Friday, April 12, 2002

The Democracy Factor " . . . democracy at least is evolutionary. Its ultimate logic is equality, allowing for a framework of development and change — as citizens constantly seek to match their own maturing notions of freedom with their government's constitutional commitment to fairness. Democracy, more effectively than other forms of government, also seeks to alleviate the inherent sins of mankind, rather than to ignore or even enhance them. . . . Yet the issue lies at the heart of our war with Iraq, unease with allies like the Saudis, bafflement at demonstrations in Cairo, and overwhelming support for Israel." "We must remember that democratic revolution . . . has never made any inroads in the Middle East. . . . Apparently democracy and freedom are words that cannot be spoken — out of politeness by us or embarrassment by them." "There is an asymmetrical war going on in the Middle East; yet it is not merely military, but political and cultural as well: The Israelis elect their leaders, audit their behavior, tolerate active political opposition, and suffer calumny in their press. The Palestinians do not — well before the start of the intifada. And yet all this is left unsaid." " . . . terrorism fails utterly when state and non-state autocrats like those in Japan, the IRA, and Palestine have used kamikazes, terrorist bombers, or suicide murderers against democracies." " . . . consistent support for democracy is valuable in other ways as well. It reminds our Arab friends that support for Israel . . . derives from a shared commitment to open and periodic elections, a free press, and an independent court system." "Should the Palestinians immediately hold free and periodic elections, televise raucous debates of a truly independent Parliament, allow an open press and court system, send their reporters into Israel to learn of the other side's view, and begin nonviolent resistance to the presence of Israeli troops, they would accomplish more in 3 months than they have in 35 years." "But then it might turn out that a free Palestine's biggest enemy would not be Israel — but governments like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, who could not stomach such dangerous democrats right on their borders and who themselves would no longer have a convenient scapegoat to help vent their own unfree people's growing frustrations." ... [more] 3:17:44 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The violent road from Baghdad to Jerusalem George W. Bush has not changed his mind. Removing Saddam is the key to solving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict " . . . two fundamentally distinct understandings of the region's troubles. The first - favoured by most European governments - says that healing the Middle East is primarily a matter of healing the relationship between Palestinians, represented by Mr Arafat, and Israel. . . . The second view says that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict . . . is merely a symptom of a larger problem, the same one that generated the attack on the US in September. In this view - the administration's - Baghdad has emerged as the root of the trouble." " . . . the White House. . . . to put an ultimatum before Mr Arafat. . . . if Mr Arafat then continues to allow suicide bombers . . . he will no longer be acceptable as a negotiating partner." "the real agenda is not to allow the Arab-Israeli peace conflict to stall the momentum of the US military plan for Iraq. . . . Mr Saddam is feeding Palestinian fires . . . it is the indirect influence of Mr Saddam in the region that is most destabilising. . . . In showing that it would tolerate Mr Saddam, the US emboldened al-Qaeda and Mr Arafat." " . . . the fundamental question about the US posture in the Middle East is: is America after talks or is it after action? The answer is action. In this view, calls for more talks - even the Pope's call for peace - appear outdated. Indeed, to many Americans, Europe seems to be in a dreamland over Iraq." ... [more] 7:48:13 PM  Google It!  comment  []

American Culture Goes Global, or Does It? "Dislike for the United States stems also, they say, from its "cultural imperialism." We have been hearing a good deal about how American mass culture inspires resentment and sometimes violent reactions, not just in the Middle East but all over the world. . . . Despite those allegations, the cultural relationship between the United States and the rest of the world over the past 100 years has never been one-sided. On the contrary, the United States was, and continues to be, as much a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences as it has been a shaper of the world's entertainment and tastes." " . . . as a nation of immigrants from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and as a haven in the 1930s and '40s for refugee scholars and artists, the United States has been a recipient as much as an exporter of global culture. Indeed, the influence of immigrants and African-Americans on the United States explains why its culture has been so popular for so long in so many places. American culture has spread throughout the world because it has incorporated foreign styles and ideas. What Americans have done more brilliantly than their competitors overseas is repackage the cultural products we receive from abroad and then retransmit them to the rest of the planet. In effect, Americans have specialized in selling the dreams, fears, and folklore of other people back to them. That is why a global mass culture has come to be identified, however simplistically, with the United States." "The hallmark of 19th-century culture, in Europe and also in Asia, was its insistence on defending the purity of literature, classical music, and representational painting against the intrusions of folklore and popular amusements. . . . High culture was supposed to be educational, contemplative, and uplifting -- a way of preserving the best in human civilization. . . . the 19th-century barriers between high and low culture were resolutely, if imperfectly, maintained." "The artists of the early 20th century shattered what seemed to them the artificial demarcations between different cultural forms. They also challenged the notion that culture was a means of intellectual or moral improvement. They did so by emphasizing style and craftsmanship at the expense of philosophy, religion, or ideology. They deliberately called attention to language in their novels, to optics in their paintings, to the materials in and function of their architecture, to the structure of music instead of its melodies. And they wanted to shock their audiences. Which they succeeded in doing. Modern painting and literature -- with its emphasis on visually distorted nudes, overt sexuality, and meditations on violence -- was attacked for being degrading and obscene, and for appealing to