Paris Burns, All Europe At Risk

02. November 2005 · Comments Off on Paris Burns, All Europe At Risk · Categories: GWOT, World

Riots, by largely Islamic young people, in Paris, have spread dramatically:

Police have fought with protesters every night since last Thursday, when two teenagers were electrocuted after running into an electricity sub-station in the mistaken belief that they were being chased by the police. More than 150 fires have been reported, and tensions were increased after police fired tear gas into a mosque.

The battle to contain the riots, which have spread from the neighbourhood of Clichy-sous-Bois to nine other districts, has divided French opinion and M Chirac’s Cabinet.

Some observers feel a degree of sympathy with the protesters, many of whom are North African immigrants who live on dilapidated estates among endemic crime and unemployment.

Meanwhile, Francis Fukuyama at OpinionJournal, says this is the nature of European society:

We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going “over there” and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.

There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.

The same is not true for a Muslim who lives as an immigrant in a suburb of Amsterdam or Paris. All of a sudden, your identity is up for grabs; you have seemingly infinite choices in deciding how far you want to try to integrate into the surrounding, non-Muslim society. In his book “Globalized Islam” (2004), the French scholar Olivier Roy argues persuasively that contemporary radicalism is precisely the product of the “deterritorialization” of Islam, which strips Muslim identity of all of the social supports it receives in a traditional Muslim society.

The identity problem is particularly severe for second- and third-generation children of immigrants. They grow up outside the traditional culture of their parents, but unlike most newcomers to the United States, few feel truly accepted by the surrounding society.

[…]

Since van Gogh’s murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness. The Dutch have at least broken through the stifling barrier of political correctness that has prevented most other European countries from even beginning a discussion of the interconnected issues of identity, culture and immigration. But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.
Many Europeans assert that the American melting pot cannot be transported to European soil. Identity there remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory. This may be true, but if so, democracy in Europe will be in big trouble in the future as Muslims become an ever larger percentage of the population. And since Europe is today one of the main battlegrounds of the war on terrorism, this reality will matter for the rest of us as well.

While, short term, the hemorrhaging must be controlled, police-state tactics will prove to be counter-productive in the long run. Fundamental changes – to usher Muslim immigrants into the greater society – are in order.

Wiped from the Map

31. October 2005 · Comments Off on Wiped from the Map · Categories: Domestic, General, History, War, World

A day or so after Thanksgiving of the year when I was in the seventh or eight grade, and hated gym class above all the other torments that junior high school offered in bounteous measure, I had a short conversation with another girl in my gym class. We were not particular friends, only that our lockers were adjacent, and we would be changing out of our school dress, into the black shorts and short-sleeved, snap-closure white blouse that Mt. Gleason Junior High dictated to be proper gym class attire. I don’t even remember her name, only that she was sturdy and somewhat stocky and like me, blue-eyed with dark-blond, brown-sugar colored hair and a fair complexion… and like me, not particularly enthusiastic about gym class, and all its’ works and all its’ ways. Both of us were of the devoutly un-athletic sort who picks a team position based on the likely chances of having little or nothing to do with the ball.

So, on this first day of gym after the Thanksgiving holiday, I struck up a conversation about it, about how my family Thanksgiving had gone— how all the constellation of great-aunts, great-uncles, and grandparents had gathered for the ritual feast. The family Hayes had gathered at either Grannie Jessie’s little white house on South Lotus, or Grannie Dodie and Grandpa Al’s house in Camarillo. I can’t recollect which, so unvarying was the rotation, so regular the attendance of the senior members and devout their interest in JP and I, Pippy and our new baby brother. Most of them being for one reason or another, childless, I lamented the lack of cousins, for it meant their concentration on the four of us as torch-bearers of a new generation was as focused as a laser-beam, and I assumed that the same was true of my gym-dressing room friend.

“Oh, no,” said she. ”It’s just my parents, and my brothers and sisters. We don’t have any cousins either. All of my parents’ families… they all died. We don’t have any cousins, either.”
“None of them? None at all?” I asked, in disbelief. No fond grandparents, no doting great-aunts, no eccentric great-uncles? None of them at all, nothing outside the usual parents and sibs at the dinner table, nothing special, relations-wise, about the holiday table, with roasted turkey, crackling-fat and richly stuffed with brown-bread dressing? About this time in life, my peers had begun to lose grandparents to the usual span of human mortality— I had lately lost one, Grandpa Jim, and thought myself lucky to still have three, all of them still healthy, cantankerous and good for another couple of decades. To have none at all, though… that went beyond misfortune. That was a catastrophe.

My gym-friend shrugged.
“My parents met after the war, in a DP camp. They were just kids. It turned out they were both the only survivors of their families. They got married and came here. There was nothing for them to go back for, anyway.”

Nothing to go back for, anyway, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine… somewhere in Middle-Europe, wherever her family trees had sprung up and been pruned with brutal finality of all but two last little shoots. Transplanted, new-rooted in America, but haunted forever by a ghostly range of empty chairs around the table at those family gatherings so universally assumed to me multi-generational.

