On Man’s Nose: ‘U.S. RESCUE PLAN’
Caption: ‘JUST IN TIME’
[Het Parool, The Netherlands]
The current financial crisis is full of irony.
We have arguably the most free-market, deregulation-oriented president of the United States embracing perhaps the largest government bailout of private enterprise in world history. And according to this op-ed article from Brazil, the left-leaning ruling Workers’ Party is having a fine time teasing the Bush Administration for proving the fallacy of the neo-liberal model it has been foisting on Latin America, yet that same Party now sings the praises of a similar bank bailout passed by Brazil’s former right-leaning government.
“Believe it. The President of the United States, George Bush, provoked a festive air amongst members of the Workers’ Party [PT] who met yesterday to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of the Ministry of Finance. Ministers, advisors and economists linked to the ruling PT couldn’t contain their happiness when commenting on the North American decision to provide a mega-package of financial aid of $200 billion to two bankrupt institutions in the real estate sector [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. “They put the last nail in the coffin of neo-liberalism,” was what one heard the most in conversations before, during and after the event which was held here in Brasília [Brazil’s capitol].”
The sense of satisfaction was so high that in order to take a jab at the United States, there were Workers’ Party members promoting something they had always criticized before. Such was the case of economist Maria da Conceição Tavares. “They have tragically buried neo-liberalism. It has cost a fortune. Our PROER [Program of Incentives to the Reconstruction and Strengthening of the Nation ] was much cheaper,” she said ironically, referring to the program implemented by Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government to save bankrupt banks, which was so criticized at the time by the PT in Brazil and which is similar to the program now put forward by the United States … there’s nothing like gaining power after being in the opposition.”
So what is that very special something that makes Republicans near Sarah Palin behave as though they’ve eaten catnip? Patrik Etschmayer of Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper thinks he has the answer - an answer that will no doubt create some controversy.
“A man who criticizes a female politician quickly draws accusations of sexism and chauvinism. … But - as painful as this may be for feminists - incompetence and unethical behavior are by no means limited to the male gender. And the generally better social skills of women also results in a superior ability - if they see fit - to lie better than most men. In politics, this is a core-competence. … Therefore when a female politician is attacked, one should look very carefully at what the criticism is and who is screaming, ‘Sexism!’”
“If one removes the two X-chromosomes and regards Palin as a non-gendered entity, only one thing is left: a power-hungry politician, inhabiting a universe of yes-men [and women], unable or unwilling to see any wrongdoing in herself and regarding all people who hold dissenting opinions as political enemies, not least because she sees herself on a mission from God on her way to changing the world. … And here’s the solution to the puzzle - of why Palin was chosen, the source of her popularity among conservatives and what makes her so dangerous: She is the female version of George W. Bush, a W with two X chromosomes.”
Once again, the inimitable Khadir Taahar has thrown a textual grenade into the Iraqi body politic by suggesting to his readers that - horror of horror - Israel would be a far better friend to Iraq than Iran ever will be.
And as we have pointed out before, how representative Taahar’s views are of the Iraqi population is open to question. But we do know that he is regularly published in this Sunni-leaning Baghdad daily.
“Israel is keen on the success of the American project in Iraq to extend security, stability, reconstruction and progress. Its goals are identical to those of America, and anyone who denies that America wants progress and development in Iraq is absolutely a victim of the polluted and demagogic slogans of the hostile mob that we mentioned before. … For a thousand years we have gotten nothing from Iran but war, death, destruction and interference in Iraqi affairs; throughout history, Iran has been the number one enemy of the Iraqi people.”
It seems that both in and out of the United States, the things that concern people the most about Sarah Palin - John McCain’s running mate - is her age, his age, and Palin’s fundamentalist Christian upbringing.
The Plain Dealer published this op-ed, written by me, on May 5, 2005. I cannot state any more clearly why I believe parents should share with other parents, “how they do it,” and particularly a parent, such as Sarah Palin, who is holding out that status as a qualification for being second in line to the United States President.
