Frontline poets
Back in January, an extra fifteen seconds of fame were granted to the British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion for a 30-word anti-war poem in which he questioned President George Bush's motives. Motion suggested that oil, greed and his father were driving Bush junior to war. Here's the verse:
Causa Belli"They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad;
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad."Reaction to Motion's ode was predictable; the anti-war bloc cheered it, and the anti-Saddam confederation jeered it. Motion's no Larkin, of course, but who is anymore? Still, versifying for the smoked-salmon set is much more enjoyable than being beaten with iron cables across the legs or having your back smoothed with a hot iron — liberties regularly taken by Saddam's thugs when rebellious Kurds fall into their hands. In his "Letter from Northern Iraq" in this week's New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg talks to those who pray for Saddam's demise. Poets, including Andrew Motion, might find inspiration in this paragraph:
"It is virtually impossible to find anyone in Kurdistan who is opposed to the war against Saddam's regime. People on street corners ask for American flags or photographs of George Bush; the appreciation of the United States extends to the intellectual class. Sherko Bekas, who was described to me as Kurdistan's unofficial poet laureate, was particularly upset by the well-publicized efforts of American poets to stop the war. 'Saddam is the god of war,' Bekas said, when I saw him in his office at a publishing firm in Sulaimaniya. 'He is the killer of poetry.' He went on, 'I say to these poets that if they lived for two weeks under Saddam's rule they would write verse in reverse. They would write poems asking Bush to attack Saddam sooner.' "Verse in reverse. I like it.
Hold that "quagmire"
It must be something to do with the general spread of attention deficit disorder, for although this war's not a fortnight old, commentators are already comparing President Bush's buying into the neocon vision of an Iraq invasion transforming 
the Middle East to Lyndon Johnson's acceptance of Robert McNamara's plan for increased engagement in South East Asia. In other words, get ready for Vietnam II, they warn (hope?). The ever-excellent Michael Tomasky, writing in The American Prospect, says that Iraq's "No Nam", but while he feels that the war may be ill-advised, he thinks the "quagmire" word is inappropriate:
"Vietnam became a quagmire after about three and a half years. This war, even with the Iraqis displaying a stiffer upper lip we'd been led to believe they would — and even with the prospect of house-to-house combat in Baghdad — is very unlikely to take more than three and a half months. (If it somehow should, I'd venture that George W. Bush will be in deep political trouble.) Besides which, one should not have opposed the Vietnam War because it became a quagmire. One should have opposed the 1965 escalation, if not the 1961 mini-escalation in the number of 'advisers,' on principle. Now, as then, concerns about a 'quagmire' reflect a response to circumstances — is the war going poorly or well? — rather than an expression of principled belief."
For Tomasky, the real "quagmire" is the White House's relationship with the rest of the world and, taking the longer view, he sees the payback coming in November 2004:
"Diplomacy is this administration's real quagmire. The hawks managed to crash their way through the china shop once, when a) the arguments against the bad guy were clear as water and b) the likelihood of a relatively short war was equally clear. Will American public opinion endorse new rounds of belligerence and unilateralism even as other nations are finding ways to strike back at us? This question is far more likely to be in play in the fall of 2004 than in Iraq, and it's far less likely to benefit the incumbent than today's conventional wisdom would hold. "
Diarist of the day: Woodrow Wyatt, 31 March 1991"The Duchess of York is having an affair with a young man, the rich son of a rich American family. He is the one who, with his mother, got into the Royal Box at Ascot because the though they were inviting Verushka [Wyatt's wife] and myself. The Duchess of York was there on that occasion and no doubt took the opportunity to get friendly with him."
There will always be an England
The final scoreline tells the story: England 42-Ireland 6. "Awsome England Clinch Title" is the BBC story headline and it's so accurate. The Irish were brave; their running was exciting, but they could get nowhere against a superb English defence. Martin Johnson's men must be favoured now to win this year's World Cup.
And now, this item via Brad DeLong, via Electrolite, via William Gibson, via Sky News...
"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton," UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr," said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr. Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."
Red rose and shamrock do battle
My, my, how time flies. It was all of 55 years ago, when, led by the great Jack Kyle, Ireland last won the "Home Countries" rugby championship with a close 6-3 victory over Wales. The expanded competition is now called the
RBS Six Nations Championship and it will be decided today at Lansdowne Road in Dublin. With wins over Scotland, Italy, France and Wales, the Irish are just 80 minutes away from writing a chapter of rugby history. All that stands in the way is England. But there's the rub.
Even the most optimistic Irish supporter has to accept hat the odds are against the home side. England, one of the best teams in the world at the moment, defeated Australia, New Zealand and South Africa last November, and imperiously dismissed Scotland 40-9 last weekend, while an erratic Ireland emerged from Cardiff with a very lucky 25-24 win over Wales. So, form favours England, but they'll be facing a psyched up Irish team, on the verge of only its second Grand Slam in history and in a packed Lansdowne Road, to boot. Because the Triple Crown, Grand Slam and Championship are up for grabs today the red rose won't have it easy in Dublin.
Diarist of the day: Malcolm Muggeridge, 30 March 1948"Started reading Goebbels' Diary. Interested to note that he, too [was a] writer manqué who had begun by producing a bad novel and a play which no theatre would put on. Most men of action seem to be writers manqué and correspondingly most writers, men of action manqué. Interesting theme."
Warblogging's the word (2)
Almost overlooked Steven Levy's piece yesterday on MSNBC. "Bloggers' Delight" is subheaded: "Will the war become the breakthrough Webloggers have been waiting for?" Levy answers that question at the end of the article with a resounding yes in the form of this observation: "So while the war in Iraq might only be beginning, the pundits of the Blogosphere can already register a victory. It's a bloggers' world. We only link to it."
As with today's Financial Times article on warblogging, Sean-Paul Kelly's The Agonist gets first mention. "I've got 32 windows open on my browser, the TV is on, and I've got the BBC on my RealPlayer. I woke up to 332 e-mails this morning," the hyperwarblogger is quoted as saying.
Levy's take on the whole thing:
"Perhaps it was inevitable that this war would become the breakthrough for blogs. The bigmouths of the so-called Blogosphere have long contended that the form deserves to be seen as a significant component of 21st-century media. And in the months preceding the invasion, blogging about the impending conflict had been feisty and furious. But it wasn't until the bombs hit Baghdad that Weblogs finally found their moment. The arrival of war, and the frustratingly variegated nature of this particular conflict, called for two things: an easy-to-parse overview for news junkies who wanted information from all sides, and a personal insight that bypassed the sanitizing Cuisinart of big-media news editing.Blogs deliver on both counts. Kelley's Agonist is only one of many warblogs that suck in reports from around the world and give a constantly updated log of the conflict's arc. (Many are delivered with withering remarks on the stories, most often from a hawkish perspective, though sometimes from a lefty perspective. Kelley leans left, but since the war has started has vowed to stick to the center.)"
Along with The Agonist, other sites mentiond in Levy's piece include The Command Post, War Blogs: CC, Live From Kuwait, Lt. Smash and Back to Iraq 2.0.
Warblogging's the word (1)
Is it a slow Saturday for news or is "warblogging" the big media story of the moment? First example, today's Financial Times, which gives prominent play in print and web to the phenomenon. In print, where space is less of a problem, the story is headed "Round the clock, 'bloggers' are meeting global need". On the paper's site, the story is titled "Weblogs meet a global need".
Sean-Paul Kelly's The Agonist gets first mention and other sites referred to in Peter Thai Larsen's article include, the Command Post, and Sgt Stryker. Money quote:
"If the last Gulf war was a triumph for live television, the current conflict belongs to the web. For the first time since the internet was widely adopted in the late 1990s, its power is being concentrated on an international war. The result is almost impossible to catalogue; tens or even hundreds of thousands of weblogs — known as blogs — have been established or adapted to chronicle or comment upon the conflict. An audience of hundreds of millions surfs between them."
An audience of millions cannot be ignored so big media is muscling in. Larsen notes"
"Even media organisations are getting in on the act in an effort to make the best use of original reporting. The BBC has started posting web updates from its war correspondents. The Financial Times and UK newspaper The Guardian have done the same."
Loss of life
THE MOWERThe mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be carefulOf each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985), Humberside, 12 June 1979
This poem is taken from the 2003 edition of Philip Larkin's Collected Poems, which is faithful to his own deliberate ordering of his work, presenting, in their original sequence, his four published books: The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. It also includes poems, such as "The Mower", which Larkin published in other places, from his juvenilia to his final years.
Diarist of the day: Vera Brittain, 29 March 1943"Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked 'like an oven'. I wonder who really gets satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values."
And the Beeb goes on
In the epilogue to his News From No Man's Land, the great BBC foreign correspondent, John Simpson, writes about how much the organization has changed since he first went to work there on 1 September 1966. Although the bureaucracy of the place annoys him at times, he's comforted by the fact that its excellent radio and TV programmes continues to define our times just as they did the days when he started broadcasting. This excellence has spread into areas no one could have conceived of in 1966:
"Some years ago a friend of mine called Mike Smartt told me he was giving up his job as a television correspondent to become the boss of a new online news service which the BBC was planning to start up. I congratulated him, of course, because he had already taken the plunge; but I remember thinking he was making a terrible mistake to give up one of the best jobs in television for some weird, nerdish experiment which would probably be closed down after a year or two.Now that BBC News Online has become the most successful website in Europe, I have a feeling that it will soon be one of my main employers; the other being BBC World. Neither of these services existed a decade ago."
TODAY, you can see John Simpson reporting regularly on BBC World and, to show how accurate his prediction about BBC News Online was, he's now blogging there from the front. An example from yesterday:
Northern Iraq :: John Simpson :: 1816GMT
"There have been a couple of raids in the last few minutes. Bright lights in the sky showing where the bombs were landing, showing too that the attack is continuing in force up here.The 1,000 US paratroopers who have arrived in the North is not a great force. They are the precursors of others. We don't know how many.
It's suggested that British troops may also be coming in here, as well as tanks and other types of armour.
This represents a change of attitude, a change of interest that the US may use this front quite soon."
SIMPSON, who was in Romania as Ceaucescu fell, and in South Africa as Nelson Mandela was released, has had a long relationship with Iraq. He was the BBC's key correspondent in Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, staying in the city despite being ordered to leave by his employers. Now he's back on the battlefield.
By the way, I feel that the BBC is doing a fine job covering this war and I do not share the views of those warbloggers who have taken to referring to the organization as the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation. Andrew Sullivan, so brilliant on so many issues, has acquired an almost hysterical tone in his pounding of the Beeb, but he's wasting his powder. We all know that every news organization today has key personnel whose black-and-white views of America's role in the world were formed by events in Cuba, Vietnam, Chile and Nicaragua. That they hold powerful positions as well as loony opinions is regrettable, but it's simply one more cross we have to bear. The BBC is an enormously important and powerful instrument, and it will continue to be so long after this current conflict has ended.
Diarist of the day: James Lee-Milne, 28 March 1973"I have lately been thinking that perhaps I shall never be able to cry again. Another emotion freezing up? But when this morning Schubert's Impromptu in G Flat was played on the wireless I was moved to tears. Glad of this."
Siege mentality
On Saturday, 9 August this year some 10,000 marchers will parade through the Northern Ireland city of Derry (Londonderry) to celebrate an event that took place on 1 August 1689. The marchers call themselves "Apprentice Boys", but the majority of these traders, civil servants and farmers are far removed from the industrial culture of apprenticeship, and with their pin stripe suits, bowler hats, ruddy faces and often jowly cheeks, they're way beyond boyhood, too. Although the parade route is heavily policed, the day usually ends with clashes between some of the marchers and those who regard them as triumphalist bigots.
