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Saturday, November 22, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:58 PM:
French news headlines from Le Monde on a Saturday night:Georgia: Russian Diplomacy Gets In The Action. Russia intends to mediate between President Shevuardnaze (Eng. spelling?) and the opposition party. Just what every country would want, I guess.
Center-Left Threatened by Ex-Nationalists in Croatia. Will the current governing coalition survive or will supporters of Franjo Tudjman win the day?
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Friday, November 21, 2003
posted by gbarto at 10:56 PM:
Get Den Beste an icepack. He's sounding like the TurkeyBlog:In the US we citizens see the government as something we own and control, which exists to serve us and to benefit us. And we see our rights as being something we inherently possess. The Constitution "enumerates" some rights, and protects them, but does not grant them. (Every time I slip and accidentally write that the Bill of Rights "grants" us certain rights, I always get letters. Sigh.)From the TurkeyBlog, a few days back:
But that's not how Europeans see it. Europeans don't have any "rights" in the sense that Americans think of the term. What they have is privileges. And they think of their governments as having an inherent existence (a generalization of the "divine right of kings"), which is diametrically opposite to the American attitude described most eloquently in the Declaration of Independence...
France lost their way; they knew at one point (in the Declaration of the Rights of Man) that life and liberty were God-given. We knew it too, in our Declaration. The point of the phrase is not, by the way, that we owe fealty to the Christian deity, or any deity. The point is that these rights are. Their source is not earthly, not historical, not national, not racial, not anything except natural and proper to all humans. That means, of particular import, that they do not come from government.Den Beste was talking about drug development. I was talking about hate-crimes laws. But the point is important in all contexts: If human rights and the value of humanity are to have any meaning at all, we must recognize that the basic human rights to life, liberty and property (i.e. the fruits of our labors in coin and in self-development) are to be taken as inherent. So long as they are seen to come from earthly institutions, people in power will be at liberty to suppress them, and those lazy about liberty will be free to attribute barbarism to cultural difference. The difference in attitude explains why the US and UK are on one side and the continent is on the other. With our belief in the "rights of Englishmen" and our universalization of same, the US and UK (whatever's going on in the polls) are building on traditions of liberty very different from the idiot utopianism that leaves the French and Germans as convinced today that they can safely bury their heads in the sand as they were confident that they could remake mankind under the Directoire and the Third Reich. Building on what always has been, not merely what philosophers may dream up in the latest fad, our approach is less intellectually exciting but far more solid.
Governments are, to closely paraphrase a very wise man, instituted among men to secure the rights of man, and the TurkeyBlog would add that any government worth having views the securing of these rights as its primary and only serious responsibility. But the rights don't come from the government; the government, a body serving and respresenting the people, merely helps the people to protect them.
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posted by gbarto at 10:34 PM:
Very sharp quote too long missed on Dr. Weevil's site. In a nutshell, waiting till the habits of liberty are formed to give liberty is like waiting till you can swim to go in the water. To read the more elegant original in its fullness, visit the good doctor.* * *
posted by gbarto at 10:27 PM:
Marcus points out a story about a nurse who died during weight reduction research. Turns out the death rate is 1 in 200. Which is why Marcus suggests 1) dieting and 2) understanding just what dieting involves.* * *
posted by gbarto at 10:26 PM:
French news headlines:Ouest-France: European Diplomas: Ferry Wants to Reassure. There's a new standard for a university diploma accepted across Europe and the Education Minister has been pushing the program hard. Hard enough that 15 universities are on strike over this and related issues. But today he visited the University of Valenciennes, where the idea seemed pretty broadly accepted.
Liberation: Bush the Lone Sheriff is wearing thin on allies and partners, so saith Libé.
Le Monde: End of a [widely] criticized Bush visit to the UK.
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posted by gbarto at 12:24 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Al-Qaeda Strikes British in Turkey. Two British sites hit, 27 dead - including the head of the British Consulate, 400 injured. Attacks done with suicide car bombings.
Liberation: In Istanbul, Al-Qaeda Strikes Europe.
Ouest-France: Al-Qaeda Strikes Again in Istanbul. Says this Ouest-France editiorial by Dominique Moisi, the attacks are the result not of what Turkey has done - distantly supporting the US, but what Turkey is - a modern, democratic Muslim society, anathema to what Al-Qaeda stands for. Adds the editorialist, such attacks are "not a consequence of the war in Iraq. They result from a long-term strategy of destabilization..." The editorial closes by noting that if a few years ago, the French were with the Americans, today they're with the Turks - near the front in a war with a "medieval mentality using 21st century means" to oppose the idea that European freedom and democracy can coexist with Islam. Will the next attacks be in the EU, not just pointed at it? A lot depends on whether Europe faces up to the fact that, like the American approach or not (the writer doesn't), its diagnosis of the dangers we face was accurate.
