Iraq. First, it is delusional. It is based on the massive self-deception that international law and its brave defenders and practitioners – lawyers – kept the world in tip-top shape until that cowboy George W Bush and his heel-snapping poodle Tony Blair came along and ruined everything.
(...) The second irritating thing about the legalistic opposition to the war in Iraq is that it is deeply dishonest, duplicitous even. Many of those who moan about the illegality of Iraq were fervent supporters of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Yet that futile and fatal intervention also did not win the support of the UN Security Council, and thus was ‘illegal’. A Guardian writer penned the 10 Days to War drama, and the Guardian has been singing the praises of Wilmshurst’s performance at Chilcot over the past week. This is the same Guardian which in 1999 slated those who said Bill Clinton and Tony Blair should wait for UN backing before bombing Yugoslavia. The UN is not ‘the only legitimate law-giver’, the Guardian insisted. Indeed, the UN constitution is a ‘recipe for inaction’, and ‘its imprimatur cannot be the sole trigger for international action to right an obvious wrong’.
The third and most irritating thing is that the legalistic-not-political critique of war (well, of certain wars) is inhumane. Judgements about military interventions are made, not from the basis of what is good for humanity, or from any analysis of what terrible consequences the war might have for those on the receiving end and for international peace more broadly, but rather from the lawyerly approach of making sure that all the boxes are ticked and all the right procedures were followed. Legal niceties are elevated over people’s lives, over questions of democracy, sovereignty, stability, equality.

I agree with O'Neill on his main point that the law isn't the main tool to define just or rather unjust wars, that other factors have to be taken into considerations, and those who fail to at least, accept that the complexity of the concept of "just war" are ideologues and hypocrites. I think that even if the Iraq war could have been justified (my feeling is that it couldn't have been, but I'm willing to consider the possibility that I'm wrong) under the international law principles established by Wilmshurst and others, it would have still been an unjust and I'm making this statement, of course, with the help of hindsight. The main reason is that it was both unwinnable,  unnecessary, and too expensive since its most touted accomplishment is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. International Law is a tool among many other indispensable to determine the justifiability of a war. If the French without the backing of the UN had intervened and had stopped the genocide, what would be the argument of legal scholars today who wouldn't have a crystal ball to know that that unlawful intervention had stopped the dead of hundred of thousands innocent people. The point is that even as a lawyer, I'm forced to accept the despairing realities that laws are minimal, but essential tools to address grave societal problems and that more often than not it doesn't provide an acceptable solution to issues, which politicians and the people should have the guts to confront directly.

Lies in political democracies

Interesting "stuff" from William Rees-Mogg:

We have been told by Sir John Chilcot himself that the Chilcot inquiry is not a trial, and that nobody will be either acquitted or found guilty; we all know that is not true. A public judgment is being made as each section of evidence is given. In particular a quiet judgment has been made of Tony Blair’s conduct. It may never lead to his being tried in any court, but there is nevertheless a public verdict of his responsibility for the British action in Iraq.
It was Mr Blair who was responsible; his evidence shows it. He was the Prime Minister who had won two landslide elections. He could cajole, coax, threaten, anger and flatter to get his own way, a war leader who was the nearest thing to a parliamentary dictator since the wartime Winston Churchill.

These assertions raise the essential point of accountability in a democracy. The electorate by electing/choosing its leaders should bear a lot of the blame for their mistake in judgment. It is too easy not to say what was not heard them or what didn't convince enough politics and media analysts to force a change of actions. The argument isn't that illegalities are justifiable in a democracy because political leaders get elected, but to make the point emphatically that when an act falls in that dangerous and frustrating gray zone, the people must turn the guillotine away from the elected and question their own judgment and the way their elective process and system of government work in those situation. I have the strong suspicion that in both Britain and America, the problem was that there stopped to be any counter powers when it was pompously declared that we were in the age of terror. At that moment, fear ruled and the populace and the elites who wanted to be protected at all costs stopped  caring about the morality of the means to achieve what was considered to be the most just of end: their survival.

Thus although it must feel good to hit on Blair, it is more instructive to realize and accept that there is a Blair inside of most of us, that is someone who becomes blinded by the necessity to fight just wars everywhere when they are potential dangers to avoid domestic catastrophes.

The gift of torture

Sugary excerpt of the week from Amitava Kumar, whom I'm liking more everyday:

Each one of us has received an education in the art of torture in recent years. That’s America’s gift to us, through this war on terror, that we’ve learned words like “waterboarding”. We have also learned that torture isn’t only about force: men lose their minds, not when beaten to within an inch of their lives, but when they are placed in solitary confinement with black-out goggles and noise-blocking headphones wrapped around their heads. We have learned that if terror by non-state actors relies on brutal killing of innocents, then state terror proceeds by making torture justifiable and routine.

Culture as a justifcation for the indefensible

I cannot stand Jacob Zuma for so many reasons and reading that he's using his culture to defend or rather sacralize polygamy doesn't surprise me. It is just a reminder that we live in the age of excuses not of reasons where cultures, traditions, religions, all the crap that kill intellectualism are prevalent precisely because people don't know how to reason and to justify the fact that they are blindly following their most base urges or living ascetically. If "Culture" is a good excuse for despicable differences then there shouldn't be any problem welcoming the Taliban and other extremists on the international stage and to accept stoning, female circumcision, honor killings and whatever else.

Modernity has different faces

Good conclusion, wrong and disingenuous arguments from Raphaël Liogier on the French's discussion on the ban of the burka:

Women ­donning the full veil are not against modernity but represent rather its sophisticated product, just like ­westernised Buddhists. The veil, ­surprising as this may seem, is good news for modern values. Some smart young women keep a niqab in their bag but only wear it in Paris's Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, in order to draw attention to the fact that they belong to the best Muslim set, that they really have got that Muslim chic, something like the equivalent ­behaviour in a gay district. This deep western social movement is no threat to modern values, but rather vindicates the ­latter under unexpected aesthetic guise: it is so ­individualistic and depoliticised that it is more of a real threat for Islamism and terrorist ­networks themselves.It is a massive blunder to fight this new, ultra-modern Islam. And it is not only France that is heading towards a colossal error of understanding – ­politically capable of spinning into ­historic ­proportions – but also Europe, the United States, and all the other ­post-industrial countries, blinkered by Islamophobia, who turn out to be ­incapable of catching up on their own deep cultural changes and recognising their own best interests. It is a kind of collective, ­generational jet lag.

The issue isn't as complicated as Liognier makes it seem for all it comes down to is this: Can a woman with a burka, a veil, a niqab or whatever be the face of modernity and of individual liberties as the one of Demi Moore pregnant and Naked? My answer is yes, but too many people disagree.