So what's it all about then? Well, believe it or not, it's about a five-letter word beginning with "s" and ending with "e" and something that took place over 300 years ago. On 7 December 1688, as a Catholic army approached the Protestant garrison of Derry, thirteen young men, most of them apprentices, raised the drawbridge and closed the gate in the face of the soldiers of James II. Six months later, a siege train of heavy guns sent by James arrived and the bombardment of the city began in earnest. The barrage of cannon balls and mortar shells took a huge toll of life from the defenders, but the city walls remained intact. On 1 August 1689, after 105 days of blockade, the Jacobites were forced to withdraw by the arrival of Williamite forces and thus ended the last great siege in British history.
And your point caller? Well, the Apprentice Boys parades show how enduring folk memory of siege can be, and they also make clear that if those doing the besieging don't achieve their objectives great damage can be done to their cause. None of us wants to contemplate a future where Al-Jazeera shows the sons of the Fedayeen Saddam marching down the Boulevard Hussein celebrating their heroic role in the siege of Baghdad.
So what's to be done? In "Tough decisions at Baghdad gates", John Keegan, Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph, writes:
"If the Iraqis will not fight outside Baghdad, and it is one of the simplest military principles not to do what the enemy wants, then Gen Franks may have to organise a siege of the city. His object would be to deprive the defenders of electricity and water, food and other commodities.The trouble is that a close blockade would inevitably inflict hardship on the civilians as well as the soldiers. Indeed, Saddam would certainly make sure that his troops got the lion's share of whatever was going."
Apart from the moral implications of siege, Keegan looks at the daunting military challenges involved:
"It may prove to be a difficulty in organising a siege that there is a shortage of troops. The breakneck speed of the advance has disguised thus far how thin on the ground the allies are. Almost the whole of the British force, amounting to a light division, is engaged in the south around Basra.The drive on Baghdad has been conducted by only two American formations, the 3rd Mechanised Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, a reinforced division. The 101st Air Assault Division is making its way forward, largely by helicopter lift. However, the 101st has no tanks, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is largely infantry.
The formations that Gen Franks expected to have received via Turkey by this stage, the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, effectively an armoured force, are in transit and in unsatisfactory fashion, with the equipment aboard ships proceeding through the Suez Canal and the personnel arriving by air, mostly from the United States."
Asked what would happen if Iraqi units withdrew into Baghdad itself, the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus said:
"If British and US troops actually get to the gates of Baghdad before the regime has crumbled, then they have problems.They clearly do not want to go into the city in any great degree of force. It could be very costly, in terms of both military and civilian lives."
Given that siege is seen by most commentators in such negative light, we should, perhaps, write it off as an option.
Diarist of the day: Kenneth Williams, 27 March 1961"Blackpool in the end of the line. It is the English Siberia. It is pure TORTURE. Hateful, tasteless, witless, bleak, boring, dirty, tat -- IT HAS NOTHING. I loathe every disgusting minute of it."
Frankness and friendship
As William Blake once said, "Always be willing to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you." On Monday, in a piece in the The Guardian called "Friends disunited", Michael Ignatieff, looked at what speaking one's mind does to friendship in a time of war. Ignatieff, marched against the Vietnam war, and he doesn't like President Bush's domestic policies, but he supports the attack on Iraq because he believes that the country would be better off without Saddam. And this has had an impact on his friendships:
"Recently, 14,000 'writers, academics and other intellectuals' — many of them friends of mine — published a petition against the war, while condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting 'efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Iraq'. But since they say that 'the decision to go to war at this time is morally unacceptable', I wonder what their support amounts to. Their balancing act amounts to a pat on the head to Kanan Makiya and all the Iraqis risking their lives to create a decent society. They don't want a pat on the head. What they want is a rapid and decisive American victory."
Does anyone seriously believe that 25 million Iraqis would not be better off if Saddam were overthrown, asks Ignatieff? For him, the issue is not that overthrowing Saddam by force is "morally unjustified", the issue is whether the risks are worth running, and he concludes:
"But the fact is that America is neither the redeemer nation, nor the evil empire. It isn't always right, but it isn't always wrong. Ideology cannot help us here. In the weeks and years ahead, the choices are not about who we are or what company we should keep nor even about what we think America is or should be. They are about what risks are worth running, when our safety depends on the answer, and when the freedom of 25 million people hangs in the balance."
This is a time for making hard choices and the bottom line for Michael Ignatieff is that one should not take moral decisions to make friends.
War has traditionally divided families and ended friendships, and this conflict is going to be no different in that aspect. Candour can be costly and it's easier to keep one's mouth shut, but the truth will out and when it does friendship is put to the test. It's painful but sometimes necessary.
Diarist of the day: Brian Cox, 26 March 1990"[rehearsing a production of King Lear] In the afternoon, the fruit game exercise: everyone chooses a fruit with not more than two syllables, we sit in a circle and one person walks round on the outside, telling a story trying to say the name of each fruit and repeat it a second time before the person whose fruit in mentioned can say it three times. For me these games reflect a bourgeois English childhood which means nothing to me and I'm not sure of their value here."
A warning from Berlin
"Kein 'US-Protektorat' im Irak ("No 'US protectorate' in Iraq") says the headline in this story in Germany's FOCUS magazine. According to the report, the German government believes that the USA should be responsible for the "lion's share" of the reconstruction of Iraq after the war. "Who destroys, also bears the burden of financing the reconstruction," said Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, adding that a "US protectorate" should not be allowed in Iraq and the UN must lead the reconstruction.
"Who destroys?" But who has destroyed Iraq? Who ravaged its economy to fund two invasions of neighbouring states and then squandered its resources on efforts to acquire awesome weaponry? Who looted a nation's treasure to make deals with, among others, German and French companies for the materials that have brought nothing but suffering to his subjects? Who has murdered and tortured and repressed and ruined Iraq?
In light of such statements from Berlin, one must say that it will be an enormous relief when this German government is nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
Saddam's last Circle
At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman put together a very thorough paper on 18 March called Saddam's last Circle: The Core Forces Likely to Protect Saddam in the 'Battle of Baghdad' (available in PDF format). It features a detailed breakdown of the structure of the regular army, plus that of the Republican Guards and the Special Republican Guards. Oddities such as the Fedayeen Saddam (Saddam's Men of Sacrifice) and Eshbal Saddam (Lions of Saddam) are examined as well. Regarding the latter, Cordesman writes: "A Hitler Youth-like paramilitary training structure for ages 10-16. No one knows how real this force is, or what role it might play in combat, but it cannot be totally dismissed. Young men are often loyal and all have had Saddam as the leader during their entire lives."
Cordesman's analyis is all the more useful because it is fleshed out with pertinent comments such as this on the security services that might be involved in helping to ensure the loyalty of the armed forces:
"It is dangerous to assume that US and British forces can count on uprisings, defections, and being treated as liberators. This may well happen in some areas, but Iraq has a 100,000-man security service and a 40,000-man police force which can help maintain loyalty and be used both to fight on their own and compel Iraqi civilians to do so."
Events over the weekend demonstrated the accuracy of that forewarning
Diarist of the day: Norman Lewis, 25 March 1944"Fear is expressed that the blood of San Gennaro may refuse to liquefy this year, and that such a failure might be exploited by secret anti-Allied factions and troublemakers to set off large scale rioting of the kind that has frequently happened in Neapolitan history when the miracle has failed. Everywhere there is a craving for miracle and cures. The war has pushed the Neapolitans back into the Middle Ages. Churches are suddenly full of images that talk, bleed, sweat, nod their head and exude health-giving liquors to be mopped up by handkerchiefs, or even collected in bottle; anxious, ecstatic crowds gather waiting for these marvels to happen."
"Shock und Schreck" and the FT
The term is everywhere and has been hurried into the leading European languages without waiting for translation: "shock and awe". At the outset of the war, some commentators here on German TV rendered it as "Shock und Schreck (fright)", possibly drawing upon the German saying "die Schrecken des Krieges (the horrors of war), but they've given up now and use the original English term instead.
Did Harlan Ullman realise how ubiquitous the expression would become when he co-authored "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance" in 1996? The book is out of print, by the way, but here's an entire HTML version courtesy of its publishers, NDU Press.
Ullman, now a senior associate of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies contributes an article called "Shock and awe and a clash of cultures" to today's Comment & Analysis section of the Financial Times. The first thing that strikes the reader is that the piece must have been written before yesterday's sobering events at Nassiriya. Who at the FT sub-editing desk allowed this to get through?
"Both the US public and its government can see that the war is going exceedingly well so far. The Iraqi army and Mr Hussein's regime have been stunned and rocked by the terrifying array of US super-technology and weapons. Ground forces are driving towards Baghdad. Special Forces are believed to have seized critical airheads, bridges and other important objectives. The air war against Baghdad offers the most visible image of the way the war has been conducted."
And then there's this sentence:
"Indeed, the overwhelming strength of US arms and the relative absence of organised resistance are interpreted as the local tough beating up a defenceless and puny victim."
It's hard to continue reading an article when the argument has been overtaken by events. Even Ullman's closing paragraph sounds at odds with reality because we now know that victory will not be "quick and cheap". For what it's worth, here's the ending:
"President George W. Bush has bet more than his presidency on this war. He has bet the nation. Even if shock and awe prevail and the victory is quick and cheap, that is only the first phase in a much longer campaign to bring justice and stability to a region infested with the most virulent forms of violence and hatred the world has known."
With news from the battlefield pouring in, the FT editors are under enormous pressure to keep things in perspective but there's no excuse for allowing feeble stuff like this onto the Comment & Analysis pages.
There is an alternative
"I stopped drinking French wine for a while when the French engaged in nuclear testing in Muroroa Atoll some years back," says Rainy Day visitor Peter Gale, originally from London, but now living in Copenhagen. His quandary: "The high and mighty attitude of the French now is a good excuse to stop drinking an over-priced, inconsistent product, but what are the alternatives?"
Given that I've written the odd word here about wine, I'm delighted to help. So, Peter, the solution, in a word: Italian. Brunello di Montalcino (1997) Siro Pacenti, Messorio (1999) Le Macchiole and Marzieno (2000) Fattoria Zerbina, to name but three, easily match the best French reds. The thing is that English-speaking wine merchants tend to ignore Italian wine for the simple reason that by the time they've understood the French appellation contr? system, their brains are too taxed to take on another foreign language. This is a shame because most Italian wine producers don't bother with such details as name of region and so on. They usually decorate the label with some exotic typography,a fancy brand name and the name of some small village and that's it. After that, you're on your own.
What the anglophone fan of Italian wine needs, therefore, is a good guide and Marco Sabellico and Daniele Cernilli's The New Italy: A Complete Guide to Contemporary Italian Wine is a good starting point. While waiting for Amazon to deliver that, you should visit the excellent Slow Food website and check out its wine recommendations (registration required). By the way, the Slow Food movement publishes what has come to be regarded as the essential guide to Italian wine, the annual Gambero Rosso. It appears in English as Italian Wines and the new edition, Italian Wines 2003 will be published in April in the US by Antique Collectors Club and in Britain by Grub Street.
Again, you have to allow for some Italian idiosyncrasy with the Gambero Rosso as the wines are not named by the producers but by their (often tiny) villages. Still, the reports on the individual wineries are thorough and the list of the top wines to which the guide's tasters give no, one, two or three glasses (tre bicchiere) according to quality is today's benchmark.
Piedmont is Italy's classic quality wine region but Tuscany is coming on strong due to huge investment in the industry and a run of remarkably good vintages. Here's a list of five stunning Tuscan tre bicchiere reds:
Nardo 2000 Montepeloso Vigna D'Alceo 2000 Castello dei Rampolla Giramonte 2000 Fattoria Castiglioni e Mantagnana Solaia 1999 Antinori Casasilia Chianti Classico 1999 Pogio al Sole
These Tuscan tre bicchiere reds are high in quality and, alas, in price so the best thing to do is compare prices before buying. The Wine-Searcher.com site is invaluable here. Many Italian merchants ship internationally and at keen prices so it pays to do some leg work. But who needs an excuse to visit Italy anyway?