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Thursday, November 20, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:00 AM:
A Dog's Life is second guessing this list of the 101 most essential pieces of 20th century concert music.He suggests replacing Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 with the 4th or 10th. I can see the 4th; I've never really appreciated the 10th. But may I suggest, in lieu of all three, his Violin Concerto No. 1.
Substituting Ralph Vaughn Williams Symphony No. 4 for the London Symphony (No. 2) is a move I can understand, but I'd stick with the Second. There's something about the way it just shimmers in the air after you've heard it that is quite marvelous.
Greg is dead on in suggesting Prokofiev's 5th symphony in place of Lieutenant Kije.
I'd add that I'd like to see a place for Barber's Violin Concerto in there.
I'll otherwise refrain from a critique, but I'd like to mention a few that I was really glad to see on the list:
Debussy, Claude Preludes
Gershwin, George Porgy and Bess
Janacek, Leos Sinfonietta
Messiaen, Olivier Quatour pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time, written in a prison camp during WWII)
Satie, Erik Gymnopédies
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posted by gbarto at 12:39 AM:
Here's Matt Welch, trying to figure out how he feels about guns, having been robbed at knifepoint. On the one hand, the gun can be an eqalizer. On the other hand, the bad guys can use it to get an edge. On the third hand, it can exacerbate a difficult situation into a deadly one. On the fourth hand, it can up the stakes enough to calm such a situation. Say what you will, but given all these hands, it's fortunate our founders gave us the right to bear arms!* * *
posted by gbarto at 12:28 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Universities Contest "Ferry Reforms" - specifically reforms to unify education across Europe and to render universities more autonomous. Students are on strike against what they see as the privatization of education and creation of inequality in same.
Libération: Judicial Thriller for Michael Jackson. There's an arrest warrant out for sexual abuse of a minor and France is as abuzz (if not more so) than the US. (The story got a large picture in a side column at Le Monde.)
Ouest-France: Public Assistance: 545 Euros a Month Starting in January. That's the new RMA, or guaranteed income (if you make less the government makes up the difference).
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posted by gbarto at 12:14 AM:
Some translations go better than others. When I started translating the Chastisements (Les Châtiments) by Victor Hugo, I made an effort to stick to rhyme schemes and meters similar to those of the original poems. Big mistake. French was made to rhyme and made for a certain rhythm. English wasn't. Some efforts I've been pleased with (I like the way my "Fable or History" turned out), others not. My effort at Nox was sufficiently unsatisfactory that I stopped early on and posted what I had. Peter Hicks of Napoleon.org has sent a better reading of the opening of Nox, viewable here.* * *
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
posted by gbarto at 12:05 PM:
According to Bjørn Stærk, Mullah Krekar, who showed up at peace protests in the run-up to the Iraq war, was also a go-between for Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Asks Stærk, what could be more symbolic of the peace movement?* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:43 AM:
Here's Den Beste on suicide among troops in the Middle East. He says the numbers are less than for the general population, but that, obviously, a rate above zero is higher than we want. What can we do? If you know someone in the military, write early and often, on paper, so they'll remember a better life awaits when their tour is up. Touching off a post a few spots down, I'd note that the same thing's not a bad idea if you know someone here who's going through a rough time.* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:35 AM:
Says Cicero:On the other hand, nobody will come looking for trouble with a peaceable America that minds its own business.Like the America that was pulling back from international treaties and alliances and announcing its intent to pursue its own private interests off of the world stage in early September 2001? America's very existence is an affront and a threat to the Islamicists of the world, and the only way for us to become "peaceable" enough to cease to be their target is to stop exporting movies, music, culture, consumer goods and anything else that can't be fashioned by minds stuck in the 14th century and to fall into the sort of decay which makes their wretched societies look comparatively healthy. GW may be going about some things in the wrong way, may overplay his hand sometimes. But he understands the major point here: Those trying to sell tribal Islamicism - i.e. the mishmash of Islam and barbarous tribal customs hawked by the likes of Al-Qaeda - cannot abide the existence of a superior product on the market. Until they destroy us or at least destroy our mystique, they will not be contented. They are like - Douglas Adams fans will know the reference - the people of Krikkit. They've seen a whole vast universe out there that they don't understand and cannot thrive in and so they want to destroy it. Which is why, as Den Beste grimly noted the other day, we must destroy either them or their culture before they destroy us. With our democratization program, we're going for the most palatable choice.