The media and Haiti

I agree with Colin Murphy on this:

There were other anomalies and inadequacies in the reporting from Haiti. The US military was prominent in news reports: footage of heavily armed soldiers distributing bottles of water, of airdrops of food, and of US helicopters landing in front of the ruined presidential palace, was widely used to accompany reports on the humanitarian response. These efforts may have been laudable, but they paled in comparison to those of the United Nations and charities on the ground in Haiti. The UN’s World Food Programme said it had distributed three million meals to 200,000 people by late this week, and estimated that a further 100,000 people had been fed by charities. There were plans to scale this up to reach two million people, with four key distribution sites identified. By contrast, the US Southern Command reportedly made two air drops during the week of some 17,000 meals each.
Of course, some of the most prominent stories in the days since the quake have been good news stories: those remarkable images of people being pulled alive from the rubble by international search and rescue teams. Dozens of teams from all around the world helped rescue over 120 people. Yet even this creates a misleading impression. As anyone who has worked in a crisis zone knows (I spent two years in Angola, working on emergency relief programmes), the most important “rapid response” always comes from the people themselves. Early footage after the quake showed ordinary Haitians desperately sifting through rubble, searching for, and no doubt rescuing, family and neighbours – their successes, though, remained uncounted and largely unreported.The media is a vital part of the response to any crisis such as this, and there has been much outstanding reporting coming out of Haiti; Twitter, meanwhile, has proved valuable for getting some sense of the voice of ordinary Haitians. But too often, reporters and their editors have led with glib headlines and poorly sourced information. The courage of those on the ground deserves more.

Les rois sont petits

Charles Bremmer on Yesterday the latest Sarko's show on French TV:

When Pierre accused him of ignorance over the lives of ordinary people, Sarkozy replied: "I am not going to put ashes on my head, excusing myself for not being a worker at Renault." 
And, not to be forgotten, Sarkozy took his usual swipe at the President of the United States. Defending his multitude of simultaneous reforms, he said: "Take my friend Barack Obama... He went with just one reform and look what has happened to it."
Also worth noting: In neither the talk show nor the interview that preceded it, did anyone mention Muslim  veils, which shows that this is not one of the matters that are really worrying people.   
Sarkozy's performance, imposed on TV in a way that only Silvio Berlusconi could rival, has naturally been mocked by the Socialists and other opponents. But it scored surprisingly good reviews in the press today. The most unusual one came from Laurent Joffrin, Editor of Libération,who is Sarkozy's bête noire. "The President defended his policies with indisputable mastery," he wrote.

I have to admit that Sarkozy's Obama obsession betrays his "Americacentrism." Anytime, Sarkozy hits Obama with just words (can he do anything else?), I want to say to him, "It is so unnecessary. Don't worry, you are his equal. You have so much in common that it is scary." That said, I believed that if these two could switch roles, their countries would be better off for it. Sarkozy would make a better American president for he likes action and has his political vision is more in tune with the American compact. Obama would, undoubtedly, make a better French president, for he is so good with the symbolic and representative side of power, which the French want their republican monarch to be great at to reassure themselves that although the king may relate to and understand them, he is better than them in the sense that he has great skills and that therefore his majesty  is unquestionable and his great powers well used.

The perpetual identity question

Agnès Poirier on what it means to French:

Eric Cantona didn't pull his punches when asked about the national debate: "They talk of the Marseillaise, of the French language, but politicians are asses. To be French is to be revolutionary and refusing all this politicking crap."
Precisely. Historical events have shaped the French mindset more than any debates will. The struggle of the French revolutionaries and the first republic up in arms against all the monarchies of the continent was the start of a profound shake-up and national identity construction. The Napoleonic setback and royalist restorations throughout the 19th century sharpened the minds, created deep national divisions, but also prepared for the glorious revolutionary episodes of the second republic (1848-1852) and the Commune (1870). The Franco-Prussian war, the Dreyfus affair, the Third Republic, the law of separation of church and state, followed by the two world wars, Vichy, the Résistance, the Algerian war and decolonisation at large made France as we have known it to be: confrontational, contradictory, unruly, restless, but also profoundly republican and secular.
And let's remember that, according to the National Institute for Demographic Studies, a quarter of the French have at least one grandparent born outside France.

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.

The death of idealism

I agree partly with Ian Buruma on this:

The way it looks now, liberals, in the “progressive” American sense of the word, may actually have been among the losers of 1989. Social democrats were always despised by communists, and vice versa. But many social democratic ideals, rooted in Marxist notions of social justice and equality, were thrown out, like the proverbial baby, with the bathwater of communism.
This process was already under way before the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the free-market radicalism of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Society doesn't exist, Mrs. Thatcher once famously declared – only individuals and families count. Everyone is for themselves.
For many people, this had the ring of liberation – from overregulated markets, from overbearing trade unions, from class privilege. That is why it was called neo-liberalism. But free-market radicalism undermined the role of the state in building a better, more just, more equal society. Neo-liberals are less interested in justice than in greater efficiency, more productivity, the bottom line.
While the neo-liberals were slashing and burning their way through old social democratic arrangements, the left was dissipating its energies on cultural politics, “identity” and ideological multiculturalism. Democratic idealism was once the domain of the left, including social democrats and liberals. In the United States, it had been the Democratic Party, embodied by John Kennedy, that promoted freedom around the world.
But in the late 20th century, it became more important to many leftists to save “Third World” culture, no matter how barbaric, from “neo-colonialism” than it was to support equality and democracy. People on the left would defend brutal dictators (Mao, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Ruhollah Khomaini) simply because they opposed “Western imperialism.”
As a result, all politics derived from Marxism, no matter how loosely, lost credibility and finally died in 1989. This was, naturally, a disaster for communists and socialists – but also for social democrats, for they had lost an ideological basis for their idealism. And without idealism, politics becomes a form of accounting, a management of purely material interests.

Vibrant recent history

I can't believe it has been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell, that's probably because I was too young when it happened to understand the meaning of the moment and the fact that East Germany was hell as this sugary excerpt shows ... :

The brutal nature of the East German regime means that Monday's celebrations will be tinged with melancholy. Dozens died while trying to cross the barrier which divided Berlin and Germany in two while the Stasi squelched all protest in the German Democratic Republic, as communist East Germany was called. Ziehm says that, with attention focused on reunification, many from the former East are revisiting the past in a much more personal fashion. In the last year, tens of thousands of people have headed to the Birthler Authority to finally take a look at what their Stasi files contain. Interest has been so high, in fact, the waiting list is now two years long.
The files -- which occupy over 100 kilometers of shelf space (not including the 16,000 sacks of shredded documents the Birthler Authority is currently trying to reassemble with the aid of computers) -- are testament to a darker side of humanity. And Ziehm says that films like "The Lives of Others," which indicate that many were coerced into spying on friends and neighbors, don't come close to plumbing the depths that some ultimately fall to. Friends informed voluntarily on friends and spouses even tattled on each other.

