On Nov 30, 2007 I think it might be worthwhile to take just a switch of time and make some note of the fact that this is the 100th birthday of Jacques Barzun. There are few historians and cultural critics who can publish a (massive "Summa") work in 2000 that included memories and recollections of the German bombardment of Paris in WWI - who can make piquant and erudite proclamations on the decline of culture from his sitting room while under the watchful gaze of a cubist portrait of his mother done by Albert Gleizes (only the third cubist portrait, not the third cubist picture, but the third cubist portrait he is determined to make clear); a man who can do so after having played about in Duchamp's studio as a child and attending an orchestral performance of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre duPrintemps." Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage remains the only work of his 37 published books (he is currently at work on his 38th apparently) that I have read in its entirety and I am forced to admit that I did that so long ago I can barely recall its contours to say anything more than that the tone of polemic that runs through the bio-synopsis of all three men in the title have informed the way(s) in which I have formed my own opinions. It is a work that long ago took a hazy place in the upper-bookshelf of my mind as the small and scattered handful that pushed me down the path that I ultimately took. That noted, like the near ubiquitous line in almost every preface to every academic book published wherein the author thanks friends and colleagues for their support and influence while making mention of any errors being their's alone, let me add that neither I, nor those around me, nor any of my students, should hold Monsieur Barzun responsible for my track.
On an aligned, if not parallel, note, I am moved to think that those many (and increasing and too many legislators thank you very much) folks who insist that the teachers of history -- those first-line historians among whom I am (occasionally) proud to admit my place -- teach just the "facts" should be made to read almost anything byBarzun. For those interested, here is a nice piece from last month's New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_krystal
Somehow it also seems appropriate that Evel Knievel died today.
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Friday, November 30, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
And now for something not entirely different
I am sure we are all by now well aware that as the transit strike drew to a close - and leaving the university students who took to the streets just as that was happening without an interested audience (though I am sure there remain a few knots of Sorbonne-ers out and about) - the north-of-Paris banilieue, Villiers-le-Bel has been gripped by riots for the last couple of days/nights since the death on Sunday of two teenagers - deaths caused by an accident between the youths' motorbike and (of all things) a police cruiser. Thus far, the worst of it occurred on Monday night when clashes between young rioters and a platoon of riot officers reached a near unprecedented level of violence that saw more than a hundred officers wounded - some quite severely. In its most in-depth piece on the situation thus far, the New York Times on Wednesday insisted that while reference to the riots of late 2005 were common, two things set the latest skirmish apart: the riots have been localized largely to Villiers-le-Bel (though there were apparently some dust-ups outside of Toulouse on Tuesday night) and the "new tactics" being used by the rioters. Unfortunately, while the NYTs piece was nicely well-rounded with a scope that reached towards "the underlying causes of frustration and anger — particularly among unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants — remain[ing] the same" as those that motivated the 2005 riots, the catch of the work - and the new tactics they seemed focused on - was the use of firearms on the part of the rioters Monday night.
Indeed, that is a troubling development - more than 30 officers were wounded by shotgun pellets, with at least one losing an eye, while another had his body armor pierced and his shoulder nearly destroyed by a high-powered hunting rifle. Nonetheless, the concentration on weaponry beyond paving stones and brick bats is actually unfortunate and I suspect it was not (entirely at least) the reason for police spokesman, Patrice Ribeiro, insisting that “This is a real guerrilla war,” - though he did caution that the police (who have shown a fair measure of restraint thus far) will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding. Rather the real point of interest and concern should instead be the level of coordination that the rioters apparently exhibited through the night. According to eyewitness reports, kids as young as 10 or so acted as scouts and lookouts for the main "force" which was made up of youths from (roughly) 15 to early/mid-twenties who were, in turn, coordinated and directed by older men (apparently with some training) who focused efforts in specific places and towards specific actions with Le Monde reporting on the sighting of at least one "strapping man in a black track suit" wearing a walkie-talkie tuned to the police frequency and guiding teams of rioters. As opposed to the riots of 2005, headless hydra that they were with both random violence and lootings, those involved this past Monday were focused - rioters were stopped from burning the cars or looting the stores of "family" though a symbol of the state, the library, was gutted by molotov cocktails - and the brunt of their actions were directed specifically at the police with the "event" nearly culminating in riot forces being hemmed into an open intersection by coordinated "pincer" movements of the rioters where the bulk of the police injuries were suffered.
From the reports I have read, the level of organization was indeed quite high, waves and rough formations of the young rioters moved in concert, dodging and parrying the efforts of the police as they funneled them into the area they wished to truly engage them. The rioters wore scarves around their mouths and noses to not only obscure their identities but lessen the effects of the tear-gas that was fired to disperse them - and in what was likely an act of spontaneous support, from the surrounding apartment towers women screamed warnings down to their "sons" as they threw pails of water to wash the tear-gas from them and dampen the noxious clouds. To put it mildly, if this is to be the face of riots to come, Paris, if not all of France, is in for quite a time. I suspect things will get worse before they get better.
All of that noted, I actually see something of a Les Miserables silver lining in all of this. After the 2005 riots much was made of the occasional (if loud) shriek of "Allahu Akbar" that was to be heard among the rioters; but during this (more) violent skirmish, calls to the greatness of God were missing. Instead, it was, as was reported in Le Monde, invective hurled at the police as "pigs" and commands to stay grouped. In other words this was a call to arms, a manning of the barricades. Frankly, it was notice that for all else that has occurred, be it institutional neglect on the part of the state or "square-peg in a round hole" on the part banlieusards, this was a reaction française to a situation that for myriad reasons has been an issue since the end of WWII; one that was only covered over by Les trente glorieuses and that had the curtains pulled back on it by its end. In other words, the rioters were only and simply behaving as Frenchmen and in many regards, whether it be the unfortunate deaths of two teenagers that acted as the lighted wick, it is entirely appropriate that it came full on the heels of the transit strike - where the issue was of undoubtedly (with the wrinkled nose of Barthes when he discussed what was "natural" in France) French men and women striking in defense of their own slice of the welfare state pie - as here it was a matter of it is time that they in the banilieues get to taste the berries of said pie.
fp
Indeed, that is a troubling development - more than 30 officers were wounded by shotgun pellets, with at least one losing an eye, while another had his body armor pierced and his shoulder nearly destroyed by a high-powered hunting rifle. Nonetheless, the concentration on weaponry beyond paving stones and brick bats is actually unfortunate and I suspect it was not (entirely at least) the reason for police spokesman, Patrice Ribeiro, insisting that “This is a real guerrilla war,” - though he did caution that the police (who have shown a fair measure of restraint thus far) will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding. Rather the real point of interest and concern should instead be the level of coordination that the rioters apparently exhibited through the night. According to eyewitness reports, kids as young as 10 or so acted as scouts and lookouts for the main "force" which was made up of youths from (roughly) 15 to early/mid-twenties who were, in turn, coordinated and directed by older men (apparently with some training) who focused efforts in specific places and towards specific actions with Le Monde reporting on the sighting of at least one "strapping man in a black track suit" wearing a walkie-talkie tuned to the police frequency and guiding teams of rioters. As opposed to the riots of 2005, headless hydra that they were with both random violence and lootings, those involved this past Monday were focused - rioters were stopped from burning the cars or looting the stores of "family" though a symbol of the state, the library, was gutted by molotov cocktails - and the brunt of their actions were directed specifically at the police with the "event" nearly culminating in riot forces being hemmed into an open intersection by coordinated "pincer" movements of the rioters where the bulk of the police injuries were suffered.
From the reports I have read, the level of organization was indeed quite high, waves and rough formations of the young rioters moved in concert, dodging and parrying the efforts of the police as they funneled them into the area they wished to truly engage them. The rioters wore scarves around their mouths and noses to not only obscure their identities but lessen the effects of the tear-gas that was fired to disperse them - and in what was likely an act of spontaneous support, from the surrounding apartment towers women screamed warnings down to their "sons" as they threw pails of water to wash the tear-gas from them and dampen the noxious clouds. To put it mildly, if this is to be the face of riots to come, Paris, if not all of France, is in for quite a time. I suspect things will get worse before they get better.
All of that noted, I actually see something of a Les Miserables silver lining in all of this. After the 2005 riots much was made of the occasional (if loud) shriek of "Allahu Akbar" that was to be heard among the rioters; but during this (more) violent skirmish, calls to the greatness of God were missing. Instead, it was, as was reported in Le Monde, invective hurled at the police as "pigs" and commands to stay grouped. In other words this was a call to arms, a manning of the barricades. Frankly, it was notice that for all else that has occurred, be it institutional neglect on the part of the state or "square-peg in a round hole" on the part banlieusards, this was a reaction française to a situation that for myriad reasons has been an issue since the end of WWII; one that was only covered over by Les trente glorieuses and that had the curtains pulled back on it by its end. In other words, the rioters were only and simply behaving as Frenchmen and in many regards, whether it be the unfortunate deaths of two teenagers that acted as the lighted wick, it is entirely appropriate that it came full on the heels of the transit strike - where the issue was of undoubtedly (with the wrinkled nose of Barthes when he discussed what was "natural" in France) French men and women striking in defense of their own slice of the welfare state pie - as here it was a matter of it is time that they in the banilieues get to taste the berries of said pie.
fp
Monday, November 26, 2007
La grève in the grave? Some thoughts on the French transit strike
My apologies for the long absence. I was finishing my manuscript, attending a conference on multiculturalism, and vacationing in France. It is the last of the pretentious items that I wish to write about.
Our family vacation to Paris almost perfectly coincided with a nine-day transit strike which crippled France’s transit system. As a result, I failed to put on any weight (a usual outcome of my trips to Paris) because I was pushing a 50lb five-year old in a pram across the vast urban terrain of the City of Lights. I also think I pulled something in my back.
While the strike personally inconvenienced me, it also cost France about $592 million a day and chipped away at Sarko the American’s image as untouchable. While Sarkozy’s current popularity ratings are down, he is most certainly not out. Nearly a third of Frenchmen still support him (and by extension, his attempts to reform the bloated French state). His decline in popularity saw a measly five-point drop, something I am sure the cocksure president can live with.
Some have rushed to declare his presidency over, reform at an end, and a return to the “good ol’ days” of the welfare state, however, let me set you straight. Most Parisians condemned the strikes vehemently, while not even mentioning the government. I only met one gentleman who supported la grève, but he did so only on principle, suggesting that the government had signed a contract which they were now trying to reneg on. All others wanted the strikers to go back to work.
President Nicholas Sarkozy was quiet during most of the storm—only speaking out a day or so before the strikes were suspended. Once he opened his mouth, the strikers backed away. The French seem to have reconciled themselves to the realities of globalization and their important place within the process. Rather than let the future pass them by, they are willing take a leadership role. With Bush flailing in his self-created morass and Putin orchestrating the rapid creation of a postmodern police state, the world needs France now more than ever. And that also means they need Sarko. He has the capacity to get the French to realize that abandoning certain aspects of the welfare state is a good thing. No one expects France to become the predatory, capitalist free-for-all that is America (nor would any thinking person want that). However, it’s time move beyond the 1970s. The global economy is an incontrovertible reality. France cannot continue to act like it did when China was a third world country, and the existence of the USSR kept the world from facing the impossibility of socialist utopias.
I love France, and the French. But they—like us—are going to have to adjust to the realities of the current era. France gave the world the strike—now it’s time for them to give us something else. I, for one, am looking forward to their contribution.
Our family vacation to Paris almost perfectly coincided with a nine-day transit strike which crippled France’s transit system. As a result, I failed to put on any weight (a usual outcome of my trips to Paris) because I was pushing a 50lb five-year old in a pram across the vast urban terrain of the City of Lights. I also think I pulled something in my back.
While the strike personally inconvenienced me, it also cost France about $592 million a day and chipped away at Sarko the American’s image as untouchable. While Sarkozy’s current popularity ratings are down, he is most certainly not out. Nearly a third of Frenchmen still support him (and by extension, his attempts to reform the bloated French state). His decline in popularity saw a measly five-point drop, something I am sure the cocksure president can live with.
Some have rushed to declare his presidency over, reform at an end, and a return to the “good ol’ days” of the welfare state, however, let me set you straight. Most Parisians condemned the strikes vehemently, while not even mentioning the government. I only met one gentleman who supported la grève, but he did so only on principle, suggesting that the government had signed a contract which they were now trying to reneg on. All others wanted the strikers to go back to work.
President Nicholas Sarkozy was quiet during most of the storm—only speaking out a day or so before the strikes were suspended. Once he opened his mouth, the strikers backed away. The French seem to have reconciled themselves to the realities of globalization and their important place within the process. Rather than let the future pass them by, they are willing take a leadership role. With Bush flailing in his self-created morass and Putin orchestrating the rapid creation of a postmodern police state, the world needs France now more than ever. And that also means they need Sarko. He has the capacity to get the French to realize that abandoning certain aspects of the welfare state is a good thing. No one expects France to become the predatory, capitalist free-for-all that is America (nor would any thinking person want that). However, it’s time move beyond the 1970s. The global economy is an incontrovertible reality. France cannot continue to act like it did when China was a third world country, and the existence of the USSR kept the world from facing the impossibility of socialist utopias.
I love France, and the French. But they—like us—are going to have to adjust to the realities of the current era. France gave the world the strike—now it’s time for them to give us something else. I, for one, am looking forward to their contribution.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Come to France for the objet d'arts, stay for the . . .