Diarist of the day: Frances Stevenson, 24 March 1919"D. [Lloyd George] told me a funny story about Clemenceau & Klotz [French minister of finance]. The latter is very unpopular, & a deputation of ministers waited upon C, asking that he should be removed as he was not playing the game. Clem. explained that he did not wish to dismiss him now, as it would unstabilise the Government. 'Very well, we must shut our eyes,' said they. 'Yes, said Clemenceau, 'one always shuts one's eyes at the most delicious moment. It was Clemenceau who also said that 'All the great pleasures of life are silent.' ."
A poem for the dedicated
In this time of war, let us think about the courage and sacrifice of those who may die so that others might be free.
The DedicatedSome must employ the scythe
Upon the grasses
That the walks be smooth
For the feet of the angel.
Some keep in repair
The locks, that the visitor unhindered passes
To the innermost chamber.Some have for endeavour
To sign away life
As lover to lover,
Or a bird using its wings
To fly to the fowler's compass,
Not out of willingness,
But being aware of
Eternal requirings.And if they have leave
To pray, it is for contentment
If the feet of the dove
Perch on the scythe's handle,
Perch once, and then depart
Their knowledge. After, they wait
Only the colder advent,
The quenching of candles.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985), XX Poems, 18 September 1946
Diarist of the day: Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 23 March 1912"Blizzard bad as ever -- Wilson and Bowers unable to start -- tomorrow last chance -- no fuel and only one or two [items] of food left -- must be near the end. Have decided it shall be natural -- we shall march for the depot with or without our effects and die in our tracks."
Feedback
Rainy Day visitor Aidan responds to yesterday's Jermany posting about Germany's efforts to emulate Japan.
"I think it's perfectly clear that Germany already is the Euro area's Japan.If you were to given the job of enumerating the structural problems of this country the hardest job would be knowing when to stop. After all there is only so much paper in the world.
The root cause however is easy. Germany is the land ideas forgot. Somewhere in the late 70s the German mind freeze dried. While the Anglosphere and other European countries examined post-Keynesian economics, the balance of individual responsibility and welfare provision, changing demographics and national identity, the relationship between education and industry and above all, the nature of the post communist world, Germany ploughed on as before. Curiously the one country that had most been affected by the collapse of the USSR's empire became the country most unwilling to examine the social, economic and intellectual implications of that collapse.
Not to say that there wasn't debate, but the conclusion was always the same: a firm resolution to do nothing. Never change a winning formula, even when it stops winning, is the key idea. Despite publicity grabbing speaches, German thinking remains utterly anti-reform.
Looking at the prospects for change today one cannot be optimistic. Everyone agrees that change is necessary so long as everything stays the same.
Unions demand parity for workers in west and east irrespective of the lower living costs in the east. Students see no reason to curtail their 20 semester sojourn in education (leading to an massive exclusion of the educated from the workforce), retirement often begins at 50, either by choice or through German reluctance to employ anyone over 45. Shedding workers from the massive, unproductive state sector is a taboo even for the desparate Schroeder. The deaded Beamter status, which give rise to Germany's notoriously lazy public sector workers, remains inviolate. Suggest that shops should stay open an hour or too longer on Saturday and the unionised workers take to the streets.
Germany will not reform itself and renew itself until there is a prior opening of the German mind. Looking at the Anti-American antagonism of the past months I can see no prospect of that happening within the term of the current administration.
A."
"Do you speak English?"
Excellent war coverage being delivered by Reuters these days. The agency has had more than its share of troubles recently, and it's being hammered on the trading floors and on the desktops by Bloomberg, but the honourable Reuters tradition of news coverage is evident in how it's responding to events in Iraq.
Along with fine writing, including a "War Diary" by Luke Baker, the agency's website is providing dramatic raw video of events as they unfold. One stream early this morning showed Iraqi soldiers surrendering to an American unit. As this handful of unarmed, rather bedraggled looking Iraqis squatted by the roadside, a young American soldier approached and asked: "Do you speak English?" There was a muffled reply but one could pick out the word "No" uttered by one of the captured. His war has ended, but his English learning has just begun.
Clearly, one of the growth areas in a liberated Iraq will be the provision of English-language training. The de-Baathed power elite will need to communicate with those in charge of the interim administration, and traders and professionals of all kinds will want to make the most of the opportunities that reconstruction will offer. The British Council is currently involved in teaching English in countries that range from Azerbaijan to Vietnam, but Iraq is missing from its list of client states. That will change before long, though.
Diarist of the day: Cynthia Gladwyn, 22 March 1963"There is a good deal of talk going on about Profumo, Minister of War, being involved in some form of sex scandal, arranged by Bill Astor [newspaper proprietor] and concerning a missing model. Profumo made a statement in the House of Commons today clearing himself of having seen the girl since December 1961. He is nice, but a poor creature to get himself embroiled in all this."
Jermany?
Ah, the fog of war. It obscures a lot. One person very much enveloped by it at the moment is German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?. Yesterday evening, he addressed the nation expressing sorrow at the outbreak of war and disappointment at the American decision to strike Iraq. But while alliances between countries might be tense, he said, those between their populations are sound. Fine words, but there's no disguising the fact that the country's relationship with the United States has reached an all-time low.
A week ago he delivered a very different address. It was to the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and it was heralded in advance as a "make-or-break" speech about the state of the economy. He was forced to take this step because Germany's prospects do not look exactly rosy these days. The background includes, soaring unemployment, years of feeble growth, worrying demographics and opposition to immigration. To that list, one must add a series of disastrous ventures by the leading communications and technology corporations and a host of banking scandals. As well, deflation is on the doorstep at a time when euro zone interest rates are far above what is needed to treat the German disease, which is beginning to look awfully like the Japanese one. No wonder, then, that the Chancellor felt the time had come to talk about the need for reform.
He responded to the challenges with a range of proposals that includes:
- making it easier for employers to fire workers
- reducing the length of time unemployed people can receive benefits
- requiring the unemployed who have received welfare payments for a year or more to accept jobs, even if unpleasant, offered by state employment agencies
- eliminating the hurdles facing small businesses wishing to hire temporary workers
- cutting some of the costs of the national welfare system
- increasing public works spending
Germany doesn't need new employment laws; it needs structural changes, and the key to making these happen is in motivating a new generation with different values. What they must grasp is that risk has to be embraced; that although change is fraught with risk, it is necessary. Sure, it makes sense to minimize uncertainty when everyone's happy with the status quo, which was the case for Germany until, say, 1989 — but that was then. Unless structural changes take place soon, Germany will become a European Japan. Jermany, Japermany?
Diarist of the day: John Wesley, 21 March 1762"After riding about two hours and an half from Evesham, we stopped at a little village. We easily perceived by the marks he had made, that the man of the house had been beating his wife. I took occasion from thence to speak strongly to her, concerning the hand of God, and his design in all afflictions. It seemed to be a word in season. She appeared to be not only thankful but deeply affected."
Irish ayes and nos
The Irish government has decided to allow the US military to continue using Shannon Airport, reports the Irish Times. A withdrawal of these landing rights would be "a hostile act", the Taoiseach (prime minister), Bertie Ahern, said. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, introduced a Dᩬ (parliament) motion that "recalls the longstanding arrangements" covering Shannon and US military overflights, and "supports" the Government's decision to continue those arrangements. To the anger of opponents, the motion did not criticise the United States and the United Kingdom for acting without UN approval. Instead, it "regrets that the coalition finds it necessary" to go to war" and condemned the Iraqis "continued refusal" to comply with UN orders, while noting that Iraq was found to have been "in material breach of its obligations".
One person who will not like this decision is Tom McGurk, broadcaster and pundit with The Sunday Business Post. In the current edition of the paper he gives vent to his feelings in a piece called "US is about to commit a wilful war crime". Here's a sample of his venom:
"And now at last, after all the pretence and the posturing at the United Nations, the United States is about to do what it wanted to do late last autumn, invade Iraq and depose its sovereign government.That such a government is also run by a criminal monster is neither here nor there.
This weekend the full dimensions of the international crisis we face in world affairs are becoming clearly visible. Let's spell it out carefully in case there is any dispute. The US is about to act in a premeditated fashion, unilaterally and illegally under international law and in clear confrontation with world opinion. A war crime is about to be committed."
Dumbstruck by, "That such a government is also run by a criminal monster is neither here nor there." Well, it's certainly not "here" in the cosy Dublin where Tom McGurk was writing those words, but it is "there" where people have not had the right to express trenchant opinions without fear of state reprisal for some 30 years now. How can anyone write such a revolting sentence?
More (b)logs and (re)sources of war
Among Big Media, The Guardian doesn't shy away from using the "blog" word. Its "Weblog," more a portal than a blog, really, is an excellent guide to the day's best online journalism. The paper's Special Report: Iraq is one of the finest of its kind.
Are you an armchair strategist? Want to know more about all the new military technologies and how they relate to US national security? Defensetech.org is a blog that can help. Although somewhat unsystematic in its approach, it's a valuable resource.
As one would expect, the US military has access to real-time satellite imagery of Iraq, but what about the rest of us? How are those of us who wish to forego dependence on Big Media supposed to form an opinion of the situation? Well, Terraserver posts satellite images of almost every world city, including Baghdad. OK, what's exactly going on in the pictures is not easy to figure out, but every bit and byte helps.
The Iraq-focussed www.ribbityfrog.blogspot.com delivers a slightly eccentric Israeli view of the war. That's what makes the blogosphere what it is.
And while we're in the region, did you know Al Jazeera video is available at www.favo.tv, an English-language site that streams from TV and radio stations worldwide? If your Arabic is up to it, try the Al Jazeera site instead. It's just had a makeover, too. Must be expecting lots of visitors.
The logs of war
It's a kind of a hackneyed headline, but why not? The thing is that most of the major news gathering organizations are responding to the blogging boom by adding diary-like sections to their online coverage. Take the BBC. Rather than used the "blog" word, however, and be seen as following the herd, the venerable British news institution prefers the word "log". As a result, it calls its new section "Reporters' Log" and uses the related verb in its introduction: "On this page BBC News Online reporters log their impressions and personal experiences as they watch events unfold."
And the presentation? Correspondents such as Paul Wood (Baghdad), Tim Franks (British Army HQ in Northern Kuwait), Heba Saleh (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Matthew Price (Ark Royal, Gulf of Arabia), Caroline Hawley (Amman, Jordan), Andrew North (US marine base Kuwait), and Caroline Wyatt (Northern Kuwaiti desert) add regular snippets stamped with location and time. A typical posting:
Northern Kuwaiti desert :: Caroline Wyatt :: 0900 GMT"Today the main battle for everyone here in the Kuwaiti desert has been against the elements. A massive sandstorm is blowing clouds of fine dust across military camps and restricting vision to about 100 yards."
It's all a bit lacking in personality but, given the amazing quality of the BBC website, I expect the log section to find its feet within the week.
The Financial Times has ramped up coverage of the crisis in the Gulf by adding its own special sections, including one devoted to reporters' chronologies, but it also opts to avoid the "blog" word. "Diaries" is used instead. A typical introduction:
Kurdish diary: Days of hope and apprehension"Those living in the Kurdish-held enclave - the only part of Iraq where opinion can be freely expressed - ask repeatedly why the French and the Germans are not supporting the United States, writes Gareth Smyth."
By the way, access to these diaries requires a subscription to FT.com.
The New Republic has gone with "War Diary" for describing the daily comments of Iraqi exile and dissident, Kanan Makiya. The author of the Democratic Principles Working Group report for the State Department's Future of Iraq Project is eloquent and (insider?) informed.
FOCUS, the German newsweekly, favours the "diary" word as well. "Tagebuch aus der Krisenregion" is how it titles Christian Liebig's postings from the Kuwaiti desert, where he's with the US Third Infantry Division.
From Baghdad itself, there is the dramatic, real-time blog of an Iraqi called Raed. Many doubt his authenticity, but others claim he's genuine. There's no certainty. An entry:
:: Thursday, March 20, 2003 ::"there is still nothing happening im baghdad we can only hear distant expolsions and there still is no all clear siren. someone in the BBC said that the state radio has been overtaken by US broadcast, that didn't happen the 3 state broadcasters still operate.
Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent, is providing text, image and audio-blogging from Iraq and Iran. A "first-person account of a solo journalist's life on the front lines of war" is how he describes his work and it is very professional indeed. Freelance journalists wishing to make an impression in newsrooms around the world would do well to look and learn.
Meanwhile, Christopher Allbritton's Back to Iraq 2.0 is busy collecting donations to send the blogger into the field.
Diarist of the day: Virginia Woolf, 20 March 1926"But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn them; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; and then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them; if the scraps and scratching were straightened out a little bit. God knows. This is dictated by a slight melancholia, which comes upon me sometimes now and makes me think I am old; I am ugly. I am repeating things. Yet, as far as I know, as a writer I am only now writing out my mind. "
A moral man points his finger
Sure, the White House has been less than adept in its diplomacy these past weeks, but who is really to blame for the failure of the diplomats to find a way out of the cul de sac that's brought us to the eve of war? There was no doubt in Tony Blair's mind yesterday when he addressed the House of Commons:
"We then worked on a further compromise. We consulted the inspectors and drew up five tests based on the document they published on 7 March. Tests like interviews with 30 scientists outside of Iraq; production of the anthrax or documentation showing its destruction. The inspectors added another test: that Saddam should publicly call on Iraqis to cooperate with them. So we constructed this framework: that Saddam should be given a specified time to fulfil all six tests to show full cooperation; that if he did so the inspectors could then set out a forward work programme and that if he failed to do so, action would follow.So clear benchmarks; plus a clear ultimatum. I defy anyone to describe that as an unreasonable position.
Last Monday, we were getting somewhere with it. We very nearly had majority agreement and I thank the Chilean President particularly for the constructive way he approached the issue.
There were debates about the length of the ultimatum. But the basic construct was gathering support.
Then, on Monday night, France said it would veto a second resolution whatever the circumstances. Then France denounced the six tests. Later that day, Iraq rejected them. Still, we continued to negotiate.
Last Friday, France said they could not accept any ultimatum. On Monday, we made final efforts to secure agreement. But they remain utterly opposed to anything which lays down an ultimatum authorising action in the event of non-compliance by Saddam.
Just consider the position we are asked to adopt. Those on the security council opposed to us say they want Saddam to disarm but will not countenance any new resolution that authorises force in the event of non-compliance.
That is their position. No to any ultimatum; no to any resolution that stipulates that failure to comply will lead to military action."
Read the full speech at The Guardian. It's passionate, reasoned and compelling in its clarity.
The long view
Among the many intelligent features of Movable Type, the content management system that powers this and thousands of other blogs, is the one that allows you to create a list of categories — sex, drugs, rock n' roll, for example — and then assign these categories to each of your postings. From a maintenance standpoint, this is a nifty idea as it allows you to keep track of your entries, and it can also be used to add a categorization structure to the archives.
Last night, while scrolling through the hundreds of entries I've posted here since 1 May last year, I noticed that some 60 percent of them are labelled with the category "The war", which includes topics such as 11 September, Iraq and Ameriphobia. When I started Rainy Day I imagined that I'd spend most of the time writing about the things that inspire me: music, books, Rome, wine, the internet, Liam O' Flynn's piping, Donegal fiddling, and so on. But no, I keep coming back to "The war". I suppose it's a reflection of what's in the news and what many people I know talk about.
So, when will this "war" end and when will I get back to blogging about more joyful matters? Not for a long time, I fear. In fact, we may be entering a phase reminiscent of times past when war was the norm and peace was a rare interlude. This sounds unduly morose, I know, but a look at the history books attests that it's based on realism. Take, for instance, the Thirty Years' War, a term so extraordinary as to almost defy comprehension. But, although we must go back 400 years to that particular bloodletting, not much about human nature has changed since then. Indeed, although our wars are shorter now, the horrors of the 20th century suggest that we've become more barbaric.
The Thirty Years' War, by the way, was a series of conflicts lasting from 1618 to 1648, involving most of the countries of western Europe, and fought mainly in Germany. It ended with the Peace of Westphalia, signed in M? on 24 October 1648, which fundamentally influenced the subsequent history of Europe. As well as establishing Switzerland and the Dutch Republic (the Netherlands) as independent states, the treaty seriously weakened the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, ensured the emergence of France as the continent's dominant power and disastrously impeded the development of Germany. The economic, social and cultural consequences of the war were enormous. Estimates suggest that the total population of Germany fell by at least 20 per cent; some regions suffered a loss of over 50 per cent.
So how can we avoid another Thirty Years' War? Well, let's start by accepting that our desire for peace must be accompanied by the will to confront the Chavezes, the Mugabes, the Husseins and the Kim Jong Ils of this world. Anything else is delusion.
Diarist of the day: Albert Camus, 19 March 1941"Every year, the young girls come into flower on the beaches. They have only one season. The next year, they are replaced by other flower-like faces which, the previous season, still belonged to little girls. For the man who looks at them, they are yearly waves whose weight and splendour break into foam over the yellow beach."
Human rights abuses in Geneva
Three cheers for media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. Yesterday, six of its members managed to interrupt the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights at the Palais des Nations in Geneva by showering the meeting with leaflets criticising the human rights record of the country holding the chair. And which country might that be? Why, none other than that bastion of freedom and tolerance, Libya.
Yes, believe it or not, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was elected to head the UN Commission on Human Rights on 20 January and yesterday the body began its annual session. Incredibly, those who voted for Libya managed to overlook the country's record on, well, human rights. It's a cruel history that includes disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests, detention without charge or trial and censorship. And, don't forget, the country is already under UN sanctions for the 1988 Pan-Am bombing. As the Libyan chairperson, Najat Al-Hajjaji, was making her inaugural speech yesterday in the Salle des Assembl饳, the admirably ethical Reporters Without Borders members released a shower of leaflets on the audience bearing the message: "At last the UN has appointed someone who knows what she is talking about!" Irony is the best way of dealing with this colossal insult to all those whose human rights have been abused.
Diarist of the day: H. D. Thoreau, 18 March 1861"You can't read any genuine history -- as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede -- without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject, but on the man, -- on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius -- a Shakespeare, for instance -- would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world."
Ireland's Holy Wars
Ireland, 1887: Charles Stewart Parnell's Plan of Campaign is in full swing. Catholic tenant farmers are withholding rents from their Protestant landlords. In an interview with the English Catholic newspaper The Tablet, Arthur Ryan, the administrator of the cathedral of Thurles, says: "Irish priests and bishops bless it [the Plan of Campaign] and declare it to be a high and unassailable morality, a holy war in the cause of the poor and the oppressed."
Holy war! Jihad! Not really. The doctrine of jihad divides the world into the faithful and the infidels but what was happening in Ireland was a power struggle, not a religious war. All Ryan was saying was that the local Catholic Church was siding with the weak against the strong. But little in Ireland is as it seems, so the story contains two of those delicious arabesques that add to the complexity of Irish history: Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Plan of Campaign, was a Protestant, and because the papacy was hostile to Irish agitation against British rule, Pope Leo XIII issued a decree in 1888 condemning Parnell's Plan of Campaign.
Marcus Tanner's Ireland's Holy Wars: The Struggle for a Nation's Soul , 1500-2000, is an account of the role of religion in one small country's tormented history. Tanner is a respected English journalist best known for his book Croatia: A Nation Forged in War and his coverage in the Independent of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. With his combination of journalistic and analytical skills, he brings history to life by using scenes from Irish life today and then rewinding time, explaining the present by means of the past.
The questions Tanner sets out to answer include: Why was Ireland dogged with conflict from the 16th to the 20th century? Why has the northern part of the island been wracked by a hideous campaign of terror and counterterror that still rumbles menacingly on? Why do so many white, Irish Christians who watch the same TV shows, speak the same language and endure the same rainfall want to kill each other?
There's no answering such questions without delving into some very complicated and sanguine history. What emerges from the annals, however, is that the seeds of Ireland's bloodshed were imported, not home-grown, and that much of today's sectarianism stems from the fact that island was used as a battlefield in the strife between Parliament and the monarchy in England, and the related rivalries of European monarchs.
Take the seminal conflict of the late 1680s and early 1690s that followed the decision of the English Parliament to depose the Catholic James II and invite the Dutch Protestant William of Orange to take the throne. It produced the most savage battle ever fought on Irish soil: the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, after which the Catholic elite fled to France and Spain. The Protestant victory that preceded it, the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, is still marked each year in Northern Ireland by the 12th of July marches of the militantly Protestant Orange Order. But William was in Ireland not to smash Catholic unbelievers but to bolster his own tenuous position as a Dutch leader facing an aggressive France. The Williamite alliance more anti-French than anti-Catholic and it included Catholic leaders such as Emperor Leopold I of Austria and the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria. Indeed, William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne, which is celebrated today by Northern Irish Protestants, was welcomed at the time with the singing of a Te Deum in Catholic Vienna and was also greeted by the Pope, whose hatred of Louis XIV far surpassed his sympathy for his followers in Ireland.
Land and power, not religion, were the key issues in the Irish conflicts of the 17th century. The country's tragedy is that religious identity became the pawn of foreign political and economic forces and it has remained hostage to domestic bigots and cynics ever since.
Ireland, 2003: Two headlines from today, 17 March: "Inquiry after police station death" , "A paramedic and two police officers have been injured during disturbances in north Belfast".
St Patrick was a Gentleman
"Patrick was a Gentleman He came from daycent people He built a church in Dublin town And on it put a steeple His father was a Gallagher His mother was a Grady His aunt was an O'Shaughnessy His uncle was a Brady The Wicklow hills are very high And so is the hill of Howth sir But there's a hill much higher still Much higher than them both sir On top of this high hill St Patrick preached a sermon Drove the frogs into the bogs And banished all the vermin There's not a mile of Eireann's Isle Where dirty vermin musters But there he put his dear fore-foot And murdered them in clusters The frogs went hop and the toads went pop Slapdash into the water The snakes committed suicide To save themselves from slaughter 900,000 reptiles blue He charmed with sweet discourses Dined on them in Killaloe On soups and second courses Where blind worms crawling in the grass Disgusted all the nation Down to hell with a holy spell He changed their situation No wonder that them Irish lads Should be so gay and frisky Sure St. Pat he taught them that As well as making whiskey No wonder that the Saint himself Should understand distilling His mother kept a sheebeen shop In the town of Enniskillen Was I but so fortunate As to be back in Munster I'd be bound that from that ground I never more would once stir There St Patrick planted turf Cabbages and praties Pigs galore, mo gra mo stor Altar boys and ladies."
Source: The Christy Moore Songbook.
Diarist of the day: Dorothy Wordsworth, 17 March 1798"I do not remember this day."
Our world's troubled water
- Global water use has more than doubled since 1950
- One person in six has no regular access to safe supplies
- Contaminated water gives 200 million people a year diseases
- Agriculture uses about 75% of global water consumption and industry 20%; much of it wasted
Against the background of such alarming statistics, the third World Water Forum has opened in Kyoto. The event brings together about 10,000 delegates from 150 countries to debate solutions to the crisis facing more than one billion people without access to clean water. However, some pressure groups say the forum is dominated by private corporations who favour projects such as dams instead of simpler technology which could be used to conserve water for the world's poor. Inevitably overshadowed by the Iraq crisis, the conference says its discussions during the coming week will have far more impact on mankind in the 21st Century than current events in the Middle East.
Speaking of water and the Middle East, Peter Gleick, brother of the excellent journalist James Gleick, has compiled a fascinating
Water Conflict Chronology over at The World's Water. Of course, water conflict is as old as mankind, but every chronology needs a starting point and Gleick picks 1503, when Leonardo da Vinci and Machievelli planned to divert the Arno river away from Pisa during a conflict between Pisa and Florence. Students of domestic US terrorism might be interested to learn, by the way, that the Los Angeles Valley aqueduct suffered repeated bombings in 1924 in an effort to prevent diversions of water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles. The chronology lists lots of conflicts, but the ones involving Iraq are more relevant than ever and I'm sure military planners on all sides involved in the impending conflict will be factoring how best to use the region's water as a weapon and a target. Here's a quick overview of the past 30 years:
1974: Iraq threatens to bomb the al-Thawra dam in Syria and massed troops along the border, alleging that the dam had reduced the flow of Euphrates River water to Iraq.
