Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Legislative Stupidity on Display
I've just come across this CNET article on Gmail, the free mail service being proposed by Google, and I have to say that I find the privacy concerns being raised absolutely ridiculous; there really aren't any new issues here that those who make use of free web-based services like Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail shouldn't already be worried about. Who cares if some silly algorithm serves up an advertisement based on keywords in a message? I say this as one more concerned about privacy issues than most. The plain truth is that email messages are already automatically scanned for content, and it would be impossible to filter out viruses and spam if this were not so.
Still, what really gets on my nerves about this article isn't the fact that a bunch of technically ignorant people are making a big fuss about nothing, but that some of those ignoramuses are legislators, and eager to abuse the legislative powers bestowed on them by the electorate to enact laws to govern issues they don't have the slightest clue about. In particular,
Google's plans have drawn a sharp reaction from privacy advocates, who worry about potential abuses of a system that might allow the company to permanently store millions of e-mail messages and scan their content.
On Monday, Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, Calif., said she was drafting legislation that would prevent Google or any other company from examining the content of e-mail in order to serve up ads.
Last week, Privacy International urged Britain's information commissioner to take action against the service, although that official appears to have backed away from taking a hard line for now. What stupidity! It figures that Liz Figueroa would be a Democrat, what with the contempt she displays for free enterprise. Even if Gmail really were some unprecedentally intrusive email service (which it most certainly isn't), shouldn't it be up to individuals to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to make use of it? If I value my privacy a whole lot less than you do yours, what business of yours is it to forbid my taking up a service like Gmail? It isn't as if anyone's being forced at gunpoint to get a Gmail account. I'll also add that the lobbying by "Privacy International" to get the British government to take action against a service that isn't even freely available to the public yet is one more example of an unaccountable NGO taking policy-making into its own hands. Why couldn't this organization simply have contented itself with warning the public against the adoption of Gmail? The assumption that NGOs are necessarily benign is one that stubbornly refuses to die, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
posted by Abiola |
11:44 AM
| |
Competitive Democracy in South Africa
Here's a NYT article that touches on a subject of some concern to me, the sheer dominance of the ANC in the political landscape of South Africa.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, April 13 - When South Africans go to the polls on Wednesday, as many as 7 of 10 will vote for the African National Congress, expanding a dominance that the party has maintained since 1994 and raising the question of whether the country's storied transition to democracy is taking an extended detour toward one-party rule.
President Thabo Mbeki, the A.N.C.'s leader, says the mere notion that its dominance threatens democracy borders on racism. In a newsletter released last week, Mr. Mbeki ridiculed "the fictional threat of a one-party state," calling it the creation of a white minority whose survival depends on ginning up opposition to what he called the A.N.C.'s multiracial coalition.
South Africa's most pressing political question, Mr. Mbeki wrote, is not whether it needs a strong political opposition, but whether voters can unite behind the A.N.C.'s "people's contract" to continue reconciliation after the abuses of apartheid.
One white who was a thinly veiled target of Mr. Mbeki's remarks, Tony Leon, heads the Democratic Alliance, the A.N.C.'s main, if distant, rival. In a telephone interview, Mr. Leon said South Africa under the A.N.C. was becoming "a de facto one-party state" at great risk of what he called "Putinization" - the slow erosion of democratic freedoms by a party whose power is hard to resist.
"The A.N.C. is a hegemonic party," he said. "I'm not saying that there have been markedly undemocratic or antidemocratic practices. But the kind of majority-party influence on institutions in this country is very deep."
Perhaps so. Eyebrows shot up three years ago when, in the midst of a parliamentary inquiry into a particularly seamy government arms deal, the A.N.C. majority abruptly cleaned house at the investigating committee, packing it with less aggressive legislators. The inquiry soon came to naught. "It's kind of as if George Bush were getting punished by the Senate Intelligence Committee in its investigation, and one day he simply replaced all the Republicans with compliant members," said Robert B. Mattes, a political polling expert and an associate professor of political science at the University of Cape Town.
But such cases appear isolated. Among African democracies, few if any are as robust and freewheeling as this one, even with the A.N.C.'s virtual lock on the levers of power.
The press is British-style raucous and scandal-seeking. Special interest groups on issues like AIDS and land reform are unfettered and sometimes effective in changing the government's direction. The Constitution is revered for its fairness and resistance to political tinkering - and the Constitutional Court regularly rules against the government.
Flocks of opposition parties regularly and fearlessly flay Mr. Mbeki and his ruling party for all sorts of sins, without fear of being suppressed or harassed. Despite Mbeki's worrying complacency with regards to the situation in Zimbabwe (no doubt motivated in large part by a misplaced sense of loyalty to a former comrade), and notwithstanding his even more alarming indifference to the problem posed by HIV within South Africa's own borders, it still is the case that Mbeki has not displayed any of the grandiosity or contempt for pluralism put on show by Sam Nujoma, or Mugabe from his very earliest days in office.1 It is also natural that complaints from the white minority about de-facto one-party rule will reek of hypocrisy in the eyes of the black majority, given the National Party's uninterrupted monopoly of power from 1948 to 1991, and its penchant for packing all the branches of the state with its loyal supporters; for instance, the army went from 10 of the 16 most senior officers being English in 1950 to 8 of 11 being Afrikaners in 1960, while the railways went from being all-English at the top levels in 1949 to being all-Afrikaner by 19552. Still, the issue isn't whether South Africa is or isn't about to enter into a new era of one-party rule - such a thing is clearly not unprecedented in the country's history - but whether one-party rule would be a healthy development for the country, and the precedent set by the National Party is hardly the best argument in favor of such a position. Who can really dispute that everyone would have been better off in the long run if the likes of Helen Suzman had been able to realistically contest the dominance of the National Party during the 50s and 60s? One party rule isn't necessarily a recipe for Zimbabwe-style chaos, as the examples of Japan and Sweden demonstrate, but it does tend to breed a sense of complacency in the dominant party, as well as an intellectual atrophy in the political life of a nation. What is more, even in the best situations, it can lead to horrendous abuses, as the case of Sweden's eugenic sterilization programmes, which continued until well into the 1970s, illustrates, while in less benign situations it can lead to jaw-dropping levels of political corruption - see Japan's LDP. In less favorable situations than those of Japan and Sweden, one-party rule usually leads to the erosion of fundamental freedoms over the long run, Singapore, Malaysia and Putin's Russia being just a few non-African examples of what I'm getting at. Now, it's all very well for armchair observers like me to say that the prolonged overwhelming dominance of a single party isn't healthy for the preservation of individual freedoms and a democratic culture, but what is one to do about the current situation? The unpleasant reality is that outside of the ANC, there just aren't that many alternatives on offer, and none of them have the credibility with the black majority that the party which did so much to advance their cause naturally possesses. One might wish that black South Africans were like the Poles, who were quick to abandon Solidarity once communism fell, or like the British, who showed their gratitude to Churchill by throwing him out of power just as soon as World War 2 had been won, but South Africa has an ugly legacy that neither Poland nor Britain had to contend with, and that legacy is one of extreme racial polarization. It is with an awareness of this history in mind that I conclude that the Democratic Alliance, whatever the anti-apartheid credentials of Tony Leon, will never make much headway against the ANC while Tony Leon and other whites are the public face of the party, as most of the black majority will see it only in racial terms, as the party for "rich white folk." Like it or not, the days when blacks could abide being represented in parliament by whites are gone for good. If any South African opposition party wishes to make a deeper impression on the national landscape than that managed by the Democratic Alliance or the New National Party, it would do well to take this reality on board. 1 -The fact is that Mugabe never hid his contempt for multiparty democracy; right from the start he made it clear that his preference was for a one-party state. A lot of people would like to imagine that the ongoing developments in Zimbabwe couldn't have been foreseen, but it just ain't so. Perhaps we ought to take the words of elected would-be dictators more at face value, rather than downplay them as mere grandstanding? 2 - See Frank Welsh's A History of South Africa, ISBN 0-00-638421-8.