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posted by gbarto at 11:15 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde says that In the Face of Criticism, Bush is Raising Questions about the Europeans. Specifically about their ties to Iran and not so nice elements of the Palestinian cause. Just to make it a three-fer, he suggested it was time for Europe to take on anti-Semitism, which must be rough for Chi-Chi, just getting started fighting anti-Semitism now that the burning of a Jewish school has France looking into its soul again, though neither Chi-Chi nor France was so introspective when synagogues were burning left and right a year or so ago.
Le Monde's second headline of the moment is - check out the language on this one - Berlusconi's Italy, Privileged Partner of Israel in the Bosom of the EU. Egads! The Jewish state found a friend in Europe! Le Monde's phrasing makes it sound like they're afraid of infiltration. The Jewish Menace! Coming Soon to Italy!
Just to be clear, one needn't become Israel's best pal or most slavish devotee to avoid charges of anti-Semitism. But when your proud nation once loaded Jews on to train cars to Auschwitz while telling itself everything was alright, you lose your moral authority to pronounce upon the benignity of perceived threats to the survival of the Jewish people.
Liberation: Turkish Trail in Istanbul Bombings. Seems they've got four people associated with the bombing in mind. They're all Islamicist Turks, not foreigners.
Ouest-France: After Rennes, Students in Nantes and Caen go on strike. I dunno. If you've seen the buildings at Rennes 2, you can understand wanting to stay out of them. (I studied there for a semester in '93.) Nonetheless, the people inside tend to be a decent enough lot. Can't speak for Nantes and Caen.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:31 PM:
Here's LGF on our friends the Saudis. They're whipping a young bride and her groom because they didn't play along with the Sharia system. You know, the system they're trying to export with their support of Wahabbism. But not to worry. Dr. Dean and friends say we don't need to do anything in that part of the world but stay out so peace can reign. As if. Our biggest mistake to date is viewing Iraq as more dangerous than Saudi Arabia. If the politics were better, we couldn't go wrong in edging out the Crown Prince, even if it meant waiting on Iran.* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:17 PM:
Here's Joanne Jacobs on teen suicide and a particular teen suicide that's been in the papers out here. I actually think the teacher is on to something here. We as a society still tend to pooh-pooh it when people are going through serious mental trauma for whatever reason. Mostly, I imagine, it's a question of fear. Acknowledging that somebody else's mind might go bing, leading to irrational and downright dangerous behavior leaves open the possibility it might happen to us. And splitting our time between touchy-feely garbage that's just plain demeaning to anyone with half a brain and the rugged grin-and-bear-it attitude that assumes any problem can be conquered with a little bit of will no doubt exacerbates the situation.Tonight I was looking at a book - forget the title, ironically - on how to strengthen and improve your mind. It defined the brain as your most important organ because it does the organization to keep everything under functional and provided for. Which leads me to propose this campaign for dealing with mental illness: Take care of your brain: it's your most important organ. Never happen, I know. But it should. It's time we stopped acting like when Bill eats 2 lbs. of red meat a day it's understandable he'd get heart disease, especially since it runs in the family, yet when it comes to mental illness we act like you can feed an emotional diet of crap to kids from families where the psyche isn't the most stable anyway and if something goes to hell the kid needed more willpower. These kids needed people reaching out who knew what they were dealing with and understand that a depressed teenager might not just be going through a phase but might be experiencing the onset of something - depression, bipolar, generalized anxiety disorder - that needs medical treatment, not wishing away.