The genocide against European Jews is as much of a challenge today to get ones’ sensible American head around as it was sixty years ago. Us Indian-massacring (sorry, Native American massacring!) slavery-enabling, Negro-lynching (Sorry— Persons of Color lynching!) religion-addled, brutally-capitalist, petty-small-town minded uncultured Jacksonians are forever being lectured about our shortcomings by those cultured Europeans. Europe was, after all, the place where they did everything better than us… more cultured, more tolerant, and oh-so-much-better in every civilized way. And yet, pogroms never happened here. Social prejudice, country-club anti-Semitism, distrust of the “other”— oh yeah, all of that…but never pogroms. Russian and Polish Jews came here to get away from pogroms, ungrateful and unappreciative of the cultural advantages to living in Europe.

The clamor of the lectures by our so-called moral superiors pretty much swamps the observation that the Native American and Black American communities still exist in a far more vibrant state than, say, the Jewish communities of Poland… and that Paris, the city of Light has a suburb torn for the fourth night running by what we, in our uncouth American way, used to call race riots. Ah, well, Europe— they do things with so much more style, over there. Sixty years ago, under German occupation, ordinary Europeans watched their neighbors, their friends, coworkers, classmates, employers and employees, their doctors, and cleaning women rounded up and marched away to oblivion. Some eagerly assisted; some benefited from participating, most watched and turned away and did nothing, not wishing to risk what might happen to them, should they be too open in objection. A very few righteous, possessed of a fiercely refined moral sense, and courage of the sort usually termed “crazy-brave” did what they could… that there was anything left of European Jewry by 1945 was a sort of miracle in itself. On a national level, only the Danes can be credited for behaving in a way that we hope we could ourselves be equal to, given the same situation. They refused, categorically, firmly, and in a manner most breathtakingly effective, to turn over Danish citizens of the Jewish faith to the occupying German authorities… of course, the Germans had gone easily on the Danes, hoping to win them over to the benefits of the Thousand-year Reich… but still, and all… German blandishments did not tempt them to sell out their fellow citizens.

So, during a week in which the elected leader of Iran, which has done everything it can to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, has publicly and in terms quite straightforward and understandable, vowed an intention to wipe Israel off the map… a small and pesky nation formed in no small part from the survivors of the European-wide holocaust. What would a single nuclear hit do to a tiny and democratic survivor-state? Nothing good, that should go without saying. So, what will Europe do, this time? How stalwart will be European resolve be to intervene, given that Israel was referred to as “that shitty little country” by a French diplomat at an English dinner party, that anti-Semitism (now charmingly called anti-Zionism) is at a revoltingly open, all-time high? No matter what they call it, it’s still used for the same old purpose, to kill Jews, or at least, justify their murder by a third party. How nice. How amusing, that European hands would be kept clean of the murder of Jews. This time, anyway.

Oh, yeah… if I were a Jew, I’d think twice before depending on Europe to keep my ass safe… especially given how effective they were, overall, about that the last time.

The eastern world, it is explodin’.
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy
It’s bound to scare you boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Imagination and Will

25. October 2005 · Comments Off on Imagination and Will · Categories: General, History, World

Sometime around the middle of the time my daughter and I lived in Athens, the Greek television network broadcast the whole series of “Jewel in the Crown”, and like public broadcasting in many places— strictly rationing their available funds— they did as they usually did with many worthy imported programs. Which is to say, not dubbed into Greek— which was expensive and time-consuming— but with Greek subtitles merely supered over the scenes. My English neighbor, Kyria Penny and I very much wanted to watch this miniseries, which had been played up in the English and American entertainment media, and so she gave me a standing invitation to come over to hers and Georgios’ apartment every Tuesday evening, so we could all watch it, and extract the maximum enjoyment thereby. We could perhaps also make headway with our explanation to Kyrie Georgios on why Sergeant Perron was a gentleman, although an enlisted man, but Colonel Merrick emphatically was not.

On occasion, the Greek broadcasting network screwed up, and the next episode of “Jewel” didn’t air. Penny and I would talk for a while, and Georgios would encourage my daughter to all sorts of rough-housing; pillow fights, mostly. (Blessed with two sons, the Greek ideal, Georgios rather regretted that he and Penny didn’t have a daughter as well.) On those Tuesday nights when “Jewel in the Crown” didn’t air, the Greek network most often substituted something appropriately high-toned, classical and in English. Brought out from their library and dusted off, most likely— the Royal Shakespeare Company, in all their thespian glory. And Penny and Georgios and all I noticed on one of those warm spring evenings, that Blondie was sitting on a cushion on the floor, totally absorbed, wrapped up in one of the Bard’s duller history plays. She was then about four years old— but she was enchanted, bound by a spell of brocaded velvet words, swirling cloaks and slashing swords, glued to the television while we sat talking about other things, drawn in by a spell grown even more lightening-potent over the last 400 years. And it happened, the next time that “Jewel” was pre-empted… it was the RSC again, and Blondie was glued to the television, her concentration adamantine, and almost chillingly adult. I was quite sure she had never seen anything of the sort before, I wasn’t one of those frenetically over-achieving mothers, stuffing culture down the kidlets’ throat. I barely had time and energy enough to be an achieving mother: we hardly watched TV at home, VCRs were barely on the market and her favored bedtime reading was “Asterix and Obelix”, although we had branched out as far as the “Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings”. No, it was not anything I had done… it must have been something innate in Shakespeare, a spell that has been cast, and drawn them in since Shakespeare himself was a working actor and playwright.