posted by Abiola |
10:54 AM
| |
Demography and Islam in Europe
Razib recommended this post by Randy McDonald as a must-read a while back, but I've only just found the time to sit down and read it; it really is excellent, as Razib said it was. Most importantly, it serves as a healthy reality-check on some of the more extreme doomsday scenarios being bandied about with regards to Islamic immigration in the context of a Europe in demographic decline. McDonald gives useful references to information suggesting that France's Muslim immigrants are indeed acculturating to the norms of their new homeland in many respects, even if the rate of acculturation isn't necessarily as rapid as might be desired. No, Chicken Littles, the sky is not falling, and "Eurabia" isn't a likely prospect at any point in our lifetimes.
In fact, one problem that McDonald's problem helps to highlight is that fertility rates are also dropping quickly throughout the rest of the world, even in those poorer regions Europe's aging populations might have hoped to rely on as sources of youthful immigrant labor. That much of the Arab world is fast approaching below-replacement rate levels of fertility doesn't mean that immigration will necessarily decline from that region, much less cease altogether (as the wave of Eastern European migrants towards Britain is currently demonstrating), but it does portend that immigration cannot be relied on as a long-term solution to the impending demographic crisis, which is, in my view, largely avoidable, provided one is willing to adopt a more realistic attitude.
The truth of the matter is that men, throughout their existence on this earth, have had to work for the entirety of their lifetimes, and the notion of a world in which the elderly spend 20 to 30 of their years doing nothing but collecting paychecks, watching television and playing golf is one that simply isn't arithmetically sustainable when virtually everyone can expect to live to enjoy such an extended period of leisure. There is no good reason why adults in decent health and with their mental faculties mostly intact should be expected or required to retire at 65, 70 or some other arbitrary age, and I'd even argue that it is probably harmful for the well-being of most people to be left to idleness in such a manner. There may be the odd occupation where advancing old age mandates a retreat from the frontline - no one wants to be operated on by a surgeon whose hands shake - but for the most part, today's jobs require little by way of physical strength or endurance, and 75-year olds in good health are just as suited as 25-year olds to sit behind desks poring over bits of paper, and probably better suited, given the increased patience and capacity for reflection that (usually) comes with much life-experience.
One final point I'd like to make, albeit one tangential to the main thrust of this post: those who would like to argue that America is at threat from an alleged Mexican "reconquista" have some serious explaining to do, in light of the sharp and still continuing drop in Mexican fertility rates. Even on the ridiculous assumption that every last Mexican below the age of 40 decided to cross the Rio Grande and settle in the United States, and, what is more, was successful in realizing that assumption, the low fertility of the average Mexican female would make any scenario of a predominantly Chicano America far-fetched in the extreme. America will become a less "white" country than it is today, but it isn't about to turn into Mexico's Northern March anywhere except in the fervid imaginings of racist paranoids.
posted by Abiola |
9:19 AM
| |
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Darwin's Last Hours
PZ Myers has an excellent, moving post up on the death of Charles Darwin, and what it does and doesn't say about religion and atheism. I won't excerpt any of it here, as it's well worth reading in toto (and in situ).
posted by Abiola |
11:04 AM
| |
Sunday, April 11, 2004
The Road Not Taken
Here's an interesting article that tries to address the question, why did Islam, once at forefront of science, fall by the wayside? The article lists a variety of reasons for this, but most of them have a materialist thrust that I find unconvincing. To be sure, war is bad for scientific enquiry, and the Islamic world saw its share of wars during the 15th to the 20th centuries, but so did Europe, and European conflicts were in the main far more destructive affairs during the period in question - largely due to superior European technology, the very thing the article seeks to explain.
I think anyone wishing to understand why the Islam that led the world in learning so gloriously in 1000 AD could have given birth to the current dispensation - in which 5 times* as many books are translated into Greek every year as into Arabic, and more are translated annually for Spain's domestic market than all the volumes translated into Arabic over the last 1000 years - needs to look within Islam itself, rather than to external causes like the loss of al-Andalus, for the truth is that the decline was well underway before the Reconquista was completed, and was actually one of the very things that made the Reconquista possible.
The real reason for decline, as far as I can make out, has a great deal to do with the decline of the Mutazilite movement that was actually responsible for the development and transmission of all that ancient Greek learning that would make the Renaissance possible, at the hands of al-Ghazali and the Asharite school. I know it's been said plenty of times elsewhere, but it really is ironic that the likes of bin Laden should bewail the decline of the Ummah, when it was the very triumph of their sort of doctrinaire, ultra-orthodox Islam, that insists on the subjugation of reason to religious tradition, that did so much to undermine the lead Islam enjoyed during its golden age.