Of course, with all else that has emerged from France in the last weeks - presidential divorces, new museums, personality diplomacy in Chad and Libya, etc. - this struck me as the most "wow" inducing. James Lipton, host of "Inside Actors' Studio" once made his way in Paris as a pimp!
l'enfer, c'est les autres – part deux
There is a manner in which the whole project might be read as a particularly fuzzy French attempt at Guliani's "broken-window" policy, combined with aforementioned basketball league. Give the rambunctious young'uns someplace else to break the windows and commit the vandalism of "tagging" (a vaguely protected piece of urban cultural production since Jack Lang in the 1980s) - and wouldn't it be an interesting twist if this box that apparently no one wants/uses became a contested territory between rival groups. But it also seems to reduce the problem of juvenile delinquency to an issue of place; and “place” has been an issue among the French for sometime, committed as they are to the construction of what Pierre Nora has called “sites of memory.” Though there is also the wary speculation of Michel Foucault who, in his Discipline and Punish, offered the “Panopticon.” A “site” which should not be “understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form . . . polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons.”
The question now becomes what the “distribution of individuals in relation to one another,” means when the space allotted is not really a space at all but the recreation of an entry-way – when the passage from the external world to the ostensibly internal becomes an end in itself? Mies van der Rohe once declared that the role of the architect and modern architecture was to “express the will of the epoch . . . For the meaning and justification of each epoch, even the new one, lie only in providing the conditions under which the spirit can exist.” What “will” is being expressed and whose “spirit can exist” in an architectural equivalent of purgatory? Considering all this, it is only the most fortuitous expression of ironic convenience that the “faux hall” is made of a shipping container – somehow it doesn’t seem as if its economic role in the transport of things away and out of sight has changed all that much, it has only become a social one.
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The question now becomes what the “distribution of individuals in relation to one another,” means when the space allotted is not really a space at all but the recreation of an entry-way – when the passage from the external world to the ostensibly internal becomes an end in itself? Mies van der Rohe once declared that the role of the architect and modern architecture was to “express the will of the epoch . . . For the meaning and justification of each epoch, even the new one, lie only in providing the conditions under which the spirit can exist.” What “will” is being expressed and whose “spirit can exist” in an architectural equivalent of purgatory? Considering all this, it is only the most fortuitous expression of ironic convenience that the “faux hall” is made of a shipping container – somehow it doesn’t seem as if its economic role in the transport of things away and out of sight has changed all that much, it has only become a social one.
fp
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
l'enfer, c'est les autres
If the "resistance" bona fides of Sartre's Occupation-era work has been called into question (I am often prone to paraphrase the historian Julian Jackson and argue that if you have to parse out the meaning and intent and even then it is still available only to a discreet few then I wonder what is meant by "resistance" or member thereof - in more cynical moments I fall to the postion of Merleau-Ponty and say that all resisters were killed) there remains no doubt about the cultural legacy of said work. Particularly the premier piece of insouciant, though incessant, dread - or at least the life-looping, shoulder-shrugging, make of it what you will static maze - No Exit. The "aura" of this work (to steal from Walter Benjamin) - if not simply France's 20thC Voltaire, as de Gaulle was wont to call the wobbly walleyed philosopher - and the more than faint residual draw that existentialism generally has left in the land of the champions of ennui, still marks much of the most frequently (and vociferously) lauded cultural products. Despite its relative age (being just over a decade old), I admit that I think most here of Kassovitz's 1995 "La Haine." True, the frowsy interior of a Second Empire parlor has been replaced by the more expansive (but equally entrapping) confines of the banlieue and the conversation has changed from discussions of the inappropriateness of a man presenting himself to a woman in his shirt-sleeves to any manner of dress in a space of decidedly fractured social scapes, but the general dynamic of three characters interacting in a setting besotted by a very Sartrean utterance "tu n'es rien d'autre que ta vie" (you are nothing else but your life) remains tightly to type.
Of course it's hardly a secret that the banlieues have (overtly?) re-entered the French political and social scene in the last couple of years; and given Sarkozy's use of the inflammatory "racaille" during the 2005 riots they were an important part of the presidential election this spring. Even with all this being said, I was still caught by how perfectly and peculiarly "French" the recent attempt to manage urban deliquency in the port city of Le Havre was. Anyone familiar with Luc Besson's 2006 parkour vehicle knows that the entry-ways of the modernist blocks of apartments that make up the banieues are frequent hang-out spots for local toughs with little other place to go. According to Jean-Pierre Noit, Director General of the Public Housing Authority, this has become a serious issue in the port city's housing projects. "Entry-halls should be places of conviviality," he insisted, "but the reality is that they become the focus for social tensions, and many tenants find them unbearable." To that end, a daringly existential experiment has been undertaken that once again reduces the outlines of the social experiment called life to the confines of a single space - this time not a drawing room but a "faux hall" intended to create the illusion of a foyer to an apartment building - complete with door and windows, interphone, entry code-pad, mail/letter boxes, fake elevator door, and a stairway to the roof of what is actually a former 12 meter long shipping container - some 30 meters away from an apartment block of 400 "real" apartments. The results, and discussion, of the experiment have been mixed. Nathalie Nail, of the PFC, has called it a "total failure" and another example of how the youth of France are "made fun of" rather than listened to. One of the local youths has insisted that no one ever goes to it while another, Kevin, testily called it a joke; "They're trying to pack us in like sardines in tins."
Given the awkward way in which the French are only beginning to address the role and place of immigrants in the country - beyond futbol of course - there is something about this that does stike uneasily. Though is it much different than a midnight basketball league, just with a little more ennui? Whatever else might be the case according to Noit, given Le Havre's place as a port city, it would take no more time to bring in the crane and remove the box than it did to place it in the first place - and as an experiment in social organization, "the object was to empty the halls of the buildings to make life more pleasant for the tenants, for the moment it has worked." And if there is something that might mark the experiment at least a temporary success, lending it some of its own gritty authenticity - the faux hall was recently vandalized.
Of course it's hardly a secret that the banlieues have (overtly?) re-entered the French political and social scene in the last couple of years; and given Sarkozy's use of the inflammatory "racaille" during the 2005 riots they were an important part of the presidential election this spring. Even with all this being said, I was still caught by how perfectly and peculiarly "French" the recent attempt to manage urban deliquency in the port city of Le Havre was. Anyone familiar with Luc Besson's 2006 parkour vehicle knows that the entry-ways of the modernist blocks of apartments that make up the banieues are frequent hang-out spots for local toughs with little other place to go. According to Jean-Pierre Noit, Director General of the Public Housing Authority, this has become a serious issue in the port city's housing projects. "Entry-halls should be places of conviviality," he insisted, "but the reality is that they become the focus for social tensions, and many tenants find them unbearable." To that end, a daringly existential experiment has been undertaken that once again reduces the outlines of the social experiment called life to the confines of a single space - this time not a drawing room but a "faux hall" intended to create the illusion of a foyer to an apartment building - complete with door and windows, interphone, entry code-pad, mail/letter boxes, fake elevator door, and a stairway to the roof of what is actually a former 12 meter long shipping container - some 30 meters away from an apartment block of 400 "real" apartments. The results, and discussion, of the experiment have been mixed. Nathalie Nail, of the PFC, has called it a "total failure" and another example of how the youth of France are "made fun of" rather than listened to. One of the local youths has insisted that no one ever goes to it while another, Kevin, testily called it a joke; "They're trying to pack us in like sardines in tins."
Given the awkward way in which the French are only beginning to address the role and place of immigrants in the country - beyond futbol of course - there is something about this that does stike uneasily. Though is it much different than a midnight basketball league, just with a little more ennui? Whatever else might be the case according to Noit, given Le Havre's place as a port city, it would take no more time to bring in the crane and remove the box than it did to place it in the first place - and as an experiment in social organization, "the object was to empty the halls of the buildings to make life more pleasant for the tenants, for the moment it has worked." And if there is something that might mark the experiment at least a temporary success, lending it some of its own gritty authenticity - the faux hall was recently vandalized.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Fear of the Other in Campaign 2008
Maybe it’s just me reading too much into it, but I am currently aghast at the level of fear mongering vis-à-vis the "Other" that going on right now in the Republican presidential primary campaign. Case in point: Mitt Romney’s recent quote, “Actually, just look at what Osam — uh — Barack Obama, said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq. That is the battlefield. That is the central place, he said. Come join us under one banner.”
In this gaffe (or Freudian slip—call it what you like), Romney’s fear of the Other is laid bare. The Democrats—personified by a black man and a woman—are bent on destroying America from the inside (the internal other) while the jihadists target America from the outside (the external other). The irony is that even if this was a mistake (I am sure it was), it is not a departure from the general tone of the Republican discourse as the candidates prepare for January in Iowa.
I listened to Sunday’s Republican debate in its entirety only to hear former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani “softly” threaten Putin with his “big stick” (the phallic undertones need not be explored here) to thunderous applause. This while Ron Paul was booed for suggesting that the PKK terrorism is a Turkish issue and should be left to Ankara to solve (after the Hispanophobe Tancredo eviscerated Speaker Pelosi over the Armenian resolution).
To believe the Republicans, Iran is bent on world domination and capable of projecting its imaginary missiles at Finland (thus the universal approval of magical missile defense in “Czechoslovakia” wherever—or should I say whenever—that is). China and India were both held up as nefarious economic and demographic bogeys lurking on the other side of the globe, but insidiously near in the deterritorialized world of call centers and cheap shipping containers. Even the generally even-handed Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee threatened America with the specter of a bunch of “old hippies” (the late 1960s internal other) finding out their drugs are free under “HilaryCare.”
Let’s hope this frightfest is simply part of an “October surprise” by the Republicans, and that after Halloween, the politics of the real rather that politics of the preposterous seeps back in to the Red campaign.
In this gaffe (or Freudian slip—call it what you like), Romney’s fear of the Other is laid bare. The Democrats—personified by a black man and a woman—are bent on destroying America from the inside (the internal other) while the jihadists target America from the outside (the external other). The irony is that even if this was a mistake (I am sure it was), it is not a departure from the general tone of the Republican discourse as the candidates prepare for January in Iowa.
I listened to Sunday’s Republican debate in its entirety only to hear former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani “softly” threaten Putin with his “big stick” (the phallic undertones need not be explored here) to thunderous applause. This while Ron Paul was booed for suggesting that the PKK terrorism is a Turkish issue and should be left to Ankara to solve (after the Hispanophobe Tancredo eviscerated Speaker Pelosi over the Armenian resolution).
To believe the Republicans, Iran is bent on world domination and capable of projecting its imaginary missiles at Finland (thus the universal approval of magical missile defense in “Czechoslovakia” wherever—or should I say whenever—that is). China and India were both held up as nefarious economic and demographic bogeys lurking on the other side of the globe, but insidiously near in the deterritorialized world of call centers and cheap shipping containers. Even the generally even-handed Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee threatened America with the specter of a bunch of “old hippies” (the late 1960s internal other) finding out their drugs are free under “HilaryCare.”
Let’s hope this frightfest is simply part of an “October surprise” by the Republicans, and that after Halloween, the politics of the real rather that politics of the preposterous seeps back in to the Red campaign.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Scam Czars to the West: “You are getting what you deserve.”
The NYTimes website has an interesting article—Scam Czars: What’s Russian for ‘Hacker’? (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/weekinreview/21levy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp )
Here are some quotes from that article:
What a “bravo” way of constructing an online nationalism course from a new generation of IT-equipped Russians! Indeed, it is a totally Putin-style “Saying NO to the West!”
Friday, October 19, 2007
from sign and sight
Our negroes, our enemies"
Serbian writer Vladimir Arsenijevic outlines the calamitous relationship of his compatriots to the Albanians.
For all ex-Yugoslavs, but particularly for the Serbs, the Kosovo Albanians used to be simply "our negroes." Nowadays, however, they are cast as Serbia's arch-enemies – a myth ruthlessly exploited by nationalist politicians, even as negotiations take place over the future of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, which has been under UN administration since 1999. If anyone in Western Europe asks how all this could have happened, I can tell them, for I have watched and listened to this story unfolding in my country.
The country that used to be mine, the former Yugoslavia, was ethnically and culturally extremely diverse. Marshall Josip Broz Tito used to call this diversity our Yugoslavian "melting pot." In reality, though, it was never that. After Tito's death the country's diversity was tragically instrumentalized; it became socially divided, split ethnically and culturally into sub-groups and economically into a hierarchy of better-off and worse-off regions. Post-Tito Yugoslavia thus became a proverbial European vertical.
At the top of this vertical, in the far north on the border with Austria, was the economically most advanced republic Slovenia. In a certain sense Slovenia stood for the permanent "high" in what was then the common homeland. You then moved on down through Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia in the centre to Montenegro and Macedonia in the far south, the chronic "low" of our former country. "The further south, the more deplorable" ("Sto juznije to tuznije") was the popular saying used to describe the ladder along which a specifically Yugoslavian brand of racism was always directed at those who were on the next rung down geographically and economically. Hence the Slovenians showed the contempt they felt for the country bumpkins, idlers or failures of the other republics most clearly towards the Croatians; the Croatians for their part passed it on to the Serbs; and the latter, in turn, took pleasure in making fun of the Macedonians or Montenegrins. The Bosnians, on the other hand, as the people who inhabited the centre of the Republic of Yugoslavia, were the object of mockery from all sides.
But right at the very bottom came the Albanians who lived in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Their language wasn't a Slavic language. They were poorer than the rest of us. Their culture was pretty alien. In the motley collection of different kinds of Yugoslavs they, as the southernmost ethnic group, were condemned to play the role of the absolute outsiders.
Anything that the rest of us in former Yugoslavia claimed to know about the Albanians was put together from a hodgepodge of offensive cliches. They were generally referred to derisively as the Siptari or the shiptars. If we didn't hate them openly, it was only because we did not consider them worthy of our hatred. Even at the best of times there was never any dialogue between "them" and "us."