I have recently gotten this book— it’s a book club bennie— and gone as far as the first three or four chapters. It’s a good book, a speculative book by necessity, since we know so very, very little for certain of the real William Shakespeare. The author is dependent on speculation and imagination, much given to assuming that if such and such were happening in the neighborhood of Stratford-upon-Avon in the lifetime of the glove-maker’s son, then he possibly would have known about it, and might have reason to weave it into one of his spell-plays. Did he have a good education… or not? Might he have been a school-teacher? A soldier? A clerk? Might he have been a Catholic sympathizer? Might his marriage been unhappy, his father a drinker… we have no way to know for sure, in ways that would satisfy the strict accountants of history. In fact, many have been the symposia, the experts, the finely honed intellectual authorities who have insisted over the years that the Shakespeare who was the actor, the manager and entrepreneur, the son of a provincial petty-bourgeois, simply could not have written the works attributed to him. Such expert knowledge of statecraft, of law, of international polity, of soldiering and the doings of kings and nobles… no, the tenured experts cry… this could not be the work of any less than an intellectual, highly placed and noble, gifted with the best education, and extensive mileage racked up in the corridors of power! Any number of candidates, better suited in the eyes of these experts to have written the works attributed to Wm. Shakespeare of Stratford are advanced, with any number of imaginative stratagems to account for it all… but every one of them I have read, leaves out the power of imagination itself.

Imagination, which takes us out of ourselves, and into someone else— the common thing all these great experts disregard, as if it were something already cast into disrepute, something useless, of no regard…but it is the major part of the actors’ craft and entirely the part of the writers… that part that is not given up to intelligent research. All those great experts seemed to be saying, when they credit other than Shakespeare, the actor and bourgeois householder of Stratford and London… is that imagination is worthless, null, of no account or aid. It is impossible for a writer to imagine himself, or herself into anything other than what he or she is. One cannot imagine oneself convincingly into another time or place, gender or role in life. Imagination is dead… you are stuck with writing about what you are. How sterile, and how horrible. How pointless and boring—
but that is what the highly-educated would have of us. We must not, under pain of what the academicians judge, imagine what it would be like that it is to be whatever we were born to be.
When I was about 17, or so, I wrote a story for a high school English creative writing class, incorporating an account of a historic event which I couldn’t possibly have witnessed— because I had been born fifteen years after the events I described. But I had done research, and even at 17 I was pretty good at writing description… and I had the imagination. It creeped the hell out of the creative writing teacher. He knew of the events that I had written about, and I had gotten it pretty well right. So, imagining again; what would have prevented a young actor from sloping up to a friend of his, in a tavern someplace, a friend who was a soldier, or a law clerk, a priest or servant in the house of a noble, and saying “Say, I’ve got this thing I’m working on… what d’you say about it? What do you think, how would it work, really?”

Which was the creepy, magical part, the part that academicians and writing teachers cannot fathom… which is how far the intelligent and well-researched imagination can take us. To insist that Shakespeare couldn’t have written Shakespeare, is to deny the power and authority… and even the authenticity of imagination.

Which may explain the relative shittiness of novels written by all but the most deviant of academics. Education— all very nice, but nothing will take a writer farther than imagination and some good contacts in other fields. Imagination… it’s what we have that separates us from the beasts. Never underestimate it, use it what you must. Especially when it’s necessary to get out of what you are, and see through the eyes of someone else.

New Provence

17. October 2005 · Comments Off on New Provence · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, World

I went to the herb fair this last Saturday, under the trees in Aggie Park. It has always been crowded, no matter how early in the day I go; a mass commingling of serious gardeners, herb enthusiasts, vendors of botanical exotica and plants. Large plants in tubs, small plants in 2-inch pots, wrought-iron garden accessories, and increasingly, soaps, teas, books, dried herbs and tiny bottles of expensive essential oils – everything for the dedicated herbivore. The non-plant vendors were mostly inside the park hall, which as a result smelt divinely of lavender. In the last decade or so, certain adventurous enthusiasts have discovered that lavender grows quite well, thank you, on the rocky limestone slopes of the Hill Country.
The Hill Country, that tract of rolling, lightly wooded hills north of San Antonio has always been South Texas’ Lake District, our Berkshires, our Mackinac Island, or Yosemite; a cool, green refuge in the summer, a well-watered orchard oasis in the dusty barrens of the Southwest.. Rivers run through it –  the Guadalupe, the Pedernales – and it is dotted with edibly charming small towns, like Wimberley, Johnson City, Kerrville, Comfort and Fredericksburg. Visitors like my mother often say it reminds them of rural Pennsylvania, a resemblance strengthened by the coincidence that large tracts of the Hill Country (notably around Fredericksburg) were settled in the mid 19th century by German immigrants, who built sturdy, two-story houses out of native limestone blocks, houses adorned with deep windows and generous porches and galleries.