As a refutation of the preceding statement, it will not suffice to say that the Asharites didn't forbid the use of rationalistic methods in the fields of science and technology, for if the history of science over the last three centuries has taught us anything, it is that philosophical enquiry and scientific progress are impossible. The dispute between Galileo and the Church lay in a philosophical issue, as the vision of our universe as one created by God for the benefit of man seemed to necessitate a geocentric view of the cosmos - an Earth that was just one ball of several circling around a mediocre, middle-aged Sun of several billion in a run-of-the-mill galaxy of several billion is hard to reconcile with the notion of Man as occupying a central place in God's creation; there would likely have been no Theory of Relativity without logical positivism; the dangerous, politically-motivated movements of Lysenkoism and eugenics both had their roots in philosophical conceptions of the nature of man and his innate potentialities; in the present era, Popperian falsificationism continues to prove central to the demarcation of science from pseudoscience. The notion of science divorced from free enquiry is little more than a joke, and once Islam had shut its doors to "innovation" (bid'ah) in the philosophical arena, innovation also necessarily came to an end elsewhere**. No amount of money channeled by Islamic governments into scientific research will lead to a scientific re-awakening in the Islamic world as long as the sort of thinking that insists on blind imitation of the past, and condemns everything new as "harmful innovation", continues to be the norm.
*About 300 books are translated into Arabic each year, and about 1500 into Greek (source, the Arab Human Development Report (2002). Interestingly, while I haven't been able to find any estimates of the number of books annually translated into Hebrew annually, the number of books published (which I'm aware isn't the same thing) in Israel annually is estimated at about 6,000.
**This idea isn't new with me by any means. The Nobel-prize winning physicist Abdus Salam has also said much the same in his 1988 collection of essays, Ideals and Realities.
posted by Abiola |
10:08 PM
| |
It's the Things You Don't Know That Hurt You
Via Metafilter, I've just come across this Chicago Tribune* mini photo-gallery, the focus of which is on the inadvertant messages the Kanji-ignorant bearers of Japanese tattoos often carry. None of the tattoos featured actually says anything grossly insulting, but they do show up the amusing (for me; Asians might think "annoying" more appropriate) tendency of many Westerners to exoticize Asian cultures they have little to no real understanding of.
I have absolutely no intention of ever getting a tattoo, but if I were ever so moved as to want Kanji characters permanently etched unto my skin, I'd at least have the foresight to look up the characters in a dictionary beforehand, to ensure that what I was getting and what I asked for were the same thing. Culture isn't genetically transmitted, and just because a person seems of Asian extraction doesn't mean he or she knows anything about Asian culture per se, nor does knowledge of one Asian culture automatically imply knowledge of all the others - a fact I'm always reminded of whenever I see a "Japanese" restaurant advertising æ—¥æœ¬æ–™ç† ("Japanese cooking") written with katakana characters, or hear "Japanese" restaurant workers speaking Cantonese.
*Yes, I'm aware that the story is actually being carried by the Sun Sentinel; it's still a Tribune story, as can be seen by looking at the bottom of the page. I replaced the original Chicago Tribune link with this one because of the Tribune's insistence on requiring registration.
posted by Abiola |
7:46 PM
| |
What the World Needs Now Is DDT
I never thought I'd see the day, but the New York Times appears to have ditched its automatic genuflection before the idols of the environmental movement to make room for this excellent article on the tremendous harm that has been, and still is being, done by environmental activists to efforts to control malaria in the Third World. The success of environmental pressure groups in extending the ban on DDT usage from the Western world, where malaria has long been banished, to the entire globe, is the single best illustration of why I am so distrustful of such groups, and so scornful of their agenda. The year 2000 was a time of plague for the South African town of Ndumo, on the border of Mozambique. That March, while the world was focused on AIDS, more than 7,000 people came to the local health clinic with malaria. The South African Defense Force was called in, and soldiers set up tents outside the clinic to treat the sick. At the district hospital 30 miles away in Mosvold, the wards filled with patients suffering with the headache, weakness and fever of malaria -- 2,303 patients that month. ''I thought we were going to get buried in malaria,'' said Hervey Vaughan Williams, the hospital's medical manager.
Today, malaria has all but vanished in Ndumo. In March 2003, the clinic treated nine malaria cases; Mosvold Hospital, only three.
As malaria surges once again in Africa, victories are few. But South Africa is beating the disease with a simple remedy: spraying the inside walls of houses in affected regions once a year. Several insecticides can be used, but South Africa has chosen the most effective one. It lasts twice as long as the alternatives. It repels mosquitoes in addition to killing them, which delays the onset of pesticide-resistance. It costs a quarter as much as the next cheapest insecticide. It is DDT.
KwaZulu-Natal, the province of South Africa where Ndumo and Mosvold are located, sprayed with DDT until 1996, then stopped, in part under pressure from other nations, and switched to another insecticide. But mosquitoes proved to be resistant to the new insecticide, and malaria cases soared. Since DDT was brought back in 2000, malaria is once again under control. To South Africans, DDT is their best defense against a killer disease.
To Americans, DDT is simply a killer. Ask Americans over 40 to name the most dangerous chemical they know, and chances are that they will say DDT. Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane was banned in the United States in 1972. The chemical was once sprayed in huge quantities over cities and fields of cotton and other crops. Its persistence in the ecosystem, where it builds up to kill birds and fish, has become a symbol of the dangers of playing God with nature, an icon of human arrogance. Countries throughout the world have signed a treaty promising to phase out its use.
Yet what really merits outrage about DDT today is not that South Africa still uses it, as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about 10 more for emergencies. It is that dozens more do not. Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about. Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa. Until it was overtaken by AIDS in 1999, it was Africa's leading killer. One in 20 African children dies of malaria, and many of those who survive are brain-damaged. Each year, 300 to 500 million people worldwide get malaria. During the rainy season in some parts of Africa, entire villages of people lie in bed, shivering with fever, too weak to stand or eat. Many spend a good part of the year incapacitated, which cripples African economies. A commission of the World Health Organization found that malaria alone shrinks the economy in countries where it is most endemic by 20 percent over 15 years. There is currently no vaccine. While travelers to malarial regions can take prophylactic medicines, these drugs are too toxic for long-term use for residents.
Yet DDT, the very insecticide that eradicated malaria in developed nations, has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today. The paradox is that sprayed in tiny quantities inside houses -- the only way anyone proposes to use it today -- DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives.
[............]