The Kosovo Albanians were for us just a bunch of primitive, at most sometimes comical golliwogs, our Uncle Toms. In other words, they were our negroes. Yet just as the existence of the despised Albanians scarcely penetrated the consciousness of the average Yugoslav of the Tito era, so the casual cultural racism of that time seems, from today's perspective, rather harmless compared with the violent, murderous hatred of the "shiptars" that seized the Serbs following the death of Tito and after the first wave of "unrest" in Kosovo at the end of the twentieth century. This resentment became particularly intense throughout the phase of burgeoning nationalism in all the republics, during the brutal tyranny perpetrated by Slobodan Milosevic, who set out to ruthlessly tear apart the common state. During the 1990s politicians and the media also began using the colloquial and derogatory term "shiptars," a label that increasingly stuck to make them the object of our paranoia. More and more often people began to speak of them as though the only reason they existed was to crush and annihilate "us Serbs".
One of the legends that did the rounds in Milosevic's version of the news was a historical myth that went roughly like this: "Once there were far fewer Albanians than Serbs in Kosovo. But over the years (by means of a miracle that has never been fully explained! V.A.) they came to Kosovo across the Albanian border and just settled here in our country, before our very eyes, without so much as a 'by your leave'." Equipped with what in our eyes were positively animal-like qualities, they developed the collective determination of termites and, what is more, bred like rabbits. Their uncontrollable virility and high birth rates made us shiver, indeed we shuddered with disgust. At the same time the Serbs were constantly being publicly entreated to profess their hatred of the "shiptars." No Serb was considered worth his salt unless he cherished this hatred. Thus official propaganda during the Milosevic era, supported unerringly by the media, declared the "shiptars" to be the Serbs' archetypal enemy; indeed, without this enemy the Serbs' own existence would have been practically unthinkable. For where would Batman be without his Joker? Now the "shiptars" were no longer pathetic Uncle Toms. On the contrary, they had transformed themselves into terrifying, dangerous demons, intractable and persistent in their mission to take over our historic territory, to snatch away from us the Kosovo Polje, the Kosovo Field, "the cradle or our culture," to steal our myths, to rob us of that which belonged to us by "historic right". (More here)
Determined to settle scores with these "shiptars" once and for all, our President Milosevic conceived a fantastic plan. In his murky empire of evil, poverty, ethnic hatred and hyperinflation, the army and the police aided by the mass media were to be allowed to discriminate against and humiliate the Kosovo Albanians without incurring sanctions. The Albanians would be able to be arbitrarily dismissed or arrested, their property plundered, their families and villages destroyed. Absolved of any responsibility and encouraged by popular support, the president for many years painstakingly put his plan into action, bringing violence and destruction first to Kosovo and then to the whole territory of Yugoslavia. Following the Dayton Agreement in December 1995 there was a brief ceasefire, but in 1999 the spiral of violence finally led Milosevic back to where it had all started, back to Kosovo.
Yet Kosovo was also the place that was to seal Milosevic's fate after thirteen years of his destructive rule. When NATO began bombing the main culprit, Serbia-Montenegro, at the end of March 1999, it destroyed some more of the infrastructure and claimed hundreds of civilian victims. Yet what followed was the end of Serbian state power in the province of Kosovo. At the same time the roles of perpetrator and victim were once more reversed in this hapless place. There was an exodus of thousands of Serbs and Roma and a rampage of revenge by the victors; and once again the victims were almost exclusively innocent civilians. The hope of any normality between ordinary Serbs and Albanians, of them being able to live side by side in the foreseeable future, was gone.
Milosevic had played his game so cunningly that only one kind of epilogue was possible: the UN war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague. Nevertheless, even then, Milosevic managed to escape the place where justice might have been done, if only by suffering a heart attack. By eluding justice he left us with the question of blame. Not least for this reason the citizens of Serbia are burdened with guilt and shame, whether we accept it or not.
A few years ago the Serbian media reported for months on end on mass graves whose dead had been identified by forensic experts as Kosovo Albanians. One of the most horrific images was that of a refrigerated lorry out of which murdered Kosovo Albanian women, children and old people were disposed in Lake Perucac, near the mouth of the river Derventa. On our screens we saw half-decayed, clothed corpses being pulled out of the water, we heard the shocking confession of the driver, who had been told to transport the dead out of Kosovo in order to cover up the crime. At the time a Belgrade television station broadcast an interview with a man bathing untroubled in this beautiful lake from whose green waters the corpses had just been pulled. When the reporter asked whether this bothered him the simpleton stood there shaking his head as the water dripped off him. Blinking innocently and smiling laconically, he looked at the camera and said without turning a hair: "To be honest, I don't believe all that," and dived defiantly back into the water.
The guy is mad, you might think. But actually the opposite is the case. His reaction is absolutely understandable. Serbian citizens have a decade of brainwashing by politicians and the media behind them, a decade of lessons in how continuous lying can eventually make people believe their own lies. The bathing man was simply using that acquired skill.
Denial is one of the central new Serbian qualities. It is so new that we don't even have a proper word for it, and those who realize what is happening simply use the English word instead. Denial. This denial, coldness in the face of human suffering, an inability to show the most rudimentary empathy, shows that we as a society are in a no-man's land. Sometimes it seems as if we did not want to escape the maelstrom of the past. The question of the status of Kosovo, and at least as important, of our future relationship with the Kosovo Albanians, are among the most decisive questions of all, and they could be used as a measure of our political maturity. The reasons why we don't take a constructive approach to them are more profound. Today's Serbian society is tired of politics. It is tired of lost wars, exhausted by chronic poverty and the feeling that the Serbs must see themselves either as victims or as the guilty party. It fears change and shirks responsibility.
In other words, events have ensured that our view of the Kosovo Albanians will remain unchanged for a long time to come. To the traditional resentment there has simply been added the subliminal rage of the loser, which is vented in self-pity and may be coupled with the mystical idea of being inherently in the right. Indeed, the unavoidable loss of the former southern Serbian province of Kosovo is in certain circles of our society perceived as tantamount to an apocalypse. Not long ago the centre of Belgrade was plastered with posters designed to fool us: "There is no Serbia without Kosovo!" But whoever says that is lying, and many people fundamentally know this – for despite everything it is becoming increasingly evident that the status of Kosovo is becoming marginal in the everyday life and concerns of the Serbs. In fact many citizens – our young particularly – disappointed by all sides, seem to have decided that they don't believe in anything any more, like that simpleton bathing in the lake.
But what can one expect from a generation that has been raised amid war and destruction, fed with a policy of overt hatred, and that can't get a visa to become acquainted with other countries and cultures? Unfortunately, probably not very much. Our young people have begun to hate again, without inhibitions, with a frivolous delight. Surveys of school students are enough to make your hair stand on end – and they confirm the impression one gains from everyday life. More than 30 percent of the pupils at Serbian middle schools believe that one "should neither become friends with Albanians nor visit them." Almost a third of young people believe that the Chinese – the only relatively large group of foreigners in our country – should have their residence permits removed, even if they obey the law. Every third teenage boy and every second teenage girl is looking down on homosexuals and people infected with HIV.
The thought of the ghastly success with which contemporary Serbian society has deformed the thoughts and emotions of young people makes one shudder. Maybe the solution is simply to wait stoically and be patient. Maybe one only needs to hope that a new generation will grow up under more peaceful and healthier circumstances. Perhaps the only thing left for us is to believe that our grandchildren will be our real children.
*
Vladimir Arsenijevic was born in 1965 in Pula/Croatia. His prize-winning novels have been translated into many languages. He lives in Belgrade.
This article orignally appeared in German in Die Zeit on 20 September, 2007.
Translation: Melanie
Serbian writer Vladimir Arsenijevic outlines the calamitous relationship of his compatriots to the Albanians.
For all ex-Yugoslavs, but particularly for the Serbs, the Kosovo Albanians used to be simply "our negroes." Nowadays, however, they are cast as Serbia's arch-enemies – a myth ruthlessly exploited by nationalist politicians, even as negotiations take place over the future of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, which has been under UN administration since 1999. If anyone in Western Europe asks how all this could have happened, I can tell them, for I have watched and listened to this story unfolding in my country.
The country that used to be mine, the former Yugoslavia, was ethnically and culturally extremely diverse. Marshall Josip Broz Tito used to call this diversity our Yugoslavian "melting pot." In reality, though, it was never that. After Tito's death the country's diversity was tragically instrumentalized; it became socially divided, split ethnically and culturally into sub-groups and economically into a hierarchy of better-off and worse-off regions. Post-Tito Yugoslavia thus became a proverbial European vertical.
At the top of this vertical, in the far north on the border with Austria, was the economically most advanced republic Slovenia. In a certain sense Slovenia stood for the permanent "high" in what was then the common homeland. You then moved on down through Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia in the centre to Montenegro and Macedonia in the far south, the chronic "low" of our former country. "The further south, the more deplorable" ("Sto juznije to tuznije") was the popular saying used to describe the ladder along which a specifically Yugoslavian brand of racism was always directed at those who were on the next rung down geographically and economically. Hence the Slovenians showed the contempt they felt for the country bumpkins, idlers or failures of the other republics most clearly towards the Croatians; the Croatians for their part passed it on to the Serbs; and the latter, in turn, took pleasure in making fun of the Macedonians or Montenegrins. The Bosnians, on the other hand, as the people who inhabited the centre of the Republic of Yugoslavia, were the object of mockery from all sides.
But right at the very bottom came the Albanians who lived in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Their language wasn't a Slavic language. They were poorer than the rest of us. Their culture was pretty alien. In the motley collection of different kinds of Yugoslavs they, as the southernmost ethnic group, were condemned to play the role of the absolute outsiders.
Anything that the rest of us in former Yugoslavia claimed to know about the Albanians was put together from a hodgepodge of offensive cliches. They were generally referred to derisively as the Siptari or the shiptars. If we didn't hate them openly, it was only because we did not consider them worthy of our hatred. Even at the best of times there was never any dialogue between "them" and "us."
The Kosovo Albanians were for us just a bunch of primitive, at most sometimes comical golliwogs, our Uncle Toms. In other words, they were our negroes. Yet just as the existence of the despised Albanians scarcely penetrated the consciousness of the average Yugoslav of the Tito era, so the casual cultural racism of that time seems, from today's perspective, rather harmless compared with the violent, murderous hatred of the "shiptars" that seized the Serbs following the death of Tito and after the first wave of "unrest" in Kosovo at the end of the twentieth century. This resentment became particularly intense throughout the phase of burgeoning nationalism in all the republics, during the brutal tyranny perpetrated by Slobodan Milosevic, who set out to ruthlessly tear apart the common state. During the 1990s politicians and the media also began using the colloquial and derogatory term "shiptars," a label that increasingly stuck to make them the object of our paranoia. More and more often people began to speak of them as though the only reason they existed was to crush and annihilate "us Serbs".
One of the legends that did the rounds in Milosevic's version of the news was a historical myth that went roughly like this: "Once there were far fewer Albanians than Serbs in Kosovo. But over the years (by means of a miracle that has never been fully explained! V.A.) they came to Kosovo across the Albanian border and just settled here in our country, before our very eyes, without so much as a 'by your leave'." Equipped with what in our eyes were positively animal-like qualities, they developed the collective determination of termites and, what is more, bred like rabbits. Their uncontrollable virility and high birth rates made us shiver, indeed we shuddered with disgust. At the same time the Serbs were constantly being publicly entreated to profess their hatred of the "shiptars." No Serb was considered worth his salt unless he cherished this hatred. Thus official propaganda during the Milosevic era, supported unerringly by the media, declared the "shiptars" to be the Serbs' archetypal enemy; indeed, without this enemy the Serbs' own existence would have been practically unthinkable. For where would Batman be without his Joker? Now the "shiptars" were no longer pathetic Uncle Toms. On the contrary, they had transformed themselves into terrifying, dangerous demons, intractable and persistent in their mission to take over our historic territory, to snatch away from us the Kosovo Polje, the Kosovo Field, "the cradle or our culture," to steal our myths, to rob us of that which belonged to us by "historic right". (More here)
Determined to settle scores with these "shiptars" once and for all, our President Milosevic conceived a fantastic plan. In his murky empire of evil, poverty, ethnic hatred and hyperinflation, the army and the police aided by the mass media were to be allowed to discriminate against and humiliate the Kosovo Albanians without incurring sanctions. The Albanians would be able to be arbitrarily dismissed or arrested, their property plundered, their families and villages destroyed. Absolved of any responsibility and encouraged by popular support, the president for many years painstakingly put his plan into action, bringing violence and destruction first to Kosovo and then to the whole territory of Yugoslavia. Following the Dayton Agreement in December 1995 there was a brief ceasefire, but in 1999 the spiral of violence finally led Milosevic back to where it had all started, back to Kosovo.
Yet Kosovo was also the place that was to seal Milosevic's fate after thirteen years of his destructive rule. When NATO began bombing the main culprit, Serbia-Montenegro, at the end of March 1999, it destroyed some more of the infrastructure and claimed hundreds of civilian victims. Yet what followed was the end of Serbian state power in the province of Kosovo. At the same time the roles of perpetrator and victim were once more reversed in this hapless place. There was an exodus of thousands of Serbs and Roma and a rampage of revenge by the victors; and once again the victims were almost exclusively innocent civilians. The hope of any normality between ordinary Serbs and Albanians, of them being able to live side by side in the foreseeable future, was gone.
Milosevic had played his game so cunningly that only one kind of epilogue was possible: the UN war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague. Nevertheless, even then, Milosevic managed to escape the place where justice might have been done, if only by suffering a heart attack. By eluding justice he left us with the question of blame. Not least for this reason the citizens of Serbia are burdened with guilt and shame, whether we accept it or not.