In the spring, in April and May the hillside pastures and highway verges are splashed with great vibrant sweeps of color — red and gold Mexican Hat, pink primroses, and the deep, unearthly indigo of bluebonnets, acre after acre of them. Wildflower meadows are an ongoing enthusiasm in Texas, more notable here than any other Western state I have ever traveled in. Lamentably, they also figure in kitschy art: the perfect Texas landscape painting must be of a long-horn grazing in a field of bluebonnets, and double-points if the artist includes a barn with a roof painted with the Lone Star Flag, and the Alamo façade  silhouetted in the clouds overhead. Alas, Vincent Van Gogh was never able to immortalize the Hill Country in paint, as he did so memorably with Provence. Perhaps he might have not been so dreadfully depressed, what with communing with cows, cowboys and staid German immigrant farmers.

But that may turn out to have not been needed – for I detect that the Hill Country is very gradually and delicately turning into Provence. There always were the artists, and eccentrics, and hobby farmers (one of the eccentrics is currently running for governor, and I just might vote for him out of the sheer weirdness of it all =  god knoweth Kinky Friedman couldn’t possibly be more out-of-sight than Jesse Ventura, and Minnesota is supposed to be so boringly sane, for chrissake!) I make the suggestion in all seriousness: the Hill Country may not superficially look all that much like Provence, but the underlying geographic bones are similar, the climate is (at a squint) similar and the same kind of things Provence is famous for (at least in popular imagination) are emerging from the Hill Country. Got that – and some very good wine at that, for all that ‘Texas Wine’ probably elicits the same sort of humorous reflex that ‘Australian Wine’ did, once upon a time. (No, Texas wine is quite drinkable, and does not have a bouquet like an aborigines’ armpit. Seriously –  the local high-end groceries all have a section for the local stuff.) Goat cheese  –  we got it. All those local hobby farmers, trying to find a useful outlet for what started as a herd of pets. Olive oil? Got that, too. (Although this place is still thinking Tuscany – ) A local farmer, with a booth at the herb market had small saplings in 2-inch pots I may yet get an olive tree to grow, in my front yard garden, devoted to my memories of Greece. It will take a bit, a couple of hundred years or so, but I and my descendants will have nicely gnarled, bearing olive tree. In a decade or two, there will be a Hill Country olive oil industry –  it may be boutique –  but it will be there. Lavender and perfume? Got it.(I love St. Fiacre, from this place   – it’s in my perfume wardrobe, right next to the Chanel Number 5.)
And if you don’t care for wine, and all that,  there is this brewery. Enjoy! the desserts are splendid, but very rich; best split them between two diners, or get them to take away.
Now, if we could only get Red McCombs, and a couple of other local millionaires to build some fortified villages and artistically ruinous castles on some strategic hilltops – the Hill Country might have a chance at being ‘The New Provence.’

The Palestinian Civil War

14. October 2005 · Comments Off on The Palestinian Civil War · Categories: GWOT, World

This from Ha’aretz, via OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web:

In the report, the Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry cited 219 deaths as a result of inner-Palestinian violence compared to 218 deaths at the hands of Israeli security forces over the course of the first nine months of this year. The statistics reflect the relative calm in the territories vis-a-vis Israel as well as the increasing anarchy in PA-controlled areas.

As I have previously stated, I believe the Sharon administration expected this prior to their turn-over of Gaza. This is strong evidence of Palestinian incapacity for self-government.

But, beyond that, like al-Qeada, and the general Islamic Fundamentalist movement itself, this is an indicator of Islamic society’s internal collapse. It is important that we in the First World frame our philosophical thinking, vis-a-vis the GWOT, to this reference, moreso than simply a lashing-out against us.

But, more specifically, we in the United States must keep this in mind, as we endeavor to gently guide Iraq towards the establishment of a liberal democracy.

Keep your U.N. off my Internet

09. October 2005 · Comments Off on Keep your U.N. off my Internet · Categories: Technology, World

This from Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews at OpinionJournal:

Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet’s long run as a global cyberzone of freedom–where governments take a “hands off” approach–is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month’s U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this “global resource.”

I see no good coming of this.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

Syria Still Quite Active In Lebanon

08. October 2005 · Comments Off on Syria Still Quite Active In Lebanon · Categories: Iraq, World

This from Michael Totten’s blog:

It doesn’t look good. The situation here in this country isn’t precisely the rosiest I can imagine. Syria’s Bashar Assad did threaten to “burn Lebanon” if he was forced out. And he was forced out. But Lebanon hasn’t burned yet – not much anyway. A total of four people have been killed here since February. I for one don’t see why a massive terror campaign would start up after the U.N.’s report is released. I don’t see what Syria could possibly gain. Syria, on the contrary, could lose everything.

