I just returned from the World Economic Forum and compared to past editions this year antiamericanism was harder to track for lack of...Americans. The absence of high profile representatives from the Bush Administration was due perhaps to the fact that many of them have not yet "passed their exams" at the Congress, but it was widely interpreted by Europeans as a proof that this Administration just does not care about the US image in the rest of the world.
An American columnist goes back to Europe after many years, and is surprised by Europeans feelings about the US, and Bush in particular. Sensitive to a traditional understanding of power (he cites Kagan) he writes that: "Europe is too weak to lead and too proud to follow." Nevertheless, he understands that Europeans attitude towards netotiations comes from their capacity to "control historical hatreds through the EU."
There a re a lot of interesting considerations in this column, starting with the basic one which is that "we are drifiting."
The Washington Post - Drifting Apart
Drifting Apart
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A29
BRUSSELS -- This ought to be a moment of great triumph for Europe and America together. Instead there is mutual disenchantment. On May 1 the European Union accepted 10 countries -- most of them remnants of the Soviet empire -- into membership. The EU is now a massive free-trade area and loose political union with 25 countries, 455 million people and an $11.6 trillion economy. After World War II, farsighted Europeans and Americans promoted European unification to end a history of ruinous continental wars. The vision has succeeded spectacularly, and yet there's no common celebration.
You can see this in coverage of the "enlargement" (the new members are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta). The U.S. media paid scant attention; it was no big deal. In Europe it was a gargantuan deal. But the self-congratulation virtually ignored the huge American role in European unification: in encouraging it after World War II; in providing a defense shield against Soviet invasion and intimidation, permitting the EU to grow; and in maintaining the military and economic pressure that led to the Soviet Union's ultimate collapse.
This was my first European visit in several years. I knew, of course, that widespread opposition to the war in Iraq had darkened opinion toward America. In a March poll, the Pew Research Center found that only 38 percent of Germans and 37 percent of the French had "favorable" views of the United States. In mid-2002, the comparable figures were 61 percent and 63 percent. Still, I was not prepared for the depth of feeling. "Even my parents, who are part of the World War II generation and always supported the United States, think Bush is a war criminal," a 48-year-old German, a mid-level EU official, told me. War criminal?
It's not just that many Europeans oppose Bush's Iraq policies. They mistake the motives -- and that's scarier. The implication is not simply that the United States made an error. It's that something about Bush or America (it's not clear which) represents a permanent menace. One view is that Bush went into Iraq for oil. About 60 percent of the French and Germans believe that, says Pew. Another view is that U.S. foreign policy has fallen hostage to Bush's religious fervor. Militarism becomes a heavenly mission.
"We've been much more used to a distinction between the state and God," says John Palmer of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think tank. It's "deeply worrying . . . for the major superpower to be deriving its strategy from fundamentalism." By labeling these views distorted, I don't mean that Bush is bound to prove his critics -- at home and abroad -- wrong. The outcome in Iraq is unknown; the administration may fail. What I do mean is that prevailing European readings of Bush represent dangerous misunderstandings.
His motives were upfront: finding weapons of mass destruction, fighting terrorism, ending tyranny -- and not oil. Although Bush advertises his religious faith, his good-guys-and-bad-guys rhetoric remains firmly in the moralistic tradition of U.S. foreign policy. Enemies (the Nazis, the Japanese, the commies, al Qaeda) represent evil. Wars become moral crusades -- to save the world for democracy, to establish universal peace. Missionary zeal is routine. Indeed, it buttressed the post-World War II U.S. enthusiasm for European unity.
Bush, it's said, created this rift -- and can end it by embracing cooperation or (involuntarily) retiring. There's something to this. Love him or hate him, Bush has a knack for offending critics. But the roots of disagreement, I suspect, go much deeper.
In his book "Of Paradise and Power," Robert Kagan argued that Americans and Europeans have divergent views of military power. Americans believe that only raw power can defeat evil, he wrote. Having controlled historical hatreds through the EU, Europeans prefer negotiation and compromise.
Not surprisingly, Europeans and Americans see Sept. 11, 2001, differently. "Americans felt this was the beginning of a war," says Roland Koch, a leading German politician. "This is not the feeling of Europeans." The terrorist threat is seen as "more or less far away." In the Pew poll, 57 percent of the French and 49 percent of Germans said Americans overreacted to terrorism. Even the Madrid bombing didn't much change opinion, Koch says.
