Bonne Fête

Some French and France-related blogs worth your time on this holiest of French days:

Frogsmoke
SuperFrenchie
Libé blog
F(r)oggy Notion
Le nid du Piou
Inside the USA
Amerloque
Le Monde Blog
Filles Sourires

Friday Dinner Party Conversation Stopper

One needs to see that one's own way of life and habits of speech and of thought, not only seem wrong to large populations, but can be repugnant in very much the same way in which alien habits of eating, or alien sexual customs, can be repugnant.

- Stuart Hampshire

"Obedience"

Nice set of photos and an interview with street artist Shepard Fairey at The Morning News. If you've walked around NYC, you'll recognize some of his images. I particularly like these two above.

"It's not individual atrocity. It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity"

This major report in The Nation is worth reading: "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness."

"Here's some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he's going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you've ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds..."

"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under the American flag'."

"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."

The Eros of the Other Mind

I came upon this really lovely article in The American Scholar, then discovered that 3QD and Aspazia have both posted on it. It's really worth a whole read, but here is one of the passages I most admired. Then check out Aspazia's piece (and SteveG continues with an offshoot discussion on Nietzsche's priests).

Sex is the god we worship most fervently; to deny that it is the greatest of pleasures is to commit cultural blasphemy. In any case, how can you have an eros of souls if you don’t have souls? Our inability to understand intimacy that is neither sexual nor familial is linked to the impoverishment of our spiritual vocabulary. Religion still speaks of the soul, but to the popular mind, at least, it means something remote from our earthly self. What it should mean is the self, the heart and mind, or the heart-mind, as it develops through experience. That’s what Keats meant when he called the world a “vale of soul-making.” And because we’re unequipped to understand the soul in this sense, we’re unequipped to understand Socrates’ belief that the soul’s offspring are greater than the body’s: that ideas are more valuable than children.

Another blasphemy. If there’s one god our culture worships as piously as sex, it’s children. But sex and children, sexual intimacy and familial intimacy, have something in common — beyond the fact that one leads to the other: both belong to us as creatures of nature, not as creators in culture. After Rousseau and Darwin and Freud, and with evolutionary psychology preaching the new moral gospel, we’ve become convinced that our natural self is our truest one. To be natural, we believe, is to be healthy and free. Culture is confinement and deformation. But the Greeks thought otherwise. To them, our highest good is not what we share with the animals, but what we don’t share with them, not the nature we’re born with, but the culture we make from it — make, indeed, against it.

That is why, for the Greeks, the teacher’s relationship with the child was regarded as more valuable and more intimate than the parents’. Your parents bring you into nature, but your teacher brings you into culture. Natural transmission is easy; any animal can do it. Cultural transmission is hard; it takes a teacher. But Socrates also inaugurated a new idea about what teaching means. His students had already been educated into their culture by the time they got to him. He wanted to educate them out of it, teach them to question its values. His teaching wasn’t cultural, it was counter-cultural. The Athenians understood Socrates very well when they convicted him of corrupting their youth, and if today’s parents are worried about trusting their children to professors, this countercultural possibility is really what they should be worried about. Teaching, as Neil Postman says, is a subversive activity — all the more so today, when children are marinated in cultural messages from the moment they’re born. It no longer takes any training to learn to bow to your city’s gods (sex or children, money or nation). But it often takes a teacher to help you question those gods. The teacher’s job, in Keats’s terms, is to point you through the vale of soul-making. We’re born once, into nature and into the culture that quickly becomes a second nature. But then, if we’re granted such grace, we’re born again. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his mortal soul?

This is the kind of sex professors are having with their students behind closed doors: brain sex. And this is why we put up with the mediocre pay and the cultural contempt, not to mention the myriad indignities of graduate school and the tenure process. I know perfectly well that not every professor or every student feels this way or acts this way, nor does every university make it possible for them to do so. There are hacks and prima donnas at the front of many classrooms, slackers and zombies in the seats. And it doesn’t matter who’s in either position if the instructor is teaching four classes at three different campuses or if there are 500 people in the lecture hall. But there are far more true teachers and far more true students at all levels of the university system than those at its top echelons like to believe. In fact, kids who have had fewer educational advantages before they get to college are often more eager to learn and more ready to have their deepest convictions overturned than their more fortunate peers. And it is often away from the elite schools — where a single-minded focus on research plus a talent for bureaucratic maneuvering are the necessary tickets to success — that true teaching most flourishes.