My sense is that bad memories and the usual Middle Eastern paranoia (which is understandable to an extent) is exagerrating most people’s dread of the worst case scenario. In April the fear on the street was that the Lebanese civil war would restart. It didn’t.

Even before the liberation of Iraq, I maintained that Syria would be the primary roadblock to stability. We see that this is true in Lebanon as well. Although I believe their capacity for mischief is being taxed by operations in Iraq. I think this is an issue that can only be addressed militarily.

If You Didn’t Fear World Government Before…

04. October 2005 · Comments Off on If You Didn’t Fear World Government Before… · Categories: Stupidity, World

…Perhaps it’s time to start. The BBC just did a “fantasy election” to find the most popular leaders of a world government. The results:

1 – Nelson Mandela
2 – Bill Clinton
3 – Dalai Lama
4 – Noam Chomsky
5 – Alan Greenspan
6 – Bill Gates
7 – Steve Jobs
8 – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
9 – Richard Branson
10 – George Soros
11 – Kofi Annan

Actually, Branson might not be so bad. Virgin Group is frequently brought up by business pundits as one of the world’s best-run major businesses. One of the key features: a very small headquarters organization, with maximum atonomy given to individual units.

Hat Tip: Tigerhawk

Women Drivers: Hughes Kinda’-Sorta’ Faux Pas

03. October 2005 · Comments Off on Women Drivers: Hughes Kinda’-Sorta’ Faux Pas · Categories: Politics, World

This from T. A. Frank at TNR:

Condoleezza Rice may, of course, have good reasons not to broach the topic with the Saudis. Men are in charge of Saudi Arabia, and the men can help us, so angering them might be unwise. And perhaps it was impolite of Hughes to bring up the subject. But since when do progressives favor politesse in the face of discrimination? And why, exactly, should liberals like “West Wing” writer Aaron Sorkin be more deferential about the Saudi driving ban than Karen Hughes?

Isolationist conservatives generally take the position that it’s not the proper role of American politicians to comment on another society’s treatment of women. But liberals don’t have that excuse. Instead, their dilemma is by now an old story: For the contemporary left, when any value–in this case, equal rights for women–comes up against the value of not judging other cultures, non-judgment tends to win. The left prizes tolerance so highly that it often refuses to condemn intolerance. (Europe, with a large population of immigrants who oppose the values of the society in which they live, has grappled with this problem for years.)

It’s about time we come to fit with our suit as omnipower, and the global hegemony which it entails. As Americans, we are naturally uncomfortable in wearing it; but it has been forced upon us by the tides of history. But to shun it is to leave its shards to be picked-up by (as Virginia Postrel would put it) the “enemies of the future.” On foreign policy, libertarian first principles are only clear-cut on matters of initiation of force (Even so, the matter of Iraq sheared the libertarian ranks.); restrictions of trade are a more nebulous matter.

Still, as a practical matter, we have to realize that they need us far more than we need them. If you doubt this, just look at prospects for Sunco Oil.

Light a Single Candle

03. October 2005 · Comments Off on Light a Single Candle · Categories: A Href, General, World

As a child, I ran across the quotation “Better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.”

Carlos Leite, a Brazilian who lives on the edge of poverty, seems to have done just that. Illiterate, he has amassed a library of 10,000 volumes, which he has made available to his community of Sao Goncala. Brazilians, on average, read less than 2 books per year (America reads 5, according to the article). There are few or no public libraries there, and although the government has launched a campaign to build public libraries, the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly.

Leite couldn’t wait.

“Those of us who grew up here, we know what the needs of the community are,” he said. “I stopped and thought, ‘Wait a minute. There’s not a single library. The schools have libraries, but there’s no public library.’ So I said, ‘Let’s make this dream come true.’ ”

When he asked members of his small bicycling group to help him collect used books, “they all thought I was a little crazy,” he said.

But they humored him, and the nameless cycling club got a moniker: “The Madmen of Sao Goncalo.” Or so they seemed at first to the neighbors whose doors they knocked on.

“Some people thought, ‘You must be joking. Here in this community, people ask for clothes, but to ask for books!’ ” said Ronaldo Pena, 48, one of the cyclists.

They inaugurated the library on March 20, 2004, with 100 volumes, most of them literary and historical treatises donated by someone Pena knew. Since then, the group has been amassing books at a feverish pace. Many come from rich Brazilians in whose homes they work as cleaners, handymen and the like.

Because everything is by donation, the collection is eclectic and quixotic, but impressive in scope: from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, Umberto Eco to political theorist Antonio Gramsci, William Faulkner to James Joyce, not to mention textbooks and reference works. There’s no Dewey decimal system, or even strict alphabetical order; books are simply grouped by subject.

“All the material you need is here,” said Gabriele Sthefanine Silva Azeveda, a seventh-grader who was busy one recent afternoon copying down information about Central America from an encyclopedia. The nearest public library is 20 minutes away by car — not that many residents here own cars — and her school library is often of little use.