1975: As upstream dams are filled on the Euphrates, Iraqis claim that the flow reaching its territory is "intolerable" and asks the Arab League to intervene. Syrians claim they are receiving less than half the river's normal flow and pull out of an Arab League committee formed to mediate the conflict. Syria closes its airspace to Iraqi flights and both Syrian and Iraq reportedly transfer troops to their joint border. Saudi Arabia successfully mediates the conflict.
1981: Iran claims to have bombed a hydroelectric facility in Kurdistan, thereby blacking out large portions of Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War.
1980-1988: Iran diverts water to flood Iraqi defence positions.
1993-present: To quell opposition, Saddam Hussein reportedly poisons and drains the water supplies of southern Shiite Muslims, the Ma'dan. The European Parliament and UN Human Rights Commission deplore use of water as weapon in region.
The World's Water, a precious resource — the website and the stuff itself.
St Patrick's pronunciation
Given that tomorrow is St Patrick's Day, let's spend a moment with the language he encountered some 1,500 years ago when he set foot on Erin's green shore. OK, there's a bit of a linguistic leap involved here as Gaelic's been through the historical wringer since then, but why let inconvenient facts obstruct the flow?
Anyway, we'll take the Irish Gaelic word for "river" abhann and the word for "summer" samhradh and try to pronounce them. Not easy, is it? Well, here's how it works: the "abha" in abhann is pronounced "own" (to rhyme with "clown") and the "amha" as in samhradh is pronounced "sow (the female pig)-ruh". That very practical advice has been posted on the website of Lincoln University, Missouri, in an article titled "The Pronunciation and Spelling of Modern Irish". It's a very basic introduction to the topic, to be sure, but a start.
Diarist of the day: Marie Belloc Lowndes, 16 March 1912"Lunched at 'Thirty' [luncheon club]. We all talked about the enduring power of love. Some of those present said that loves goes in a man when the woman becomes middle-aged. I said that is often amazed me to see how love endured, though I admitted that in a certain class -- the prosperous commercial class, no man, whatever his age, has any use for a woman, even for her company after she is say, forty. That is one of the things that strikes me in one circle I frequent. The moment you know a man at all well, he confides to you quite frankly what a bore he find his wife's friends -- that being a man of sixty talking of women between forty an forty-five."
Ozymandias, King of Kings
Romanticism in a time of war. That's what makes The Economist such a refreshing read. In "Saddam's last victory" (subscription required), the leader writer this week quotes "Ozymandias", one of Percy Bysshe Shelley's best-known poems, which takes its title from the Greek name for Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh from whom Moses and the Israelites fled during the Exodus.
Given the damage suffered by the trans-Atlantic alliance, the disarray within the EU and the discord at the UN, The Economist feels that a gloating Saddam, who is reputed to love poetry, may now be reciting Shelley's: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
But, says the leader writer: "Shelly's poem, though, was a poignant one, about how a tyrant's ambitions, carved on a pedestal, become a broken wreck. That is what now needs to happen to Saddam Hussein."
The paper reviews the long charge sheet on the dictator and then rounds on those who believe that containment or even retreat is a suitable strategy for dealing with him:
"That would also be the worst outcome for the 25m Iraqis themselves. Their interests seem barely to be considered in the debate over this war. Yet they offer one of the most powerful arguments in its favour For them, containment has been deadly, and so has SaddamHussein. He, his family and his forces have ruled Iraq by terror, maiming, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of people, while ruining the lives of many millions more. Again, the critics ask, why single out Saddam when the world is full of human-rights abusers? To which the answer, first, is that he is clearly one of the very worst; and, second, why not? If you cannot deal with all mass murderers, should you therefore deal with none of them?"
In recent months, Saddam has achieved much and conceded little. But, says The Economist, "His short term success is going to lead to war. And so it should." The task now facing those who have the courage to face down the tyrant is to ensure his defeat so that his latest victory will be his last.
OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said-"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert .... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Shelley wrote the sonnet "Ozymandias" in 1818. Four years later, shortly before his 30th birthday, he was drowned in a storm while attempting to sail from Livorno to La Spezia.
Diarist of the day: Gerard Manley Hopkins, 15 March 1868"Fine and summer-like -- With Stokes on the Quinton Road. Chervil and wood-sorrel out. Hawthorn sprays papered with young leaves. -- Venus like an apple of light. ."
20six speaks
Wrote yesterday about a Hamburg-based start up called www.20six.de, which is hoping to be Old Europe's answer to Blogger. Thought the idea presented a good opportunity for a blog interview, something I haven't tried before, so I e-mailed Stefan Wiskemann, one of the company's founders, and here's the result.
Rainy Day: "Who are you?"
Wiskemann: "Stefan Gl䮺er (41), Christoph Linkwitz (41), Stefan Wiskemann (40) — all studied business economics in Hamburg, Paris and Vienna."
Rainy Day: "What's your entrepreneurial background?"
Wiskemann: "We started a publishing company called COMPANIONS back in 1991. In 1996 we published one of the first internet magazines in Germany called CU. In 1998 we founded ricardo.de offering internet auctions in Germany. With that company we had an IPO in 1999 and merged with British competitor QXL to QXL ricardo plc in 2000. The company is operating services in many European countries. Under the ricardo brand its running in Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland."
Rainy Day: "What makes think that blogging has business potential?"
Wiskemann: "Weblogs are the ideal multimedia tool for publishing thoughts, diaries or other very practical stuff like family blogs etc. one-to-many. We are convinced that many people will join this emerging universe of news and opinions. And: there is no free Currywurst. If we offer a good service than people will accept to pay for certain value adding features over time."
Rainy Day: "How many people are working on the 20six project?"
Wiskemann: "Currently 10."
Rainy Day: "How is it financed?"
Wiskemann: "No comment, we just started it."
Rainy Day: "What are your projections for user numbers?"
Wiskemann: "We would be very happy if we could reach comparable numbers to some of the U.S. services."
Rainy Day: "When will you introduce paid subscription? How much?"
Wiskemann: "We will introduce some kind of payment in the future. For now it's all free. So enjoy it."
Rainy Day: "How are you marketing 20six?"
Wiskemann: "Only by word-of-mouth. We hope that our users will spread the word if they are happy with the service. Please try it yourself — it's really very simple to use. Also there will be a lot more features in the near future."
Rainy Day: "What's the technology involved? What was the inspiration? Blogger?"
Wiskemann: "The technology has been self-developped. Of course we screened existing services and added some ideas ourselves. Anyway we are a hosted community rather like LiveJournal or Xanga is. You cannot FTP your 20six Weblog to your own website."
Rainy Day: "How would you compare 20six to Blogger? To other blogging systems?"
Wiskemann: "The content of 20six is generated dynamically which allows you to post comments, choose between private and public entries or even define a list of buddies whom you allow to see your entries. Also we would like it to be more editorial. We have weblog reporters who guide others to interesting contents. We have a part called 'Magazin' where we try to throw up or gather interesting entries to hot topics."
Rainy Day: "Finally, a question about language. Are you interested in attracting bloggers whose first language is not German? And a quick follow up: Can German bloggers ever gain a wide audience if they don't write in English?"
Wiskemann: "Of course we are open to webloggers who do not speak German - and we already have some too. But we started 20six because we believe that there are also different cultures going along with different languagges. Who cares if I write about the HSV or the Reeperbahn if I write it in English. Nobody, because they do not know what those things are. If this is as somebody said the eBayiziation of media than it also will work like ebay where most of the deals are done within a country and not cross-border.
Hope that helps. What about you as an expert in the field writing a weblog in German?? I would love to see that!"
My sincere thanks to Stefan Wiskemann for taking the time to answer these questions so graciously. Don't know when I'll get around to writing a blog in German, though. Keeping this one running is hard enough. But if 20six makes me an offer I can't refuse?I won't. Refuse, that is.
Diarist of the day: Malcolm Muggeridge, 14 March 1957"With Val to see play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. Play quite execrable -- woman ironing, man yelling and snivelling highbrow smut, 'daring' remarks (reading from Sunday paper; Bishop of?asks all to rally round and make hydrogen bomb). Endured play up to point where hero and heroine pretended to be squirrels."
Old Europe gets the blogging bug
"Siegeszug der Online-Journale" (Triumphal march of the online journals) was the heading on the article in yesterday's Financial Times Deutschland. The subhead on Konrad Lischka's comprehensive overview provided clarification for the mystified: "Weblogs, daily updated internet diaries, are becoming a mass phenomenon".
Those who didn't have a blog before reading Lischka's article will surely start one now. After all, Moby's got one and superstar sci-fi writer William Gibson's got one as well. It's hosted at Blogger, by the way, which has the advantage of being free. Could there be a better reason to surf a wave? Can't beat free.
To emphasize the point that this is more than a fad, Lischka focusses on the work of a trio of überbloggers: Andrew Sullivan, Dave Winer and Dan Gillmor, and he also looks at some of the services that have developed to pursue blog changes: Daypop, Blogdex and Blogtracker.
Is it all vanity and narcissism, he asks? It's the clich頱uestion in almost all articles that look at blogging, so Lischka can't be blamed for asking it again. To his credit, he doesn't dwell long on the amateur psychology, and he singles out Dan Gillmor as an example of a journalist who is soaring above all others in the tech field because of the tips readers of his blog provide.
Missing from the blogging picture until now have been German bloggers. But that's about to change says Lischka. Up in Hamburg, Stefan Gl䮺er and Stefan Wiskemann have started www.20six.de and they hope that their baby will be Old Europe's answer to Blogger. Why 20six? It's the number of letters in the Latin alphabet, the say, and that's all you need to make words dance. Their system is easy to use. Registration is straightforward (you must be over 14), the blogging interface is thorough and the templates offer cool design. Let's see if 20six can produce a counterweight to Instapundit. That will be the test. Eh?
Diarist of the day: Virginia Woolf, 13 March 1921"[T.S.] Eliot dines here tonight, alone, since his wife is in a nursing home, not much to our regret. But what about Eliot? Will he become 'Tom'? What happens with friendships undertaken at the age of forty? Do they flourish and live long? I suppose a good mind endures, and one is drawn to it, owning to having a good mind myself. Not that Tom admires my writing, damn him."
Value destruction
This is a truly terrifying graph. It shows this year's continuing freefall of the German DAX. At the time of writing the share index is at 2207, down 70% from its 7 March 2000 high of 8065. That?s right. Down 70%. Can you imagine what this is doing to the morale of businesses and shareholders? The stresses now operating on the German economy and society are scary.
But there?s more. When the country?s turgid corporate sector needed a place to trade small stocks, the Neuer Markt (a version of the Nasdaq) was launched just before the 2000 market high. Well, it?s gone. And the banks are in trouble from the high level of corporate defaults. And the insurers, because of their holdings, are badly wounded by the drop in equities. And let?s not forget the demographic implosion the country faces, plus the fact that consumption is flat.
One seriously underreported finance story of the last year is that Germany enjoyed a bigger bubble than the US did and is now experiencing a far worse crash.
Niebuhr's realism
The doctrines of Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) profoundly influenced 20th century philosophers and theologians. The Missouri-born Protestant was a remarkable man, for along with being an active member of the Socialist party in the 1930s, he also waged a vigorous fight against isolationism before and during World War II.
In an article called "Christian Faith and the World Crisis" written for the journal Christianity and Crisis and published on 10 February 1941 he declared:
"Yet there are times when hopes for the future, as well as contrition over past misdeeds, must be subordinated to the urgent, immediate task. In this instance, the immediate task is the defeat of Nazi tyranny. If this task does not engage us, both our repentance and our hope become luxuries in which we indulge while other men save us from an intolerable fate, or while our inaction betrays into disaster a cause to which we owe allegiance."