Even when spraying is possible, though, developed nations don't want to pay for it. Instead, the malaria establishment in developed nations promotes the use of insecticide-treated nets that people can buy to hang over their beds. Treated bed nets are indeed a useful tool for controlling malaria. But they have significant limitations, and one reason malaria has surged is that they have essentially become the only tool promoted by Western donors. ''I cannot envision the possibility of rolling back malaria without the power of DDT,'' said Renato Gusm-o, who headed antimalaria programs at the Pan American Health Organization, or P.A.H.O., the branch of W.H.O. that covers the Americas. ''Impregnated bed nets are an auxiliary. In tropical Africa, if you don't use DDT, forget it.''
The other reason DDT has fallen into disuse is wealthy countries' fear of a double standard. ''For us to be buying and using in another country something we don't allow in our own country raises the specter of preferential treatment,'' said E. Anne Peterson, the assistant administrator for global health at Usaid. ''We certainly have to think about 'What would the American people think and want?' and 'What would Africans think if we're going to do to them what we wouldn't do to our own people?'''
Given the malignant history of American companies employing dangerous drugs and pesticides overseas that they would not or could not use at home, it is understandable why Washington officials say it would be hypocritical to finance DDT in poor nations. But children sick with malaria might perceive a more deadly hypocrisy in our failure to do so: America and Europe used DDT irresponsibly to wipe out malaria. Once we discovered it was harming the ecosystem, we made even its safe use impossible for far poorer and sicker nations.
Today, westerners with no memory of malaria often assume it has always been only a tropical disease. But malaria was once found as far north as Boston and Montreal. Oliver Cromwell died of malaria, and Shakespeare alludes to it (as ''ague'') in eight plays. Malaria no longer afflicts the United States, Canada and Northern Europe in part because of changes in living habits -- the shift to cities, better sanitation, window screens. But another major reason was DDT, sprayed from airplanes over American cities and towns while children played outside.
In Southern Europe, Latin America and Asia, DDT played an even more prominent role in controlling malaria. A malaria-eradication campaign with DDT began nearly worldwide in the 1950's. When it started, India was losing 800,000 people every year to malaria. By the late 1960's, deaths in India were approaching zero. In Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, 2.8 million cases of malaria per year fell to 17. In 1970, the National Academy of Sciences wrote in a report that ''to only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT'' and credited the insecticide, perhaps with some exaggeration, with saving half a billion lives.
From the 1940's to the late 1960's, indoor house spraying with DDT was tested all over Africa. It was least effective in the lowland savannas of West Africa, but even partly successful programs provided considerable health improvements. And in other parts of Africa, DDT reduced the infant mortality rate by half and in some places wiped out malaria completely.
[............]
The move away from DDT in the 60's and 70's led to a resurgence of malaria in various countries -- Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Swaziland, South Africa and Belize, to cite a few; those countries that then returned to DDT saw their epidemics controlled. In Mexico in the 1980's, malaria cases rose and fell with the quantity of DDT sprayed. Donald Roberts, a professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., has argued that when Latin America stopped using DDT in the 1980's, malaria immediately rose, leading to more than a million extra cases a year. The one country that continued to beat malaria was Ecuador, the one country that kept using DDT.
In the few countries where it is used today, DDT is no longer sprayed from airplanes, and no country admits to using it as an insecticide for crops -- although there are probably cases where it is diverted for agricultural use. Its only legitimate use is inside houses. Roberts said that the quantities used for house spraying are so small that Guyana, to take one example, could protect every single citizen of its malarious zones with the same amount of DDT once used to spray 1,000 acres of cotton. ''The negative environmental effects of DDT use that led to its banning were due to massive, widespread agricultural use,'' says a fact sheet published by Usaid (no fan of the chemical). ''Spraying limited amounts of DDT inside houses is considered unlikely to have major negative environmental impact.''
[............]
Rereading ''Silent Spring,'' I was again impressed by the book's many virtues. It was serialized in The New Yorker in June 1962 and published in book form that September -- a time when Americans were living in the golden glow of postwar progress and science was revered. ''Silent Spring'' for the first time caused Americans to question the scientists and officials who had been assuring them that no harm would result from the rain of pesticides falling on their farms, parks and backyards. Carson detailed how DDT travels up the food chain in greater and greater concentrations, how robins died when they ate earthworms exposed to DDT, how DDT doomed eagle young to an early death, how salmon died because DDT had killed the stream insects they ate, how fiddler crabs collapsed in convulsions in tidal marshes sprayed with DDT.
''Silent Spring'' changed the relationship many Americans had with their government and introduced the concept of ecology and the interconnectedness of systems into the national debate. Rachel Carson started the environmental movement. Few books have done more to change the world.
But this time around, I was also struck by something that did not occur to me when I first read the book in the early 1980's. In her 297 pages, Rachel Carson never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions.
DDT killed bald eagles because of its persistence in the environment. ''Silent Spring'' is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind. Public opinion is so firm on DDT that even officials who know it can be employed safely dare not recommend its use. ''The significant issue is whether or not it can be used even in ways that are probably not causing environmental, animal or human damage when there is a general feeling by the public and environmental community that this is a nasty product,'' said David Brandling-Bennett, the former deputy director of P.A.H.O. Anne Peterson, the Usaid official, explained that part of the reason her agency doesn't finance DDT is that doing so would require a battle for public opinion. ''You'd have to explain to everybody why this is really O.K. and safe every time you do it,'' she said -- so you go with the alternative that everyone is comfortable with.
''Why it can't be dealt with rationally, as you'd deal with any other insecticide, I don't know,'' said Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. ''People get upset about DDT and merrily go and recommend an insecticide that is much more toxic.'' (emphases added) Even if it could be established that DDT were harmful to birds in the minute quantities required for malaria prevention, I would still be for its widespread use - I know what it's like to suffer from malaria, and putting myself in the shoes of those children whose lives are unnecessarily at risk because of the blanket ban on DDT use, I know that I'd be cursing those who put the needs of the spotted eagle ahead of my survival. What is most enraging is that, despite denials to the contrary when challenged in the media, I know from personal experience that more than a few environmental opponents of DDT use actually don't think the malaria pandemic is necessarily a bad thing, as they see it as a natural means of keeping human numbers on the continent down, and thereby safeguarding the continent's wildlife; similar sentiments have also been expressed about the "beneficial" effects of the tse-tse fly, again to my hearing. I have news for those who'd put the welfare of wild animals ahead of that of their fellow human beings - Africa isn't just a gigantic game reserve, to be pristinely maintained for the benefit of filming documentaries to keep you suitably entertained. If "nature" means so much to you, concentrate your efforts on your own backyards, rather than trying to further your crusade on the shoulders of those who are too poor to have their voices heard on CNN and in international fora. Millions shouldn't have to die for the sake of an environmentalism that has become an ersatz religion for many comfortable westerners.
posted by Abiola |
5:03 PM
| |
Saturday, April 10, 2004
BBC - Bergman 'Depressed' by Own Films
Well. he's not alone in that respect. I find his films misery-inducing too!