A few years ago the Serbian media reported for months on end on mass graves whose dead had been identified by forensic experts as Kosovo Albanians. One of the most horrific images was that of a refrigerated lorry out of which murdered Kosovo Albanian women, children and old people were disposed in Lake Perucac, near the mouth of the river Derventa. On our screens we saw half-decayed, clothed corpses being pulled out of the water, we heard the shocking confession of the driver, who had been told to transport the dead out of Kosovo in order to cover up the crime. At the time a Belgrade television station broadcast an interview with a man bathing untroubled in this beautiful lake from whose green waters the corpses had just been pulled. When the reporter asked whether this bothered him the simpleton stood there shaking his head as the water dripped off him. Blinking innocently and smiling laconically, he looked at the camera and said without turning a hair: "To be honest, I don't believe all that," and dived defiantly back into the water.
The guy is mad, you might think. But actually the opposite is the case. His reaction is absolutely understandable. Serbian citizens have a decade of brainwashing by politicians and the media behind them, a decade of lessons in how continuous lying can eventually make people believe their own lies. The bathing man was simply using that acquired skill.
Denial is one of the central new Serbian qualities. It is so new that we don't even have a proper word for it, and those who realize what is happening simply use the English word instead. Denial. This denial, coldness in the face of human suffering, an inability to show the most rudimentary empathy, shows that we as a society are in a no-man's land. Sometimes it seems as if we did not want to escape the maelstrom of the past. The question of the status of Kosovo, and at least as important, of our future relationship with the Kosovo Albanians, are among the most decisive questions of all, and they could be used as a measure of our political maturity. The reasons why we don't take a constructive approach to them are more profound. Today's Serbian society is tired of politics. It is tired of lost wars, exhausted by chronic poverty and the feeling that the Serbs must see themselves either as victims or as the guilty party. It fears change and shirks responsibility.
In other words, events have ensured that our view of the Kosovo Albanians will remain unchanged for a long time to come. To the traditional resentment there has simply been added the subliminal rage of the loser, which is vented in self-pity and may be coupled with the mystical idea of being inherently in the right. Indeed, the unavoidable loss of the former southern Serbian province of Kosovo is in certain circles of our society perceived as tantamount to an apocalypse. Not long ago the centre of Belgrade was plastered with posters designed to fool us: "There is no Serbia without Kosovo!" But whoever says that is lying, and many people fundamentally know this – for despite everything it is becoming increasingly evident that the status of Kosovo is becoming marginal in the everyday life and concerns of the Serbs. In fact many citizens – our young particularly – disappointed by all sides, seem to have decided that they don't believe in anything any more, like that simpleton bathing in the lake.
But what can one expect from a generation that has been raised amid war and destruction, fed with a policy of overt hatred, and that can't get a visa to become acquainted with other countries and cultures? Unfortunately, probably not very much. Our young people have begun to hate again, without inhibitions, with a frivolous delight. Surveys of school students are enough to make your hair stand on end – and they confirm the impression one gains from everyday life. More than 30 percent of the pupils at Serbian middle schools believe that one "should neither become friends with Albanians nor visit them." Almost a third of young people believe that the Chinese – the only relatively large group of foreigners in our country – should have their residence permits removed, even if they obey the law. Every third teenage boy and every second teenage girl is looking down on homosexuals and people infected with HIV.
The thought of the ghastly success with which contemporary Serbian society has deformed the thoughts and emotions of young people makes one shudder. Maybe the solution is simply to wait stoically and be patient. Maybe one only needs to hope that a new generation will grow up under more peaceful and healthier circumstances. Perhaps the only thing left for us is to believe that our grandchildren will be our real children.
*
Vladimir Arsenijevic was born in 1965 in Pula/Croatia. His prize-winning novels have been translated into many languages. He lives in Belgrade.
This article orignally appeared in German in Die Zeit on 20 September, 2007.
Translation: Melanie
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Accountability or Royalties
Ricardo Sanchez said a few days ago that the war had been conducted with criminal negligence from its conception to the surge, and that the American people should hold their civilian leaders accountable for their actions. Bravo, Lieutenant General. Of course, Ricardo Sanchez was the military leader of Coalition forces in Iraq in the first years of the invasion, eluded being court-martialed for Abu Ghraib, and is now retired and planning to write a tell-all book. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show juxtaposed the general's "unbelievable progress" comments when he was in charge, with his recent "nightmare-with-no-end-in-sight" statement. The segment was appropriately called "Now You Tell Us."
Sanchez is only the last one in a too long list of shameless has-beens rushing for the publishing house. George Tenet, former chief of the CIA, tried in vain to absolve himself and blame others in his book. When he was an enthusiastic participant, it was all "slam dunk." Now that he's teaching at Georgetown and selling books, he maintains that his bosses manipulated him and the American people. Remember Colin Powell -the Secretary of State who believed Curveball and lied to the world on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly- and his book "Soldier"? General Richard Myers was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005, and now that he's retired claims that the strategy that the United States has adopted in the war on terror is wrong and ineffective. He was supposed to be the top dog, the main military adviser to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. They all had the ear of the emperor, but from their accounts they'd have you think that they were merely government clerks.
And it is not just about praetorian subordination. My favorite intellectual contortionists are the neo-conservatives, like Richard Perle or David Frum, who wrote the Axis of Evil speech. Hans Blix himself went from timid and ambiguous reports and statements when he directed the UN inspections team in Iraq, to blunt and fiery criticism when he became a published author. Plugging his book at an event in New York at the end of 2003, where he was received with standing ovations by an anti-war crowd, the only question he left unanswered was posed by a Syrian that asked: "Why didn't you say all this before?" Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has already had some run-ins with angry Americans at book-signings. Why? He says now that the Iraq war is all about oil, and that Bush's tax cuts are atrocious. When he was running the show, he testified in Congress supporting Bush's economic policy. Even the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times did a one-eighty on their opinion of the war as soon as they found neither WMDs nor smiles and flowers from grateful Iraqis, and went from war cheerleaders to fierce opponents.
In this tragedy, there are two kinds of criminals: those that were wrong, don't admit it, and stay the course, and those that were wrong, didn't say anything when it mattered, and now can't stop chattering to seek absolution and book deals. They have one thing in common: neither the former nor the latter have had the trial they deserve.
Sanchez is only the last one in a too long list of shameless has-beens rushing for the publishing house. George Tenet, former chief of the CIA, tried in vain to absolve himself and blame others in his book. When he was an enthusiastic participant, it was all "slam dunk." Now that he's teaching at Georgetown and selling books, he maintains that his bosses manipulated him and the American people. Remember Colin Powell -the Secretary of State who believed Curveball and lied to the world on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly- and his book "Soldier"? General Richard Myers was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005, and now that he's retired claims that the strategy that the United States has adopted in the war on terror is wrong and ineffective. He was supposed to be the top dog, the main military adviser to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. They all had the ear of the emperor, but from their accounts they'd have you think that they were merely government clerks.
And it is not just about praetorian subordination. My favorite intellectual contortionists are the neo-conservatives, like Richard Perle or David Frum, who wrote the Axis of Evil speech. Hans Blix himself went from timid and ambiguous reports and statements when he directed the UN inspections team in Iraq, to blunt and fiery criticism when he became a published author. Plugging his book at an event in New York at the end of 2003, where he was received with standing ovations by an anti-war crowd, the only question he left unanswered was posed by a Syrian that asked: "Why didn't you say all this before?" Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has already had some run-ins with angry Americans at book-signings. Why? He says now that the Iraq war is all about oil, and that Bush's tax cuts are atrocious. When he was running the show, he testified in Congress supporting Bush's economic policy. Even the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times did a one-eighty on their opinion of the war as soon as they found neither WMDs nor smiles and flowers from grateful Iraqis, and went from war cheerleaders to fierce opponents.
In this tragedy, there are two kinds of criminals: those that were wrong, don't admit it, and stay the course, and those that were wrong, didn't say anything when it mattered, and now can't stop chattering to seek absolution and book deals. They have one thing in common: neither the former nor the latter have had the trial they deserve.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Politics of Eurovision
This debate is a few months old, but I thought the roster and content of this blog was perfect to revive a topic that in the United States gets the attention that it truly deserves: zero.
Last May, Columbia University's Duncan J. Watts wrote this interesting Op-Ed on political bloc-voting in the annual Eurovision contest. Serbia had just won the contest, receiving most of its votes from Former Yugoslavia republics. And England got trounced, in another supposed demonstration of anti-British sentiment and the buoyancy of ethnonationalism in Europe in the 21st century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22watts.html
I wrote this in response: Mr. Watts is not alone in suggesting a political bias in the Eurovision contest. British and German tabloids also cried foul, and the British Parliament debated (!) this question. They couldn't be more wrong. It is true that voting patterns over the years show some recognizable voting blocs, but this is more due to geographic proximity and cultural affinities -similar languages, similar tastes- than the reflection of political alignments within Europe. There is no anti-Western or anti-British bias. Contrary to Mr. Watt's assertion that "no one votes for Britain," the United Kingdom is the country that has received the most votes overall in the history of this contest. The politics of Eurovision have more to do with other issues, such as the exclusion of Serbia for several years or the reaction in Arab countries to the inclusion of Israel, than with Western European countries having one bad year.
Having said this, did Marija Serifovic ever explain what she meant by giving the three-fingered salute to the cameras when she received 12 points from Bosnia?
Last May, Columbia University's Duncan J. Watts wrote this interesting Op-Ed on political bloc-voting in the annual Eurovision contest. Serbia had just won the contest, receiving most of its votes from Former Yugoslavia republics. And England got trounced, in another supposed demonstration of anti-British sentiment and the buoyancy of ethnonationalism in Europe in the 21st century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22watts.html
I wrote this in response: Mr. Watts is not alone in suggesting a political bias in the Eurovision contest. British and German tabloids also cried foul, and the British Parliament debated (!) this question. They couldn't be more wrong. It is true that voting patterns over the years show some recognizable voting blocs, but this is more due to geographic proximity and cultural affinities -similar languages, similar tastes- than the reflection of political alignments within Europe. There is no anti-Western or anti-British bias. Contrary to Mr. Watt's assertion that "no one votes for Britain," the United Kingdom is the country that has received the most votes overall in the history of this contest. The politics of Eurovision have more to do with other issues, such as the exclusion of Serbia for several years or the reaction in Arab countries to the inclusion of Israel, than with Western European countries having one bad year.
Having said this, did Marija Serifovic ever explain what she meant by giving the three-fingered salute to the cameras when she received 12 points from Bosnia?
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Who is their real target behind their call for boycott Beijing Olympic Games?
I am sick of Beijing’s “friendship” with Khartoum and Yangon. Should Beijing be condemned for these cold-blooded “friendships”? Yes.
But I am also sick of those so-called international human rights activists’ political prejudice and shallowness. Who is the real target behind their call for boycott Beijing Olympic Games? Not Khartoum! Not Yangon!
They naively believe that genocide cannot be stopped in Darfur because Beijing has resisted international pressure to bring peace to Darfur. They believe that the Burmese junta would not have cracked down on the monks’ protests without a tacit signal from Beijing that it would veto any sanctions bill at the UN. They may be naïve, but their governments which back them up are not stupid.
Behind the Western criticisms of Beijing over Khartoum and Yangon, there is a new round of great power politics is unfolding. This time, it is in a different way. Like the “hard” arms race in the Cold War which ended the USSR, the “soft” bullets in such “morals race” (wrapped with human rights banners) can also drag the rising dragon down.
Angela Merkel has met the Dalai Lama in her office. Canada will follow up. Who is next, India, Japan, or even the US? If Yangon collapses, Aung San Su Kyi will drive the Dalai Lama back to his palace in Tibet via the plain of Burma. The 72-year old man doesn’t need climb over Himalaya Mountains.
Excluded from the Western-dominated “legitimate” energy sources, Beijing has to look to those “illegitimate” energy sources. With democratic-styled regime change in the places like Khartoum, Beijing’s “illegitimate” oil supply will be cut off. China’s GDP growth will slow down. In the case of China, a 10% GDP growth is not an economic miracle, but a basic requirement for political stability. Even a 1% drop in GDP growth would create several million new unemployed who would become the driving force for the regime change in China.
The Communist Party of China is only one of many giant monsters in China’s history. This country has always been governed by various authoritarian monsters during its 5,000 year history. If China's communist monster collapses, who will replace it? Who can replace it? Will it ever be replaced?
If China collapses, what then for this world?
But I am also sick of those so-called international human rights activists’ political prejudice and shallowness. Who is the real target behind their call for boycott Beijing Olympic Games? Not Khartoum! Not Yangon!
They naively believe that genocide cannot be stopped in Darfur because Beijing has resisted international pressure to bring peace to Darfur. They believe that the Burmese junta would not have cracked down on the monks’ protests without a tacit signal from Beijing that it would veto any sanctions bill at the UN. They may be naïve, but their governments which back them up are not stupid.
Behind the Western criticisms of Beijing over Khartoum and Yangon, there is a new round of great power politics is unfolding. This time, it is in a different way. Like the “hard” arms race in the Cold War which ended the USSR, the “soft” bullets in such “morals race” (wrapped with human rights banners) can also drag the rising dragon down.
Angela Merkel has met the Dalai Lama in her office. Canada will follow up. Who is next, India, Japan, or even the US? If Yangon collapses, Aung San Su Kyi will drive the Dalai Lama back to his palace in Tibet via the plain of Burma. The 72-year old man doesn’t need climb over Himalaya Mountains.
Excluded from the Western-dominated “legitimate” energy sources, Beijing has to look to those “illegitimate” energy sources. With democratic-styled regime change in the places like Khartoum, Beijing’s “illegitimate” oil supply will be cut off. China’s GDP growth will slow down. In the case of China, a 10% GDP growth is not an economic miracle, but a basic requirement for political stability. Even a 1% drop in GDP growth would create several million new unemployed who would become the driving force for the regime change in China.