Defining national identities

I would like to say amen to these words from Jim Wolfreys on the debate on the definition of Francité (Frenchness) that is occurring in France, but a part of me is resisting it:

At one extreme those who find themselves concentrated in the poorest areas of France do so not out of choice, but through ethnicity and income. Neither Islam nor "ethnic communitarianism" are responsible for such divisions: they are the product of social deprivation and racism. At the other extreme, however, is a section of society that wilfully separates itself from the rest of France. The top 10% of earners choose to live in the most segregated areas of the country, well-heeled districts like Neuilly and St-Cloud on the outskirts of Paris. It is they who have created what Maurin calls "the bourgeois ghetto".
If the present debate is to reassert the historic republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity then government priorities will need to be overturned. The targeting of "illegal" immigrants – Besson aims to deport 27,000 people this year, more than double 2002 levels – focuses attention on a tiny proportion of the population. Likewise, high-profile campaigns to impose a republican dress code on Muslims are a distraction from more fundamental divisions shaping French society, divisions determined less by religion than by poverty, racism and inequality. In France, as in Britain, if debates on citizenship are to involve denouncing the extreme right while pandering to its bugbears, they will only obscure the real issues – and in so doing become part of the problem.

I believe that the trap of any debate on national identity, whether it be French, British, Moroccan, or Nigerian, is to cast it in the terms  Wolfreys is choosing to frame by emphasizing the risks as if nationals of a country should be afraid to define/decide who they are or who they would to be.There is this morbid and unhealthy connection between patriotism, any attempt to show national price and fascism and there is one between any admission that national identity can grow, change or even be redefined drastically with self-hatred, deculturation, Arabization, de-europeanization, and dewesternization.

Ubuland

I found this video of Idi Amin Dada, the former dictator of Uganda talking his ability to dream the future not only funny, but enlightening. Not very much has changed for the perceptions remains and when one looks at things today in Uganda and elsewhere, it is difficult not to think of Alfred Jarry's famous play Ubu Roi  except that here it is not the French middle class, which is at the center of the theater of the absurd in this case. What is alarming is that there are some who believe that Dada was great partly because he was a thorn to the sides of the Brits and to the Israelis. In other words, the standard for political greatness in many African leaders is standing up to the former colonizers and to foreigners and being a menace to the world as leaders such as Dadis Camara and Omar Al Bachir show just to name two of them.

Moving past Blair

I agree with Agnès Poirier on her conclusion that Blair wouldn't make a good president for Europe:

There is a stronger argument still against Mr Blair’s candidature: he’s not the intellectual heavyweight and above-all-parties moral figurehead that we Europeans need to represent our old and proud continent. (...)What Europe needs is a figure that can incarnate the very idea of Europe, not a schemer who can pull his weight in the negotiations of banana exports. What Europe needs is a wise leader whose personal experience of the ordeals and triumphs of the 20th century makes for a commanding figure in the world, somebody who makes people stop and listen. Who would a busy Barack Obama take immediately on the phone? An Einstein or a Blair?(...) Tony Blair may be a talented and savvy political figure, but he shouldn’t be Europe’s first choice. Let’s aim higher. Europe deserves it.

I don't think that Blair is lightweight. I just thinks that he represents the past and that Europe needs somebody who doesn't have all of his political baggage to help it move forward and not to go back to some of the gray zones of Blairism. When I think of Blair, the first thing to my mind is the Yo blair incident in which he accepted to be treated with too much nonchalance by Bush (At least Angela Merkel was repulsed when Bush rubbed her shoulders in an inappropriate manner ). That episode and his actions in the later years of his time at Britain's prime minister force one to question his ability to question wrong actions motivated by good intentions and to not be religiously ideological.

Sarkozy and the expensive shower

This excerpt from the Guardian  on Sarkozy's expenses during his presidency of the EU is perplexing because it shows that he has lost touch with reality since it is a mistake that he wouldn't have made before becoming president when he was very much aware of how the French perceived their politicians :

French financial watchdogs slammed Nicolas Sarkozy for spending £160m during his country's six-month stint in charge of the EU – including £250,000 on a personal presidential shower that he never used.
The vast expense is set out in a report blaming poor management and a lack of transparency by the president's staff.
Costs soared because so many of the EU-related events were organised at the last minute, said the report.
On one occasion Sarkozy triggered the cancellation of an entire EU event he was due to host in Evian, because he wanted to sleep in his own bed at the Élysée palace. By then, hundreds of journalists, EU officials and national delegations had either already arrived in Evian or were on their way.

We knew that Sarkozy had expensive taste and that he liked bling, but having a shower build in times of crisis is outrageous, but I don't think any of this will affect greatly Sarkozy's political fortunes as long as he doesn't have a credible opposition. In other words, there is no audible alternative to Sarkozysm.

PS: The shower didn't cost 250, 000 euros to be fair since the price includes offices and other stuff which had to be build just for the occasion (is France a developing country to need to build infrastructure when it receives heads of state?). I'm wondering how it is possible to spend more over 5000 euros per person for a reception and almost a million euro a day just because France is presiding the EU.

Writers and political ideologies

I just finished reading Enrique Krauze's piece in the New Republic on Gabriel García Márquez in which he discusses Marquez 's politics and its effects on his writing by focusing on Gerald Martin's biography. Unfortunately, I think that Krauze's piece suffers from its lack of conciseness and cohesiveness and its author's inability/unwillingness to just say or rather just write what he means rather than beating around the bush to cover his biases and partiality. This lack of conciseness explains why the sugary excerpt of the article is found in its conclusion, which has to merit to try to make a point:

Gabriel García Márquez is not a hothouse writer. He claims to be proud of his work as a reporter. He promotes journalism at an academy in Colombia. He has asserted that the news story is a literary genre with the potential to be "not just true to life but better than life. It’s as good as a story or a novel, but with one sacred and inviolable difference: novels and stories permit unlimited fabrication but news stories have to be true down to the last comma." How, then, to reconcile this declaration of journalistic ethics with his own concealment of the truth in Cuba, despite his possession of privileged inside information?
Eventually history makes both aesthetic and moral judgments. Aesthetically speaking, it is a little premature to say that García Márquez is the "new Cervantes." But in moral terms, certainly, there is no comparison. A hero in the war against the Turks, wounded and maimed in battle, castaway and prisoner in Algeria for five years, Cervantes lived his ideals, his tribulations, and his poverty with Quixote-like integrity, and enjoyed the supreme freedom of accepting his defeats with humor. There is not a trace of such greatness of spirit in García Márquez, who has avidly collaborated with oppression and dictatorship. Cervantes? Not by a long shot.
The beauties of the fiction of Gabriel García Márquez will survive the twisted loyalties of the man who created it, just as the work of Céline survives his passion for the Nazis and the work of Pound survives his admiration for Mussolini. But it would be an act of poetic justice if, in the autumn of his life and at the zenith of his glory, he disassociated himself from Fidel Castro and put his influence at the service of the Cuban boat people. There is no point in hoping for such a transformation, of course. It is the kind of thing that happens only in García Márquez novel.