A year earlier, Niebuhr, the intellectual and darling of the left, had rocked the liberal establishment with his essay "The End of Illusions". Although no apologist for American foreign policy, he felt that certain values were worth fighting for: "The Socialists are right, of course, in insisting that the civilization which we are called to defend is full of capitalistic and imperialistic injustices. But is still a civilization". The utopians, he argued, were unable to see the moral gulf separating liberal democracy and a genocidal tyranny.
Prior to America's entry into the Second World War there was much talk about how the "moral force" of the international community could tame tyrants. Not so, said Niebuhr: "It fails to explain just how this moral force is to be effective against tanks, flame throwers, and bombing planes." Sometimes a different kind of force is necessary, he concluded, and this meant fighting fascism with "ambiguous methods". For pacifists and idealists appalled by such vistas, he had this message: "Let those who are revolted by such ambiguities have the decency and consistency to retire to the monastery, where medieval perfectionists found their asylum."
By the way, you can read more of Niebuhr's thoughts at Religion Online, which presents more than 4,500 articles and book chapters on topics that range from abortion to Islam to women clergy.
Diarist of the day: Marie Belloc Lowndes, 12 March 1915"Mr Liddell gave me a curious account as the Lord Chancellor's secretary. He opens all the letters from lunatics. They have a right to send unopened letters to the Lord Chancellor twice a month. He says that some of the letters coming in now are most pathetic, the burden of many of them being, 'Only let me out, and I will at one enlist!' He said the war had neither increased nor diminished the number of lunatics. I asked him if he had ever discovered a sane man incarcerated unfairly. He said no, but that they always looked out for such cases, and that he makes a special note when any new lunatic's letter arrives. "
Blogging shifts up a gear
It's still quite common to hear derision poured on those early (circa 1997) homepages where the mass of web enthusiasts employed the <blink> tag to say "Hello world!" And who'll ever forget all that centred text and those out-of-focus photos of the pet badger? And the proud owner's name done up as an enormous JPEG featuring 75% drop shadow!
What the caustic critics overlook, of course, is that those early efforts were created with the dominant tools of the day — chiefly bad HTML, often copied tag for tag from sites built with bad HTML which, in turn, had been made using ideas gleaned from sites that offered advice on how to write really bad HTML.
Fast forward to 2003 where we find people creating sites using blogging tools, many of which are every bit as good as outrageously expensive content management systems. These tools come equipped with templates designed to take the heavy lifting out of learning about information architecture with the result that that thousands of today's blogs incorporate best practices in navigation and layout. In light of these developments, it seems rather uncharitable to be so harsh when criticizing those homepages of yesteryear. If the execution was faulty, the intentions were laudable.
Now that excellent tools are at hand, there are fewer excuses for sloppy sites. The bar has been raised, and the good news is that quite a few people are jumping over it. Take Mike Pugh, for example.
Pugh's Vagabonding blog chronicles his solo, one year, round-the-world journey. His mastery of the Movable Type system is breathtaking. He uses the tool to blend text, photos and video into a stunningly engaging experience. Read about his adventures, track his route and watch edited video of the sights he visits and people he meets. He even provides a press kit and possible story angles for those looking to write about what he's doing. Amazing. There will always be an exalted place for travel writing of the calibre of Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, but Mike Pugh — "one man, one year, one world" — is mapping the future of travel storytelling.
Diarist of the day: Andy Warhol, 11 March 1978"I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows."
Peter the Great's calendar reform
Apropos calendars (see today's earlier post), Rainy Day reader Simone Bayha adds this snippet concerning Peter the Great and the Gregorian calendar:
"Until Peter the Great's rule, Russia counted time from the creation of the world, which the Russian Orthodox Church calculated as having occurred in 5509 BC. By this reckoning, Peter was born in the year 7180 (early 1672 by the Gregorian system). Once in power, Peter decided to "Europeanize" Russia. With missionary zeal, he cut the beards off the boyars, banned caftans and updated the calendar, ordering in late 1699 (or, as it then was, early 7208) that the New Year should start on 1 January instead of 1 September. So 7208, which had begun on 1 September, was replaced by the year 1700 after only three months. But why he didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar, which had been in use for over a century in the European countries he wished Russia to imitate, remains a mystery. As a result, Russia remained 10 days behind the West for over two hundred years."
The making of books and calendars
Currently reading "The Gutenberg Revolution" by John Mann. Enormously entertaining. In 1450, all Europe's books were handcopied and amounted to no more than a few thousand. By 1500 they were printed and numbered in the millions. Printing with moveable type, pioneered by Johann Gutenberg born in 1400 in Mainz, was the invention that started this revolution.
Mann, a historian with a background in German studies and science, makes a lot out of the little we know about Gutenberg's life and part of his technique is to people the story with portraits of some of the leading figures of the time. One of the most fascinating of the inventor's contemporaries is Nicholas of Cusa, a lawyer from Trier and a true Renaissance man, whose driving ambition and brilliant mind propelled him all the way up from a non-noble birth to being made a cardinal by Pope Eugenius IV.
Nicholas established his reputation at the Council of Basle, which began in 1431 and went on for 18 years. He arrived in Basle to argue the case of the disputed bishopric of Trier but made his name by helping to broker an agreement between Rome and the Hussites in a bloody dispute that focussed on the Hussites' insistence that communion be administered in both bread and wine, while Rome claimed that bread alone sufficed. Then Nicholas turned to a matter that required enormous competence in law, mathematics and religious observance: the calendar. As Mann writes:
"The Church was deeply concerned with the calendar because of the need to calculate the date of Easter. A thousand years before, the Council of Nicaea, laying out the ground rules of Christian practice, had decreed that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the full moon following the vernal equinox, one of two dates (in spring and autumn) on which day and night were of equal length. But the calendar of the time contained two errors. It's year (365.25 days) was 11 minutes and 8 seconds too long, which over 1,000 years amounted to seven days; and the calculations that predicted the lunar cycle were way out as well. Actually, Roger Bacon, philosopher and scientist, had pointed this out seventy years before, but it was considered so intractable a problem that the papal authorities averted their eyes. In his De Reparatione Calendarii (On Revising the Calendar), presented to the Council in 1437, Nicholas expertly reviewed the evidence and proposed the only possible remedy: to adopt a new lunar cycle, leave out a week in the calendar — he suggested Whitsun, because it was a moveable feast and the general public wouldn't notice — and then, as a final piece of fine tuning, omit a leap year every 304 years. This would have to be done not only with the agreement of the Greeks in Constantinople, because the were co-religionists, but also of the Jews, who would bear the brunt of revising all financial agreements."
Given the contentious nature of the issue and the fractured state of the church at the time, though, nothing was done. Reform had to wait for another 80 years when Pope Gregory XII introduced the "Gregorian" calendar, as we now know it. The structure that measures our years owes an enormous debt to Nicholas of Cusa, however. Now, back to Gutenberg's life.
Diarist of the day: Frances Stevenson, 10 March 1919"P.M [David Lloyd George] lunched at Mrs. Balfour's flat to meet with Queen of Rumania, & according to everybody, was in his best form. D. says she is very naughty, but a very clever woman, though on the whole he does not like her. She gave a lengthy description of he purchases in Paris, which included a pink silk chemise. She spoke of meeting President Wilson on his arrival. 'What shall I talk to him about?', she asked. 'The League of Nations or my pink chemise?' 'Begin with the League of Nations,' said Mr. Balfour, 'and finish with the pink chemise. If you were talking to Mr. Lloyd George, you could begin with the pink chemise!' "
Poetry matters
"What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?"
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Days
"Poetry makes nothing happen," wrote W.H. Auden. Yet at times of crisis, we look to poets to remind us of our humanity. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary interest in Pope John Paul's Roman Triptych published Thursday.
The search for comfort and meaning in poetry, especially in the sparse works of Larkin, Auden and, now, Seamus Heaney is, no doubt, a response to the inaccessibility and extreme aestheticism of so much contemporary verse. Perhaps the irrelevance of most modern poetry is because so many late 20th-century poets had the luxury of viewing history from a sheltered distance. In the absence of tragedy and terror, they were left undisturbed to create private, coded worlds. Many curious creations emerged, but challenging statements about the human condition were rare. It's only after reading the likes of Auden, Larkin and Heaney that you begin to question your moral choices.
"What will survive of us is love" wrote Larkin in An Arundel Tomb, and his poem expressed what so many felt when Anthony Lane quoted it in The New Yorker to commemorate the man and woman who jumped hand-in-hand to their deaths from New York's World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.
Diarist of the day: Franz Kafka, 9 March 1914"I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require the expenditure of so much strength."
The veto dog may bark but it won't bite
Where now for the US and the UN? And what will France, Russia and China, those three permanent Security Council members with veto powers, do? Although they keep avoiding the "veto" word, the implication is that they'll use it if forced to. Rainy Day doesn't believe it.
Why would the three use their veto in a situation where this would block the resolution but not the action? All they would achieve by casting a meaningless veto would be to damage the authority of the Security Council further and thereby throw open to question the composition of the body itself. Neither the French, the Russians or the Chinese are interested in a reconstituted council that might see India and Japan being given permanent member status.
And bear in mind that the Security Council is well aware that resolution 1441 would not have existed if before its unanimous adoption President Bush had not sought and obtained the authorisation of both Houses of Congress to attack Iraq with or without a UN mandate. The Iraqi co-operation that Hans Blix reports is only because of the US threat, but it is unrealistic to think that that the massive American military presence in the Gulf can be maintained indefinitely. The Pentagon, by the way, is not totally unaware of the strain this is placing on the domestic economy.
And, another thing, the permanent members of the Security Council know full well their own undistinguished UN pasts when it comes to acting in their own interests. In a Council on Foreign Relations article titled "U.N. Blessing Is Just a Frill for a U.S. War in Iraq", Walter Russell Mead points out:
"Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has undertaken at least one war without the council's permission or endorsement. China attacked India in 1962 without a Security Council resolution, and again without a resolution attacked Vietnam in 1979. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary without going to the Security Council. Britain and France invaded Egypt in 1956 without informing, much less consulting with, the Security Council. More recently, both Britain and France have sent troops to Kosovo and various African destinations without council advice or consent."
So, don't expect any vetoes. Which, of course, begs the question as to what the scenario will look like if the veto is not used. Well, the French, the Russians and the Chinese say that they're opposed to military action without a UN mandate, but if they don't cast their vetoes there will be a Security Council mandate. Despite the posturing and the bluster, that's the situation.
Diarist of the day: George Templeton Strong, 8 March 1852"N.B. Willis is stricken with a deadly disease, epilepsy and consumption together. The idea of death and of the man who writes editorials for the Home Journal are an unnatural combination. Death seems too solemn, a matter for him to have any business with it."
Euroland alarm
Unless Germany's economic crisis is dealt with soon, Euroland is in grave danger of meltdown. One only has to look at the German numbers to see how dramatic the situation is. Unemployment at 4.7 million, 11.3 percent of the available workforce jobless, a further 83,000 people added to the dole queues between January and February, 410,000 more out of work compared to this time a year ago. These numbers are horrific.
Because of this disaster, Chancellor Schr? is to deliver a make-or-break speech to the Bundestag next Friday. His "super" minister, Wolfgang Clement, wants modern, flexible labour laws, while Ursula Engelen-Kefer, the deputy chairwoman of the German trade union federation, is warning against cuts in benefits for long- term unemployed. A clean break with the past, featuring a shake-up of tax, welfare and consultative bargaining agreements is needed, but one gets the feeling that inertia has become such a factor in the system here that change is not possible anymore.