The Communist Party of China is only one of many giant monsters in China’s history. This country has always been governed by various authoritarian monsters during its 5,000 year history. If China's communist monster collapses, who will replace it? Who can replace it? Will it ever be replaced?
If China collapses, what then for this world?
Monday, October 1, 2007
The Fourth Wave of Newly Independent States
[Note: This is in part a reply to Miodrag Kapor’s earlier post on Kosovo, but due to its length, I have decided to make it a separate post rather than a comment.]
You are right to worry about the cascade effect of Kosovo’s independence. As we have discussed previously, I believe the province’s independence is a fait accompli and cannot be avoided at this point. While some commentators have said Russia will block it out of ideology and not use it a bargaining chit, I disagree. I have watched the Putin administration closely for almost a decade and have yet to see ideology rear its ugly head. He is a pragmatism to the core and will ultimately sell out the Serbs (an outcome which, I believe, would be in the nation's long-term interests) to get his way with Abkhazia (though I still not see an independent South Ossetia in the cards).
Given this, I believe that the international community needs to begin addressing the implications of the “fourth wave” of newly independent states within and on the borders of the European Union. The first and most important wave (1918-1922) resulted from the breakup of the Romanov, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Hohenzollern empires after the Great War, creating Cazecholovakia & the Baltics and reviving Poland and Albania. While the second wave (1945-1969) which was associated with decolonization did little to redraw borders in Europe, the loss of colonial possessions did much to change the face of the Continent. The third wave (1989-1993) again remade the map of Eastern Europe, as the federal states of Yugoslavia and the USSR disintegrated. Today, we sit in the liminal space between waves three and four. In addition to Kosovo, Republika Srpska, Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Flanders, Wallonia, Euskadi (Basque Country), Catalunya, Padania, Corsica, and various ethno-republics of the Russian Federation are clamoring for absolute autonomy or outright independence. The devolution of power to regional and ethnic areas which the EU has facilitated over the years is a powerful catalyst for these polities. Kosovo’s independence will encourage them even more.
Inside the European Union (especially within the Euro- and Schengen-zones), granting independence is a bureaucratic nightmare, but will have little effect on peace and stability. Outside its borders, things are much stickier—especially where Russian troops might have a say in territorial transfers. Regardless, the lawless statelets which have proliferated since 1989 are a major problem and must be addressed soon. Forcing breakaway republics to adopt parts of the acquis communautaire could possibly function as tool to reduce crime, trafficking, etc. However, to get to that point, the EU needs a policy. In post-Soviet space, it will be Russia that rewards and punishes behavior, and so the Kremlin will need to do its part as well. The question is: how comfortable is the international community with the fracturing of the current state system? Is a 300-member UN anathema or could it be accommodated?
A unified position is the only way forward. Back in the early 1990s, Bush the Elder told Croatia and Slovenia not to jump ship, but there were back channel signals which contradicted this official position, and, of course, the Germans did not hide their feelings about Croatian and Slovene independence. Currently, such mixed messages again proliferate. As Miodrag pointed out in his earlier post, a common EU position on Kosovo itself is almost unimaginable, much less a concerted agreement on the general trend towards splinter states. This situation is likely to emerge as an important shibboleth in years to come. Angela Merkel has shown an amazing propensity for ostrich-like behavior on tough issues, so don’t look to Germany to provide answers. I suspect it instead be Nicholas Sarkozy that decides the future of the European map.
You are right to worry about the cascade effect of Kosovo’s independence. As we have discussed previously, I believe the province’s independence is a fait accompli and cannot be avoided at this point. While some commentators have said Russia will block it out of ideology and not use it a bargaining chit, I disagree. I have watched the Putin administration closely for almost a decade and have yet to see ideology rear its ugly head. He is a pragmatism to the core and will ultimately sell out the Serbs (an outcome which, I believe, would be in the nation's long-term interests) to get his way with Abkhazia (though I still not see an independent South Ossetia in the cards).
Given this, I believe that the international community needs to begin addressing the implications of the “fourth wave” of newly independent states within and on the borders of the European Union. The first and most important wave (1918-1922) resulted from the breakup of the Romanov, Habsburg, Ottoman, and Hohenzollern empires after the Great War, creating Cazecholovakia & the Baltics and reviving Poland and Albania. While the second wave (1945-1969) which was associated with decolonization did little to redraw borders in Europe, the loss of colonial possessions did much to change the face of the Continent. The third wave (1989-1993) again remade the map of Eastern Europe, as the federal states of Yugoslavia and the USSR disintegrated. Today, we sit in the liminal space between waves three and four. In addition to Kosovo, Republika Srpska, Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Flanders, Wallonia, Euskadi (Basque Country), Catalunya, Padania, Corsica, and various ethno-republics of the Russian Federation are clamoring for absolute autonomy or outright independence. The devolution of power to regional and ethnic areas which the EU has facilitated over the years is a powerful catalyst for these polities. Kosovo’s independence will encourage them even more.
Inside the European Union (especially within the Euro- and Schengen-zones), granting independence is a bureaucratic nightmare, but will have little effect on peace and stability. Outside its borders, things are much stickier—especially where Russian troops might have a say in territorial transfers. Regardless, the lawless statelets which have proliferated since 1989 are a major problem and must be addressed soon. Forcing breakaway republics to adopt parts of the acquis communautaire could possibly function as tool to reduce crime, trafficking, etc. However, to get to that point, the EU needs a policy. In post-Soviet space, it will be Russia that rewards and punishes behavior, and so the Kremlin will need to do its part as well. The question is: how comfortable is the international community with the fracturing of the current state system? Is a 300-member UN anathema or could it be accommodated?
A unified position is the only way forward. Back in the early 1990s, Bush the Elder told Croatia and Slovenia not to jump ship, but there were back channel signals which contradicted this official position, and, of course, the Germans did not hide their feelings about Croatian and Slovene independence. Currently, such mixed messages again proliferate. As Miodrag pointed out in his earlier post, a common EU position on Kosovo itself is almost unimaginable, much less a concerted agreement on the general trend towards splinter states. This situation is likely to emerge as an important shibboleth in years to come. Angela Merkel has shown an amazing propensity for ostrich-like behavior on tough issues, so don’t look to Germany to provide answers. I suspect it instead be Nicholas Sarkozy that decides the future of the European map.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Kosovo's case - consequences and implications
In a recent visit to Albania, President Bush received a much needed warm welcome by local officials, as well as by the local population. The reason was very simple: in contradiction with international law, Mr. Bush promised Albanians that Kosovo would be recognized as an independent country in a reasonable time period, thus rewarding the region that has the highest level of the organized crime in Europe. He looked very satisfied knowing that there exists a single European nation that actually likes him.
On the other side, the Russian president Vladimir Putin is very satisfied that the current political situation in Serbia corresponds to Russian interests in that part of Europe. Not long ago, the current prime minister of Serbia Vojislav Kostunica declared himself a big follower of the Western ideas in politics. Unfortunately, he did not take into account that he would sacrifice most of his former principles just to stay in power. From making a political union with former Milosevic and Arkan allies to the recent change of the party's status (Democratic Party of Serbia, not to be confused with Democratic Party in Serbia) which explicitly says that the party is against joining the NATO alliance in the future.
Taking into account the strongly entrenched views between the U.S. and Kosovo on one side and the Russian Federation and Serbia on the other, it seams that the (unified?) view of the European Union will have a decisive impact on the future solution of the breakaway region. But again, will it be there a unified EU view regarding Kosovo's future status? It is hard to confirm, particularly since there are many regions in Europe that have similar problems (including a recent widening chasm of distrust between Belgium's two main language communities). The long-run worst case scenario would be a possible recognition of Kosovo's independence without the resolution of the U.N. Security Council, which is unfortunately the most likely scenario considering the current situation.
What impact will it have on world politics? Will other problematic regions in the world take Kosovo's case as a prime example for their ultimate political goals (just to mention the cases of Abhkazia and Taiwan)? I would not be able to give a conclusive answer right now because there is, I believe, currently none.
In the case of the Balkan peninsula, there would be a long term animosity, not only between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, but also between Bosnia (why the Republic of Srpska should not have the same rights as Kosovo?) and Serbia; not to mention a most likely scenario of Serb's rebellion in the northern part of Kosovo (where Serbs make up the majority of the population) against a unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence. Depending on the general political relations between the Russian Federation and the U.S., Serbia actually might go more quickly into political and economic reforms than it would otherwise do with the region that is economically underdeveloped and has two million insubordinate people.
Yet, by accepting this fact, Serbia would have to give up its highly valued national pride which plays a huge role among the majority of Serbs.
On the other side, the Russian president Vladimir Putin is very satisfied that the current political situation in Serbia corresponds to Russian interests in that part of Europe. Not long ago, the current prime minister of Serbia Vojislav Kostunica declared himself a big follower of the Western ideas in politics. Unfortunately, he did not take into account that he would sacrifice most of his former principles just to stay in power. From making a political union with former Milosevic and Arkan allies to the recent change of the party's status (Democratic Party of Serbia, not to be confused with Democratic Party in Serbia) which explicitly says that the party is against joining the NATO alliance in the future.
Taking into account the strongly entrenched views between the U.S. and Kosovo on one side and the Russian Federation and Serbia on the other, it seams that the (unified?) view of the European Union will have a decisive impact on the future solution of the breakaway region. But again, will it be there a unified EU view regarding Kosovo's future status? It is hard to confirm, particularly since there are many regions in Europe that have similar problems (including a recent widening chasm of distrust between Belgium's two main language communities). The long-run worst case scenario would be a possible recognition of Kosovo's independence without the resolution of the U.N. Security Council, which is unfortunately the most likely scenario considering the current situation.
What impact will it have on world politics? Will other problematic regions in the world take Kosovo's case as a prime example for their ultimate political goals (just to mention the cases of Abhkazia and Taiwan)? I would not be able to give a conclusive answer right now because there is, I believe, currently none.
In the case of the Balkan peninsula, there would be a long term animosity, not only between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, but also between Bosnia (why the Republic of Srpska should not have the same rights as Kosovo?) and Serbia; not to mention a most likely scenario of Serb's rebellion in the northern part of Kosovo (where Serbs make up the majority of the population) against a unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence. Depending on the general political relations between the Russian Federation and the U.S., Serbia actually might go more quickly into political and economic reforms than it would otherwise do with the region that is economically underdeveloped and has two million insubordinate people.
Yet, by accepting this fact, Serbia would have to give up its highly valued national pride which plays a huge role among the majority of Serbs.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Pre-emption is the only way….says the EU?
In an article entitled, “Brussels Rules OK,” in the September 20th issue of The Economist, readers were told that the European Union has become the global trendsetter in economic regulations regarding everything from trade practices to quality to ethics. The author goes on to suggest that the EU’s “precautionary principle” (which refers to the ways in which EU regulations preempt the behavior, production, and distribution of many global goods), has been more successful than its counterpart, the American style, cost-benefit analysis, (which relies more heavily on market forces and post-production lawsuits) at attracting a global audience for regulatory behavior.
Those supporting its merits value its ability to test potentially harmful products before they hit the marketplace. Supporters see it as the best way to ensure the safety of both the business community and consumers. They argue that by forcing the business community into compliance with harsher environmental and safety issues, the business community as a whole will gain a competitive edge (with the exception of Microsoft, recently ruled as an illegal monopoly in Europe) and consumers will have access to better products.
Those arguing against such “preemption” see things differently. Take for example an article appearing in Stratfor, entitled, “Precautionary Policy: Leaving the Precautionary Principle Behind.” Bart Mongoven argues that for all of its “apparent” benefits and common sense, the precautionary principle is not being employed as a policy prescription, but one that is shrouded in protectionism, stifles innovation, and wastes millions of dollars/euros.
“In early attempts to apply the principle to regulatory decision-making the tendency was to argue that an activity or product should not be allowed until it had been proven not to cause harm. The problem was that despite centuries of careful thought and study, proving a negative remains impossible, so applying this strict standard was never a credible approach. And parsing the issue—for instance, defining whether a practice or substance gave rise to “concerns”—proved too vague for the precautionary principle to withstand scrutiny from legislators and regulators” (Stratfor, May 25, 2006).
So why has the world embraced this European policy; a policy that seems to be utterly counterproductive? Well, it appears that these protectionist policies (let’s face it, that’s what the precautionary policy is) have given a great deal of authority back to the state; a power that many critics have claimed it had been losing for quite some time. Also, the EU has proven to be more powerful than the mighty Microsoft, the face of the American corporation; finding Gates and Co. guilty of illegally dominating European competition and stifling homegrown talent.
In short, many countries/regional organizations around the world (especially those in the throes of industrialization) applaud the measures created in Brussels because it keeps the money in state hands and allows home-grown businesses the opportunity to compete against more powerful multinational corporations. Is this the solution to woes of globalization? I am not too convinced that it is. What I am convinced of is that it will allow Europe to perform two necessary short term tasks: 1.) maintain its position as the standard bearer for global ethics and 2.) keep the United States and its business interests at arms length.
Those supporting its merits value its ability to test potentially harmful products before they hit the marketplace. Supporters see it as the best way to ensure the safety of both the business community and consumers. They argue that by forcing the business community into compliance with harsher environmental and safety issues, the business community as a whole will gain a competitive edge (with the exception of Microsoft, recently ruled as an illegal monopoly in Europe) and consumers will have access to better products.
Those arguing against such “preemption” see things differently. Take for example an article appearing in Stratfor, entitled, “Precautionary Policy: Leaving the Precautionary Principle Behind.” Bart Mongoven argues that for all of its “apparent” benefits and common sense, the precautionary principle is not being employed as a policy prescription, but one that is shrouded in protectionism, stifles innovation, and wastes millions of dollars/euros.