Googling the author's name, William Deresiewicz, I came upon another nice piece by him from the NY Times, cited on a Villanova writing program webpage. The opening paragraph is a good one.

I CAME across the following sentence in a term paper recently. The student was about to describe how she had arrived at her conclusions. This is what she wrote: ''The following methodology was utilized.'' I see this kind of thing all the time. Not ''the following method was used''; not ever ''this is what I did.'' Like nearly all the students I've taught, this young woman has learned to believe that the English language does not have room for her. That it is a secret code known only to the initiated. That the language she speaks is uneducated, inferior and incorrect. Hence the corseted tone, the vocabulary that strains at sophistication, the way she absents herself from her own writing. This is a student who has been taught to worship the volcano god of Correct English.

Felonious Bully

This is from a reader at TPM, re Bush's pressure on Harriet Miers.

Invoking a privilege is one thing, but telling a person not to show up in response to a subpoena -- if only to actually invoke the privilege -- is quite another. It's not just worse, it's a felony under federal criminal law. See for yourself.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505 : ... Whoever corruptly ... influences, obstructs, or impedes ... the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress ... [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years ... or both.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b): As used in section 1505, the term "corruptly" means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including ... withholding, [or] concealing ... information.

p.s. given the ponderous profundity of my professional pursuits, the occasion seldom arises in which occurs to me such a passing trifle as the present consideration that a rather humorous moniker for the current US president might be "Felonious Monkey."

UPDATE (12 July):

Cass Sunstein, writing in the Boston Globe, suggests that legal interpretation on the matter of executive privilege is a wash. That is, despite any appearances of political impropriety we might wish resolved, there are legal cases to be made on both the president's case for executive privilege and Congress' case for disclosure. Forcing the case in court would be the decisive factor, perhaps, but it appears that we wouldn't have any inkling of which direction the decision would go until we had the decision in our hands. This strikes me as odd in this particular case, at least. This is a country legally unprepared for a presidential abuse of power, even when most of us recognize it as abuse. We ought to question the broad assumption that law ought to trump ethics, especially given the dependence of law that is genuine in spirit if not in letter on ethical reasoning (but not necessarily the other way around).

The president's best answer is that this is not a judicial proceeding and that Congress has not demonstrated anything like sufficient need for these materials. The Department of Justice argues that Congress has received "thousands of documents and dozens of hours of testimony already." The department adds that Congress must do more than to say, in a general way, that it fears wrongdoing or that the materials "are of public import"; it must show that they are "demonstrably critical" to Congress' effort to exercise its constitutional role.

Congress' strongest reply is that the evidence reveals a real need for the documents, which are indispensable to establish whether a genuine misuse of executive power has occurred. Congress might add that its own lawmaking prerogatives are at stake. If partisan politics has affected the decision to replace US attorneys, it might seek to enact corrective legislation.

In arguing for inherent authority to engage in torture, and for the power to make war without congressional approval, the Bush administration has made some extravagant arguments about executive power. But the president's authority to resist congressional subpoenas has never been well defined. If the issue gets to court, anything can happen.

What Helmut Needs, Badly

Photo: Christopher Wray-McCann

W Loves a Parade

Unfortunately, after all is said and done and demolished into rubble and blood, I think this is probably right.

People ask what we're doing in Iraq. And you can answer in a hundred ways and in a thousand shades of literalism to metaphor. But at some level we're in Iraq because President Bush wanted a parade. It's not hard to imagine how he must have imagined it. A withdrawal of most American troops from a staunchly allied pro-American Iraq. Waving flags. Heartfelt thanks and vindication for the president who had the guts and character to see it through.

And that's why we stay. Because somehow if he just keeps at it someday he might get his parade. Or rather if he just keeps us there forever he doesn't have to really deal with what a disaster he's created and fundamentally what a failure he is.