the baser instincts of humanity. In much the same way, critics would later denounce the vulgarity of popular culture." "Although modernism assaulted the conventions of 19th-century high culture in Europe and Asia, it inadvertently accelerated the growth of mass culture in the United States. Indeed, Americans were already receptive to the blurring of cultural boundaries. In the 19th century, symphony orchestras in the United States often included band music in their programs, and opera singers were asked to perform both Mozart and Stephen Foster." "Writers like Hemingway . . . invented a terse, hard-boiled language, devoted to reproducing as authentically as possible the elemental qualities of personal experience. . . . All of those trends provided the foundations for a genuinely new culture. But the new culture turned out to be neither modernist nor European. Instead, the United States transformed what was still a parochial culture, appealing largely to the young and the rebellious in Western society, into a global phenomenon. The propensity of Americans to borrow modernist ideas, and to transform them into a global culture . . . " "But it is in popular culture that the reciprocal relationship between America and the rest of the world can best be seen. . . . the power of American capitalism is not the only, or even the most important, explanation for the global popularity of America's movies and television shows. . . . [First,] the effectiveness of English as a language of mass communications has been essential to the acceptance of American culture. . . . English is . . . a language exceptionally well-suited to the demands and spread of American mass culture. Another factor is the size of the American audience. A huge domestic market . . . The American audience is not only large; because of the influx of immigrants and refugees, it is also international in its complexion. The heterogeneity of America's population -- its regional, ethnic, religious, and racial diversity -- has forced the media, since the early years of the 20th century, to experiment with messages, images, and story lines that have a broad multicultural appeal. . . . given them the techniques to appeal to an equally diverse audience abroad. . . . " "American musicians and entertainers have followed the example of modernist artists like Picasso and Braque in drawing on elements from high and low culture, combining the sacred and the profane. Advertisers have adapted the techniques of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism to make their products more intriguing. Composers like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein incorporated folk melodies, religious hymns, blues, gospel songs, and jazz into their symphonies, concertos, operas, and ballets. Indeed, an art form as quintessentially American as jazz evolved during the 20th century into an amalgam of African, Caribbean, Latin American, and modernist European music. That blending of forms in America's mass culture has enhanced its appeal to multiethnic domestic and international audiences by capturing their varied experiences and tastes." "Early- 20th-century European painters wanted viewers to recognize that they were looking at lines and color on a canvas rather than at a reproduction of the natural world. Similarly, many American films . . . deliberately remind the audience that it is watching a movie instead of a play or a photographed version of reality. American filmmakers (not only in the movies but also on MTV) have been willing to use the most sophisticated techniques of editing and camera work . . . to create a modernist collage of images that captures the speed and seductiveness of life in the contemporary world. . . . the Method's disregard for language permitted global audiences -- even those not well-versed in English -- to understand and appreciate what they were watching in American films." "Finally, American culture has imitated not only the modernists' visual flamboyance, but also their emphasis on personal expression and their tendency to be apolitical and anti-ideological. The refusal to browbeat an audience with a social message has accounted, more than any other factor, for the worldwide popularity of American entertainment. American movies, in particular, have customarily focused on human relationships and private feelings, not on the problems of a particular time and place. They tell tales about romance, intrigue, success, failure, moral conflicts, and survival." " . . . But American culture has never felt all that foreign to foreigners. And, at its best, it has transformed what it received from others into a culture that everyone, everywhere, can embrace, a culture that is both emotionally and, on occasion, artistically compelling for millions of people throughout the world. So, despite the current hostility to America's policies and values -- in Europe and Latin America as well as in the Middle East and Asia -- it is important to recognize how familiar much of American culture seems to people abroad. If anything, our movies, television shows, and theme parks have been less 'imperialistic' than cosmopolitan. In the end, American mass culture has not transformed the world into a replica of the United States. Instead, America's dependence on foreign cultures has made the United States a replica of the world." ... 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Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation "Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow--it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?" "For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?" ... [more] 6:01:31 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The Hard Truth "A terrible disaster is in the making in the Middle East. What Osama bin Laden failed to achieve on Sept. 11 is now being unleashed by the Israeli-Palestinian war in the West Bank: a clash of civilizations." "So there you have it. Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama wins — and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you." ... [more] 5:47:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Protecting Saddam "The name of their game is delay — to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam." ... [more] 3:32:31 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Popular Arab Anger Is Long- Term, Radicalizing Threat to the Foundations of Peace " . . . an unrelenting siege by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and at the headquarters in Ramallah of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, is radicalizing the politics of the region and creating a threat to peace and recognition of the Jewish state by a rising generation of Arabs . . . 