“In early attempts to apply the principle to regulatory decision-making the tendency was to argue that an activity or product should not be allowed until it had been proven not to cause harm. The problem was that despite centuries of careful thought and study, proving a negative remains impossible, so applying this strict standard was never a credible approach. And parsing the issue—for instance, defining whether a practice or substance gave rise to “concerns”—proved too vague for the precautionary principle to withstand scrutiny from legislators and regulators” (Stratfor, May 25, 2006).
So why has the world embraced this European policy; a policy that seems to be utterly counterproductive? Well, it appears that these protectionist policies (let’s face it, that’s what the precautionary policy is) have given a great deal of authority back to the state; a power that many critics have claimed it had been losing for quite some time. Also, the EU has proven to be more powerful than the mighty Microsoft, the face of the American corporation; finding Gates and Co. guilty of illegally dominating European competition and stifling homegrown talent.
In short, many countries/regional organizations around the world (especially those in the throes of industrialization) applaud the measures created in Brussels because it keeps the money in state hands and allows home-grown businesses the opportunity to compete against more powerful multinational corporations. Is this the solution to woes of globalization? I am not too convinced that it is. What I am convinced of is that it will allow Europe to perform two necessary short term tasks: 1.) maintain its position as the standard bearer for global ethics and 2.) keep the United States and its business interests at arms length.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Why Bush and Ahmadinejad Deserve Each Other
Today, I watched Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance on 60 Minutes with awe. In an interview with Scott Pelley, the Iranian president refused to provide a single straightforward answer to any of the questions posed to him (at least the ones aired on Sunday night’s broadcast). When faced with such queries as “Can you tell me that you are not sending to weapons to Iraq?” and “Will you pledge not to test a nuclear weapon?,” Ahmadinejad purposefully refused to make himself understood. He responded to “yes” or “no” questions with elaborate—even floral—musings about human nature, world history, et cetera. (He was similarly vague, evasive, and obtuse at Columbia University on Monday).
As the interview progressed, I realized how similar Ahmadinejad and US President George W. Bush are in their political styles and personal habits. Both craft elaborate parallel universes where they are defenders of freedom, peace, and morality. Both refuse to answer questions they do not like. Such refusals similarly take the form of fatuous counter-questions which provide neither context nor content to important issues. (My favorite is when Bush responds to reporters’ questions with “The question I thought you were going ask me was…” and then he answers that question). Both engage in mind-numbing discursive manipulation to frame issues and attack their critics.
Both are so convinced of their own righteousness that fail to see that their respective worlds are falling down around them. Their faith blinds them to problems of their own making. Both men lack any sort of intellectual curiosity (this is born out by their refusal to deal with difficult issues directly and their proclivities towards instant answers without even a millisecond for reflection). Both laugh and smile at inappropriate times, even when talking about death and destruction. Both hide behind affected piety (Ahmadinejad curiously affirmed "I am a Muslim. I cannot tell a lie." in the interview) and accuse the other of apostasy (Ahmadinejad vociferously denied that Bush was a Christian because of his policies in Iraq). When things get tough, they blame others because they have God on their side so obviously they have done nothing wrong.
Do these two deserve each other? Most definitely. But my question is, what have we, the American people, and the Iranians done to deserve them?
As the interview progressed, I realized how similar Ahmadinejad and US President George W. Bush are in their political styles and personal habits. Both craft elaborate parallel universes where they are defenders of freedom, peace, and morality. Both refuse to answer questions they do not like. Such refusals similarly take the form of fatuous counter-questions which provide neither context nor content to important issues. (My favorite is when Bush responds to reporters’ questions with “The question I thought you were going ask me was…” and then he answers that question). Both engage in mind-numbing discursive manipulation to frame issues and attack their critics.
Both are so convinced of their own righteousness that fail to see that their respective worlds are falling down around them. Their faith blinds them to problems of their own making. Both men lack any sort of intellectual curiosity (this is born out by their refusal to deal with difficult issues directly and their proclivities towards instant answers without even a millisecond for reflection). Both laugh and smile at inappropriate times, even when talking about death and destruction. Both hide behind affected piety (Ahmadinejad curiously affirmed "I am a Muslim. I cannot tell a lie." in the interview) and accuse the other of apostasy (Ahmadinejad vociferously denied that Bush was a Christian because of his policies in Iraq). When things get tough, they blame others because they have God on their side so obviously they have done nothing wrong.
Do these two deserve each other? Most definitely. But my question is, what have we, the American people, and the Iranians done to deserve them?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Let's Not Forget to Not Remember
A new movie (set for release in August 2008) that chronicles the failed assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler by a German military officer has faced harsh criticism in the court of German public opinion. Valkyrie, starring Hollywood leading man and scientology couch dancer, Tom Cruise, follows the last days of Colonial Claus von Stauffenberg and his plan to destroy the Third Reich from within; an act that demonstrated rather boldly the fact that not all Germans living under Hitler were arm-band wearing, swastika-waving, Nazis. Yet apparently in contemporary Germany, the past, even when it is portrayed heroically, is still very much a part of the guilty present.
In this age of globalization, humanity tends to think about tomorrow much more than today, let alone sixty years ago. But in Germany, and in particular Berlin, it seems that the past is omnipresent. Take for example the Holocaust Museum. Not only is its content designed to serve as a constant reminder of the final solution, but so too is its location. Sitting across the street from the Bundestag, the Holocaust Museum was intentionally placed there to serve as a physical reminder to each and every member of the German political establishment.
Yet memories and memorials and are one thing, what about the Cruise film? Well, it turns out that Mr. Cruise has apparently broken two of the most sacred social and political taboos in Germany: a deadly cocktail of Nazi symbolism and scientology. In Germany, the law stipulates that both the Church of Scientology and any representation of Nazi symbolism are against the fundamental features of democracy and are therefore, against the law. In fact, the German criminal code is clear to indicate that any representation of Nazi symbolism whether it’s in the form of a political party, a swastika, or a verbal or written denial of the Holocaust can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
So what has Cruise done? Well, actually nothing; that is by American standards, a standard that will judge Tom Cruise by his shortcomings as an actor. To Germans however, their troubled past, complete with swastikas and armbands will be brought to life for the world to see by a member of the Church of L. Ron Hubbard. For Mr. Cruise’s sake, I hope he has left enough room on the mother-ship.
In this age of globalization, humanity tends to think about tomorrow much more than today, let alone sixty years ago. But in Germany, and in particular Berlin, it seems that the past is omnipresent. Take for example the Holocaust Museum. Not only is its content designed to serve as a constant reminder of the final solution, but so too is its location. Sitting across the street from the Bundestag, the Holocaust Museum was intentionally placed there to serve as a physical reminder to each and every member of the German political establishment.
Yet memories and memorials and are one thing, what about the Cruise film? Well, it turns out that Mr. Cruise has apparently broken two of the most sacred social and political taboos in Germany: a deadly cocktail of Nazi symbolism and scientology. In Germany, the law stipulates that both the Church of Scientology and any representation of Nazi symbolism are against the fundamental features of democracy and are therefore, against the law. In fact, the German criminal code is clear to indicate that any representation of Nazi symbolism whether it’s in the form of a political party, a swastika, or a verbal or written denial of the Holocaust can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.
So what has Cruise done? Well, actually nothing; that is by American standards, a standard that will judge Tom Cruise by his shortcomings as an actor. To Germans however, their troubled past, complete with swastikas and armbands will be brought to life for the world to see by a member of the Church of L. Ron Hubbard. For Mr. Cruise’s sake, I hope he has left enough room on the mother-ship.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Austria Doesn’t Fear Bruno…Why It Should
Sacha Baron Cohen is on the verge of unleashing his third motion picture Frankenstein: the Nazi-fetishizing Austrian fashionista Bruno. While the Cambridge-educated comedian’s other creations—Ali G and Borat—enraged the black identity police and the Kazakh government respectively, Bruno does not even register on Vienna’s radar. When confronted with a question about Baron Cohen’s next movie project, an Austrian Foreign Ministry official responded, “Bruno who?”
Despite being the birthplace of Hitler, the Austrians seem to have moved on from worrying about historical stereotypes, especially in light of media attention surrounding the government’s recent imprisonment of the British historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving. While Viennese diplomats may not be taking much notice of the faux reporter who argues that the fashion-illiterati should be "put on trains and shipped off tocamps," the same cannot be said for the country’s tourism industry. According to one report:
Perhaps the tour marketers understand the mass-mediated global environment a bit better than Viennese policymakers. In today’s world of over-stimulated, under-educated, culturally-confused Western youth, your country is only as good its last pop-cult reference. Austrians wrongly assume that the average American 20-year old knows much more about their country than they know about Kazakhstan. I would be willing to bet that they would wrong at least half of the time. I am not saying that American youth are brimming with facts about Nauryz, kumiss, Kashagan field, the Nazarbayev clan, etc., but that they know very little about Austria. If you polled one on the street, I think you would be lucky to pry a single viable factoid from their brain. Given such unhappy realities, the country’s governmental image-makers would be wise not to ignore Baron Cohen.
Kazakhstan’s diplomatic legions made the best of a bad situation when Borat shoved their country into the spotlight. They worked hard to counter Baron Cohen because they knew that he had more power than they did among certain sections of the general public. Over time, they tamed their out-of-control national brand. The Austrians have a false sense of confidence about the resonance and content of their country’s image. This comes from being the descendent of one of Europe’s largest empires, Austria’s special role in the Cold War as a neutral meeting ground for East and West, and most recently from EU insulation. Austria is situated completely within Europe—mentally and physically. Of course Brits, Slovaks, and Swedes know something about Austria because the trains run through there. But what about the Americans?
It’s time to wake up and smell the Starbucks. If Vienna’s Scheißendummführeren do not counter Bruno, there will be a generation of American youths that think all Austrians are gay, fascistoid Schantineux.
Despite being the birthplace of Hitler, the Austrians seem to have moved on from worrying about historical stereotypes, especially in light of media attention surrounding the government’s recent imprisonment of the British historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving. While Viennese diplomats may not be taking much notice of the faux reporter who argues that the fashion-illiterati should be "put on trains and shipped off tocamps," the same cannot be said for the country’s tourism industry. According to one report:
"Panic is now spreading among Austria’s tourism marketers, who fear that the gay fashionista, Bruno, will trigger images of a country brimful of Nazis instead of the advertised mountains, blue lakes and pretty girls in Dirndl folk costumes. If Borat’s success is indicative, they are justifiably terrified. Bruno’s air-headed adoration of Adolf Hitler could well remind prospective visitors that Austria still has a number of unresolved issues with its Nazi past, not to mention an active and rather successful rightist party."
Perhaps the tour marketers understand the mass-mediated global environment a bit better than Viennese policymakers. In today’s world of over-stimulated, under-educated, culturally-confused Western youth, your country is only as good its last pop-cult reference. Austrians wrongly assume that the average American 20-year old knows much more about their country than they know about Kazakhstan. I would be willing to bet that they would wrong at least half of the time. I am not saying that American youth are brimming with facts about Nauryz, kumiss, Kashagan field, the Nazarbayev clan, etc., but that they know very little about Austria. If you polled one on the street, I think you would be lucky to pry a single viable factoid from their brain. Given such unhappy realities, the country’s governmental image-makers would be wise not to ignore Baron Cohen.
Kazakhstan’s diplomatic legions made the best of a bad situation when Borat shoved their country into the spotlight. They worked hard to counter Baron Cohen because they knew that he had more power than they did among certain sections of the general public. Over time, they tamed their out-of-control national brand. The Austrians have a false sense of confidence about the resonance and content of their country’s image. This comes from being the descendent of one of Europe’s largest empires, Austria’s special role in the Cold War as a neutral meeting ground for East and West, and most recently from EU insulation. Austria is situated completely within Europe—mentally and physically. Of course Brits, Slovaks, and Swedes know something about Austria because the trains run through there. But what about the Americans?
It’s time to wake up and smell the Starbucks. If Vienna’s Scheißendummführeren do not counter Bruno, there will be a generation of American youths that think all Austrians are gay, fascistoid Schantineux.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Local Policy, Global Cities
Local controversies around particular proposals from Mayor Bloomberg's new long-term plan for New York City have emerged recently, ranging from congestion pricing to zoning, and others. These proposals would entail immediate local repercussions if enacted and, therefore, should obviously be of concern to residents and other local stakeholders. However, what I think has been missing from the debate is the following: how does New York's long-term development affects its standing as a significant node in the network of global cities? Should the global economy be concerned about the specifics of New York's development?
Particular constellations of cultural, transportation, educational, and other infrastructures in New York attract and sustain the global components within the city that connect directly to global flows; examples of those global components being the finance industry, corporate headquarters, and such. In other words, many of the individuals who have chosen to live in New York in order to work in Wall Street do so in large part because of the cultural vibrancy, excellent transit options, and related amenities the city offers, and, in the same token, many of the institutions headquartered in Wall Street have done so in large part because of the communications and transportation infrastructures, and the cadre of highly educated individuals concentrated in the city. In recognition of this point, Hong Kong's chief executive said recently of New York and London:
"It’s not only merchant bankers and the Financial Times. You need art, you need the West End, you need Wimbledon. They all need the Yankee Stadium and Broadway – that’s all in the make-up of a good city.”
The policy decisions that made possible these city amenities, like "the Yankee Stadium and Broadway," were taken at the local level, yet their implications have outgrown the local and national scale to become enmeshed in a global scale. The growing significance in global affairs of cities has entailed the increasing globalization of urban policy, as urban policy has global repercussions and global trends influence the direction of urban policy. So, debates surrounding congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan should matter not only to New Yorkers, but to all concerned about the global economy.