Because of Germany's position at the top of the Euroland "at risk" list, Morgan Stanley's Eric Chaney is arguing that Europe is dicing with deflation:
"From 1973 to the late-1990s, a popular macro game between industrialised economies was to export inflationist pressures. The strong-dollar policy in the Reagan period and also during the Rubin one, and the strong Deutsche Mark policy in the boom years that accompanied the German unification were textbook examples of this not really zero-sum game. Nowadays, in a durably deflationary world, the game is different. Its name is "exporting deflation" and I am afraid that Europe could be on the wrong side, this time. The analytical case is three-folded. First, the euro is already non-competitive, on a unit labour cost basis. This is particularly flagrant for Germany. Second, three years of sub-par growth have widened and continue to widen considerably the output gap. Third, the euro might rise even higher, if the US economy does not recover convincingly and oil prices stay high.In other terms, even at 95 cents, the euro was slightly overvalued, from a pure productivity-adjusted costs standpoint. Euroland manufacturers could have lived with that. For a region where restructuring is a compelling necessity, a 10% over-valuation of the currency is not that bad, in our view. But at today's rate, 107, Euroland relative labour costs (ULCs) stand at 123. A 20% to 25% over-evaluation of the currency is clearly excessive for a sector already in recession. Put simply, it is deflationary for Europe. Note that, for Germany alone, things are much worse: on the same estimates, German ULCs are now 38% higher than US ones.
As the decline of the US dollar carries on - the US currency is only half-way on its way down, according to my colleague Stephen Jen - the situation will get even worse if the euro is the only counterpart to bear the burden of the rebalancing of the US economy. Well, it seems that this is the case, since most Asian currencies are practically linked to the USD. Using the weights used by the Fed for its own currency basket, it appears that a 10% effective depreciation of the USD would require a 50% rise of the EUR/USD rate. If only half of this is behind us, there is more pain coming for Europe. In addition, it seems that the well-established correlation between oil prices and the USD exchange rate is now inverted and that, practically, the euro has now taken the status of "petro-currency." Just imagine what would happen if crude oil prices stayed around $40 for some time. As the US and Asia export their own internal deflation risks, Europe seems to be the main recipient of this poisoned chalice. Has Europe the means to absorb deflation? The answer is clearly negative, given the still very high rigidities most regional labour markets suffer from."
Over to you, Mr Duisenberg.
Ameriphobia, Americanophobia
Rainy Day visitor Stavros Petrolekas writes:
"I generally try to avoid (paraphrasing Evelyn Waugh) the senile itch to write to blogs, but yours is such a gem, and what you discuss today is so tempting that I have succumbed.I read Schama's analysis in the New Yorker with interest and as well as your highlights of Mead's article in Foreign Affairs. Although clearly the subject for both is current anti-Americanism and the reasons for it, I think that one should remember that Ameriphobia (incidentally why not Americanophobia?) is just one side of the coin in the history of America's image in Europe. That formed by the written testimony of intellectuals and political commentators. There are however other sources, less "top down" and literary to be sure, but still eloquent testimony to the flip other side of this imagery. I refer to the thousands of letters, poor European immigrant masses to America sent home during the great 19th & early 20th century migrations. Much of this "bottom up" literature, surviving in numerous collections and academic monographs, is philoamerican, sometimes to the extreme. It remains nonetheless something that should be read alongside the Ameriphobic tirades of Europe's by and large affluent writers."
Regards,
Stavros Petrolekas
As Sylloge sees it
Meanwhile, over in Vancouver, Stewart Butterfield, who runs the excellent Sylloge, has come up with by far the best observation on Google's acquisition of Blogger's creators, Pyra Labs:
"The people who don't understand why Google bought Pyra strike me as rather like people who, after watching a car pull into a gas station and seeing it fill up, stand around trying to puzzle out the driver's motivation."
Diarist of the day: 'Chips' Channon, 7 March 1934"My 35th birthday. Actually I have lied so much about my age I forget how old I really am. I think I look 28, and I know I feel 19."
John Paul's Roman Triptych
In a television documentary in 1999, Eamon Duffy, Reader in Church History and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, recounted a story about the Pope and poetry. Duffy told of a priest who sat next to the Pontiff at a dinner in the Vatican in the early 1980s. He asked: "Holy Father, I love poetry and I've read all your verse. Have you written much poetry since you became Pope?"
The Pope, who was a prolific poet before his 1978 election as Roman Catholic leader, answered "No," but did not expand. Twenty minutes later he turned to the priest and said only: "No context." The response, Duffy said, meant that the papacy had forced him to hide his feelings. Now, however, age, illness and the shadow of death have given him fresh inspiration. Called Roman Triptych, the Pope's new, three-part, 14-page poem is a meditation that touches on some of the key moments of his life and includes a reference to his own death. The first part, called The Stream, is an ode to nature with verses about rolling hills, silvery mountain streams, life, death, love, eternity...
"The undulating wood descends to the rhythm of mountain streams... If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current tear through, seek, don't give up, you know it must be somewhere here. Where are you, source? Where are you, source?!"
In part two of the poem, Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel, the Pope reflects on the frescoed hall in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace where he was elected and where his successor will be chosen. He depicts the cardinals sitting under Michelangelo's inspiring ceiling scenes of the Creation as they make their momentous decision on who to elect as Roman Catholic leader:
"So it will be again, when the need arises after my death. Michelangelo's vision must then speak to them. 'Conclave': a joint concern for the legacy of the Keys of the Kingdom. They will find themselves between the Beginning and the End. between the Day of Creation and the Day of judgment. It is given to man once to die and after that the judgment!"
The third part of the poem is a meditation on the story of Abraham, the Biblical figure honoured by all three of the great monotheistic religions — Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It is set in Ur, Abraham's birthplace, in modern-day Iraq but there is no reference to the current crisis in the region.
The Pope wrote the poetry longhand in Polish, and besides the Polish original, English, Italian, French, German and Spanish translations were also published today.
"Allow me to wet my lips in spring water, to feel its freshness, reviving freshness."
Ameriphobia
Born and educated in England, Simon Schama taught at Christ's College, Cambridge University before tutoring in modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford. He then spent 13 years as professor at Harvard and is now professor of history at Columbia University, New York, where he specialises in European history and the history of art. Who better, then, to assess the current bout of anti-Americanism that has so much of Europe in its thrall? In "THE UNLOVED AMERICAN" in the current issue of the New Yorker, Schama looks at the root causes of Ameriphobia and declares:
"Modern anti-Americanism was born of the multiple insecurities of the first decade of the twentieth century. Just as the European empires were reaching their apogee, they were beset by reminders of their own mortality. At Adowa in 1896, the Ethiopians inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italians; in 1905, the Russian Empire was humiliated in war by the Japanese. Britain may have ruled a quarter of the world?s population and geographical space, but it failed to impose its will decisively on the South African Boers. And Wilhelm II's Germany, though it was beginning to brandish its own imperial sword, remained fretful about 'encirclement'. The unstoppability of America?s economy and its immigrant-fuelled demographic explosion worried the rulers of these empires, even as they staggered into the fratricidal slaughter that would insure exactly that future."
In between such succinct historical analysis, Schama peppers his article with comments from the writings of Rudyard Kipling, Knut Hamsun, Fanny Wright, Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens. All of them visited the United States and all found something to dislike about American society, but it in the competition to detest America the most it was the French who outdid all contenders. Says Schama:
"For French writers like Kadmi-Cohen, the author of The American Abomination, the threat from the United States was not just economic or military. America now posed a social and cultural danger to the civilization of Europe. The greatest 'American peril' (a phrase that became commonplace in the literature) was the standardization of social life (the ancestor of today's complaints against globalization), the thinning of the richness of human habits to the point where they could be marketable not only inside America but, because of the global reach of American capitalism, to the entire world. Hollywood movies, which, according to Georges Duhamel, were 'an amusement for slaves,' and 'a pastime for the illiterate, for poor creatures stupefied by work and anxiety,' were the Trojan horse for the Americanization of the world. Jean Baudrillard?s belief that the defining characteristic of America is its fabrication of reality was anticipated by Duhamel's polemics against the 'shadow world' of the movies, with their reduction of audiences to somnolent zombies sitting in the dark."
THE PECULIAR FRENCH LOATHING of things American is examined by Walter Russell Mead in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. "Why Do They Hate Us?" asks Mead in his review of two new French books that examine the phenomenon. The volumes are "L'obsession anti-americaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences" by Jean-Francois Revel and "L'ennemi americain: Genealogie de l'antiamericanisme francais" by Philippe Roger.
Both Revel and Roger contend that anti-Americanism is a self-referential Franco-French indulgence that does not allow facts to get in its way, Mead notes. Revel and Roger, Mead and Schama are all in broad agreement that the rise and persistence of the phenomenon reflects historical trends. French Ameriphobia is so virulent because the United States has diminished France, and what makes this all the more galling is that there's no comparable American anti-Gallicism. This is because France is seen as little more than a nuisance in the United States. What the French would like to regard as a global conflict about culture and economics in which they are key players, the Americans treat as irksome noise which they prefer to tune out. Mead's sole criticism of Revel and Roger:
"If there is anything missing in these books, it would be a discussion of the relationship between French Anglophobia and French anti-Americanism. Both in France and beyond, new anti-Americanism is simply old Anglophobia writ large. Anti-Anglo-Saxonism has been a key intellectual and cultural force in European history since the English replaced the Dutch as the leading Protestant, capitalist, liberal, and maritime power in the late seventeenth century. The image of Anglophone "New Carthage" — cruel, treacherous, barbarous, plutocratic — that Jacobin and Napoleonic propaganda assiduously disseminated contains the essential features of anti-Anglo-Saxon portraits so familiar today. The humiliations and setbacks that France suffered at American hands in the twentieth century chafe so badly in part because they rub the old wounds that the British inflicted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British destroyed the empires of the Bourbons and Bonaparte; the rise of the United States established a new superpower league in world politics in which France can never compete. The dog-eat-dog competition of Anglo-Saxon capitalism forces French firms to adjust, and it steadily undermines France's efforts to maintain its social status quo. The English language has replaced French in science, diplomacy, and letters; the list goes on."
Does the fact that writers such as Ravel and Roger are finally giving French Ameriphobia a critical hiding mean that Paris will now start to accept reality? Alas, no, says Mead. French anti-Americanism is likely to persist as long as its causes exist:
"These causes are not, as perennially optimistic Americans want to think, American shortcomings and failures. America's failures and crimes are the patrimony of anti-Americanism, its treasures and its darlings. They inflame and disseminate anti-Americanism, but they are not its root cause. For that we must look to American success, American power, and America's consequent ability to thwart the ambitions of other states and impose its agenda on the rest of the world.The challenge for Americans and non-Americans alike is not to end anti-Americanism; only the collapse of American power could accomplish that task. Today, the task is to manage pragmatically the resentments, irritations, and real grievances that inevitably accompany the rise to power of one nation, one culture, and one social model in a complex, divided, and passionate world."
Diarist of the day: Evelyn Waugh, 6 March 1946"An offensive letter from a female American Catholic. I returned it to her husband with the note: 'I shall be grateful if you will use whatever disciplinary means are customary in your country to restrain your wife from writing impertinent letters to men she does not know."
Stalin's fiftieth shadow
A quick synopsis of the monster's life reads: born on December 21, 1879, in Gori, now in the Republic of Georgia, died in Moscow on March 5, 1953. Before his death Joseph Stalin managed to murder an estimated 20 million people, including doctors, nurses, teachers, writers, army officers, peasants, Balts, Cossacks, Georgians, Poles, Ukrainians, Christians, Jews, Communists and, especially, Russians. But why so many?
That's a question today's rulers of Russia will have to address at some point because the ruination of the once mighty Soviet Union is directly attributable to Stalin. He shot almost everyone who was intelligent and thereby ensured that the surviving mediocrities would manage to lose an empire within 40 years of his death. But despite the poverty and crime that are the legacy of failed communism, Russia's leaders are in no hurry to confront the legacy of Stalinism. In an interview last year, president Vladimir Putin said: "Stalin was of course a dictator...the problem is that it was under his leadership that the country won the second world war and that victory is to a significant extent associated with his name."