Opposition to the United States also distracts from Europe's own problems. There's a growing collision between generous welfare benefits and poor economic growth. From 1996 to 2003, economic growth averaged 1.3 percent annually in Germany, 1.5 percent in Italy and 2.2 percent in France (the U.S. rate: 3.3 percent). Many EU countries have taxes between 40 percent and 50 percent of national income. Aging populations intensify upward pressures on benefits. From 2000 to 2020, the over-65 population in the 15 countries of the "old" EU is projected to rise 38 percent, while the number of people between 25 and 49 falls 14 percent. These economic tensions even affected the "enlargement" process. The 10 countries received membership on grudging terms: Economic aid and farm subsidies were limited; immigration rights were curtailed.
The truth is that Europe is too weak to lead and too proud to follow. It doesn't want to undertake costly new commitments. It's already got more than it can handle. In some ways, George Bush is a political godsend. His style and language offend so many Europeans -- he seems simplistic, trigger-happy, uneducated -- that opposition to him camouflages more basic conflicts. I've been repeatedly reminded here that Europe and America share too much (common cultures, political systems and economic interests) to drift apart. Maybe. But we're still drifting.
This is an article on how the French perceive the American view of the enlargement... Mixed feelings. The basic idea is that Washington hopes the new members will make the EU more pro-american. Some neocons, though, believe that a bigger Europe will slowly drift away, and be more independent.
According to a European observer in Washington, the Americans "don't understand the European Union." It looks too much like NATO. Anyway, they are too busy dealing with Iraq and the coming presidential election.
Le MOnde - L'Amérique espère que l'Union à 25 penchera du côté de la "nouvelle Europe"
L'Amérique espère que l'Union à 25 penchera du côté de la "nouvelle Europe"
LE MONDE | 28.04.04 | 14h28
A Washington, on compte sur les dix Etats adhérents pour "atlanticiser" l'UE. A l'inverse, certains "néoconservateurs" craignent que celle-ci ne s'éloigne, avec le temps, des Etats-Unis.
Washington de notre correspondant
S'ils n'étaient pas accaparés par l'Irak, le Proche-Orient et l'élection présidentielle de novembre, les responsables américains s'intéresseraient sûrement à l'entrée de dix nouveaux pays dans l'Union européenne. Mais, dans le contexte des dernières semaines, l'événement a les plus grandes chances de passer inaperçu outre-Atlantique, même si la délégation de l'UE à Washington a été contactée par plusieurs magazines à la recherche d'informations sur la "nouvelle Europe".
Pourtant, vu de la capitale américaine, l'élargissement est favorable aux intérêts des Etats-Unis. "Traditionnellement, nous soutenons l'extension de l'UE", rappelle Philip Gordon, un ancien de l'administration Clinton qui dirige le Centre d'études sur les Etats-Unis et l'Europe à la Brookings Institution, un des grands think tanks (groupes de réflexion) de Washington. "Les nouveaux membres modernisent leurs économies sans que cela ne nous coûte rien, explique-t-il. Les mauvais côtés - fonds structurels, problèmes d'immigration - ne sont pas pour nous. Et nous pouvons espérer que l'élargissement aura pour effet d'"atlanticiser" l'UE." Jacqueline Grapin, qui préside l'Institut européen de Washington, confirme que les Etats-Unis "comptent beaucoup sur la "nouvelle Europe" pour garder l'UE dans le giron américain".
L'expression "nouvelle Europe" a été lancée par Donald Rumsfeld, secrétaire américain à la défense, en janvier 2003. Au plus fort de l'opposition de la France et de l'Allemagne aux visées de George Bush sur l'Irak, M. Rumsfeld avait qualifié ces deux nations de "vieille Europe" et fait l'éloge des pays d'Europe centrale et orientale, en instance d'intégration dans l'UE et qui, eux, soutenaient Washington. Jacques Chirac avait répondu que ces pays avaient "perdu une occasion de se taire" en prenant position pour les Etats-Unis.
Fin mai 2003, à Cracovie (Pologne), M. Bush s'était insurgé contre les propos du président français. Ces pays n'ont pas fait tout ce chemin, à travers occupations, dictatures et révoltes, pour s'entendre dire qu'ils devaient "choisir, maintenant, entre l'Europe et l'Amérique", avait déclaré le chef de la Maison Blanche.