Cognoscenti of the world, procreate
Idiocracy, a little-known American movie from 2006, depicts a frightening dystopia: in the year 2505, we are all idiots. Generation after generation, educated, intelligent, and career-oriented couples continue to have less kids, if any at all, and later in life. Meanwhile their less enlightened peers happily outbreed them. The cumulative effect of this particular kind of dysgenics is a dumbing-down of human society that has less to do with the evils of television than with demographics and the gradual deterioration of our gene pool. Heady subject for a silly comedy.
Idiocracy speaks to the well-attested fact that poorer, less educated people are having larger progenies, while the rich and/or educated choose career or leisure in detriment of the reproduction of the species. This demographic time bomb is old news for many Lebanese, Israelis, or Serbs in their respective backyards, but has planetary consequences. Most of the billions of people to be added to the total of human population in the coming years will be born in the developing world. In the developed world, immigrant families gift their ungrateful hosts with both cheap labor and breeders. Most young Westerners today are empty-nesters that either can´t or don´t want to procreate to ensure that their kin doesn´t die out. In a recent Pew Research Center survey in the United States, the category "having children" ranked second to last among nine conditions for a succesful and happy marriage, taking a whooping 24-point-drop from 1990. "Sharing household chores", "adequate income", "good housing", "shared tastes", and "shared religious beliefs" were all deemed more important than children ("Agreement on politics" was the only one that scored worse than children, some forty points away from similar categories, such as shared tastes or shared religious beliefs. It spooks me that arguments about the removal of your toddler´s foreskin, which movie should win the Oscars, or which curtains look good in the living room, could be more important than the politics of your significant other. But that´s a whole other post).
Demographics and genes are also the subject of one of the most original books published this year. In Farewell to Alms, economist historian Gregory Clarks argues that the cultural and genetic transmission of capitalist values among the British population over centuries allowed it to escape the Malthusian trap and jumpstart the Industrial Revolution that moved some societies from poverty and underpopulation to relative affluence and drastic population growth. With a controversial thesis, Clark will now feature prominently in the academic debate over the rise of the West, which ranges from David Landes´emphasis on cultural values to Jared Diamond´s emphasis on environmental happenstance. And its title, a modified version of Hemingway´s famous novel, surely aims at putting it at the center of the development debate as well -more aid, says Sachs, less aid, says Easterly. To me at least, the most thought-provoking part is that these capitalist values (nonviolence, literacy, and a willingness to save and work long hours) spread and prevail due to a change in the nature of human population. In England, during the centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, the upper classes bred more effectively than the lower classes, whose infants died in massive numbers. This resulted in downward social mobility, as the progeny of the rich and educated, moving away from privilege and idleness, gradually took over their occupations. As Clark puts it, "the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages." The Samurai in Japan or the Qing in China, however, were strikingly unfertile.
If you are reading this and a torrent of objections to Clark streams through your thoughts, don´t rush to reply this post with your comments. First, find a mate. Be fruitful. Multiply.
Idiocracy speaks to the well-attested fact that poorer, less educated people are having larger progenies, while the rich and/or educated choose career or leisure in detriment of the reproduction of the species. This demographic time bomb is old news for many Lebanese, Israelis, or Serbs in their respective backyards, but has planetary consequences. Most of the billions of people to be added to the total of human population in the coming years will be born in the developing world. In the developed world, immigrant families gift their ungrateful hosts with both cheap labor and breeders. Most young Westerners today are empty-nesters that either can´t or don´t want to procreate to ensure that their kin doesn´t die out. In a recent Pew Research Center survey in the United States, the category "having children" ranked second to last among nine conditions for a succesful and happy marriage, taking a whooping 24-point-drop from 1990. "Sharing household chores", "adequate income", "good housing", "shared tastes", and "shared religious beliefs" were all deemed more important than children ("Agreement on politics" was the only one that scored worse than children, some forty points away from similar categories, such as shared tastes or shared religious beliefs. It spooks me that arguments about the removal of your toddler´s foreskin, which movie should win the Oscars, or which curtains look good in the living room, could be more important than the politics of your significant other. But that´s a whole other post).
Demographics and genes are also the subject of one of the most original books published this year. In Farewell to Alms, economist historian Gregory Clarks argues that the cultural and genetic transmission of capitalist values among the British population over centuries allowed it to escape the Malthusian trap and jumpstart the Industrial Revolution that moved some societies from poverty and underpopulation to relative affluence and drastic population growth. With a controversial thesis, Clark will now feature prominently in the academic debate over the rise of the West, which ranges from David Landes´emphasis on cultural values to Jared Diamond´s emphasis on environmental happenstance. And its title, a modified version of Hemingway´s famous novel, surely aims at putting it at the center of the development debate as well -more aid, says Sachs, less aid, says Easterly. To me at least, the most thought-provoking part is that these capitalist values (nonviolence, literacy, and a willingness to save and work long hours) spread and prevail due to a change in the nature of human population. In England, during the centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution, the upper classes bred more effectively than the lower classes, whose infants died in massive numbers. This resulted in downward social mobility, as the progeny of the rich and educated, moving away from privilege and idleness, gradually took over their occupations. As Clark puts it, "the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages." The Samurai in Japan or the Qing in China, however, were strikingly unfertile.
If you are reading this and a torrent of objections to Clark streams through your thoughts, don´t rush to reply this post with your comments. First, find a mate. Be fruitful. Multiply.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
French Politics as Unusual
That crushing sound you hear is the death of French politics as usual. On the left and the right, the old guard is making a mockery of themselves as the enfants terribles Nicholas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal remake the French political landscape.
Jacques Chirac—now thankfully ensconced in obscurity—did what he could to hand the Left a victory earlier this year, but despite his poor governance and attempts to undermine his own party (the ridiculously named Union for a Popular Movement or UPM), the people of France gave the son of a Hungarian aristocrat a chance. It seems, at face value, to have been the right choice.
Sarkozy, who is not afraid of hard work (or telling anybody he’s working hard), may come across to the uncareful observer as both Bush-like and liking Bush. While there may be something to the latter, the former analogy is far off the mark. While George W. Bush spent his first few months in office tapping cronies for key jobs before retiring to the ranch to cut brush, Sarkozy boldly built a cabinet of the old and the young from the left and the right. In his government, familiar faces like Bernard Kouchner (Foreign Minister), the left-wing founder of Medicins sans Frontieres, have been joined by an unfamiliar, but astoundingly adept, coterie of political operators, most notably Rachida Dati (Justice Minister). He has reorganized ministries, begun a reform process, plastered over the divisiveness of the presidential election, brought the Bulgarian nurses home, and hammered out a new vision for the country in one short summer. The only valid criticism leveled against him by the socialists is that he “steals our best people” (Kouchner, Jack Lang, etc.).
Despite this success he has brought the right, his arch-nemesis and UPM rival Dominique de Villepin still continues to heap derision on Sarkozy even as he faces a damaging inquiry his own role in a smear campaign against Sarkozy. De Villepin is a product of the old French right with its grandes ecoles, recondite networks, and disdain for the average citizen of the republic. Sarkozy—though seemingly an ideologue—has proven himself beyond ideology, a French Putin if you will, less the secret police background. Of course, he makes the old guard nervous. He has no use for them. He hit the ground running and did not pause to make sure he was scratching the right backs.
This brings us to the Left. Segolene Royal has intimated that the Socialist Party (PS) leadership undermined her campaign. She understates the matter. They wanted her to lose to show that new is bad. But she handled herself wonderfully against the obviously better situated Sarkozy. I believe she emerged from defeat with a mandate for change—not for France, but for the PS. Her post-election split with longtime companion Francoise Hollande, who is currently the head of the PS, was both appropriate and overdue. He had slowly transmogrified into her primary political stumbling block—a frenemy of the most dangerous sort.
He and the other “elephants” (as the old leadership of the PS are known) are loathe to tinker with the party, fearing that such re-engineering will delay their return to power. What they fail to grasp is that continuing to propagate 1970s-style socialism will prevent them ever returning to power (unless they are pitted directly against Le Pen’s forces of darkness). In Spain, Brazil, and elsewhere, the socialists have adapted to the realities of globalization and the fact that Big Business is not the Devil. However, France’s socialist party has spun itself warm but suffocating cocoon—and when Royal made some missteps early in the campaign (countenancing the statocide of Israel, supporting an independent Quebec, etc.) she allowed herself to get trapped in that cocoon. But judging from her recent invective against the party’s leadership, she has learned her lesson. When you see her speak now you realize that Royal mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. I wish her luck, but reform—like revolution—is a messy business. I hope she has the staying power to see her new project through. With Sarkozy dazzling the masses and the media, she might just have the cover she needs to get the job done.
Now if only we in America could hope for such an embarrassment of riches as the French enjoyed in the most recent presidential elections.
Jacques Chirac—now thankfully ensconced in obscurity—did what he could to hand the Left a victory earlier this year, but despite his poor governance and attempts to undermine his own party (the ridiculously named Union for a Popular Movement or UPM), the people of France gave the son of a Hungarian aristocrat a chance. It seems, at face value, to have been the right choice.
Sarkozy, who is not afraid of hard work (or telling anybody he’s working hard), may come across to the uncareful observer as both Bush-like and liking Bush. While there may be something to the latter, the former analogy is far off the mark. While George W. Bush spent his first few months in office tapping cronies for key jobs before retiring to the ranch to cut brush, Sarkozy boldly built a cabinet of the old and the young from the left and the right. In his government, familiar faces like Bernard Kouchner (Foreign Minister), the left-wing founder of Medicins sans Frontieres, have been joined by an unfamiliar, but astoundingly adept, coterie of political operators, most notably Rachida Dati (Justice Minister). He has reorganized ministries, begun a reform process, plastered over the divisiveness of the presidential election, brought the Bulgarian nurses home, and hammered out a new vision for the country in one short summer. The only valid criticism leveled against him by the socialists is that he “steals our best people” (Kouchner, Jack Lang, etc.).
Despite this success he has brought the right, his arch-nemesis and UPM rival Dominique de Villepin still continues to heap derision on Sarkozy even as he faces a damaging inquiry his own role in a smear campaign against Sarkozy. De Villepin is a product of the old French right with its grandes ecoles, recondite networks, and disdain for the average citizen of the republic. Sarkozy—though seemingly an ideologue—has proven himself beyond ideology, a French Putin if you will, less the secret police background. Of course, he makes the old guard nervous. He has no use for them. He hit the ground running and did not pause to make sure he was scratching the right backs.
This brings us to the Left. Segolene Royal has intimated that the Socialist Party (PS) leadership undermined her campaign. She understates the matter. They wanted her to lose to show that new is bad. But she handled herself wonderfully against the obviously better situated Sarkozy. I believe she emerged from defeat with a mandate for change—not for France, but for the PS. Her post-election split with longtime companion Francoise Hollande, who is currently the head of the PS, was both appropriate and overdue. He had slowly transmogrified into her primary political stumbling block—a frenemy of the most dangerous sort.
He and the other “elephants” (as the old leadership of the PS are known) are loathe to tinker with the party, fearing that such re-engineering will delay their return to power. What they fail to grasp is that continuing to propagate 1970s-style socialism will prevent them ever returning to power (unless they are pitted directly against Le Pen’s forces of darkness). In Spain, Brazil, and elsewhere, the socialists have adapted to the realities of globalization and the fact that Big Business is not the Devil. However, France’s socialist party has spun itself warm but suffocating cocoon—and when Royal made some missteps early in the campaign (countenancing the statocide of Israel, supporting an independent Quebec, etc.) she allowed herself to get trapped in that cocoon. But judging from her recent invective against the party’s leadership, she has learned her lesson. When you see her speak now you realize that Royal mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. I wish her luck, but reform—like revolution—is a messy business. I hope she has the staying power to see her new project through. With Sarkozy dazzling the masses and the media, she might just have the cover she needs to get the job done.
Now if only we in America could hope for such an embarrassment of riches as the French enjoyed in the most recent presidential elections.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
New PM for Russia, But Does It Matter?
An unexpected shake-up within the Russian government has the wonks all atwitter. The media have prematurely crowned a man whose name they don't even utter as the next Russian president. But does it really matter?
Today, Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation of the Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and nominated the hitherto low-profile Leningrader Victor Zubkov to fill the spot. It seems like 1999 all over again when Putin himself emerged from the shadows to become the heir-apparent to Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically-elected president of the second Russian republic. However, something is different here. Yeltsin was ill, unpopular, tired, and beaten. Putin is hale (judo-chop!), adored (in the words of Borat, "Like Stalin!"), invigorated (by America's Iraqi morass), and indefatigable (maybe because he's a teetotaler). In other words, he's not going anywhere. Yes, yes--we all know Putin is stepping down at the end of his second term to make way for a new Russian president--ostensibly Zubkov. However, Putin only promised to step down from the presidency. Unlike Mr. Bush who is already salivating about "replenishing the ol' coffers" after leaving office and whose administration is on auto-pilot, Putin is stepping up the political stakes and bringing his "A-game."
As Hans and Franz used to say--or was it Gov. Schwarzenegger--"hear me now and listen to me later:" Putin is going to Ukrainianize the Russian political system at the last minute by making the head of government more powerful than the head of state. However, unlike Ukraine where a Westernizing president was hamstrung by a pro-Russian PM, Putin will find nothing by pliant (if not supine) acquiescence to his electoral legerdemain. Using that tried-and-true Russian system known as "government-by-telephone," Putin will emasculate the office of the presidency in his final hours in office by transferring power to the office of Prime Minister. But before that, he will then utilize Russia's spectral political party structure to ensure his party-of-the-month (name suggestions for the upcoming election: Russia Rocks and You Suck! and Putin or Die) wins election thus enabling him to be appointed PM at his leisure. Voila, the master of political prestidigitation (see my chapter in George Kassimeris' Playing Politics with Terrorism) will have done it again. All legal and keeping with letter if not spirit of his previous declarations.