Regrettably, the 50th anniversary of the death of the mass murderer will not be marked in any special way in Russia today. I say regrettably because a healthy Russian democracy will not develop without a thorough accounting of Stalin's crimes, and the punishing of any surviving accomplices and perpetrators. Speaking darkly of a Russia unable to honestly deal with its past, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: "Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity. It is going to be horrible to live in such a country."
Churchill described Stalin as "unnatural" and this is perhaps the best analysis of a man whose lust for blood was so insatiable that he lowered the age of the death penalty to just 12. If there is any satisfaction to be gained from writing about such a monster and his able executioners it comes from noting that the stupidity of the Soviet apologists has been exposed and that the gulags have been closed.
Diarist of the day: Edith Velmans, 5 March 1941"[Holland] Tonight I asked mother to repeat some of the old sayings that are good to know if you want to have a good life. E.g. from Schopenhauer, etc.: 'He who believes in goodness will gain goodness.' And: 'Trouble is the scale on which the true worth of friendship is weighed.' And I just found this one in my pocket diary: 'Look at the sun, then your shadow will fall behind you.' "
Tuesday feasting, Wednesday fasting
A heap of pancakes will be cooked and eaten tonight and two bottles of wine will be drunk. (Note the use of the "cautious passive" there as I may need help in the kitchen). Anyway, then it's forty days and nights without sweet things and alcohol for this blogger. Why the feasting and fasting? Habit, I suppose. I grew up at a time and in a place when Lent was observed more rigorously than it is now. In the rural Ireland of my youth, the three days prior to Ash Wednesday were known as Shrovetide and it was a time of eating, drinking music making and card playing. Then came the fasting, one of those ancient rites in which physical activities were reduced, resulting in a state of quiescence comparable, symbolically, to death. Today, it's much less extreme.
Interesting word that, "Shrove", by the way. It comes from the Roman Catholic practice of confessing one's sins and being absolved of them, or "shriven". The word comes ultimately from the Latin scribere "to write", source of English "scribe" and the meaning evolved via the sense of "to prescribe penances". In Brazil and the United States, today, Shrove Tuesday, is called Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday); in Italy and other southern European countries it is called Carnival (Farewell to Meat), and here in Germany it's Fastnacht (Night of the Fast). There was a very practical aspect to these Shrovetide pre-fast feasts as they were designed to use up the food that could not be eaten during Lent. On Shrove Tuesday (more generally known now as Pancake Day) flour, eggs, milk, and butter were used up in the making of pancakes.
The excesses of Shrove Tuesday are followed by Ash Wednesday, so called from the ceremony of placing ashes on the forehead as a sign of penitence. This custom, probably introduced by Pope Gregory I, has been universal since the Synod of Benevento (1091). In the Catholic Church, ash obtained from burned palm branches of the previous Palm Sunday is blessed and the priest places it on the foreheads of the congregation, while reciting over each person the highly sobering: "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return".
Diarist of the day: Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 4 March 1978"[Egypt] I brought a couple of books from Barbara Cartland to give to Mrs Sadat who she understood read her books. However, the President said, 'No, no, I shall read them first, I am a great fan of Barbara Cartland myself.' He then suggested she might come to Egypt and get some background information for writing one of her novels set in Egypt. I said I would pass on the invitation."
About "About Schmidt"
Gave myself the weekend project of reading Louis Begley's About Schmidt and then viewing Alexander Payne's film of the book. The film was a rewarding Saturday night diversion, but Begley's prose is of such a luminous quality that the reading will be prolonged for some days to come, which is not to say that the one work is superior to the other. Different media, differing interpretations, that's all.
First, the book. Gracefully stylish and comically touching, Begley's account of the unravelling life of Albert Schmidt is hypnotic in the telling. Schmidt represents a type of East Coast propriety that's being swept away by coarseness and naked ambition. Here's a man who enjoys a cigar, knows his wine and takes pleasure in reading belles lettres. By way of contrast, Schmidt's only child, Charlotte, is planning to marry a man whose idea of relaxation is to write work memos on his laptop computer. And, to make matters worse, he's a Jew.
Schmidt's world is falling apart because his beloved wife has died and he feels that the remaining useful life of his overcoats is longer than his own. He's also beginning to doubt the value of such "cycles of maintenance" as daily shaves and monthly haircuts. Still, he's got a few consolations, including his diary, the keeping of which began as an order from his father.
"A man is responsible for what he does with his time, he said. Unless you get it down it will be lost?"Alone in the house after Mary died, he found that keeping a diary was also a pleasant pastime that cost nothing, a more dignified way of breaking the oppressive silence that surrounded him than talking to himself. He became quite diligent. And, to the extent that any of us understand the forces by which we are buffeted, what he wrote down at that time was far from inaccurate."
IN ALEXANDER PAYNE'S FILM "About Schmidt", Louis Begley's East Coast lawyer is transformed into Warren Schmidt, a retired, insurance executive living in Omaha. Of all the mutations Jack Nicholson has undergone in his acting career, none is more remarkable than his portrayal of this American everyman who finds himself retired, alone and lonely at the age of 66. Schmidt, who has spent his working life calculating the life spans of others, views his remaining years with disappointment. He feels that he has made no difference to the world.
This existential crisis is exacerbated by the sudden death of his wife, Helen (June Squibb). Earlier in the film Warren confesses in a voice-over to a secret loathing of this thickening, gray-haired woman he has lived with for 42 years, but with Helen gone, he's unable to cook or tidy the house. After a few weeks of living in squalor, he escapes Omaha in the huge Winnebago motor home he and his wife had planned to travel in once he retired. As Warren speeds from Nebraska to Kansas on a journey that eventually takes him to Denver to attend the wedding of his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), one is reminded of Nicholson's "Easy Rider" trip 33 years ago. But instead of heading into the future, "About Schmidt" is a pilgrimage into the past.
Instead of falling prey to sentimentality, however, "About Schmidt" becomes a captivating, often hilarious, road movie interspersed with voice-overs in which Warren composes letters to Ndugu, a six-year-old Tanzanian boy he is sponsoring (for $22 a month) in response to a TV ad by an international charity. While all this is going on, Payne brilliantly balances his satirical look at the rituals of the American heartland with a respectful appreciation of their value to the Silent Majority of decent middle-class people who work hard and respect the law.
Can an ordinary person make a difference? That's the question posed by the film. The answer in the final scene is simple and deeply moving. "About Schmidt" is exquisite screen realism.
Diarist of the day: Alan Bennett, 3 March 1983"I take a version of a script down to Settle to be photocopied. The man in charge o the machine watches the sheets come through. 'Glancing at this,' he says, 'I see you dabble in playwriting.' While this about sums it up, I find myself resenting him for noticing what goes through this machine at all. Photocopying is a job in which one is required to see and not see, the delicacy demanded not different from that in medicine. It's as if a nurse were to say, 'I see watching you undress, that your legs are nothing to write home about."
Turkish yarn
By rejecting a measure yesterday that would have allowed US troops to use the country as a base for attacking Iraq, Turkey's parliamentarians have handed American diplomats and military strategists a seriously unwelcome complication. One immediate outcome is that US troops will not be wearing Turkish-made outfits any time soon.
A staple of Pentagon contracting for decades has been a "Buy American" provision, but as Dan Morgan reported on Thursday in The Washington Post (registration required), part of the reward for letting US troops use the country as a staging point for an attack on Iraq would have included a temporary waiver of the provision to allow the Pentagon to purchase Turkish-made apparel for its forces. Expanding on the background of the proposed deal, Morgan wrote:
"Greater access to the U.S. textile market has long been a top priority for Turkey, which sells nearly $1 billion worth of clothes and textiles in this country each year. A senior Turkish official said here this week that improving the terms of his country's textile trade with the United States was high on Turkey's wish list in negotiations over the stationing of U.S. troops.During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Turkey won textile quota relief valued at around $100 million. With its economy recovering from one of the deepest recessions in decades and public opinion overwhelmingly opposed to a war with Iraq, Turkey is attempting to negotiate concessions that would make the stationing of U.S. troops on its soil more palatable to its people and parliament."
The US textile industry, which has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the past decade, was sharply opposed to the "Buy American" provision waiver so it will be pleased with the result of yesterday's vote, but Turkey's economy will surely suffer. So too will campaign momentum and morale. And permitting more imports of clothing from Turkey would have been one of the more acceptable arrangements of this regime-change push — certainly more honourable than tolerating Russian savagery in Chechnya, ignoring Chinese colonialism in Xinjiang and consorting with Saudi mediaevalists.
Parents! Kids! Free computing degree
How do you get kids interested in studying computer science, especially after the tech bubble burst has hurt the careers and finances of many of their parents? It's a serious problem in Ireland, where university intake last autumn showed a significant rise in applicants for such traditional subjects as law and medicine and a marked decline in interest in IT courses.
In Britain, the situation isn't much different, which is causing alarm amongst those planning the future of a knowledge economy. Queen Mary College, part of the University of London, has now come up with an idea that's sure to raise the profile of computing science among the young and their cash-strapped parents. It's started an internet treasure hunt with the ultimate prize of a three-year computer science degree with all fees paid as well as the chance to gain a year's work placement with Microsoft. Aimed at 16 and 17 year-olds the competition features a general computing knowledge quiz and tests of mathematical and logical thinking skills. There will be followed by a programming task in the summer. The winner will be announced after an interview in November and will be able to begin their degree in September 2004. Here's an idea of the questions from the first phase of the competition:
Computer Science is about writing computer programs, this takes an eye for detail. In the following sentence how many F's are there? "FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF FABULOUS YEARS": 4, 5, 6, 7.When studying Computer Science at University you will learn different programming languages. Different languages are developed for different applications. Which programming language did Dennis Ritchie help develop? JAVA, FORTRAN, BASIC, C
Computer Scientists need to think logically, after all computer programs follow logical rules. Can you solve this logic problem? Kyle, Stan, and Cartman were rounded up yesterday, because one of them was suspected of having grabbed a few too many cookies from the cookie jar. The three friends made the following statements under very intensive questioning:
Kyle: I'm innocent
Stan: I'm innocent
Cartman: Stan is the guilty oneIf only one of these statements was true, who took the cookies? Kyle, Stan, Cartman.
Like to try more? You'll have to get all ten right before advancing to the second phase.
Diarist of the day: Alec Guinness 1996, 2 March 1940"In the evening we watched an excellent TV interview with Dame Muriel Spark. She came over as wonderfully direct, honest, witty and charming. When she lived in Rome some yeas ago she invited us to drinks in her splendid apartment. At that time she wore her hair piled high; there were flashing jewels and chic clothes, ad she was most affable. The last time I saw her was in June 1991, at the memorial service for Graham Greene. We sat next to each other; were both required to get up and speak. She wore no make-up and was almost casually dressed. In her tribute to Graham she spoke of the financial help he gave her when she was a struggling writer. She said, 'It was typical of Graham that with the monthly cheques he often sent a few bottles of red wine to 'take the edge off cold charity'. It says something very pleasing about both of them."
So, farewell then, Red Herring
Founded ten years ago, Red Herring magazine devoted itself to what so many of us wanted to know about in the 1990s: the goings on in the venture capital community. With an IPO in everyone's dreams, Red Herring fed eager readers with tidbits about who was giving and who was getting the coveted start up capital.
All this led to a huge circulation, issues fat with advertising and a payroll that exceeded 300. That was then. Today, the word out of San Francisco is that Red Herring is no more. Hard times have claimed another tech must-read. The website hangs on, telling us in its lead story that Jordan is a technology oasis, but it's slated for disposal as well. When I visited this morning, a popup appeared inviting me to "Save up to 70% on Life Insurance!" In began in a rather eerie fashion, when one thinks of Red Herring's fate: "What Would Happen to Your Family If You Died? Nobody wants to think about it, but the truth is that it can happen."
Yes, indeed. It can happen.
Diarist of the day: Leo Tolstoy, 1 March 1851"Rule. In difficult circumstances always act on first impressions."