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There’s no shortage of documentation about how mothers feel crushed between simultaneous responsibilities. Earlier this year, Newsweek published a cover story based on Judith Warner’s book, “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety,” which explores women’s feelings when their career woman role collides with being a mother. A New York Times piece, called “Mommy (and me),” detailed the explosion in online chronicles of parents’ angst. And a new industry — parent coaching — seeks to capitalize on the critical mass of worry.
Unfortunately, this type of sympathy perpetuates the very assumption we need to attack: that integrating motherhood into our lives can and should be performed perfectly, without anxiety and in harmony with all other desires. I say this as a mother whose family would nominate her to be the poster child for Warner’s book faster than she could speed dial the pediatrician.
We need to refocus the debate and affirm a mother’s efforts without applying a win-lose analysis to them. We need to stop pandering to the belief that a mother can function perfectly if only she watches enough episodes of “Supernanny,” digests enough parenting manuals and increases the memory in her PalmPilot.
Take me, for example.
By the time I turned 30, I’d earned two graduate degrees, gotten married and was pregnant with my first child. Over the course of eight years, I took three maternity leaves and worked a variety of schedules at a large, mental-health agency. For the last three years, I’ve worked 10 to 15 hours weekly from home. I circumnavigate the same six streets up to nine times a day as I take my kids to and from school, dance, art, friends’ homes and birthday parties. I volunteer in the schools and attend a variety of monthly meetings in the evenings.
What’s not perfect?
Well, I’ve had multiple fender benders, locked my kids in the car and locked all of us out of the car (both inadvertently), blown three tires in four months by driving over a stroller, a bungee cord and a curb (I was late to the carpool pickup line), mailed thank you cards two months after receiving the present and, this year, I sunk to a new low: preschool guests at my son’s birthday party received candy-filled Chuck E. Cheese goody bags because I was too lazy to scour stores for politically correct items like puzzles or inexpensive books. Read the rest of this entry »
From what we can gather so far from central Europe, there is little love for Sarah Palin or the McCain campaign’s apparent embrace of the Karl Rove election strategy.
Author, historian and political scientist Nicole Bacharan finds irony in the tactics used by the Republican Party, and fears that the more tolerant America that appeared to be emerging may once again be submerged under the out-sized influence of the Christian right.
“Up to now, John McCain, not much liked by his party, was trying to attract independents and moderates. The arrival of Sarah Palin radically alters this pattern: it greatly polarizes the election and has triggered an outbreak of moral intolerance in the campaign.
“There is cause to protest this equation in which a particular group - the Christian right - has a monopoly on morality, while all others are presumed to be living in debauchery. What a paradox for the Republican Party, always hostile to the encroachment of the state, to have become the champion of religious values imposed by public force!”
Now that Iraq’s Sunni ‘Awakening Councils’ appear to have vanquished al-Qaeda in Iraq, is the United States prepared to ‘throw them under the bus’ as it were, in order to obtain a much-desired long-term security agreement with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad?
“There are sure signs that the “Awakening” project will be abandoned and its participants left to an unknown fate. After all the animosity that has occurred, these people can’t return to pre-Awakening days, nor will they be able to become effective political players, particularly because unlike the militias that work and operate in and around the government, they have no foreign support. They are the subjects of a deal being made to satisfy those in power. ”
It seems that Europeans are starting to get the jitters over the likelihood that their preferred American presidential candidate could once again be defeated.
“In France, the matter is settled: Barack Obama, our idol, the candidate of us all, in the strange political unanimity that we secretly adhere to when we look beyond our borders, will win triumphantly in November. In fact, we show almost no interest at all in John McCain, that old white-haired reactionary.”
“Remember the 2004 election and … what was his name? Ah, yes, John Kerry! He made headlines in Courrier International, Télérama and Nouvel Observateur. He was supposed to make us love a new America. He spoke French, too. We even went as far as reviving, politically and in the media, his cousin Brice Lalonde, to get him to tell us about his teenage vacations with him in Brittany. A whack in the face! George W. Bush was triumphantly re-elected. No need to recount the votes from Florida this time, the Republicans had thrashed the Democratic Party. Few people in France ever wondered why our desires and predictions were such a long way from American political reality.”