“It has fewer books than here,” she said.

Leite and his companion have been pushed to a tiny back alcove of their small house, and many books are still in boxes due to lack of space. His library is run by volunteers, and his bills are mounting. Libraries need lights and fans so the patrons can be comfortable. Someone donated a computer so they could catalog the books, but no one has had time to do so – all their time is taken up either working at their regular jobs, or running the library.

It’s a challenge just to keep the library open Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and often later when there’s special need: a report due, a test the next day.

“There’s a lot of demand,” Leite said. “We have lawyers, doctors, teachers, psychologists coming in to do research.”

He depends on Da Penha and his friends to staff the library, all of them unpaid. Leite continues to do construction and maintenance work to try to meet the mounting bills. How do you run a library without overhead lights? Or fans to keep patrons cool and books from going moldy on those hot tropical afternoons? Or tape and glue to repair broken spines and torn pages?

Not a single penny has come from official sources — “not from the politicians, not from the government,” said Da Penha, who is on medical leave from her job as a cleaning lady at a local school.

“What’s here is what we’ve done ourselves,” she said. “We’ve sacrificed a lot to help the people here. But it’s a sacrifice of love.”

The one thing the article didn’t tell me was how I can help this man. I’d love to send him some money to help with his bills, but have no idea how to do that. Can anyone tell me how?

This Is An Interesting Concept:

20. August 2005 · Comments Off on This Is An Interesting Concept: · Categories: World

This seems to be a common theme among the weekend talking-head shows: If the Palestinian Authority is successful in creating a state on Gaza, their primary benefactors will not just be the United States and Western Europe, but Israel.

This says something.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization

18. August 2005 · Comments Off on The Shanghai Cooperation Organization · Categories: World

Sounds like an East Asian Trading Company doesn’t it? Or maybe a trendy place for good eggroles and trolling for members of the oppisite sex?

For this old Cold Warrior, its formation makes me go hmmmmmmmmmmm. All together now, get into your inner Arsineo, hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Russia and China are the dominant countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping that includes four former Soviet republics of Central Asia and which took on Iran, India and Pakistan as observers this year.

At a summit in July, the group called on Washington to set a date for the withdrawal of forces from Central Asia, where they have been deployed since late 2001 in support of military operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

If this were the late 80s or early 90s, I might be a bit worried. Well it’s not like they’re playing wargames or anything…

The war games launched Thursday will practice coordinating a joint force that culminates in a mock invasion next week on China’s Shandong peninsula in the Yellow Sea – using thousands of air, sea and land forces to simulate a mission stabilizing a restive country.

Go read the whole thing.

Note to Admin…looks like we’re going to need Russia and China categories.

I Was Just About To Go To Sleep But…

02. August 2005 · Comments Off on I Was Just About To Go To Sleep But… · Categories: World

…I just flipped the TV to Discovery/Times channel. And they are airing Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan. This is a real must see.

Here’s the plot so far: The prospective groom’s family can’t afford the price demanded by the bride’s father. So they decide to kidnap her. But, when they go to her town, she is not around. So they set their sights on next best. Her family is all for it, but she doesn’t want to cooperate. And this is all business-as-usual.

Update: This repeats several times, until noon PDT.

Update: After watching the whole thing, I must repeat with emphasis, this is a must see.

The Widening Gap Between Success And Failure

26. July 2005 · Comments Off on The Widening Gap Between Success And Failure · Categories: World

Foreign Policy’s Failed State Index is a must read.


Foreign Policy Failed State Index map

Failed State Index map

It is alarming, particularly in light of the success of some nations in the post-colonial world, that so many nations are either “failed” or “at risk”. These failures are, virtually without exception, due to failure to institute proven political and economic reforms. And, as James Bovard of CATO writes, increased, or even continued foreign aid is not the answer.

I’ll Admit It… (050723)

23. July 2005 · Comments Off on I’ll Admit It… (050723) · Categories: GWOT, World

I’m not as upset about the Egyptian Bombings as I was about the London Bombings. I think it’s because I’m used to terrorist attacks in the Middle East. I hear about an attack there and my mind simply goes, “Sigh, another one?” and doesn’t file it much farther than that.

Blow something up in America or in London, that’s still a surprise.

A Chinese Nuclear First Strike?

20. July 2005 · Comments Off on A Chinese Nuclear First Strike? · Categories: World

I absolutely can’t believe the domestic MSM hasn’t picked-up on this:

A senior Chinese general has warned that his country could destroy hundreds of American cities with nuclear weapons if the two nations clashed over Taiwan.
Major general Zhu Chenghu, a dean at the National Defence University, said he was expressing a private opinion, but his comments, the most inflammatory by a senior government official in 10 years, will fuel growing concerns in Washington about the rise of China.

Darfur 101

18. July 2005 · Comments Off on Darfur 101 · Categories: World

This from TNR:

This week, Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College and an expert on Darfur, will be guest blogging at &C. His contributions will add up to a sort of crash-course on the Darfur genocide–moving from posts today on the genocide’s history, to posts in coming days on the inadequate response of the international community, to posts toward the end of the week on what it would realistically take to bring the genocide to a halt. Today: why the genocide started, how it is being carried out, and whether it is getting worse.