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posted by gbarto at 11:05 PM:
Here's Natalie Solent with the latest bright idea for education the kiddies in England. It's funny they tried this out with the elite; it sounds like the program we sent "problem" kids to where I come from. But it's probably even been part of the curriculum at one point or another. That is how education theory works - you find an idea old enough that people don't remember it, toss on some new jargon and wait for the intended audience - educrats, divided between those cynical enough to wink and those too illiterate to know any better - to go gaga.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:58 AM:
Here's Den Beste on fussing with Windows XP, vs. 2K. The TurkeyBlog for his part, has been trying to figure out how to make his Samsung SD-612 DVD in an HP Pavilion actually play DVDs. The leading advice seems to be to get rid of the Samsung and not buy from HP since they never support their 3rd party add-ins (my father says he just got a note that they decided not to do the fixes to support the write function in the DVD/RW that they charged extra for). So, while Steve's ticked about XP being a little "too helpful" we salute HP and Samsung for joint productions that not only don't do "too much" but don't even do everything they're supposed to. Guess that's what Perfect Enough (the title of CEO Carly Fiorina's book) means.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:00 AM:
Cicero's trying to press some buttons, and presses some of the right ones. Responding to France's initiatives on anti-Semitism, he wonders why Jews get special protection and, say, Turks, don't. He is, of course, right.France lost their way; they knew at one point (in the Declaration of the Rights of Man) that life and liberty were God-given. We knew it too, in our Declaration. The point of the phrase is not, by the way, that we owe fealty to the Christian deity, or any deity. The point is that these rights are. Their source is not earthly, not historical, not national, not racial, not anything except natural and proper to all humans. That means, of particular import, that they do not come from government.
Governments are, to closely paraphrase a very wise man, instituted among men to secure the rights of man, and the TurkeyBlog would add that any government worth having views the securing of these rights as its primary and only serious responsibility. But the rights don't come from the government; the government, a body serving and respresenting the people, merely helps the people to protect them.
The above point made sense back when we had property rights because you could say that your liberty was protected by the government in the same way as your car or home; i.e. the government doesn't own your home, but still provides police protection so you can live in it safely without anyone taking your stuff. Now that property rights have started in cases to go out the window, a better analogy is needed but I don't have one at hand. What I do have is this conclusion that is obvious upon reflection: There has been a trend toward failing to see our rights as God-given, viewing them as emanating from government, rather than merely being secured by government. The logical result is the hate-crime law, in which the right to live or to live free from fear, persecution or discrimination is no longer the proper state of all humanity, assured by government as necessary, but is a secular right emanating from and granted by government as the government sees fit.
Should we return to a point where Americans can quote easily and without defensiveness:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governedwe will have made some progress, for at least one continent will carry the knowledge that the value of the human life rests not in UN compacts, human rights treaties or Berkeley city council resolutions, but in the fact that God and/or Nature put it there, and that the best government can do is not to give us something wonderful for which we owe gratitude but to help us guard what is naturally ours and to make the most of it. Until then, I fear, Cicero is right and we shall all have to line up to see if whether the powers-that-be judge our lives to be of value or not.
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posted by gbarto at 12:29 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Bush in London: Police and Pacifists Mobilize - for the demonstrations planned for Thursday. 14,000 police to be on hand.
Le Figaro: 2004 Test Year For Investors. Investors are, as always, caught between dreams of wealth and the fear of losing it all. Which way will they go? They're not sure.
Liberation: Harrassed, the Americans Counter-Attack. The US, ahead of transferring power, is cleaning house to shut down sources of rebellion.
Ouest-France: Saint-Nazaire like a family facing drama. A point made by the headline we ran this a.m.
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Monday, November 17, 2003
posted by gbarto at 9:20 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Jacques Chirac Mobilizes Against Anti-Semitism. This comes in response to a fire at a Jewish school in Gagny. One hopes it's also a response in part to the remarks of the Malaysia's Mahathir and to the broad undercurrent of anti-Semitism that we've seen implicit in both the statements and the policies of governments across Europe. Still, protecting the Jews in France is a step up over 60 years ago; we'll see if the domestic initiatives open up into an understanding that a certain percentage of people the French (and the US) celebrate as partners in trade, etc, want the whole of the Jewish people dispersed at best, dead at worst, and that such things call for more than worries about "a shitty little country" getting in the way of one's oil field deals and one-world dreams.
Libération: We'll continue the above with Libé's Meeting at Elysée to Fight Anti-Semitism. The above refers, of course, not to Chirac taking to the streets and knocking around skinheads. Rather, he convened a meeting at the presidential palace, which meeting included the Prime Minister (Raffarin), Interior Minister (Sarkozy), Education (Ferry), Teaching (Darcos) and Justice (Perben). The first three names will be familiar to French news readers; the others aren't in the press much. Chirac is later to meet with representatives of the Jewish community to help decide what's to be done. As for the hope this will translate into an international stance against anti-Semitism, we'll note that the Foreign Minister was not there.
Ouest-France: All Saint-Nazaire Observed Moment of Silence. At 10am in memory of those who died in the Queen Mary 2 accident, which took place there.
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Sunday, November 16, 2003
posted by gbarto at 10:49 AM:
No Celebration of food:Hepatitis Outbreak Spreading in Pa.
