April 28, 2007
Racaille, Religion and Repression
The Three Rs of "Sarko the American"
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — Right-wing French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has built his political reputation on "getting tough with crime". Since crime is generally unpopular, that seems an unbeatable theme. But Sarkozy's approach to the problem is highly controversial in France, where it goes against established cultural norms in ways that can be called "American". This approach can be summed up by Sarko's "three Rs": Racaille, Religion and Repression.
April 24, 2007
Who wants Sarko? New or Old France?
Examining the First Round of the French Presidential Elections
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — With over 31% of the vote, compared to slightly under 26% for Ségolène Royal in the April 22 first round of the French presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy is a clear favorite to win the May 6 runoff by a comfortable margin.
The Anglo-American media view the strong showing of Sarkozy as evidence that a new France may finally be seeing the light and turning away from the stultifying "French model" to the freedom-loving example embodied by Britain and the United States.
April 21, 2007
Paris at the Polls
French Foreign Policy and the Presidential Election: The Absent Middle East
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — The French presidential elections will be followed by elections for the National Assembly, whose composition will largely determine the extent to which the new president can keep her or his domestic promises — within the limits of European Union regulations and directives.
Foreign policy, however, is still the privileged domain of the President. Theoretically, the one field in which the presidential election is truly decisive is foreign policy.
April 19, 2007
Rashomon in Leopoldville
Recently Taki recounted one of my favorite Africa stories, about how the German Ambassador to the Belgian Congo got eaten by a crocodile. Except that in Taki's version the fellow turned into an afternoon snack while jogging. The version I'd always remembered — which I've told for so many years I've forgotten how I came to learn it (I was a little kid in the Congo in the early 1960s) — has the Ambassador an enthusiastic water skier who insisted on water skiing the Congo River. He fell off his skis, went under the surface, and was never seen again. To double check which version is right I made inquiries.
April 18, 2007
History From the Bench
In April, 1995, I wrote an article, "The Bosnia Calculation," in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. In it, I argued that claims of numbers killed in Bosnia then being tossed around had been grossly exaggerated for propaganda purposes. At the time I was pilloried relentlessly for my trouble. In the past couple years, however, the best published demographic research shows I was not far off the mark — and my sense of it is, if a reasonable extrapolation were made from my estimates (completed in December 1994) through to the end of the fighting (the Dayton Accords in December 1995) I would have been almost exactly on the money. Anyhow, having been proved more-or-less right in the teeth of furious opposition on such a subject, the prospect of Europe now adopting a law that goes a considerable distance towards criminalizing "Holocaust denial" gives me pause. To be honest, I have no idea how many Jews the Nazis killed, or how exactly they killed them (or not), but I doubt that any court is in a legitimate position to rule on these matters. My a priori assumption — and I believe it's the only appropriate working assumption — is that whenever governments turn a particular historical point over to the courts for enforcement of a prevailing consensus, then that consensus must be wrong. The very idea that a court should enforce historical truth smacks of medieval witch trials. Europe has gone uncomfortably far down this path already and it is to be fervently desired that some residue of American notions of free speech may continue to prevail in our sorry nation. (Art by Drooker.)
April 17, 2007
Black Monday
Not much to say at a time like this. How awful. What a horrible way to die. What a senseless tragedy. The local yokels — Steger & Flinchum — obviously criminally negligent, nevertheless make the bumptious assertion that they did all they could. Annoyingly, a day later, authorities have yet to release information about who did it, or why. And even the Tyrant leapt in with two left feet, rallying the Red Tide against gun control. Whatever one's position, Virginia has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation, whereas common sense suggests it really should be more difficult to purchase a handgun than a six-pack. In this case it probably wouldn't have mattered if indeed early news reports are correct that the guns used had had their serial numbers filed down. But add the gun control issue anyway to hot buttons for 2008. Nor will the jitters clear for a very long time.
April 15, 2007
Bye, Bye, Bees
When I was a kid here in DC, I had to be careful running barefoot in the park during the summer because of the good chance I'd step on a bee and get stung. But for many years now we haven't had a lot of bees around — so few, indeed, that I've noticed and often remarked on it — though I assume some must be left or else we'd have had reports of problems with our flowering plants (Washington has abundant flora). But a nascent crisis has emerged nationally and worldwide over the past year: colony collapse disorder, or CCD, with losses of up to 90% of commercial hives in certain areas. What's going on? And is this how the world ends, with a die-off of bees that makes commercial agriculture impossible?
April 14, 2007
Email Evidence Evanescent
Nobody who's at all followed the White House email story believes its protestations of an innocent, "accidental" loss of up to five million emails. Nobody. Yet congressional committees have been exceedingly slow off the mark. If they mean to recover relevant records they don't have weeks — or maybe that many more days — before even the drives themselves begin to "accidentally" disappear. Unlike wrangling over material that's kept within the White House, an important subset of these emails, because they were transmitted via RNC servers and archived within the RNC, should not even hypothetically receive protected status of any sort. Oversight committees would do well to cast a very wide net, immediately, under threat of contempt of Congress.