So far, I would say this is a must read.

An Interesting Historical Parallel

08. July 2005 · Comments Off on An Interesting Historical Parallel · Categories: World

I am currently rewatching Spielberg’s Into the West, to catch some scenes missed previously. I have to say, this is a VERY good film, as Hollywood dreck goes, with its greatest flaw being the Rousseauvian Noble Savage – White Man’s guilt trip portrayal of the Indians.

But here’s a question to ponder: If we must express such umbrage over the White Man’s “desecration” of Indian “sacred land.” than why does the Dome of the Rock be so much of a non-issue?

Shouldn’t Jews be afforded the same consideration as Indians?

The Remedy For Africa’s Problems Lies Principally With Africans

08. July 2005 · Comments Off on The Remedy For Africa’s Problems Lies Principally With Africans · Categories: World

This from Max Boot, in (of all places) the LATimes:

Africans continue to be tormented not by the G-8, as anti-poverty campaigners imply, but by their own politicos, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is abetting genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is turning his once-prosperous country into a famine-plagued basket case. Unless it’s linked to specific “good governance” benchmarks (as with the new U.S. Millennium Challenge Account), more aid risks subsidizing dysfunctional regimes.

Any real solution to Africa’s problems must focus on the root causes of poverty — mainly misgovernment. Instead of pouring billions more down the same old rat holes, maybe the Live 8 crew should promote a more innovative approach: Use the G-8’s jillions 2 hire mercenaries 4 the overthrow of the 6 most thuggish regimes in Africa. That would do more to help ordinary Africans than any number of musical extravaganzas.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

London, Unhinged

07. July 2005 · Comments Off on London, Unhinged · Categories: Media Matters Not, World

I am at abit of a loss as to how to take this Times of London article:

Bloggers have called for a mass protest against today’s bombings and have insisted that Londoners will not be intimidated by the string of attacks on their city.

“The outrages in London are the work of enemies of humanity. There should be massive demonstrations throughout Britain this weekend to show our solidarity against them,” said Paul Anderson on the libsoc blog.

But where is the solidarity to be focused – on increased capitulation, or increased resistance? Reading the article, that’s not clear.

ONE

27. June 2005 · Comments Off on ONE · Categories: World

ONE Blog is up.

Who’s with ONE?

Watch the video.

ONE. The campaign to make poverty history. Add your voice.

Other voices.

Iran: The Blogger’s Paper Chase Is On

17. June 2005 · Comments Off on Iran: The Blogger’s Paper Chase Is On · Categories: Iran, Politics, World

This Brian Murphy – AP report will establish the conventional wisdom for the moment. But my sources tell me it’s hardly the truth. More to come later:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iranian voters streamed to polling stations Friday, snubbing dissidents’ calls for a boycott in the closest presidential race since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Results will decide who inherits a long list of challenges, including nuclear talks with the West and demands for reform at home.

Turnout appeared stronger than expected and polls stayed open an extra four hours, with voting booths even set up at Tehran’s main cemetery for those paying weekly visits to family graves. But the contest could still end with no clear winner, forcing a runoff next week.

Some credited U.S. denunciations of the election for goading more Iranians to cast ballots after a Western-style campaign that has reshaped Iranian politics. A runoff would almost certainly include front-runner Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political veteran and leader of the Islamic Revolution who now portrays himself as a steady hand for uneasy times.

On the contrary, I’ve heard of massive rejection of this election. Time will tell.

Inteesting Political Practices In Myanmar

15. June 2005 · Comments Off on Inteesting Political Practices In Myanmar · Categories: General Nonsense, World

This from T. A. Frank at TNR:

Meanwhile, the leaders of Myanmar’s junta emerge as, arguably, the world’s most forward. The New Light of Myanmar, the country’s official newspaper, leads with the headline “Senior General Than Shwe felicitates President of the Philippines.” Although it’s hard to imagine this happened on camera, such actions may simply be customary in Burma, since, lower on the page, we also read “Prime Minister felicitates Russian counterpart.” Of course, that’s one way to conduct diplomacy. And now Burma has guests in town: “Chinese men’s volleyball team arrives.” One hopes that the task of felicitating them will be divided up.

LMFAO

More On Africa

07. June 2005 · Comments Off on More On Africa · Categories: World

This from Perry at Samizdata:

Clearly the only chance for the people of Zimbabwe is for someone, anyone, to help them to rise up and meet violence with violence. They do not need aid, they need guns and ammunition so that supporters of the MDC can start shooting at anyone associated with ZANU-PF or the ‘security’ services. Time for Mugabe’s swaggering police thugs to be met with a hail of gunfire rather than terrified sobbing. But of course the South African ANC government, far from being a possible solution to the rapidly deteriorating situation across the border, is aiding and abetting in the Cambodia-ization of Zimbabwe. I look forward to Saint Nelson Mandela taking a loud, public and sustained stand against Mugabe’s madness. Yeah, right.