Cinq des nouveaux membres - l'Estonie, la Lettonie, la Lituanie, la Slovaquie et la Slovénie - ont été accueillis en grande pompe, le 29 mars, à Washington, dans les rangs de l'OTAN, un mois avant leur intégration dans l'UE. La Hongrie, la Pologne et la République tchèque font partie de l'Alliance depuis 1999. Les Etats-Unis font déjà campagne pour que la Bulgarie et la Roumanie, les deux autres nouveaux partenaires de l'OTAN, soient admises, à leur tour, dans l'UE. "Pour les Américains, l'UE, c'est un peu comme l'OTAN. Ils ne comprennent pas ce que signifie l'Union européenne", estime Mme Grapin. Certains, pourtant, s'inquiètent. Marian Tupy, un économiste slovaque qui suit les questions européennes au Cato Institute, fondation ultralibérale, raille les néoconservateurs de l'American Enterprise Institute, pour qui, dit-il, "tout ce qui renforce l'Europe est mauvais pour l'Amérique". En fait, les avis sont partagés. Certains font le pari que, plus l'UE s'étend, moins elle s'approfondit, et que cela complique la formation d'un contrepoids politique à la puissance américaine. D'autres estiment, au contraire, que l'élargissement ne peut qu'accroître la puissance européenne, et que les nouveaux adhérents, pour atlantistes qu'ils soient aujourd'hui, s'éloigneront inévitablement, avec le temps, de Washington.
Aux yeux de Jacqueline Grapin, c'est là une "position intellectuelle". Pour le moment, la réalité est que les pays d'Europe centrale et orientale "sont proches des Etats-Unis" et comptent sur eux pour leur sécurité, face à une Russie dont ils ont peur. Ils n'entreront donc jamais dans une stratégie qui aurait pour effet d'affaiblir l'Amérique. Aussi un responsable du département d'Etat peut-il affirmer, dans un entretien officieux, que les Etats-Unis considèrent l'Union européenne élargie comme leur "partenaire primaire" et n'ont "pas le moindre désaccord avec son existence"...
"Plus d'Europe ne signifie pas moins d'Etats-Unis", a assuré Anthony Wayne, un des adjoints du secrétaire d'Etat, dans un discours prononcé à Graz (Autriche), le 2 avril, au sujet de l'élargissement. Ce jugement, pourtant, ne se vérifie pas à 100 %. Ainsi, Washington s'est efforcé d'obtenir des nouveaux membres qu'ils signent, au préalable, des accords afin d'exempter les Américains de poursuites éventuelles devant la Cour pénale internationale (CPI). L'échec a été complet. Plus facile : l'application par ces pays du tarif extérieur commun et de la politique agricole commune aura des conséquences pour les exportateurs américains, qui demandent des compensations à l'UE. Ils devraient les obtenir.
Patrick Jarreau
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 29.04.04
European's know their common cultural past, but they ignore each other's contemporary artists and intellectuals, writes Alan Riding who adds: "As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American."
The article mentions a number of limited efforts, explaining that they are unsuccessful, while failing to underline that they are numerous. This could be an excellent image of what we are seeing in other fields: myriads of small things contributing unsatisfactorily to a greater integration because they pale in comparison to the idea of Europe. These perceptions are not incompatible, and we should learn to deal with them if we want to better understand what's really happening.
The New York Times - A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, April 22 — As 10 new countries prepare to enter the European Union on May 1, it is not so much economic weight or political tradition that has earned them the right to join the regional bloc. Rather, it is a certain cultural identity forged by Christianity and a common artistic heritage. In one crucial sense, then, the lingua franca of this expanded Europe remains that of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Mozart and other giants of the past.
Turn to the contemporary arts, however, and a different picture emerges. Here the union's old and new members alike know surprisingly little about one another's artistic inventiveness today. Creative life may be flourishing in widely different ways across Europe, but the most common cultural link across the region now is a devotion to American popular culture in the form of movies, television and music. In a Europe committed to seeking "ever closer union," where a dozen countries already share a currency, culture seems to have fallen out of step. Even as Europeans visit one another's cities and beaches more than ever, national self-obsessions prevail in the visual arts, new plays, literature, contemporary classical music, pop music and movies.