Legendary Swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman, known for his gloomy works, has admitted he cannot watch his films because they make him depressed.
"I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful," he said in a rare interview on Swedish TV.
Bergman, 85, is considered one of the most influential directors in history.
His 60-year career has spanned intense classics like Cries & Whispers, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.
He has been nominated for nine Oscars - including three for best director - but never won. I hate to sound like a philistine, but I find European "auteurs" like Bergman to be highly overrated in the main. Just because a film comes with subtitles doesn't automatically give it depth or anything to hold the interest. There's a damned good reason why America dominates the movie business, and it goes beyond mere advantages of scale - Hollywood generally makes better movies! An outrageous statement, I know, but anyone thinking of countering it by mentioning the low-brow, formulaic dreck churned out by the American movie industry also has to face the fact that an even greater proportion of the output of the heavily-subsidised European movie business is also bottom-drawer stuff, so bad that even Europeans themselves aren't interested in it. At least "2 Fast, 2 Furious" has no annoying pretentions to high-art status.
posted by Abiola |
12:30 PM
| |
Friday, April 09, 2004
Inside the Mind of Sam Nujoma
Lest there be any doubt left that Nujoma's as rotten as they come, and madder than a hatter, I heartily advise reading this English translation of a Die Welt interview of the man back in 2002 (the original German transcript of which can be found here). Reading this, I wasn't sure whether to be give in to riotous laughter at the buffoonish responses given by Namibia's president, or to to give in to deep sorrow that an entire nation should have been burdened with a "leader" so manifestly unqualified to tend to the affairs of state. Below is a small excerpt from the interview that gives a flavor of the workings of Nujoma's mind:
Let me start with something that many people expect by now, Mr President. And that is, with you being in very good health -- in fact if I look back to independence I see exactly the same person, it seems you never age -- if the people want you to run for a fourth term, would you accept the mandate?
It seems that you in the Western world have contradictions in your minds. There are two ways or manners of democracy, as we know. In Western Europe, in Britain, you have a prime minister who can be elected repeatedly by the people of Britain. So it is in Germany -- [Helmut] Kohl has been in office almost for the last 15 years, before the SPD [Social Democratic Party] and the Greens came into office. And in the United States they have two terms for each president.
Why is that news? Really, is that news? You travelled all the world to come and ask senseless issues?
The Namibian people have the right, just like all other people in the world, to decide who's going to be their next president. To me it's not news. Except that you, who are confused, try to create confusion in Africa.
No, I meant it straightforward. I just wanted to know from you, if ... obviously the people have a right to elect you. But would you accept?
You leave that to the Namibian people. Not for you to come and decide.
Okay. Another question, because we are in the neighbourhood here, is the Epupa Project [a controversial dam initiative]. When do you expect that to go ahead?
That is also not your business. That is the prerogative right for the Namibian people to decide, and their government, when it is put into operation. That project, or the other projects. It's not your business.
Well, I'm just interested, I'm not critical.
Interested for what?
It's like the Lesotho Highlands Project, like all of these big projects ...
... Then you go to Lesotho. In Namibia we make our own decisions. As we see fit, our own interest.
All I asked you was whether it will go ahead or whether you ...
It's not your business.
[............]
From this I now take it, that you say: in the longer run ...
Don't insult me further! Don't talk about my land. We fought and liberated this country through bloodshed and loss of life.
No, sir, I would never insult you. I really didn't come to insult you. I'm just here ...
[Agitated, points finger ] Stop that insult now!
... to get clarity.
Now you stop insulting me, by referring, talking to me about Zimbabwe. Go to Zimbabwe. You know where Zimbabwe is. Stop that insult of talking about land in this country! You have no right whatsoever! Strange that Nujoma considers the mere mention of Zimbabwe an "insult", considering that he thinks so highly of what Comrade Mugabe's been doing that he's even asked for Zimbabwean land reform "experts" to come over to teach his own people how the job ought to be done. This guy is a clown, utterly unable to answer a single question with anything other than a non-sequitur, leaning all the while on the crutch of "white racism" to disguise his irredeamable ignorance.
posted by Abiola |
12:51 PM
| |
A Peter Singer Quote
If anyone doubted that there was something horribly wrong with Peter Singer's moral philosophy, the following passage by him ought to settle the matter.
“What, for instance, are we to do about genuine conflicts of interest like rats biting slum children? I am not sure of the answer, but the essential point is that we do see this as a conflict of interest, that we recognize that rats have interests too.†Sure rats have interests; the question is whether we ought to respect theirs even while they fail to respect ours.
posted by Abiola |
10:08 AM
| |
Thursday, April 08, 2004
allAfrica: 'No Plan to Extend Obasanjo's Tenure'
Now here's a promise by an African leader that I can believe, for a very good reason: he's kept it before. In fact, prior to General Abdulsalami's handover of power in 1999, Obasanjo was the only Nigerian head of state ever to voluntarily leave office, and precisely on schedule to boot.
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and vice chairman, Joint Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, Hon. Austin Opara, has said contrary to insinuations the committee would not make any provision for a third term in the reviewed constitution.
Opara, who spoke in Abakaliki at a reception ceremony organised by the Ebunwana community in honour of the chairman, House Committee on Co-operation and Integration in Africa, Hon. Irem Ibom said "there is no provision for a third term. It is unnecessary and we cannot make such provisions in our constitution".
While describing the idea of a third term as "very unreasonable and absolutely uncalled for", he berated Nigerians for their penchant for orchestrating rumours and making an issue out of a non-issue.
"As a people, we must stop selling ridiculous ideas to people. A third term is alien to us by all ramifications. It is unconstitutional and Nigeria is too big for a thing like that. I strongly doubt that Mr. President is nursing such an ambition", Opara maintained.
He pointed out that "the way we are orchestrating this matter is surprising. This rumour has suddenly become an issue when it should not be. There is no provision for a third term".
On fears that the review committee may be influenced by the presidency to allow a third term, Opara remarked that "there is nothing like manipulation here. I want to categorically state that since the committee started its work, Mr. President has neither contacted, spoken to nor made overtures, whether overtly or covertly to us. So there is no interference".