“Let’s hope that in future, we will look a little more lucidly at these realities. We shouldn’t be disappointed if a President Obama isn’t thinking about us while shaving in the White House, let alone have a falling out with John McCain, who may very well prevail.”
In the “lull” between Obama’s announcement of his vice-presidential pick, and the opening of the Democratic Convention in Denver tomorrow, I am going to try to briefly re-direct the readers’ attention to what I feel is a shameful situation.
There have been many—too many—instances where an administration that claims to “support the troops,” falls woefully short of doing just that. The list is long, starting with body armor and other protective equipment for our troops in combat; continuing with the Walter Reed Medical Center and other active duty and veterans’ health care scandals; and most recently, the fact that Bush & Co. (read: McCain) had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing-on to a decent G.I. Bill of Rights for our troops.
We have also heard, or even experienced, how Condoleezza Rice’s personnel in some U.S. Consulates and Embassies abroad treat Americans—or their spouses—who need assistance from their country with more red tape and red ink than red carpet. Read the rest of this entry »
“The absurdity of this entire affair was best illustrated when John McCain called for coastal oil-drilling and was cheered for it by his Christian-conservative audience. For the most part, this is an audience which believes that the earth is 6,000 years old, yet it applauded plans to look for resources that exist due to the organic remnants of prehistoric organisms that took millions of years to accrue … The fact that a future U.S. President has to suck up at this kind of a forum really gives global politics a surrealistic undertone.”
“For a long while as they ranted about democracy, Iraqi politicians were also laughing to themselves. And they have been backed up by the greatest laughers of them all, the Americans - and the might of the U.S. Army. In fact, since the Americans created the racist, sectarian Governing Council on the first day of their occupation, everyone has been laughing to themselves over the ‘democracy; that Iraqis have been practicing.”
After venting a bit on Iraq’s political class and foreign interference, Abdusalam adresses what Iraqi leaders need to do to make things right:
“Now all of Iraq must show the courage necessary to stop this democracy game that has been exposed, and for which we Iraqis have paid so heavily with our priceless blood. The question is: what’s the solution?What’s the alternative to the false democracy with which all Iraqis ‘comfort’ themselves today? For if the new Iraq is to rise up, Iraqis must take hold of the only choice - real democracy - which doesn’t submit to racial or sectarian influence, regardless of which side it comes from.”
As you might imagine, trying to cover what the rest of the world thinks and says about the United States is a pretty ambitious undertaking. At times, when there is a major story like the war in Georgia or the U.S. presidential election, many other issues get shunted aside for a time.
One such issue is the ‘war on drugs’ now taking place in Mexico, in good measure funded by the United States.
Unbeknownst to most people in our country, many Mexicans feel that the drug ‘war’ we are waging along with the Mexican government is not only illegal, it is part of a Bush administration plan to permanently undermine the Mexican state and turn it into a U.S. vassal.
“Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, under the guise of an effective but undeclared state of emergency, the administration of George W. Bush has proceeded with the systemic demolition of the Constitutional order of the United States. … The White House chief has instituted illegal espionage operations at home and has become embroiled in pre-emptive war abroad, has resorted to ‘legalized’ torture and the abduction-disappearance of suspected terrorists, and has kept thousands of ‘enemy non-combatants’ under indefinite arrest, detaining them in an archipelago of clandestine and ‘floating’ prisons under the control of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency … In a permanent state of emergency, the exception becomes the rule. In the case of the United States, the war became the ontological foundation of the State. All these years Bush has governed through fear, encouraging nationalism and exploiting the racial and ethno-religious prejudice of his fellow countrymen.”