Now the bigger picture. Is this good or bad for Russia? Definitely good. Russians can expect better healthcare, a more reliable economic system, and certainly more respect internationally than was the case during the chaotic Yeltsin era. Is it good for the rest of us? If you are Polish, Latvian, or Georgian, then a chill is probably going through your spine right now. But what about the Chinese, Indians, Western Europeans, and Americans? The forecast is mixed.
As a PM with more power than Blair could have ever dreamed, Putin will undoubtedly continue to make Russia stronger. A strong Russia is not only desirable, it is a must for the security of Eurasia. But there is a price to pay, and we've already seen the preview: petro-politics where the losers freeze to death; American college students unable to leave Russia because they bought some Soviet baubles from a babushka; long-range Russian bomber flights in the Atlantic and Pacific; the "father of all bombs" tested publicly yesterday; etc.
With these tidbits in mind, we all need to start preparing ourselves for Putin version 2.o.
Today, Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation of the Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and nominated the hitherto low-profile Leningrader Victor Zubkov to fill the spot. It seems like 1999 all over again when Putin himself emerged from the shadows to become the heir-apparent to Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically-elected president of the second Russian republic. However, something is different here. Yeltsin was ill, unpopular, tired, and beaten. Putin is hale (judo-chop!), adored (in the words of Borat, "Like Stalin!"), invigorated (by America's Iraqi morass), and indefatigable (maybe because he's a teetotaler). In other words, he's not going anywhere. Yes, yes--we all know Putin is stepping down at the end of his second term to make way for a new Russian president--ostensibly Zubkov. However, Putin only promised to step down from the presidency. Unlike Mr. Bush who is already salivating about "replenishing the ol' coffers" after leaving office and whose administration is on auto-pilot, Putin is stepping up the political stakes and bringing his "A-game."
As Hans and Franz used to say--or was it Gov. Schwarzenegger--"hear me now and listen to me later:" Putin is going to Ukrainianize the Russian political system at the last minute by making the head of government more powerful than the head of state. However, unlike Ukraine where a Westernizing president was hamstrung by a pro-Russian PM, Putin will find nothing by pliant (if not supine) acquiescence to his electoral legerdemain. Using that tried-and-true Russian system known as "government-by-telephone," Putin will emasculate the office of the presidency in his final hours in office by transferring power to the office of Prime Minister. But before that, he will then utilize Russia's spectral political party structure to ensure his party-of-the-month (name suggestions for the upcoming election: Russia Rocks and You Suck! and Putin or Die) wins election thus enabling him to be appointed PM at his leisure. Voila, the master of political prestidigitation (see my chapter in George Kassimeris' Playing Politics with Terrorism) will have done it again. All legal and keeping with letter if not spirit of his previous declarations.
Now the bigger picture. Is this good or bad for Russia? Definitely good. Russians can expect better healthcare, a more reliable economic system, and certainly more respect internationally than was the case during the chaotic Yeltsin era. Is it good for the rest of us? If you are Polish, Latvian, or Georgian, then a chill is probably going through your spine right now. But what about the Chinese, Indians, Western Europeans, and Americans? The forecast is mixed.
As a PM with more power than Blair could have ever dreamed, Putin will undoubtedly continue to make Russia stronger. A strong Russia is not only desirable, it is a must for the security of Eurasia. But there is a price to pay, and we've already seen the preview: petro-politics where the losers freeze to death; American college students unable to leave Russia because they bought some Soviet baubles from a babushka; long-range Russian bomber flights in the Atlantic and Pacific; the "father of all bombs" tested publicly yesterday; etc.
With these tidbits in mind, we all need to start preparing ourselves for Putin version 2.o.
Kazakhs Eyeing the Latin Alphabet
Last week, EurasiaNet reported that Kazakhstan is officially investigating the cost of switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. The openness with which this question is being addressed tells us much about global culture, decolonization, Russian influence in its "near abroad," and international political economy.
While there have long been advocates amongst the Kazakhs for a change to the Latin alphabet, it only recently that the country's powerful nigh omnipotent president Nursultan Nazarbayev has officially back such a move. The change would lead to the use of two alphabets in the country where Russian-speakers still outnumber those whose primary language is the Turkic tongue Kazakh. The Azeris, Uzbeks, and Turkmen--all Turkic cousins of the Kazakhs--rapidly adopted the Roman alphabet after independence from the Soviet Union. However, the Kazakh government was reticent to do so. On the one hand, remaining within the Cyrillic orthographic space aided relations with its neighbor to the north (Russia). The neutrality-loving Turkmen, the Americanophile Azerbaijani, and the anti-Yeltsinite Uzbek governments all happily distanced themselves from the Russian linguistic, cultural, and political space in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. Language politics was simply a cultural extension of a larger set of policies. We saw this boldly underscored as Uzbekistan's paranoid president Islam Karimov backed a return to Russian-language education after being cold-shouldered by the Americans in the wake of his bloody crackdown on political protest in Andijon a couple of years ago.
Closer to home, keeping Cyrillic enabled Russophones (Russian, Ukrainian, German, Uzbek, Chechens, Koreans, Uyghurs, and others) to more easily adapt to the new "state language," i.e., Kazakh. Keeping a lid on the brain drain of Russian technocrats, educators, scientists, and businesspeople was a major factor in preserving both Russian's role a "language of inter-ethnic communication" and a Cyrillicized form of Kazakh. After a decade of Russian emigration, the trend has stopped. Many Russian emigrants from Kazakhstan have actually decided to return to the country realizing they have better opportunities as a "national minority" (although they loathe this term) under the Kazakhs than as an "immigrant" in Russia (where they are treated no better than other economic migrants from the old southern tier of the Soviet Union.
This is not the first time an alphabet change has been influenced by international politics. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) literally outlawed the adapted Arabic script that Ottoman Turkish had long employed. While it took a generation of surreptitious Arabic scribblers to die off for his vision to be fulfilled, the decision to embrace the Roman alphabet proved seminal. Turkey started a slow gravitational shift towards the Latin world, and now sits on the doorway of Europe (both physically, legally, and mentally). Within Soviet space, script choices have long been shaping politics. After the Bolshevik revolution, many of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia were forced to adopt a Latin script (and abandon their Arabic writing systems), but fearing the spread of pan-Turkism from Anatolia, Stalin quickly ordered these language to adopt Cyrillic creating a generation of schizophrenic writers and readers. The Baltic states--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--existed outside this orthographic madness. After their incorporation into the USSR after WWII, the Balts preserved their alphabets which made learning other European languages much easier. The Belorussians, Ukrainians, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz (along with the Kazakhs and others) were locked into a Cyrillic-informed (and policed) mindset which was a subset of the Soviet world (with the exception of anti-Soviet Yugoslavia, albeit still a communist country).
In today's globalized world, the Kazakhs along with Russian Kazakhstanis (i.e., ethnic Russian citizens of Kazakhstan) are extremely cognizant of the power of the Internet, the English language, and neo-liberal norms of international business. Crafting a a Latinized form of Kazakh will undoubtedly add to the Kazakh people ability to better interface with the outside world, but especially in developing their nation into a vibrant information economy (buoyed by wisely invested petro-dollars). Kazakhs are enthusiastic about their nation resuming an important place in the global chain of commerce. A "new" Silk Road is indeed possible, but it will take openness and engagement on the part of the Kazakhstanis (Kazakh, Russian, and others) to accomplish this. The Latin alphabet is part of this transition. And unlike the Cyrillic, it lacks the overtones of imperialism which characterize the usage of so many writing systems around the globe, simply because the Kazakhs are choosing it of their own free will. [Note: The Kazakhs have no deeply emotional ties to their current script--it is a slightly altered version of the Russian alphabet which ill-fits the manifold Turkic vowels of Kazakhs. Prior to the adoption of a Cyrillicized standard Kazakh written language, Kazakh educated elites worked in the Russian, Persian, or Arabic languages. This makes any change much easier to swallow.]
Now to the bigger picture. Both Russia and Kazakhstan see their state coffers filling up with oil money. This enables Almaty to easily bankroll the expensive switch to Latin lettering, while simultaneously endowing Russia with the confidence to bid farewell to Kazakhstan as a Cyrillic-only space (besides, the Kazakh elite continue speaking Russian at home even if they ponitificate in Kazakh in public while their kids watch Russian MTV and read Russian glossy lad's mags or fashion rags). A few years ago, the Kremlin might have balked at such a move taking it as a sign of Western intrusion, but today Putin no longer worries about American meddling in his backyard. Washington is so distracted by Iraq that the country cannot even manage affairs in its own backyard, i.e., Latin America.
To the Kazakhs, I say "Welcome." To the Russians, I say "We'll see you in about 25 years."
While there have long been advocates amongst the Kazakhs for a change to the Latin alphabet, it only recently that the country's powerful nigh omnipotent president Nursultan Nazarbayev has officially back such a move. The change would lead to the use of two alphabets in the country where Russian-speakers still outnumber those whose primary language is the Turkic tongue Kazakh. The Azeris, Uzbeks, and Turkmen--all Turkic cousins of the Kazakhs--rapidly adopted the Roman alphabet after independence from the Soviet Union. However, the Kazakh government was reticent to do so. On the one hand, remaining within the Cyrillic orthographic space aided relations with its neighbor to the north (Russia). The neutrality-loving Turkmen, the Americanophile Azerbaijani, and the anti-Yeltsinite Uzbek governments all happily distanced themselves from the Russian linguistic, cultural, and political space in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. Language politics was simply a cultural extension of a larger set of policies. We saw this boldly underscored as Uzbekistan's paranoid president Islam Karimov backed a return to Russian-language education after being cold-shouldered by the Americans in the wake of his bloody crackdown on political protest in Andijon a couple of years ago.
Closer to home, keeping Cyrillic enabled Russophones (Russian, Ukrainian, German, Uzbek, Chechens, Koreans, Uyghurs, and others) to more easily adapt to the new "state language," i.e., Kazakh. Keeping a lid on the brain drain of Russian technocrats, educators, scientists, and businesspeople was a major factor in preserving both Russian's role a "language of inter-ethnic communication" and a Cyrillicized form of Kazakh. After a decade of Russian emigration, the trend has stopped. Many Russian emigrants from Kazakhstan have actually decided to return to the country realizing they have better opportunities as a "national minority" (although they loathe this term) under the Kazakhs than as an "immigrant" in Russia (where they are treated no better than other economic migrants from the old southern tier of the Soviet Union.
This is not the first time an alphabet change has been influenced by international politics. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) literally outlawed the adapted Arabic script that Ottoman Turkish had long employed. While it took a generation of surreptitious Arabic scribblers to die off for his vision to be fulfilled, the decision to embrace the Roman alphabet proved seminal. Turkey started a slow gravitational shift towards the Latin world, and now sits on the doorway of Europe (both physically, legally, and mentally). Within Soviet space, script choices have long been shaping politics. After the Bolshevik revolution, many of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia were forced to adopt a Latin script (and abandon their Arabic writing systems), but fearing the spread of pan-Turkism from Anatolia, Stalin quickly ordered these language to adopt Cyrillic creating a generation of schizophrenic writers and readers. The Baltic states--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--existed outside this orthographic madness. After their incorporation into the USSR after WWII, the Balts preserved their alphabets which made learning other European languages much easier. The Belorussians, Ukrainians, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz (along with the Kazakhs and others) were locked into a Cyrillic-informed (and policed) mindset which was a subset of the Soviet world (with the exception of anti-Soviet Yugoslavia, albeit still a communist country).
In today's globalized world, the Kazakhs along with Russian Kazakhstanis (i.e., ethnic Russian citizens of Kazakhstan) are extremely cognizant of the power of the Internet, the English language, and neo-liberal norms of international business. Crafting a a Latinized form of Kazakh will undoubtedly add to the Kazakh people ability to better interface with the outside world, but especially in developing their nation into a vibrant information economy (buoyed by wisely invested petro-dollars). Kazakhs are enthusiastic about their nation resuming an important place in the global chain of commerce. A "new" Silk Road is indeed possible, but it will take openness and engagement on the part of the Kazakhstanis (Kazakh, Russian, and others) to accomplish this. The Latin alphabet is part of this transition. And unlike the Cyrillic, it lacks the overtones of imperialism which characterize the usage of so many writing systems around the globe, simply because the Kazakhs are choosing it of their own free will. [Note: The Kazakhs have no deeply emotional ties to their current script--it is a slightly altered version of the Russian alphabet which ill-fits the manifold Turkic vowels of Kazakhs. Prior to the adoption of a Cyrillicized standard Kazakh written language, Kazakh educated elites worked in the Russian, Persian, or Arabic languages. This makes any change much easier to swallow.]
Now to the bigger picture. Both Russia and Kazakhstan see their state coffers filling up with oil money. This enables Almaty to easily bankroll the expensive switch to Latin lettering, while simultaneously endowing Russia with the confidence to bid farewell to Kazakhstan as a Cyrillic-only space (besides, the Kazakh elite continue speaking Russian at home even if they ponitificate in Kazakh in public while their kids watch Russian MTV and read Russian glossy lad's mags or fashion rags). A few years ago, the Kremlin might have balked at such a move taking it as a sign of Western intrusion, but today Putin no longer worries about American meddling in his backyard. Washington is so distracted by Iraq that the country cannot even manage affairs in its own backyard, i.e., Latin America.
To the Kazakhs, I say "Welcome." To the Russians, I say "We'll see you in about 25 years."
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