He hinted that the committee is likely to complete its work within the year adding that "we want to submit our report by either before mid year or towards the middle of this year to the two chambers of the National Assembly for deliberation".
There have never been allegations of a third term provision in the constitution.
But since the previous session of the National Assembly initiated moves to review the constitution, there has been campaign for a single term of five-year term for president and governor instead of the present two term of four years.
When the present National Assembly equally commenced efforts to review the constitution, there were speculations that President Olusegun Obasanjo may be scheming to extend his tenure and run for another term by manipulating the National Assembly to adopt the single five-year term. The adoption of a single five-year term, it is feared will give the president and governors another opportunity to stay on in office post - 2007.
While Presidency and officials of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have denied this, the speculation has refused to abate. I do believe that Obasanjo is being genuine when he says he has no plans for a third term in office, though it isn't because I'm a fan of the man by any means. I think he's been an incredibly weak and ineffectual leader, whose failure to act in the face of Islamist pressures for the adoption of Sharia has only emboldened the extremists, while his promises to deregulate vital parts of the Nigerian economy such as fixed-line telecoms and electricity generation have come to nothing; economically, Nigeria has made absolutely no progress under Obasano's watch. Nonetheless, as Nigerian leaders go, he's about the only one who seems to understand that the office he holds isn't his personal property, to be held onto for as long as possible for the purpose of looting - which I recognize isn't really saying much by global standards of governance.
posted by Abiola |
10:15 PM
| |
I'll Believe It When I See It
File this one under the "don't hold your breath" folder: Nujoma's now saying he has no plans for a fourth term.
Windhoek - Namibian President Sam Nujoma has abandoned any prospect of a fourth term in office after a weekend meeting with leaders of his ruling SWAPO.
The 74-year-old former guerrilla leader suggested only last week he would be willing to contest a fourth term - currently barred by the constitution - if asked by the party he led in a three-decade armed struggle for independence from South Africa.
"The President of SWAPO Party reiterates his earlier decision, in accordance with the constitution of the Republic of Namibia, he will not seek another term of office," Monday's edition of the English language daily The Namibian quoted Nujoma as saying after Saturday's meeting of the party's leadership.
Nujoma has put out mixed signals as to his intentions after his term expires on March 21, 2005. Parliament, dominated by SWAPO, altered the constitution to allow him to stand for a third term in 1999.
The party named three possible candidates to succeed Nujoma: Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba, Higher Education Minister Nahas Angula and Foreign Minister Hidipo Hamutenya, and will hold an extraordinary congress in May to decide which to field.
Whoever is chosen is regarded as firm favourite to succeed Nujoma as president given the party's grip on power - it won three out of four votes in 1999 national elections.
Presidential and parliamentary elections are expected in late 2004, but no date has yet been set.
Nujoma has led the mineral-rich former South West Africa since independence in 1990, and is highly popular with the black majority as well as some sectors of business.
But insiders at SWAPO - the South West African People's Organisation - said Nujoma had proposed other party officials as his preferred candidates at the weekend meeting, and only backed down under intense pressure from other party figures. I just don't buy that Nujoma will peacefully go into the night, not when he's taken the trouble to build a palace fit for an emperor whose completion date is scheduled to be just around the end of his current term in office. Here's to betting that like Abacha was planning before his timely demise, Nujoma's going to try to engineer a "spontaneous" plea from "the masses", begging him to stay on, "for the good of the nation" of course. The only way I can see him not trying a stunt like that is if "the nation" decides to reward him for his "selfless service" by "donating" this Windhoek palace to the Great Father, with a suitable accompanying retinue of servants to ensure that the Father of the Nation gets to live "in the style to which he's entitled."
posted by Abiola |
10:03 PM
| |
Why Does Anyone Smoke?
Could someone please explain this to me, especially in this day and age? What motivates anyone to pick up a habit that is so expensive over the long term, so ruinous to one's health, and so offensive to so many others? It's one thing for those who acquired the habit before broad public awareness of its ills to keep on doing so, and quite another thing entirely for young people, especially supposedly intelligent ones, to do so despite being fully aware of the likely consequences.
The question I'm posing isn't a rhetorical one, although I'll confess that it's motivated in great part by the acute discomfort the smell of cigarette smoke causes me. I've always been hypersensitive to the odor of cigarette smoke, and there's no surer way for me to get sinus trouble than to inhale the stuff for any but the briefest periods. In fact, so unpleasant do I find the smell that I'd much rather be around a roomful of marijuana smokers than expose myself to a cigarette smoker's exhalations, and I imagine a great many others feel the same way. Considering the strong distaste so many people have for the habit, it seems to me that there have to be pretty powerful reasons for anyone to willingly submit to the process of getting addicted to nicotine; the problem is that I find it hard to imagine what these reasons could be. Peer pressure? Even amongst the "best and brightest?" Are there really so many weak-willed people even amongst the intellectual elite that the need to fit in can override an awareness of all the negatives associated with cigarette use?
posted by Abiola |
9:41 PM
| |
Time for Some Balance on Rwandan Reporting
I've argued for a long time that the simple-minded take on the Rwandan situation that seems prevalent amongst the commentariat, in which the Tutsis are universally regarded as guiltless victims of historical Hutu prejudice, is way off the mark, and likely extremely damaging in the long run. As it turns out, via Prometheus 6, I've just discovered a Slate article that also touches upon the need for a little more balance and objectivity:
Today, state-run Television Rwanda has been playing gruesome images of the genocide all day long. Machetes, spears, guns, rapes. It's meant to remind Rwandans of exactly what went on 10 years ago. But such images—though important—also serve to create an emotional blur that becomes impossible to see through.
The RPF uses the genocide in much the same way that the Bush administration wields the emotional power of 9/11 to justify its actions and paint its critics as unpatriotic. In Rwanda, if you question political oppression, if you criticize the widely disputed elections of August 2003, or if you inquire about the massacres the RPF itself carried out in western Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the wake of the genocide, you are labeled a génocidaire. Consequently, Rwandans are afraid to speak their minds.
And that's also true for the international community. When they should be criticizing Rwanda—for the outlawing of opposition during the elections, for example, or for the recent exiling of two editors from the country's most independent newspaper—world leaders instead continue to say mea culpa. And the RPF government—whose political savvy is remarkable—takes every chance it can to exploit this guilt. To some extent, today's commemoration—which cost the impoverished country a whopping $7.4 million—is not just a memorial service for the dead, it's also about shaming donor nations into increasing their giving.
[............]