Does this lack of cohesion matter? Is it not enough for European culture to be sustained by the masters of the Italian Renaissance, the Spanish Golden Age and French Impressionism, by composers from Bach to Janacek, by writers of the stature of Cervantes, Goethe and Voltaire, by thinkers like Erasmus, Locke and Hegel? In their day these heavyweights also had only elitist audiences.
Since World War II, however, has come the massification of culture. In response Europeans have tried to reinforce national and regional identities, to hold onto their languages, foods and folkloric traditions. But given the option of American-style entertainment, they show little interest in one another's arts. It may simply be lack of information: European newspapers offer poor coverage of their neighbors' art scenes, and television is not much better, with the exception of the French-German network Arte. Whatever the reason, artistic endeavors that do cross borders today reach few people.
In movies European artists know whom to blame. The region's movie industries constantly bemoan the power of Hollywood, which for the most part leaves local films less than 15 percent of the box office even in cinephile countries like Italy and Germany. France in turn uses Hollywood to justify generous government subsidies and other privileges that enable its movie industry to control about one-third of the local market.
Yet three decades after the wellsprings of Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut, Europeans now rarely choose to see one another's films. In 2002, a good year for French cinema, 50 percent of the box office went to American movies and 35 percent to French movies, but only 4.9 percent to British films, 0.8 percent to German and 0.2 percent to Italian. And in Spain last year, Hollywood had 67 percent of the movie market, Spain 15.8 percent, Britain 5.7 percent, France 2.6 percent and Germany just 1.2 percent.
The failure of Europe's contemporary arts to enter the mainstream may help explain the plethora of the more rarefied arts festivals in the region, not only the film jamborees of Cannes, Venice and Berlin but also myriad dance and music festivals. (Dance and music, not requiring words, are more exportable.) Similarly summer theater festivals in Edinburgh and Avignon, France, invite productions from throughout Europe, yet few shows that are not local become commercial hits. In 1996 Yasmina Reza's "Art" was the first play by a living French writer to reach London's West End in 40 years.
Organizations like the British Council, the French Association for Artistic Action, Germany's Goethe Institute and Spain's Cervantes Institute actively promote their countries' cultures. And Europe's performing arts can be seen at, say, the Barbican Center in London, the Centro Cultural de Belêm, Lisbon, and the Théâtre National de l'Odéon in Paris. Yet these efforts touch a minority.
The visual arts are a case in point. Europe's museums may be crowded, yet many Europeans would struggle to name the leading living artists of France (Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Sophie Calle) or Spain (Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló) or Germany (Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer). Even Lucian Freud, generally considered Britain's greatest living painter, speaks little to Continental Europeans.
Many Britons have at least heard of their own Y.B.A.'s — Young British Artists — because of clever marketing by the collector Charles Saatchi. Yet Damien Hirst of dissected shark renown and Tracey Emin of the "slept-in" love bed have become household names in Britain more as "enfants terribles" than as artists.
In the case of books, "Harry Potter" is everywhere, but best-seller lists in Europe are generally dominated by national authors. A few have a European audience, like Italy's Umberto Eco, Germany's Günter Grass and recently Spain's Carlos Ruiz Zafón, whose "Shadow of the Wind" comes out in English this month. But most nonnational best sellers come from popular American writers, currently Dan Brown with "The Da Vinci Code," but also frequently John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell or recently Michael Moore.
American and British writing clearly profits from the English language: European publishers can read books in English, while those in other languages must usually be translated before being judged.
More surprisingly, while modeled after American "sound," even European pop music rarely crosses the region's borders, as if Europeans were accustomed to lyrics in English but not in other languages. The Rolling Stones can fill stadiums across the region, but no other European rock group could do so outside its own country. And France's undying love for its aging rock star Johnny Hallyday still mystifies other Europeans.
Does this separateness matter? Perhaps it represents the cultural diversity that Europeans continue to covet. Yet if Europeans remain focused on the riches of the past and ignore one another's contemporary work, there may also be a price. As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American.
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
This article doesn't say many surprising things about identity, but I think it pulls together many themes quite well. For example, did you know the Pope is against European unity?
Nations Struggle to Find Common Threads, Associated Press
By Tom Rachman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Associated Press
April 18, 2004
Italian businessman Stefano Morgan looks on as he sits in the historic San Marco cafe in Trieste, northern Italy. From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. Now the expanding European Union looks for common threads.