Something bothers me about Krauze's argument and his indictment of  Gabriel García Márquez, it is the fact that the context is blurred or rather tainted by an unwillingness to consider the fact that politcs aren't science and that writers's ideologies cannot be examined without considered the totality of the circumstances of the times within which they live. It is misleadingly shameful to compare Márquez to Céline without explanations or even an argumentation and without at least trying to be logical to the end. What I mean to say is that if Márquez is Céline, and thus Castro is Mussolini or Hitler what does that make Nations and their leaders that have good relations with Cuba and with the Castro ? Is Sarkozy, Neville Chamberlain because he sends envoys to Cuba? What should we say of Lula ? The goal isn't here to clear Márquez of any responsibility for his political ideology, but to point out that a writer's political ideologies cannot be judged without a deep and complete analysis of the context within which he writes. Louis Ferdinand Céline was a vile anti-semite, but he was living in  time where being antisemitic was tolerated in French society to say the least; that doesn't excuse him  but it matters. Context here is key to have make an informed judgment, but I wonder if that what was Krauze wants more than to beat on Gabriel García Márquez like a drum for associating himself with Castro.

Speechless

I don't know what to say/feel or even how to react when I read this although I know that something isn't quite right, however I'm still thinking about Mary-Kay Wilmers's words and I have to find more about her (hat tip: Norm Geras) :

I just think we get worked up about the wrong things, and there is more wrong on one side. What Cherie Blair said about being a suicide bomber if she’d been brought up in Gaza, I can absolutely see that point.

Guinea and its dangerous manly man

I would find this video outrageously funny if it wasn't about the fate of a poor, small, and martyred African nation, Guinea, in desperate need of leadership taken hostage by a dangerous and manly idiot who believes that God made him king. Even by the worst or the most generous of standards, Captain Dadis Camara is a clown who should have never been allowed to rule Guinea. He is convinced that to be Guinean, African, and finally a statesman means to be just as Harvey Mansfield would say manly that is to scream when he can neither reason nor convince and to crush the people who contest his authority. It's heartbreaking to say, but the fact that an African country can have such an idiot as its head of state shows that its future generations, because they were lied to by a previous group of political leaders, which was more or less polished and "western," will in the hope for change (here those two hypnotizing words again) be tempted to follow manly fools who will try to convince them that to be authentically African (whatever that means) is to defy reason and civilization.

Cultural cloning

Hum, I'm tempted to agree with Samir Shah on this ( I think his main point can be made about the US, France or any other country dealing with a population, which is diverse and mixed), but it would be too easy and moreover, I have the feeling that he is only offering part of the picture even though it is one, which I find both uplifting and depressing because it leaves open the possibility that race doesn't have to doom the future of a country and to pollute its politics:

The plain truth is that Britain is developing an underclass who share more in common with each other than they do with other members of their own ethnic group. What are these traits? Everyone will have their own theories. But here are mine.
The first impediment to progress is a community’s determination to cling on to elements of their own cultural traditions and ways of life. Parents from certain Muslim groups, for example, have a tendency to bring up their children in such a way that they never interact with members of other cultures — restricting the ability of their children to get ahead. Then take the ‘babyfather’ phenomenon. David Cameron has urged Afro-Caribbean fathers to attend to their parental duties — an issue because half of black children live in lone-parent households, double the ratio of whites. Jack Straw made this point rather well with the surprisingly pithy ‘Lads need Dads’. The need for a father is not specific to children of any race.
If we are to hunt for discrimination in 21st-century Britain, then we should look at other factors that make us different. Each distinguishing feature — class, culture, accent, being Northern — plays a part. For example, in some liberal industries such as the media, being right-wing doesn’t help. But why should this surprise us? The kind of people who make decisions — white, middle-class, metropolitan, liberal, male — all think that the best people for the job are, er, white, liberal, metropolitan, middle-class and male. To describe this phenomenon as ‘institutional racism’ (as many are inclined to do) misses the problem by a country mile.
The real problem is what I call ‘cultural cloning’ — the human tendency to recruit in one’s own image. Recruitment, instead of being about picking the best people, becomes a process of finding people like the ones already there. The overwhelming need for a kind of cultural comfort blanket takes precedence over every other consideration — and rules out those whose backgrounds don’t quite fit. This is what a 21st-century Equalities Commission should have in its sights. Cultural cloning is, in my opinion, the main source of discrimination in Britain today.

War, Afghanistan, and politics

Reluctantly and thus sadly, I agree with this:

Why then is U.S. President Barack Obama hesitating about committing new troops to Afghanistan? Why has Canada apparently decided to leave the struggle while it is still in the balance? Why has Australia not agreed to replace the Dutch in Uruzgan province? The answer is simple: Everyone is playing politics with the war in Afghanistan.
Playing politics with wars is supposed to be a “bad” thing. We expect our political leaders to play politics with employment insurance, or tax concessions for donations to political parties, or how slowly or how quickly infrastructure money is flowing. We expect political parties to use public issues to gain a march over their opponents, as they have since parties first began to appear about 500 years ago.
But we are repelled by the very idea that political parties play politics with war, which, after all, involves killing lots of people and laying waste to vast areas. Surely war is far too serious – and its results far too solemn – to be played for political advantage.
No, it isn't.

It has become painfully clear that it is easier to start a war than to end in great part, alas, because losing a war costs political points because it gives the enduring illusion that seen and unseen enemies will take advantage of the loser's exposed weaknesses. To be clear, I don't think that America, Canada, and all the other nations can impose their seal on Afghanistan no matter how noble and attractively or shadily naïve their motives are.

