newcity
Is there such a thing as News addiction? I'm sitting in my hotel room watching CNN on TV, reading the "Guardian" on the net, while listening to the BBC World Service on RealAudio. Help!!
There's an interesting article on American anti-Europeanism in the latest New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16059). It seems some Europeans are finally noticing that rancor can flow both ways.
Unfortunately, the article, written by a European, tends to gloss over salient points that generally lead Americans to wonder about European sensibilities. For example, the author, Tim Ash, writes:
Robert Kagan argues that Europe has moved into a Kantian world of "laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation," while the United States remains in a Hobbesian world where military power is still the key to achieving international goals (even liberal ones). The first and obvious question must be: Is this true? I think that Kagan, in what he admits is a "caricature," is actually too kind to Europe, in the sense that he elevates to a deliberate, coherent approach what is, in fact, a story of muddled seeking and national differences. But a second, less obvious question is: Do Europeans and Americans wish this to be true? The answer seems to be yes.
But he also says:
Atlanticist Europeans should not take too much comfort here, for even among lifelong liberal State Department Europeanists there is an acerbic edge of disillusionment with the Europeans. A key episode in their disillusionment was Europe's appalling failure to prevent the genocide of a quarter of a million Bosnian Muslims in Europe's own backyard.[10] Since then, there has been Europe's continued inability to "get its act together" in foreign and security policy, so that even a dispute between Spain and Morocco over a tiny, uninhabited island off the Moroccan coast has to be resolved by Colin Powell.
The immediate question Europeans seem unable to answer is, 'how do you have laws-areas where war is ruled out-without the ability to enforce those laws? Europeans often seem to be against the use of force, except when they're not. The use of force by the US is wrong, but when France involves itself in the Ivory Coast without international approval, that's fine. The fpolicy failure stares them in the face, yet there is a profound reluctance to see it.
How do you deal with those who wish to grab power rather than earn it? It seems this ultimate question of 'realpolitik' has fallen off the European radar screen.
As I've said before, I'm against a war in Iraq, at least today. UNMOVIC needs more time to work. But the Germans have categorically removed the force option, regardless of UNMOVIC's conclusions. So what is the use of the UN if there's no ability to enforce its decisions? Is the UN just a talking shop? That certainly seems to be the German decision. If that's the case, war is inevitable, since someone, at some point, will find war easier than the use of law.
A prediction: if we go to war, the French will support us. And, ironically enough, it will be for oil. They've really pissed us off, so if they don't participate, they'll be out in the cold. To protect TOTAL's contracts, they'll join us.
Corvallis, OR
A few pieces picked up from the media. The "Nation" does a good job of exposing the effects of the far right's war on women in an article by Jennifer Block at:
http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030203&s=block. My favorite part was the speech by a State Dept. representative about how her own experiences in natural family planning should be a guide for the rest of the world. Her view was promptly refuted by a woman from, of all places, Iran. What's discouraging here is how the Bush administration has turned the rights of women over to religious and other fanatics. The Bush Administration has no problem allying itself with Iraq when the victims are women.
Andrew Sullivan, a practicing Roman Catholic (perhaps he'll drop out over the war against gays that's coming in that Church), rants against those who persecute gays, but whole heartedly endorses persecution of women for their sexuality. He rejoices that Jerry Thacker, the homophobic bigot, won't be joining the Administration's committee on AIDS, but complains that the Democrats have a 'love in' with NARAL. He doesn't (to use his phrase) 'get it'. The anti-choice fanatics are the flip side of the coin for the homophobic bigots. It's all tied together by a perverted view of the place of sex in human life. To these religious fundamentalists, sex, especially by women, and gays, should be under strict government control. Sullivan thinks that's an abomination for gays, but just fine for broads. See his blog at Andrewsullivan.com
Corvallis, OR
Well, the 30th anniversary of "Roe v Wade" has come and gone. The marchers have returned home, and the buses are parked, awaiting the next group.