Two weeks ago, a perfect example of the deep cleavages that continue to divide Rwanda emerged after France released a report linking current President Paul Kagame to the downing of the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. (Who brought down the plane will always be the "who shot JFK" question of the genocide.) The RPF denounced the report and called for an inquiry into the French role in the genocide. My Hutu driver, on the other hand, declared, "Kagame shot down the plane? Yeah. Everybody knows that."
But even if "everybody knows that" (in other words, that's what most Hutus think), you'll never hear them say it in public. For the most part, they're keeping their version of the story to themselves.
And for many Hutus, the feeling that pervades the country today is one of exclusion—the national month of mourning is for Tutsis. The memorial sites are for Tutsis. The businesses are for Tutsis. The government is for Tutsis. Between 500,000 and 1 million people died in Rwanda 10 years ago. Most were Tutsis who were killed in a vicious act of genocide, and that cannot be forgotten. But the innocent Hutus who died cannot be forgotten, either.
And no matter how enlightened the government's rhetoric, it seems unlikely that there can be a real, lasting conversation about "unity and reconciliation" when 80 percent of the population feels they are not part of the discussion. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Paul Kagame is no hero, but a brutal murderer in his own right, and the remarkable tendency amongst so many otherwise thoughtful people to give his regime a pass is incredibly misguided. Not only have the Tutsis committed many a bout of mass murder of their own, particularly in neighboring Burundi, but Kagame's men have done more than their share of burning, killing and looting in the DRC, after the events of 1994 that Kagame repeatedly turns to his own advantage when dealing with foreign governments. Genocide is always wrong, but the Tutsis weren't Jews and the Hutus weren't Germans; a sense of shame over past inaction shouldn't blind us to the ugly realities of our time. Anyone who imagines that Tutsi monopolization of power in Rwanda will lead to anything other than yet another murderous explosion down the line is being incredibly naïve. UPDATE: Here's an old BBC article from 2000 that has Mandela making much the same point as I have about the necessity of power sharing between Hutu and Tutsi, though his remarks were made with reference to Burundi. Eight Tutsi-dominated political parties in Burundi have accused the new peace mediator, Nelson Mandela, of bias in favour of Burundi's Hutu majority.
In a statement issued in the Tanzanian town of Arusha after high-level peace talks earlier this week, the parties rejected Mr Mandela's statement that peace and stability could not be achieved while the Tutsi minority retained a monopoly on power.
"These conclusions tend to imply that the basis of the Burundi conflict is the political, economic and military domination of the minority Tutsi group over the majority Hutu one," the statement said.
"This theory could generate tension and the risk of confrontation in the country, which might jeopardise the chances of success for the peace process." Note just how similar the logic (if one can call it that) employed by the Tutsi leaders in Burundi is to that employed by Kagame today. I don't believe in arguments from authority, and as such I'm not going to present Mandela's statements as solid evidence in favor of my stance, but it ought at least to make some people think a bit more about their positioning of Kagame's government as some sort of positive blessing for Rwanda, when someone whose opinions they respect in other contexts is willing to point out that Tutsi political domination isn't healthy in the long term, whatever its benefits in keeping the peace in the present. Put yourselves in the shoes of the Hutu: if a small minority were to perpetuate its domination over you by playing on the guilt of outsiders who failed to halt one round of bloodshed (which did not occur in isolation, and happened to take a good number of your own people's lives as well), and if that minority was also guilty of acts of genocide against your people sheltering in the Congo or living in Burundi, a fact routinely ignored by those who are loudly advocating on behalf of said minority on various international fora, wouldn't you start to fill up with hate too? Would you really feel like saying "forgive and forget", content to live as a helot in a land in which you and those like you constitute the majority? But this sort of nonsensical thinking is just what every apologist for Kagame's regime is pushing. UPDATE 2: Here's a link to an old Guardian editorial by James Asthill that also points at the some of the negatives of Kagame's regime. Is this really the sort of repressive setup people want to be making excuses for? Or are we to accept that freedom counts for nothing as long as it's being abolished in the name of "peace" and "stability"?
posted by Abiola |
12:29 PM
| |
Circling the Wagons
When Republican senator Trent Lott praised the "principles" for which fellow Republican senator Strom Thurmond had once stood for, there was much lamentation in the land, both on the left and (albeit belatedly in some parts) on the right; but when Republican senator Chris Dodd makes the same error with regards to Democratic senator (and former Klansman) Robert Byrd, we learn that, well, some animals are more equal than others:
Distinguished "progressive" economist and anti-war ideologue Max Sawicky, in an effort to airbrush Christopher Dodd's recent Byrd-inspired brainfart completely out of existence, puts on the rhetorical high hat and waves his hand dismissively:
The effort to cook up an analogy between Chris Dodd/Robert Byrd and Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond needs a few sentences.
Robert Byrd is a great senator. His hands shake, but he is still sharp. Strom Thurmond was a great segregationist. In his final months as a senator, he was more out-of-it than in. Among other achievements, Byrd was a prime mover in blocking balanced budget amendments that would have screwed up the nation's finances even more than the Bush Administration has. Thurmond evolved from a segregationist to a garden variety political hack. Byrd's association with the KKK ended over fifty years ago. Trent Lott's remark, not for the first time, reflected nostalgia for Thurmond's glittering racist past. Comparison over. Can we please move on to the next canard?
I've never had much respect for left-wingnuts like Max Sawicky and Nathan Newman, but this just takes the cake. Praise for Strom Thurmond was bad, but when it comes to Robert Byrd (who not only was a Klansman but also tried to filibuster to death the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and who could still speak of "white niggers" on TV as recently as three years ago), it's OK because his hands don't shake and he isn't out of it? Sawicky is a disgusting little cockroach, and the silence of other liberals who were more than willing to be vocal during the Lott episode says volumes about the extent to which partisan advantage matters more in their eyes than moral principle, if it means being seen to take a stand against one of their own.
posted by Abiola |
12:04 PM
| |
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
It's All Dutch to Me - A Weird Linguistic Experience
Here's a comment that's sure to enrage all native Dutch-speakers out there, but here it goes anyway: spoken Dutch (or some varieties of it anyway) sounds remarkably like English*!