And after all the foreign policy wonks are done, the IR theorists have come and gone, the historians continue to debate arcane and meaningless presidential statements, and real human beings continue to mourn their losses, all we'll have is the reality of an ass with a beanie and an ice cream cone wishing for his parade. The American Dream, eh?

Cempedak

Photo from Wikipedia

Hands Off My Pleasure Center

A single pill appears to hold promise in curbing the urges to both smoke and drink, according to researchers trying to help people overcome addiction by targeting a pleasure center in the brain.

More here, if you want.

Categorically Complex Strife

Chart from RFE/RL

It's nice to blame everything in Iraq on al Qaeda, as is the official administration line to the public. This makes the war more understandable and gives the public an easily identifiable foe. But it's also untrue and perhaps counterproductive.

Abu Aardvark has a terrific post based on this RFE/RL report outlining the diverse factions in Iraq. The chart above shows different factions, numbers of attacks claimed by each faction, and so on. The Bush administration, however, insists on presenting a public story of a "war on terror" where the opponent is al Qaeda, which must ultimately be defeated on a global battlefield. That is a fake war since the chart above could be expanded to other countries as well, showing that in Indonesia, for instance, not all militant Islamic groups have any connections whatsoever to al Qaeda. Furthermore, one wonders about the degree to which al Qaeda is indeed an American creation. There's certainly a core group led by Osama bin Laden, and there may very well be connected cells placed around the world. But characterizing al Qaeda as the guiding, organizing, opposing force makes for a neater public story than attempting to explain the complexity of positions, demands, interrelations (and lack thereof), and political connections.

It must be further noted that many of these groups - whether in Iraq or elsewhere - did not exist prior to the invasion of Iraq.

AA suggests that,

the labeling of all violence as al-Qaeda has the effect of shutting down discussion of the political goals of the insurgency factions - at precisely the time when comprehensive political dialogue in Iraq is most urgently needed. At a time when everyone claims to recognize that the military efforts will only matter to the extent that they produce political reconciliation, this would seem to matter. Shrinking the field of Sunni positions to 'cooperating with the US' and 'al-Qaeda' simply defines away the overwhelmingly dominant political stance within the Sunni community - the nationalist, anti-US and anti-Maliki line represented by the major insurgency factions, the AMS, and so forth. This risks someday becoming a textbook example of tactics defeating strategy.

But the real harm comes in the wider Arab and Muslim world, where the exaggeration of al-Qaeda's role works directly and devastatingly against American goals. It magnifies al-Qaeda's perceived power, strengthening its own media campaign and feeding its most powerful propaganda instrument. Attributing all these attacks to al-Qaeda certainly doesn't hurt al-Qaeda's image: Iraq is the one place where al-Qaeda's violence is actually widely supported in the Muslim world (a recent PIPA survey found that over 90% of Egyptians thought that attacks on American civilians were against Islam and illegitimate, but over 90% of Egyptians thought that attacks on American troops in Iraq were legitimate). The administration in effect claims more power and military success for al-Qaeda in Iraq than al-Qaeda claims for itself - for which the al-Qaeda leadership can only be bemusedly grateful. Forget al-Hurra - if you're looking for a real public diplomacy fiasco, you'll be hard pressed to do worse than the US acting as al-Qaeda's agent in promoting its Iraqi success.

Ass Policy

A Tiny Revolution, one of the most entertaining blogs out there, documents Bush's peculiar "ass-based foreign policy."

This is from the new book The Blair Years by Tony Blair's spin master Alastair Campbell:

Shortly before the Commons debate, Mr Campbell recalls President Bush promising: "If you win the vote in Parliament, I'll kiss your ass."

This is from Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn:

As Fleischer recounted [an exchange with Helen Thomas about Saddam Hussein] for the president, Bush's mood changed...Out of nowhere, he unleashed a stream of expletives.

"Did you tell her I'm going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the Mideast?"

This is from Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait by Israeli journalist Uri Dan:

“It was an excellent discussion with the President,” Sharon told me afterwards when we sat in a fancy colonial furnished corner of ‘Blair House’..."The President was very friendly and he replied that he is decisive in continuing his total war against Bin Laden...” and here Sharon stopped for a moment, like someone who finds it hard to express the President’s words, but he got over it and smiled: “He told me about Bin Laden – “I’LL SCREW HIM IN HIS ASS.”