If Tony Blair was serious about doing something about poverty in Africa, he would be sending guns to the MDC and to anyone else who is willing to resist and threatening to have some gentlemen from Hereford put a .338 hole between Mugabe’s eyes unless things change radically. What a pity Zimbabwe does not have oil or maybe more people would give a damn what is happening there.

Perry is quite right, in that South Africa, as well as Zimbabwe’s other neighbors, should be taking the lead here. He is a bit wrong on the oil issue though; Sudan has oil, and no-one seems to give a damn there either.

This just in: I have just learned that debt relief for Africa will be off the table when Blair visits Bush this week.

There Is Little Chance Of Our Accounts Being Compromised.

06. June 2005 · Comments Off on There Is Little Chance Of Our Accounts Being Compromised. · Categories: World

Oh yes: That’s like listening to the band play, as the Titanic sank. For more, go here:

NEW YORK – Citigroup just can’t catch a break. Now it’s lost the account data of 3.9 million of its customers.

Rape As Policy In Darfur

05. June 2005 · Comments Off on Rape As Policy In Darfur · Categories: World

This Nicholas Kristof column in the NYT is a must read. But not for the faint of heart:

The government has also imprisoned rape victims who became pregnant, for adultery. Even those who simply seek medical help are harassed and humiliated.

On March 26, a 17-year-old student named Hawa went to a French-run clinic in Kalma and reported that she had been raped. A French midwife examined her and confirmed that she was bleeding and had been raped.

But an informer in the clinic alerted the police, who barged in and – over the determined protests of two Frenchwomen – carried Hawa off to a police hospital, where she was chained to a cot by one leg and one arm. A doctor there declared that she had not been raped after all, and Hawa was then imprisoned for a couple of days. The authorities are now proposing that she be charged with submitting false information.

[…]

Those women who spoke to me risked arrest and lifelong shame by telling their stories. Their courage should be an inspiration to us – and above all, to President Bush – to speak out. Mr. Bush finally let the word Darfur pass his lips on Wednesday, after 142 days of silence, but only during a photo op. Such silence amounts to acquiescence, for this policy of rape flourishes only because it is ignored.

I’m still chilled by the matter-of-fact explanation I received as to why it is women who collect firewood, even though they’re the ones who are raped. The reason is an indication of how utterly we are failing the people of Darfur, two years into the first genocide of the 21st century.

“It’s simple,” one woman here explained. “When the men go out, they’re killed. The women are only raped.”

Someone has to take this matter by the horns. I ask: if not us, who? If not now, when?

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

Our Last Words

27. May 2005 · Comments Off on Our Last Words · Categories: Science!, World

…could be, “The bird flu?”

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US health authorities are taking urgent precautions against a ‘flu pandemic’ that experts warned could erupt at any time and claim tens of thousands of lives.

Top health officials here warned that the United States was ill-prepared to counter a pandemic which could come from a mutation of the bird flu H5N1 that has badly hit Asia.

Their warnings came as European researchers are also warned this week that hundreds of millions could die around the globe if a mutated bird flu, helped by jet travel and open borders, emerges and sweeps the world.

I read a lot, and a lot of Science Fiction, and these days there’s just enough fact thrown into the mix just to keep you on your toes. The super volcanoe that’s just waiting to blow under Yellowstone. The fact that the sun, bringer of warm breezes and maybe an occaissional sunburn, is a giant freaking series of nuclear explosions going off in our very immediate galactic neighborhood has fueled more than one writer’s head. And lets not forget about Global Warming least we offend those who pray at the alter of environmentalism. All fuel and fodder for the science fiction author who wants to add a little oomph to the story to “keep it real dawg, a’ight.” (??? Randy?)

But ya know, it’s always the weird stuff that really gets us, not the sexy cool stuff. Bird Flu. We could possibly be devasted by Bird Flu.

Because of places I’ve worked and exercises I’ve participated in, I know a bit about the spread of diseases. Back in the stone age I had to physically pick a slide up off a projector and replace it with the next one in a smooth and “professional” manner. God help me, I used to be proud of this skill. But I’ve sat through more disaster preparedness (natural and created) briefings than I care to imagine and the first folks to get sick in cases like this are the transporters; Airline crews and truckers and frequent flyers. Folks who come into contact with a LOT of other folks every day. Yes…they transport the disease as well but they also get sick first so guess what? Lots of stuff that we depend on to move from point A to point B doesn’t move because the timing is just so that they’re getting REAL sick just as the rest of us are starting to think, “My God I feel like I’ve been ate by a bear and shite down a hole.” Stuff stops moving just as we’re starting to need lots of stuff. It would make life interesting.

Bird Flu? Doesn’t seem right does it? I’m thinkin’ I’d prefer a meteor or a series of continent shifting earthquakes or a super x-ray fueled gravity pulse from the surface of Mars. Bird Flu sounds so cheezy. No, Asian Avian Flu doesn’t make it any better.

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