“Here, as in Colombia, the pattern of U.S. intervention took the form of a war on narco-terrorism, by de facto including Mexico as part of the ’security perimeter’ of the United States, via the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, from which is derived the Merida Initiative, which is similar to Plan Colombia. … Bush’s model for Mexico is that of the “Colombianization” of the country. As part of a system that protects corruption and the impunity of entrenched criminal networks within the institutions of State, banks and large corporations, the prescription is more narco-politics, heavy-handedness, torture, detentions and disappearances, dirty war, mercenaries, the criminalization of social protest, and the militarization of society. The goal of the United States is to plunge the country into chaos and destabilization, in order to penetrate [Mexico’s] States security institutions, further weaken national sovereignty and accelerate dependency.”
Public confession makes a half-century leap from John Edwards’ mea-not-so-culpa to a sudden exercise in self-revelation by Charles Van Doren, who was caught in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s.
But perhaps the most telling truth about public soul-searching comes, not from Edwards on Nightline or Van Doren in the New Yorker, but in a New York Timesblog by the scholar Stanley Fish about “autobiographical writing that tells and hides all at the same time.”
In a sympathetic rumination, Professor Fish points out that Van Doren, now 80, proffers the title, “All the Answers”: “But there are no answers, at least to the questions most readers would want to ask: Why did you do it? What was going on in your mind? What about the moral issues? The moment of decision…seems not to have occurred, or to have occurred off-stage when no one, even the person most concerned, was watching.”
It is likely that even now Van Doren doesn’t know, but Fish credits him with an honest attempt at self-discovery: “He does not cast himself as a victim, or as a reformed villain or a misunderstood hero, three narratives that are quite popular in these days of compulsive self-discovery.”
Perhaps better than anything we’ve seen so far, this French news item, which discusses the peace plan negotiated by Nicolas Sarkozy with the Russians, sums up the impotence of the West in confronting Russia’s shock onslaught against Georgia.
“Before Sarkozy arrived in Moscow yesterday, Medvedev declared that the French President would always be able to say that he obtained from Moscow a halt in the bombing of Georgia.
To see the look of seriousness on Sarkozy’s face, it appeared, however, that the French president was aware of having swallowed a substantial Russian snake.”
“Asked about the pressure that Europeans could exert on Moscow, Bernard Kouchner was climbing the walls yesterday, accusing journalists of asking only “aggressive” questions. “What would you do? Send Clémenceau? Send the gas back to Russia?,” retorted the French diplomat, for the most part at a loss to outline what kind of European response could make Russia understand that bombing and occupying a neighboring states isn’t acceptable.”
Continuing on with our European coverage of the crisis in Georgia, this article by Karl Grobe of the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, written just after the crisis mushroomed last week, contains a number of arresting comments that convey the gravity of the situation.
“This is now more than a limited confrontation within the borders of what maps call Georgia. This is war. … Should this turn into a proxy war between ‘East’ and ‘West,’ it will mean a global confrontation. ”
“Moscow and Washington both have the power to bring the warring parties to heel - but both refuse to give an inch, and by hesitating as well as ramping up the rhetoric, they only fuel the flames.”
I wrote yesterday about the conflicting ambitions and hatreds in play here (which Russia is manipulating to further its own ambitions). The situation is an immense tangle of conflicting ambitions—in the form of the desire for land and resources— and furious ethnic hatred.
As I noted yesterday, Georgia is now bringing a lawsuit against Russia for ethnic cleansing:
“Today, the Georgian ambassador to the Netherlands filed a law suit to the International Court of Justice called ‘The state of Georgia against the state of Russia’ because of ethnic cleansing conducted in Georgia by Russia in 1993 to 2008,” Lomaia told Reuters.
The ICJ confirmed Georgia’s filing, in which the country accused Russia of violating an anti-discrimination convention during three interventions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia from 1990 to August 2008. Georgia requested the court to order Russia to comply with the convention, cease all military activities in Georgia, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and withdraw its troops, Georgia said in a filing released by the ICJ.
August 12th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The Times of London makes an interesting study of 10 political personalities who were involved in sex scandals. Of these 10 leaders, five got away with it and five couldn’t. Beginning with the Profumo Affair in Britain in 1963 to the latest one concerning John Edwards in the US, the affairs have attracted a lot of public attention. More here…