Three people dead, over 500 sick in flare-up linked to Mexican restaurant
It started at a Chi-Chis at a mall in Pennsylvania. 11 employees tested positive for Hepatitis A. No word on the initial source, though green onions are under strong consideration as a culprit. They're both a good carrier and difficult to clean. They're also a common ingredient in salsa, where they are added raw or barely cooked, a no-no for things carrying nasties like hepatitis. Chi-Chis has apparently stopped using the things. Will others follow suit?
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posted by gbarto at 9:08 AM:
A few days old, but here's A Dog's Life on the stress of dealing with an endangered job in these times. And I think Greg captures an element of the economic problem that Mr. Bush needs to get on his radar screen: It is not the outright unemployed that will be his downfall if he doesn't respond to economic questions. It's those who are underemployed or fearful of becoming unemployed who therefore can't find the enthusiasm to cheer things forward. Here in Silicon Valley, the capitalists seem intent on doing themselves in at times. In a Los Altos coffee shop the other day, I heard two guys talking about shipping jobs to India. What did the company where they worked do? They made software development tools. I resisted the urge to ask whether, now that they'd laid off a bunch of American programmers, they were going to sell the expensive tools to the Indians with their drastically smaller incomes and less capitalized software businesses or the unemployed programmers and defunct software companies in the US. Though the next thing they talked about, sure enough, is how much sales had dropped and how they were considering price cuts to encourage adoption of their newest package. Oh well. It will balance out, for the good Dr. Friedman has said the money will go where it's supposed to in time. And ultimately, I think it will. US business always has two bright ideas that aren't so bright: 1) they can get the US consumer without paying the US worker. 2) overseas workers who aren't even smart enough to realize their work is worth well more than they're paid will come up with the next big thing to make American business rich. Eventually, things drift back to the US and the Western nations till our big businesses get the next bright idea. So, ultimately, I'm optimistic. But, as I've said elsewhere, sometimes I'm not too bright.* * *
posted by gbarto at 8:48 AM:
From Cicero:INTERNET STORY. AL-QAEDA LEADER IN IRAQ: WE PLAN TO KILL 100,000 IN US TERRORIST STRIKEWhile the lead implication is a bit sinister, Cicero has a point. Strangely enough (in my view), the killing of 3000 in New York City was not enough to convince some people that something had to be done about the brand of Islam thriving in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan (Syria and Iraq represent different cases, I think; individual power lusting and Arabism rather than Islamism seem to be their thing). But an attack on those dimensions would almost doubtlessly mobilize even Howard Dean.
Are these guys working for Wolfie? Ariel Sharon?
...
GW has not really convinced anybody this is the present generation's Big One, and that 911 was their Pearl Harbor. Witness what we all know, that a revival of the draft would immediately cause Vietnam scale resistance and opposition.
Cicero's comments reveal the problems George W. is going to have prosecuting the war on terror, but also tell us about the problem Islamism has: A successful Islamism will be crushed and a serious war on terror will not be pursued without one. Too much of the West lacks the stomach for even telling local Muslim leaders that they're out of bounds if they root for Al-Qaeda, much less arguing that "desperate young men" don't have the right to kill all the Jews and Americans it takes to get into heaven. But Islamism is, frankly, too stupid to drum up anything other than desperate young men whose successes owe to a perverse form of luck. Hell, it took them two tries to blow up the World Trade Center, and they only got the second chance because they had more persistence in the view we should be dead than we have had in the view they should be stopped.
The West does not need to decide how many people it's willing to lose every year so that the "desperate young men" can pretend that the lives they've been given have any meaning in the civilizations in which they were born; we can dilly dally and survive because, as I said, these people aren't too sharp. I doubt if they'll pull off an attack of the magnitude being mentioned, at least not unless we give them multiple chances (à la the WTC) to work out technique, but will the desire or an actual attempt to pull off such an attack provoke a physical response or more psychoanalysis? Lenin said the West would sell the rope to hang itself, but we proved smarter than that. Will we also be smart enough to resist the thousand cuts that kill us slowly? We shall see. I'm ultimately optimistic, but then again I'm not too bright sometimes.
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posted by gbarto at 8:24 AM:
French news: a headline or two from Le Monde for the Saturday night/Sunday morning roundupA Deadly Accident Strikes the Queen Mary. The short story, as we've all heard: A new access ramp gave way beneath 30 people, leaving at least 15 dead and 32 injured with 4 of those being touch and go.
Iraq: 17 Soldiers Dead in Fall of Two Helicopters - after those choppers collided.
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