April 13, 2007
The Lynching of Don Imus
I'm no fan of Imus. It's been years since I've watched any 'Imus In the Morning' — mainly because I think he's a jerk, a bully, and so excessively internally contradictory that he gives me a headache. And of course what he recently said was stupid, wrong, hurtful... all of that. Nevertheless, one can praise Imus, not unreasonably, as Sam Smith does. Or look past Imus at those most responsible for bringing him down. Perhaps I need to take a sensitivity pill, but it seems to me there's an enormous amount of hypocrisy on display here, purely affected outrage without a shred of embarrassment. A lynch-mob mentality. Imus caught the tail of the whip this time. Who'll be next, for what offense? We have better ways to maintain a civil public dialogue.
‡ (4/15) Frank Rich puts it very well also, here.
April 11, 2007
They Don't Do Gushers in Texas, Anymore
For those who find Peak Oil an important and interesting subject, there's been a good debate over the past few weeks at The Oil Drum (an invaluable resource) over whether Saudi Arabian oil production has now peaked — which if it has that means world production has peaked, too. I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to judge, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say the more immediate estimates are more likely correct than those for five or more years out. If ever there may be a silver lining, Tom Whipple (a past guest on EP's podcast) in an excellent article last week points out that the recent GAO finding (PDF) concluding that Peak Oil is real does signify, if not a change in U.S. government policy, at least recognition that this problem may bite very soon. To paraphrase Tom, we're getting prepared to stumble into solutions.
April 8, 2007
A Note on Wikipedia
In theory, I like Wikipedia. And I've often linked there from here. This evening, however, one of their junior sub-editors decided that the dozen or so Wiki links I've posted there to EP are spam. The question was, "have reputable sources cited EP?" My answer was "no" but if Wiki has an entry for an individual, and I've interviewed that person at length, then by definition the interview should be of interest. Anyhow, the upshot was that this person deleted all Wiki links to EP. It's not worth arguing with them — traffic from Wiki to EP was de minimis — still, it has made me more aware that their editorial process can be exceedingly arbitrary, flawed, and far-reaching. Further, I hesitate to ascribe political motivations, but I believe that is a legitimate question...
April 5, 2007
Reading Intentions
When Gen. Van Riper won the wargame Millennium Challenge 2002, he won by avoiding the big guys' strengths while exploiting their weaknesses. Taking those lessons to heart, it's worth asking, in hindsight, what the Iranians may have gotten from their brief detention of UK sailors and marines. Set aside any propaganda value — so dear to American strategists. Set aside for a moment the fact that, at best, the maritime border between Iraq and Iran is ambiguous and that one cannot exclude the possibility the Iranians acted in good faith defending what they understood to be their territorial waters. Likewise set aside what appears, to me at least, to be the proximate cause of the detention crisis resolution, namely the release by US controlled actors of an Iranian diplomat/hostage. And, finally, set aside considerations of posturing regarding Iran's nuclear program, an issue wholly secondary to Iran's immediate security concerns. What's left?
April 4, 2007
April Schedule
Getting ready for this year's hurricane season we start the month with a conversation with John McQuaid, co-author of Path of Destruction (Little, Brown, 2006), an excellent overview of hurricane Katrina and the chronically failed responses to it from all levels of government. That's this Friday, the 6th. The following Friday, the 13th (and let's not be superstitious about it), I talk with Dr. David Himmelstein, a Harvard professor of medicine and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Care Program. David is an expert on why we should have a universal single-payer health care system here in the U.S., but don't. I've wanted to do a program on health care for a very long time and this conversation fulfilled all my hopes and more. I highly recommend it! The Friday after that, the 20th, I talk with Shashi Tharoor, who at the beginning of April left his position as United Nations Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, after a 28 year career at the UN. Shashi was India's candidate to succeed Kofi Annan late last year, coming a close second out of seven in the vote. I'm not sure how much new news there is here, but I did nudge Shashi enough so that you get a fairly good sense of how senior UN officials think about things. (Conservatively.) I'll have more to say about this one later. And finally, on the 27th, and this is scheduled but the only one not yet recorded, I'll talk with Dr. Christopher Howard, who writes about how the American political system provides socialism for the rich. An excellent line-up and I hope you find these conversations interesting and thought-provoking. As always, if you do, please pass the links to your friends.
April 1, 2007
From Wren Network News
(Compiled by staff.) Department of Homeland Security scientists today announced successful trial tests of a new "ethno-bomb", designed to reduce illegal immigration. The genetically engineered germ distinguishes between citizens, green card holders, and illegal immmigrants according to levels of certain stress hormones in the blood. Once activated, the germ induces in illegal immigrants complete paralysis, lasting up to 48 hours, "a sufficient time," according to DHS spokesman Russ Poolman, "for the authorities to identify the illegal and humanely deport them." "It's what the American people want," Poolman added, "and we're going to give it to them." Researchers from the Pentagon's Darpa organization have recently joined the project, Poolman said, which considerably shortens its implementation timetable. To be dispersed through bomblets and landmines, initial deployment is now scheduled for mid-2007 along both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Asked whether Darpa is trying to modify the "ethno-bomb" to target North Koreans, Poolman had no comment. The White House, citing "national security concerns", offered few additional details but spokeswoman Dana Perino, questioned sharply by Wall Street columnist Evans Chihuahua, acknowledged that several schemes for privatization are under review. Separately, investment banking sources say that David Duke has raised two hundred million dollars in a bid to acquire development rights. Although the administration appears to have prepared exculpatory documentation (and detention authority) in anticipation of public objections, so far there has been no outcry from the fourth estate, Congress, or human rights organizations. ####