Patriotism and politics

Ah, what can one say after reading this except that something stinks within American politics since everything political in America is essential about the culture wars and identity politics:

(...) we are told that there were "a lot of very positive responses" in Europe from leaders like Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and "former Nobel winners." But, he says, "It hasn't been universally positive; the Taliban, as you might expect issued a statement, saying that President Obama has done nothing for peace." Whose side are you on, fascist? France and Germany's, or the Taliban's? (When Gifford mentions that 1983 Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa criticized the decision as premature, Montagne chuckles and says that this gentle criticism seemed "a little churlish.")
Remember, during the Bush years, when our friends on the left (rightfully) bemoaned those who "questioned the patriotism" of opponents of the war in Iraq? Those who harrumphed that to not support the president was to support the terrorists? Well, that was then. Here is the DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse, speaking to Politico's Ben Smith: "The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize."

It doesn't have to make sense

The conclusion that I have to come to about the big news of this morning is that it doesn't have to make sense since the right people feel great about it. Symbols are about us and the way they make us feel not about actions and reality.

Moronic

Harshest reactions (I will stop after this one I promise) from the big new from Daniel Drezner:

If you're wondering why it took me a few hours before choosing to blog about Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Price award.... well, it took me that long to stop laughing. 
Honestly, I'm not laughing at Obama.  I'm laughing at the morons on the Norwegian Nobel Committee who made this decision to cheapen an already devalued prize. (...) Giving the award to Obama is kind of like giving that junior professor the Teacher of the Year award -- it dooms their chances for tenure.

Obama as global prozac

The funniest reaction from Obama's big prize via Maria Farrell on Crooked Timber:

But this isn’t about domestic politics, or about what he’s done yet. President Obama has changed how the world feels about America. He’s lifted the planet’s mood. This guy is global Prozac.
There’s more to it than just the Bush presidency being a total downer for everyone in the world who cares about multi-lateralism or just wants to do business with the US. The tidal wave of bad faith Bush’s presidency created washed away any chance of progress in so many international initiatives.
Obama’s not a game changer per se, but he’s changed how people feel about playing the game, or whether they even want to.

Peace, Afghanistan, and a wartime president

Great point from Gideon Rachman:

In the next couple of weeks, Obama is likely to yield to the wishes of his generals and to send many thousands more troops to Afghanistan. That will mean he is a wartime president, just as much as Bush or Lyndon Johnson. If Afghanistan ends up being Obama’s Vietnam, giving him the Nobel Peace Prize will look even sillier in a few years time.

An hooray for internationalism

More theories on why Obama got the Nobel from Roger Alford :

Obama’s approach—particularly when juxtaposed with the Bush Administration—reflects a return to a spirit of internationalism that has been a hallmark of the United States for much of its history and that has always featured prominently in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. Again, on this theory it’s not about Obama, but what he represents as one who is committed to internationalism.

What an idean ! So it is acceptable now to argue that what people symbolize is more important than what they do ! That kind of thinking scares the hell out of me because it can only lead to disaster for symbolism only works in poetry.

An A for effort

Jonathan Adler makes the following point about the fact that Obama does deserve the Nobel peace prize, which in my view is a legitimate one:

The idea is that the prize will enhance the profile and prestige of the recipient, thereby boosting their efforts.  So it only makes sense that the Committee would award the prize to a President who has adopted a more conciliatory foreign policy, is seeking to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, is pursuing more aggressive action on climate change, etc. 

I'm just wondering if boosting efforts for peace is what the Nobel peace prize is all about. It is a little bit like giving a promising student an A for effort before s/he fulfills her/his promises and because the students that you had before were ignorant and warmongering bully. I don't feel good about what this prize says about the views of the Nobel committee of America for they believe to protect Obama from the stupidity, ignorance, anti-intellectualism, and foolishness America. I guess Obama's mission in their view is to change America, it is a noble cause, but I'm not sure that this is going to help him.

Nobel

I have to say that I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with me for not being an Obamabot and for not succumbing to Obamania. This morning I woke up to NPR talking about Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize and I thought that I was still dreaming. I had to go to Le Monde website just to make sure that I had heard right. Wow, Obama wins the Nobel Peace Price 10 months after entering the White House? Is it too impertinent of me to wonder where are at the results and why does he deserve it so so? I don't have answers let just hope that the Nobel gives him the guts to stand up for the Liberals that made him president. Here is an interesting take on the issue:

Indeed, the reasoning behind the awarding of the prize to previous American presidents has been easier to discern. Teddy Roosevelt opened the court of arbitration in the Hague and helped mediate a peace treaty between Russia and Japan; Woodrow Wilson was the founder of the League of Nations. Jimmy Carter won his prize for his "untiring efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts".
Which is what makes the awarding of this year's prize to a president who has been in office for a mere nine months an odd departure. It is as if the prize committee had been persuaded to give the award on the future delivery of promises.
(...) The reality is that the prize appears to have been awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not. For not being George W Bush. Or rather being less like the last president. The question now is whether having being anointed perhaps too early by the committee, a Nobel prize earned so cheaply and at so little cost will help him in his efforts on the international stage or rather be an albatross around his neck. Something against which all his future efforts will be judged – and perhaps found wanting.

Man, George Bush really messed up American and world politics! I wonder whether he realizes it and moreover I wonder how long the fact that Obama isn't Bush is going to be enough.

Obama and the Europeans

This sugary excerpt form Timothy Garton Ash on Obama and Europe because I have no idea what Ash's point is since he is trying to have it both ways by asserting one thing and its opposite:

Barack Obama is the most European president of the United States that there has ever been. Barack Obama is the least European president of the United States that there has ever been.
(...) the approach of the Obama administration to "the Europeans" is quite pragmatic, unsentimental and realistic. It might be summarised as: what can you do for us today? On Afghanistan. On Pakistan. On Iran.
(...)Pragmatically, they take Europe as they find it. Where it acts as a single unit – on trade and competition policy – they deal with it as a single unit. Where it doesn't – on the deployment of soldiers to Afghanistan, for example, or even on tighter sanctions against Iran – they deal with 27 individual governments. That's tiresome, but it's just the way it is.
This attitude to Europe combines, in equal parts, respect and contempt. Respect inasmuch as they treat Europe as a bunch of grown-up, sovereign countries, no longer needing or wanting American tutelage. Contempt insofar as they recognise how far reality lags behind the rhetoric of European unity.
Officials in Washington know better than anyone how European leaders compete for an audience with the president or secretary of state; how they go behind each other's backs to win that contract, offer this special service, and generally preen themselves to be favourite poodle. Whether it's Nicolas Sarkozy insisting on being on stage with Obama to make his own agitated remarks about the discovery of Iran's hidden nuclear facility; or an importunate David Cameron, desperate to get his photo-op with Obama before the British election; or the Moldovan foreign minister needing his five minutes with Hillary – the silly game is the same. As for these promises of Europe finally getting its act together in foreign policy, if the Polish and Czech presidents now sign the Lisbon treaty, even the oldest friends of Europe in Washington sigh: we'll believe it when we see it.