There's yet more.... My favorite from our National Pixie, regarding Vicente Fox: "spray gold and silver glitter onto [his ass]."

"Just Around the Corner," aka "In 6 Months," aka The "Alternative Evidence" Presidency

The press finally catches on to important inherent qualities of the slippery slope-y, goal-post shifting-y, fakey report-y, dissembling-y Bush Iraq policy.

The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.

Now including just plain stupid-y.

"There are things going on that we never could have foreseen," said one official, who noted that the original benchmarks set by Bush six months ago -- and endorsed by the Maliki government -- are not only unachievable in the short term but also irrelevant to changing the conditions in Iraq.

And hope? You want hope? Even a faint glimmer?

"The heart of darkness is the president," the person said. "Nobody knows what he thinks, even the people who work for him."

Lebanon's Compounded Tragedy

“We have no sleeper cells in Lebanon.... They are all waking up.”

There's nearly enough packed into the above sentence to explain the current state of Lebanon. But not quite. For one thing, post-invasion Iraq has been the country in which the currently ascending militant groups have trained. That fertile chaos has spilled over, finding a home in the more resentful segments of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. These camps, of course, are a product of Israeli expansion, which provides ideological sustenance for recruitment. Hezbollah, on the other hand, gains its force through providing social services that the Lebanese government is not in a position to offer and gains further strength through Syrian support. Lebanon proper is a balancing act among complex and diverse political factions. Syria and Israel manipulate these factions in order to maintain instability in the country.

But... Lebanon today is equally shaped by the US invasion of Iraq. We're only now starting to see the potential devastation of this lovely and tragic country. One wonders whether the central principle underlying American policy in the region is to create violence and chaos. If not, then we have to assume a colossal incompetence, a colossal disregard for consequences, and a criminal disregard for human life. If so, these still hold, but they're augmented by a policy attitude that assumes that massive strife is in American interests, and must simply be contained within the region through the Israeli proxy and American military bases. Are we prepared to admit this?

Friday Dinner Party Conversation Stopper

In such gray hours, when the sun is sunk and the skies are already sad, it will often happen that one reflection at some occasional angle will cause to linger the last of the light. A scrap of window, a scrap of looking-glass, will be full of the fire that is lost to all the rest of the earth.

- From G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

Papaya

Happy Really Short Vacation, Everybody

"The United States is in a class of its own," the report says. "It is the no-vacation nation."

A report from the European Trade Union Institute points out that Americans get very little vacation time relative to other developed nations. Combine this with the reticence towards overtime pay, worker's rights, and insurance benefits, and you've got a nation of working people squeezed from all sides.

I'm in a rather luxurious position. Academics have plenty of time off and can work on their own projects much of the time. But this has changed in academia too as universities think more and more like businesses. Some universities and university departments are so strapped for money that they become overly conservative about project with great academic merit but that bring in little funding. Basically, many are starting to have to pay their own way to work in universities through combinations of grants and adjunct-type pay. Vacation, in this sense, ends up meaning very little when the time you do have that is free of formal obligations is entirely consumed with trying to survive over the next couple of years. This system is going to break.

Fine Dining

Design by Jurgen Bey, via Next Nature.

Border Kop

Via Subtopia.

The Two Americas Penal System

Bush commutes Libby prison sentence

You knew it was coming. Now it's here. But, as Bush says, it still "leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby." He must pay $250K and is on probation. Whoa! Ouch. Crime doesn't pay! But this isn't an official pardon, so Bush is able to skirt rhetorically the good-old-boys pardon issue.

And, on the other hand,

A federal judge increased the possible sentence for former Gov. Don Siegelman from more than 10 years to more than 15 years Thursday, saying he believes Siegelman's actions damaged the public's confidence in state government.

UPDATE (3 July):

And how painful will that $250K be to Libby? His legal defense fund already has $5 million. Well, he might have to provide return services. And he'll have to do it on probation (which means no crack for a while)!

Plus, Josh Marshall:

The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.