In 1973, after the decision, I became Catholic since they seemed to be the only ones who were fighting abortion. I had been a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a small fundamentalist Protestant sect, but fundamentalism is a dead end; a conclusion it didn't take me long to reach. Catholics were, Protestant protestations notwithstanding, the only ones fighting abortion until the election of Reagan energized the radical Christian right.
John Cardinal Newman was once asked at a dinner why he was Catholic. His answer was that 'it is not a question one answers between the soup and the fish'. Catholicism has an immense structure that those of us who lived it, and reject it, still respect. So the story behind the transitions in the above paragraph is for another day.
Over the years, it's become apparent to me that the first victims of religious fundamentalism are women. A San Diego roommate of one of the 9/11 hijackers said the murderer used to complain about the way American women dressed. Sayyid Qutb, a father of the genocidal Islamist movement, who lived in the US, used to do the same. And Mohammed Atta, the leader of the monsters who killed so many on that day, requested no women attend his funeral.
When I was in college, I had an Orthodox Jewish friend, who happened to be a woman. She used to enjoy holding my hand because, she said, she knew it offended her friends. Orthodox Jewish men don't hold hand with women for 'purity' reasons.
America, of course, has its Southern Baptists, who insist women must be subservient to men, echoing that degenerate, St. Paul, in Ephesians, chapter 6. (The S. Baptists used to read a lot further into that chapter when they used Paul's admonitions to slaves to obey their masters. But they gloss over that point today).
I'm not sure why religious conservatives despise and fear women. Surely it has to do with sexual desire, and the wish to punish women for the sins of men. Regardless, it's one of the great evils of religion. If men could get pregnant, Flo Kennedy once said, abortion would be a sacrament. But women have always paid the price for the religious beliefs of men.
Corvallis, OR
I typically post from Whitehall, PA (near Philadelphia/New York City), but this week am in Corvallis, OR. This is actually a very nice place; a small college town, home of Oregon State University. (Those of us who are chemists revere the place as the shrine of Linus Pauling).
It's 50 degrees here, as opposed to 10 degrees back home. For that I am grateful. Of course, the penalty you pay for traveling is the incessant hotel TV programs featuring 'Reality TV' (there's a contradiction), the endless loop of repeating news stories on CNN, Fox, etc., and the other boring things that substitute for the background noise one has at home.
But it also gives one time to let the news sink in in a way that's not possible when one is at home. With the possibility of war becoming real, you get to begin to understand the points of view from those on opposing sides.
The US, UK, Australia, and several other countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, etc), seem to be standing with the US in its view of Iraq. On the other side is Germany and France.
Although I'm against war at this point, the character assassination emanating from Germany and France is putrescent. The French Foreign Minister is literally a straight man, with his mantra that war is 'always a failure'. I wonder if his parents would have felt that way on June 6, 1944. As to the Germans, well, they have their own ghosts haunting their past that makes them useless as guides to morality.
This issue is larger than war over Iraq. For the Germans, French and British, it's a debate over who will lead Europe. Apparently the Germans and French have decided to split the leadership of the EU between them, with a long term for the EU presidency. The British, never enamored of either German or French continental leadership, have chosen to cast their lots with the Americans.
It's also a debate over the future of the UN. It's ironic that a US President, with a significant isolationist bloc in his party, is using UN resolution 1441 as a lance to skewer those who wish to see pretty words, and little else, flow from the UN.
I have little doubt that Iraq is in violation of resolution 1441. I also have no doubt that's very little threat to the US. Technically, the Germans and French may be right; maybe we should, in this case, dump the UN's previous resolutions on Iraq and pretend they don't exist. That would eliminate the justification for war.
But for Germany and France to portray themselves (along with may other US opponents) as upholders of international law, when only by jettisoning it can their case be made, is remarkable.
Portland, OR
On September 11, 2001, 27 NYPD officers died at the hands of terrorists. In the UK the other day, a 28th courageous police officer was murdered. A British police officer was stabbed to death by one of these monsters who wish to destroy civilization. How tragic for him, his family, and for all of us who depend on these brave men and women to protect us.