First, Ash needs to explain  what it means for an American to be European? Does it mean to be well-read, cultured, refined, and aware that America isn't the center of the world? Second, I think that Barack Obama has no sentimental ties to Europe at the moment simply because Europe doesn't matter to his political future. This will undoubtedly change, but right now, he is more preoccupied with South America and Asia. This is about real politik. To make an  approximative comparison, I would say that Europe is to Obama what Africa is to Sarkozy, a foreign continent that he would love not to have to deal with, but that he cannot ignore  mostly because of history and because an American vacuum might led to gigantic catastrophes

A slow and painful decline !?

I love reading Kenneth Anderson especially when he compares both France and America and makes some thought-provoking points about Obama and the views of his administration on American and and American power. Sugary excerpt :

The question is whether President Obama is genuinely signaling a new paradigm.  Multilateralism as a signal of the Tired Superpower that wants to refocus inwards and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems?  Or what every first term American president always does – try to focus on the domestic issues that got him elected?  One can’t say with certainty at this point – what the President would like to do is clear; not clear whether political events will let him.
Nuclear weapon in Iran?  We’ll sing kumbayah at the Security Council and be presented with the remarkable spectacle of an openly incredulous French president reminding an American president that, tacitly, that as he speaks the Iranians knit together the pieces of their nuclear weapons.  It’s quite an exchange, and not one that initially even penetrated the warm syrup of the NYT or other American mainstream media, presumably because it didn’t fit many existing narratives, about the United States, about France, about many things.
But at the same time, American conservatives wonder why on earth, if there were no Israel to worry about, they should worry overmuch about a nuclear Iran aimed at Europe, when the Europeans have themselves been so relaxed about it.  If, in an alternate universe, the Middle East contained no Israel and never had, would America have much reason to care about nukes pointed at Europe?  When the Europeans have themselves been so unconcerned about it?  Not our world, of course, and we do worry correctly about both Tel Aviv and Paris, but that’s because – let’s be clear – we’re not multilateralists in things that truly count.  But then, what I have always admired about every senior intellectual I’ve known in France is that they are not multilateralists, either, not truly, and whether of left or right, whether they want to be or not, they are pour la France, Gaullists down to their toenails.
If you doubt it for a moment, watch closely the two YouTube videos of Sarkozy and Royal singing La Marsillease [Marseillaise]  the night Sarkozy won.  They both mean it, more so, I’m afraid, than Obama, husband or wife, or any of my academic friends in the administration, for whom something as embarrassing as the national anthem is to be strictly limited to ball games, and God forbid anyone be preserved on a FB photo putting a hand over one’s heart.  It’s Gaullist because it is finally not about justice or morality or any of the stuff that tends to move Americans and which, to be sure, moves me – it’s about honor. They’re not finally multilateralists, either, not when it comes to “France-of-Caverns,” to cite Rene Char: and therefore let us be more French.
The United States has done the inward-turning before, and notably following military defeat, in the post-Vietnam 1970s.  It appears, at this juncture, that the United States is moving to accept “soft” defeat – finally do what James Fallows, for example, has always wanted to do, simply declare victory and come home – both in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Enable the Obama administration to focus on achieving two fond dreams at once – domestic social democracy and, by reason of the domestic cost of that burden, ensure that the United States cannot play the role of ultimate security guarantor in the world over the longer term.

I don't think that Professor Anderson is right, but I think that he is on to something. I think that most Americans have no idea that they are hated also because they are number one and too often refuse to apologize for it.  It is like being the Yankees in Baseball or being Brazil in soccer if Brazil where the dominant superpower. I'm wondering whether Obama is willing to the right for America if it  means losing his popularity not only abroad, but also in America and within the press corp. Unlike conservatism, I have no doubt that Obama is American and loves his country,  I'm just wondering whether he understands the rest of the world and that being loved may be impossible for America and its leaders as long as it is a superpower. What worries is what will happen if Obama finds out that he has to be Bush -like in order to protect American interests.

Bling bling and humanitarianism

Outrageously funny ! (hat tip: Alice Fishburn)

Choosing the right representative

Through quite innovative means, I'm able to watch Gadhafi (Gaddafi)'s performance at the United Nations. I'm using the word performance because that's what it is. His goal isn't to convince people that he is right, but to put himself in the spotlight. He is talking about an important issue, the need for the African Union to have a seat on the Security council but nobody is taking him seriously because he is an actor who, just as Joe Pesci in Casino or in Goodfellas, captivates/scares people, but doesn't inspire them or make them believe in what he says. Africa needs better spokespersons,  someone who can at least appear to be credible and not just what Africans want to hear about Western hypocrisy and double standards, colonization, and reparations.

C’est la même chose

At the eve of every international summit, it's always the same story about a French president and the Anglo-Saxons especially when the former is thinking about reelection and is unpopular at home:

In time-honoured French fashion, Mr Sarkozy is happy to make himself a nuisance to les Anglo-Saxons as he preaches his doctrine of “remoralising capitalism”. He calculates that with elections facing Mr Brown and Ms Merkel, he is the pre-eminent European, at least for the moment. He is busy cultivating Latin America and the East. He may have rejoined Nato but France is back to playing its old Gaullist game of middleman between Russia and the US. On Iran and its nuclear programme he is talking tougher than anyone outside Israel.
The French President is attempting a little one-upmanship over Mr Obama. He has made no secret of his frustration over the US leader’s failure to respond to his overtures. Privately, he sees Mr Obama as overrated and now politically weakened. He is said to have given him “9 out of 20” for his speech on the economy and healthcare this month.

What is funny about this new and phony gimmick is that nobody seems to remember how much Sarkozy loves America (he spent his first summer vacation as president in New Hamsphire  and  how much America, at least some its too eager journalists (Roger Cohen) and its fashion victim politicians (New Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani) used to love him. What happened? Sarkozy realized that in France it never pays to be an Atlantist and that it wasn't in his interest to be as close to Obama as he was to Bush given that closeness in this case since Obama has been sanctified as the new Messiah even though he is losing his mojo, looks like weakness and subservience while in the case of Bush, it looked like an act of political courage given the fact that he was a president in a friend on the international scene .