'In order for Israel to be able to exist, it requires the Arab world's willingness to encourage the conditions so that she can exist.'" "And while the short-term threat is whether Arab leaders will be forced to confront their own people to save themselves, a greater risk in the future may be the radicalization of a young Arab population. That population is now engaged in a verbal assault on the Arab commitment to peace, forged over three decades and nurtured by successive American administrations. The consequences of a new generation of Arabs who walk away from the 'strategic' policy of peace with Israel . . . would be a return to the politics of resistance, including weapons of terror, economic stagnation and the further rise of Islamic extremism . . . " "'You don't know what will happen. There is an accumulation of grievances, one against Israel and America and one against the Arab regimes.'" ... [more] 3:30:11 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The Blood Lust of Identity Review of  In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf, translated from the French by Barbara Bray. Arcade. "Identity is a bloody business. Religion, nationality, or race may not be the primary causes of war and mass murder. These are more likely to be tyranny, or greed for territory, wealth, and power. But 'identity' is what gets the blood boiling, what makes people do unspeakable things to their neighbors. It is the fuel used by agitators to set whole countries on fire. When the world is reduced to a battle between 'us and them,' Germans and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, Hutus and Tutsis, only mass murder will do, for 'we' can only survive if 'they' are slaughtered. Before we kill them, 'they' must be stripped of our common humanity, by humiliating them, degrading them, and giving them numbers instead of names." " . . . reasons why people fear for their sense of belonging: globalization, the erosion of national sovereignty, Western domination over the last three hundred years, the collapse of failed secular regimes. . . . Sadism must play a part. Once their basest instincts are given the official nod, some people feel a sense of pleasure, even liberation. The degradation of one's victims, stripped of their identity, is a way to sooth one's conscience. This results in a ghastly paradox: the more brutal the method of slaughter, the easier it is on the killers, for the victims are no longer regarded as fully human. . . . mass murder can seem entirely legitimate to people who feel that their community is under threat. He writes: 'Even when they commit massacres they are convinced they are merely doing what is necessary to save the lives of their nearest and dearest.'" " . . . elements of [an individual's] identity are shared by many, but the particular mix is what makes him an individual. . . . the same principle applies to everyone. It is when we take one single element and make it absolute that the trouble begins. This tends to happen . . . when we feel that our identity, or part of it, is under attack." " . . . the superior might of the West has put great strains on non-Westerners. Scientific discovery, political freedoms, economic enterprise, and imperial aggression combined to make much of the non-Western world feel peripheral to the European metropole. To match the Western powers, others had no choice but to take up Western ways. Even those who did so with success, such as the Japanese, felt a sense of humiliation. The break with the past was too abrupt. The foreign graft did not always take. Nerves are still raw even now. Those who did not succeed feel as if they live . . . 'in a world which belongs to others and obeys rules made by others, a world where they are orphans, strangers, intruders or pariahs.... What can be done to prevent some of them feeling they have been bereft of everything and have nothing more to lose, so that they come, like Samson, to pray to God for the temple to collapse on top of them and their enemies alike?'" "Another word, today, for Western domination is 'globalization,' and globalization is often used as another word for 'US imperialism'." " . . . many people see globalization as a threat to their 'culture, identity and values.' This is certainly true of disaffected intellectuals, not just in the old colonial peripheries, but especially in the West itself. Yet I wonder how many ordinary Chinese, Indians, Zambians, or even French really fret about their identity and values because of global trade. It seems more likely that the wellsprings of religious or ethnic fanaticism are political more than cultural. Fanaticism has to do with a lack of representation or free speech. Either can lead to an impotent rage." " . . . the failure of democracy in Arab countries, or indeed Asian ones, cannot primarily be blamed on Washington or global trade. In fact, pro-Western countries in the non-Western world which are most exposed to global trade are often—not always—the most democratic too. Religious fanaticism comes when politics break down. The same is true of racial or nationalist fanaticism and revolutionary millenarianism, which are all variations of religious zeal." "The furnace of antiglobalism is actually not in the so-called third world, but in Europe. This, too, has something to do with the lack of representation. We live in democracies. But to many citizens, European institutions and multinational corporations appear to be wielding more power than elected national governments. . . . Another reason for a European sense of impotence is the utter dependency for its security on the US. This, and the huge success of US commercial enterprise, makes Europeans feel more and more peripheral. As is true in the non-West, this doesn't affect the average consumer of Coca-Colonization so much as artists and intellectuals, who see it as their role to define, guard, and express "identity," be it regional, national, or spiritual. This is why Hollywood is seen as such a threat, especially in France; it has swamped our markets and invaded our histories. It has, in the words of a character in an early Wim Wenders film, 'colonized our minds.'" "In a way, non-Americans are in the position of Germans at the time of Napoleon's greatest victories. France was dominant not only in arts and culture, but in military affairs. What was most annoying to German poets and thinkers was France's claim to universality. French values were universal values. Similar claims are being made for America today. There are several ways outsiders can react. They can follow alternative forms of universalism, such as communism or Islamism. They can retreat into romantic nativism, celebrating the national soul, and so on. Or they can boost their confidence by expanding their political freedoms, and taking more responsibility for themselves. There are instances of all three in recent history. But the last decade has shown how often believers can switch their creeds without losing any of their zeal." ... [more] 3:15:29 PM  Google It!  comment  []