The reason I mention this is that I was sitting next to a trio of tourists today, who happened to be talking loudly amongst themselves about this, that and the other. I don't make it my hobby to eavesdrop on the conversations of others, but these individuals seemed determined to share their discussion with everyone around them, so voluble were they; or, in retrospect, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they felt so confident that they wouldn't be understood that they saw no reason to keep the volume down. Anyway, as I listened on, I found myself growing ever more perplexed: why was it that what these obviously English folks (or so I thought), loud as they were, nonetheless seemed incomprehensible to me? I had this vague feeling of almost but not quite comprehending what they were going on about, when after a considerable period, it dawned on me that perhaps they weren't speaking English after all. But if so, what language could it be?
I know a Slavic or Romance language when I hear one, and so I could rule those options out straightaway. Finnish and Hungarian are also sufficiently distinct from all European languages that I knew that neither of those languages could have been what I was hearing. The more intently I listened, the more certain I was that these strangers had to have been speaking a Germanic language - words like "ya/ja" and "for/vor" that are common to most of them being one tipoff, and the general intonation (to which I am always attuned, being a native speaker of a tonal language) being another. Indeed, it was the intonation pattern that led me to dismiss the possibility of the mystery language being Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. At the same time, I knew it couldn't be German, or I would have understood what was being said, which meant it absolutely had to be ... Dutch?
As indeed it was. The final clue came in a most unexpected manner, as someone handed a check to Mr. van der Waerden, who just happened to be the loud gentleman in heated discussion with two ladies next to me. That is about as Dutch as a name gets, so there was no cause for further puzzlement as far as that went. But why then did so much of what I'd been listening to seemed at once so familiar and yet meaningless?
Now, I do happen to know a bit of written Dutch, and by leaning on my understanding of German I can make my through a fair amount of Dutch (and Afrikaans) writing with surprising ease, but knowing how to read a language and understanding its spoken form are very different skills, and I've little opportunity to work on the latter in my daily life. I try to listen to Radio Netherlands broadcasts on the web, but given that most speakers on it will likely be using Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands ("General Civilized Dutch"), this is probably a less than ideal means of getting a feel for the sound of the language in ordinary usage, being the Dutch analogue of trying to learn how ordinary English people speak by listening to Oxford-educated BBC broadcasters going on in Recieved Pronunciation. Still, that the gap between the written and at least some forms of the spoken language should have been so great that listening to one would fail to help me recognize the other came as a surprise to me; I'd really expected the language to sound more ... well ... German in intonation (this my Dutch readers may feel is taking things too far!), what with being right next to Germany and all, an assumption that Radio Netherlands broadcasts have actually helped to foster.
I still have one wild hypothesis up my sleeve to explain what I heard, though I'm in no position to confirm or disprove it. Could it have been that what I mistook for Dutch was actually Frisian? Never having knowingly heard Frisian spoken, I can't even begin to guess, but given the history of settlement of the British Isles and the classification of Frisian as the closest to English of the Low German languages, the possibility naturally occurred to me. That Friesland is a province of the Netherlands also makes the hypothesis seem reasonable, as it could be that Mr van der Waerden's name is just a reflection of a degree of assimilation to the mainstream.
UPDATE: I've just discovered Omrop Fryslân, an online Frisian radio station. Listening to a broadcast, my hypothesis doesn't seem quite as outrageous as I originally thought. Still, I don't know the sound of the various Dutch dialects well enough to be in any position to dismiss the possibility that I really was listening to a variety of Dutch, rather than Frisian. One complicating factor that I haven't mentioned at all is the incredible influx of English words into all of the other Germanic languages (other than Icelandic), especially amongst the young. When one is listening to young people casually throwing English words into a conversation which is already going on in a language with many similarities to English, it can be hard to tell which language is actually in use.
*This may sound extraordinary to American ears, but it isn't so difficult to understand if one appreciates that there is a tremendous amount of variation in the way English is spoken in the British Isles, and to one who has lived amongst the British for any decent amount of time, all of them will sound as "natural" to the ear as would Brooklynese or a Texan twang would to an American.
posted by Abiola |
11:19 PM
| |
NYT Paris Memo: Since 1066, It Hasn't Always Been Cordial
This profile could only have been written by an ardent American francophile, for making out the British as little more than wannabe Frenchmen who are largely ignored by their Gallic neighbors. Nothing could be further from the truth.
PARIS, April 5 — If the history of British-French relations had begun with the signing of the Entente Cordiale on April 8, 1904, the record would not look too bad.
The agreement led to an easing of the colonial rivalry, alliances against Germany in two world wars and eventual collaboration, tinged with competition, within the European Union.
The problem is that most of the British and French public know "entente cordiale" only as a phrase — and they do not really believe it.
So Queen Elizabeth's state visit to France this week to mark the accord's 100th anniversary is as much an occasion to remember what divides the neighbors as what unites them. And here history began long before 1904.
Since 1066 for the British and the Hundred Years War for the French, the governments and the peoples have viewed one another with a mixture of envy and hostility. And even today, their cordiality often seems to be more out of necessity than conviction.
Yet, relations have also changed fundamentally, not as a result of the Entente Cordiale, but because the D-Day landings 60 years ago persuaded the French that the United States was now the undisputed leader of the English-speaking — "Anglo-Saxon" to the French — world. And if any doubt existed, that status was confirmed when London bowed to American pressure to end the Suez adventure in 1956.
As a result, since then, a basic asymmetry has shaped cross-channel relations: when France looks west, it now sees the United States, not Britain, as its competitor; but when Britain looks east, it still sees France controlling, at times blocking, its relationship with Europe. So, while the French are obsessed with the United States and somewhat indifferent to Britain, the British remain passionate about their love-hate for France. And on and on it goes. What is it with so many Americans and the urge to belittle Britain? One would think they had chips on their shoulders or something. Whether it's taking sole credit for the spread of the English language - conveniently forgotten just who bequeathed it to them, as well as the fact that it would still be the most widely spoken European language around if America were excluded, thanks to the existence of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, Pakistan and Britain's former African colonies - or portraying World War II as a mostly American enterprise in which the British came along for the ride as sidekicks (ignoring the fact that the British stood alone against Hitler from 1940 to the end of 1941, as well as doing lots of fighting against the Japanese in Southeast Asia), there's a persistent belittling tendency that runs throughout American historiography and reportage on the mother country. The only explanation I can give for this negativity is that for all of their swagger, a great many Americans still feel a certain sense of cultural inferiority towards the British, and try to make up for it by portraying their closest ally as a has-been country, a tatty old tourist-trap where everyone still speaks like Bertie Wooster and a nice cup of tea is had by all in the afternoon. It isn't only Australians who seem to suffer from the "cultural cringe."
posted by Abiola |
8:45 AM
| |
|
 |
|
 |
 |