Guilt and Aid

Ian Birrell on Paul Kagame, Rwanda, Britain, and Aid:

Britain is Rwanda's biggest donor, pumping in £52m this year in direct contributions, a form of aid-giving reserved for those that have proved good governance. But human rights groups are increasingly concerned by restrictions on freedom of speech in Rwanda; even the BBC has not escaped a ban on its local language service. And other major donors, including the Netherlands and Sweden, suspended direct aid after a UN report highlighted Rwanda's role in eastern Congo, where war has claimed the lives of six times as many people as the Rwandan genocide.
Paul Kagame, Rwanda's charismatic president, plays the guilt card with such skill that his regime has, literally, got away with murder. His defenders point to impressive economic growth rates, improved health and education, and the healing of some of the genocide scars. But the case of Rwanda illustrates a glaring problem with British foreign policy, most notably in Africa. And it is a problem that raises uncomfortable questions at a time of looming spending cutbacks.

After reading Birrell, one has to wonder whether there can be such a thing as a good or rather non creepy African president for after all, what is the standard, what are the criterion not to be belittled or to be considered just as acceptable because one isn't Mugabe or Libya (Yes, Libya is an African country)?
In other words, I'm wondering is history, biases, guilt, resentment, egocentrism always has to color political analyzes especially of complex places such as African countries.

Short-sightedness

Easy and worthless commentary, but not totally untrue:

Vanity, thy name is Sarko … Le président de la république Française made un peu d'un idiot of himself in front of the press by trying yet again – and failing yet again – to hide how short he is. He has previously been discovered standing on a box to give a speech, wearing shoes with heels notably higher than those of his supermodel wife (apparently confined to ballet flats since she married) and standing on tippy-toes during photos with the Obamas.

Redefining assimilation

I don't fully agree with this, but it just shows that too many feel that integration isn't working, I'm wondering if that perception isn't just based on the sense that there isn't enough pie left to share:

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the "agony and splendour" of assimilation has come to an end in Europe, both for Jews and other groups. The life and death pressures to homogenise are no longer there. The means of reshaping our identities – through cosmetic surgery, dress, internet personas, photoshop – are accessible to millions. At the same time, as Gabriel Sheffer's work shows, such processes can also be used to maintain the distinctiveness of Diaspora groups, which are not disappearing as many have predicted, again reducing the need to fear cultural oblivion.
We would all be far better off if we took a more relaxed attitude to assimilation. A strong society can accommodate fundamentalist religious groups that want to keep themselves apart from society, as long as they accept the fundamental principle that "the law of the land is the law". And if, for example, Muslim or Jewish groups wish to mitigate the effect of assimilation on the identities of their youth in non-coercive, voluntary ways which are compatible with common values, this too poses no danger to society and can be of mutual positive benefit.

The Outsider

It's always interesting and alas too predictable to see Tariq Ramadan skillfully portray as a victim:

The rector places me outside the Western world. But I was born in Switzerland. I grew up and I was educated in Europe. I am a part of this continent. And I would not understand the West? It is ironic that the way I am being treated in the West is a lot like people are treated in Eastern, non-democratic countries. What has happened here is not Western. It is only by casting me as an outsider who just doesn't get it that the rector can justify his decision.

Defining explosive terms

I almost agree totally with this:

I guess what it all comes down to is that when we say we are multicultural, we exaggerate. What does a multicultural country look like? It looks like India -- there are many different languages there spoken by millions and millions of people generation after generation. Different religions practice their creeds without restraint. It doesn't mean they all get along peacefully all the time -- on the contrary, Pakistan exists because they don't. But here's an example of real multiculturalism -- an old man stark naked walking down a sidewalk thronged with people not taking the slightest notice of him. It turns out he was a monk in a small religious sect that does not allow its monks to wear any clothes at all. What would happen if he were walking down a busy street in Toronto? He would be arrested. And he might say to the policeman: "But my culture requires this and Canada is multicultural." The policeman would answer: "Yes we are multicultural and isn't it wonderful. And you're still under arrest."

It's so easy to divide that it's scary

Well, I just got to go one thing to say after reading this article from Leon Wieseltier, boom boom; no I will say more, is it just me but don't culturalism and ethnicization bring the worst in people?:

Jewish self-hatred is another term for Jewish anti-Semitism, for the internalization of the standpoint of the enemy; and this is a genuinely grave charge. Jews who fling it about for political ends are desperate and disgraceful. And they are some of the same people who are outraged when right-wing African Americans are smeared as Uncle Toms.So I wish to attest--I have placed my hand on my copy of The Zionist Idea--that Rahm Emanuel is not a self-hating Jew. I know this. I have never met David Axelrod, but I am aware of no grounds for the suspicion that he has committed "race treason." (I take that charming phrase, which sounds like it was translated from Treitschke, from David Mamet's thuggish book The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews. Mamet is another one of the Most Jewish Jews of All.) Differing with Benjamin Netanyahu does not yet make you a bad Jew. If Emanuel is a self-hating Jew because he believes that Israeli settlement in the West Bank should finally cease, then I, too, am a self-hating Jew. Perhaps you will agree, friends, that this is not very plausible.

Culture of fear or fear of culture and humanity

Pankaj Mishra on what he considers to be a culture of fear that is created in too many countries by the increasing popular sentiment that foreigners are assailing their land, their culture, and their national identity as seen in Christopher Caldwell's latest book on the threat of Islam and of Muslims to Europe, Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West :

The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai claims in Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger that "minorities are the major site for displacing the anxieties of many states about their own minority or marginality (real or imagined) in a world of a few megastates, of unruly economic flows and compromised sovereignties".
This at least partly explains why a few hundred women in headscarves incited such fierce passions in a nation-state whose geopolitical and cultural insignificance in recent years has only been partly obscured by its hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy. In The Politics of the Veil, the distinguished scholar of gender studies Joan Wallach Scott explains how the banning of a small piece of cloth that covers the head and neck affirmed an "imagined France", one that was "secular, individualist and culturally homogenous" and "whose reality was secured by excluding dangerous others from the nation". Scott demonstrates that French Muslim girls, who were directly affected by the law on the foulard, were "strikingly absent from the debates" in France, which were dominated by intellectuals and politicians frantically defining the dangerous "other" (typically by describing the veil as, in Jacques Attali's words, a "successor to the Berlin wall").
The veil has now been turned into, Scott writes, a highly charged "sign of the irreducible difference between Islam and France". Elsewhere, too, politicians and journalists - self-proclaimed "liberals" as well as unabashed rightwingers - rhetorically ask whether "Islam", which allegedly enforces a harsh divine law on all Muslims, is compatible with "European" values of reason and tolerance, which are supposedly derived from the Enlightenment (or Christianity, as Sarkozy blurted out in 2007, in a revealing breach of republican protocol).

I have always thought that the debate about culture, assimilation, and identity masks what I believed to be the essential debate of our time, which is how free are we allowed to be when choosing who we are as people, citizens or whatever else? Because if one really thinks about the subject, one has to come to the realization that only people who believed in the totalitarianism of the Good./traditions/God are really obsessed with culture and with the idea that civilized people/nations can become barbarians or barbaric. The idea that if there is no God, no moralistic state or culture then everything is permissible is laughable and obscurantist because it dooms humanity since it asserts that people are incapable of making good decisions and that there is nothing that they won't forbid themselves to do if something or someone doesn't forbid them to do bad things or rather things that are for them. I may be stupidly or charmingly naïve but I don't think that banning the veil in France solves any problem with Islamism and I don't even think that it is the goal because otherwise, Sarkozy would have had the wildly imaginative idea to just ban Islamism and to therefore put the State at the center of deciding what kind of Islams are compatible with French Society.

Separate, but equal?

I agree with this:

The only thing to be said against Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, coming top in the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women in the world is the nature of the list itself. Just think about it. Power isn’t like tennis: why should women be hived off into a separate little power category all of their own?
In any list of the most powerful people on earth, Merkel would be right up there with the men: her fellow German the Pope, and not far behind Barack Obama in terms of the list’s criteria of career accomplishments, economic clout and public profile. She can hack it with the men, so why put her in the women’s section? It’s like posthumously awarding Virginia Woolf the Orange prize for women’s fiction.

International justice, politics, and money

Rob Lyons on the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the sole convicted culprit of the Lockerbie bombing, international justice, and politics :

(...) from a political point of view, the release of al-Megrahi in this way seems the best option. The US and UK governments avoid any awkward revelations at an appeal hearing. The Scottish government gets to assert itself as an independent force in world politics, even though it has no foreign policy authority as such, while appearing to be principled and humane. The Libyan government is presenting the release of al-Megrahi as a diplomatic triumph, as yesterday’s welcome party for him shows.
The driving force behind every episode in this case has been the interests of governments, particularly the major Western powers, not the lives of the people unfortunate enough to get caught up in their machinations. Sadly, justice has got nothing to do with it.

I'm only wondering whether al-Megrahi would have been released if Libya was still viewed as a sponsor of international terrorism and if it wasn't an oil-rich nation. I don't think he would have no matter how sick he was.Unfortunately, the lesson of this case is that la raison d'état always prevails over much everything else especially when economical interests are at stake. It is hard not to be impressed over the way Qadaffi has been able to buy himself a new image.What does it say about our world if it is possible to buy respectability without ever fulling atoning or even acknowledging the mistakes of the past?

Neo-cons and France

Well this is odd, but unfortunately, odd doesn't mean untrue even though the analysis here is too simplistic and too cute to clarify Poulos's point.

Easy and sterile arguments

Glenn Hubbard on Africa and its difficulties to develop economically:

A whole contingent of aid advocates admit the faults of African governments, but trace them back to colonialism. Under colonial rule, they say, foreign governments and businesses exploited Africa and left it poor. Pro-business policies, they worry, would lead to a new colonialism, with foreign companies exploiting Africa anew.
This argument flies in the race of reality. First, Africa was poor before colonialism, and for many countries, colonialism may well have made Africa richer. There were some exceptions, such as the Belgian Congo in the early 20th century, where forced labor for rubber extraction made the people poorer. But overall, Africans in 1960 were healthier, lived longer, and had higher incomes than Africans in 1900. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey calls the colonial era the "golden age of peasant prosperity" in Africa, when the vast mass of rural Africans joined the world economy for the first time. By 1960, this was even true in the Belgian Congo. The hospitals, ports, schools, railways, and roads of Africa date from the colonial era. Certainly Europeans benefited unfairly from colonialism, but for Africans the result was still an improvement over their former poverty.
What has not made Africans richer, however, are their countries' own governments, which have cut off that prosperity in favor of government and NGO assistance and foreign investment that benefits only the elite. Enabling the majority of Africa's population to access and participate in strong local businesses, through a Marshall Plan, would be a welcome breath of fresh air -- not to mention a good revenue stream for the common man and woman.

This is an easy and I have to say tiresome argument, which people make usually to ignore real issues and to avoid acting in order to either deify Africa or to marginalize it by choosing to see it as a place where change isn't possible or where poverty is a choice. It reminds of  both Obama's and for that matter of Sarkozy's speeches in Africa in which leaders who have visited the continent a few times pretend arrogantly to know it full well and offer empty moralizing words about what has to be done for Africans to get with the program. It's sickening and depressing because what is needed at the moment aren't grandiose speeches, arguments or charitable actions, but rather the acknowledgment that, at some point, in spite of history, of traditions, of whatever else, Africans and the people who want to help them help themselves are just going to have to do what works instead of choosing deification, victimization, misplaced pity or patronizing scoldings.

Nation-building and democracy

Interesting assertion from former German Defense Minister Volker Rühe, but is it true that democracy is essentially about culture and that therefore it is a waste of time to facilitate/enable its establishment in some parts of the world?

In the Balkans, the real issue is democracy in Europe. But that kind of nation-building is not going to work in Afghanistan. If you walk up to someone in the Hindu Kush and explain to them that you are trying to introduce democracy in Afghanistan, they will laugh themselves silly.

C'est compliqué

Haideh Daragahi on Iran, its uprisings, Shadi Sadr and women's rights:

In the Western media's interpretation of the presidential election and its aftermath, Iran is caught up in the rivalry between political factions within the religious power elite. But irrespective of differences of interest and opinion, none of the factions have openly questioned the Islamic dictatorship as a system. Two weeks ago, when Rafsanjani, the heavyweight political figure and super capitalist, chose to take an openly oppositional stance towards the supreme leader Khamenei in his Friday sermon in Tehran, the gist of his message was that the religious social structure was in crisis and should be saved.
Shadi Sadr articulates a third voice which, despite the barbarism of the security forces, was heard loud and clear in the demonstrations and discussions throughout the country in the weeks following the elections. Her horizon lies far above the bickering about the number of votes cast in favour of this or that candidate of this or that faction of the power elite. In her article she outlines a direction - for the opposition struggle in general and the women's movement in particular - that corresponds to the new political reality.
One of her arguments addresses the very real threat that the women's struggle will be bypassed if the new social movement succeeds. Here she is bearing in mind the bitter lessons of the history of women's struggle as well as the fate of Iranian women's rights after the 1979 revolution. In the current protests two factors have been conspicuous: the age and the sex of the participants. Women and the youth have been at the forefront of the protests on the streets. Shadi Sadr regards these two social groups as the forces of the future.