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together.
The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
After centuries of dispute, these notoriously fractious folk have begun to unite under the European Union, with a common currency, a planned constitution, and talk of a joint foreign policy and army.
The various names for this place – from Europe to Europa to Evropa – are the buzzwords of the day. The name, born of Greek mythology on ancient Crete, proclaims itself everywhere, from euro bank notes to the Eurostar train burrowing under the English Channel.
On May 1, the European Union expands from 15 to 25 members, tying ex-Soviet bloc states to Mediterranean islands to Western European powers – 455 million citizens, 20 official languages, age-old resentments and memories of war, not to mention a blinding number of ways to cook dinner.
But do Europeans really have anything in common? Interviews in several European countries indicate that few here feel foremost European, in part because it's so tricky defining what "a European" is.
An EU poll of the 25 countries published in February bears this out. Asked how they will see themselves in the near future, 86 percent said being European would come second to their present nationality or wouldn't figure at all.
Traditionally, people strive for a state; here in Trieste, crossroads of the Slavic east, Germanic center and Latin south, the invented European state must strive for a people – not an easy task in a city as historically muddled as this.
It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Mediterranean port in the 18th and 19th centuries; Italy incorporated it in 1918; the Nazis occupied it near the end of World War II; Yugoslavia took brief control after Germany's defeat; the British and Americans bumped them out; and now, it's part of Italy – and by extension the European Union.
Librarian Lisbeth Stiger was born in Austria, works in a German cultural center and speaks fondly of Trieste, her adopted city, where people eat pasta but sip coffee in Viennese-style cafes, a custom harking back to Austro-Hungarian times.
Her setting didn't appear to make her feel much more European.
"Between an Irishman and someone from Malta there's a huge difference, both culturally and in the way of thinking," Stiger said. "I'd never say I feel European. ... Deep down I'm Austrian."
At the University of Trieste, in Piazzale Europa – Europe Square – students hanging out between classes indicated that Europeans do share values, but not a common identity.
A 24-year-old law student, Alex Tardivo, puffed a cigarette and suggested that "tolerance could be our strong point." A 22-year-old engineering student, Omar Tullio, said European culture "is fairly embryonic now."
Certainly, Europe isn't a melting pot, a shared allegiance, a "United States." That was never the intention of the six countries that started the partnership in the 1950s as an economic bloc to lift them out of the wreckage of World War II.
That said, outlines of European identity can be sketched, with admittedly imperfect strokes:
–Europeans share pride in their stunningly creative past, their art and science, whose ancient markers are still evident in centuries-old frescoes dabbed onto the ceilings of village churches and in the stunning architecture of great cities.
"Europe means common tradition regardless of the many historical antagonisms," former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said in Warsaw. "It's a Europe of common history, tradition, and civilization, which leads to human rights and finally to democracy."
–Europeans also tend to believe that their governments have an obligation to care for the weak, and they pay high taxes to finance generous health, welfare and pension systems.
"That's different from the American conception where there's much more stress on individual effort," said Heather Grabbe of the Centre for European Reform in London.
–Totalitarianism in the 20th century – Nazism, Communism – has bred a reluctance to engage in military conflicts.
"I suppose compared to the Americans we are all depressives – but then they haven't suffered so many wars and ethnic conflicts on their own soil as we have," 35-year-old Hungarian Cornelia Sarkozi said in Budapest.
–At times, they agree less on what they are than on what they are not – not African, not Asian, and not American.
"As a European, I feel much more open to changes, open to new interests, cultures and countries. I see Americans as much more limited in the way of thinking and seeing things," said Stiger, the librarian.
EU proponents tout their project not only as a way to help nations prosper. The conditions for membership – market economy, democracy, human rights – have brought considerable changes in countries still struggling with the legacy of dictatorships.
With all that, do Europeans need to feel like brothers and sisters?
The EU would be stronger if they did. The idea of "being European" is sometimes mixed up with being in the club itself. The danger is that when EU-building hits a rough patch, people forget the benefits of open borders and tariff-free trade and turn sour on being European.
The euro, the most obvious sign of unity, is a case in point. Some EU citizens complain that the new currency brought huge inflation. Costs have certainly shot up in Italy since the euro was introduced in 2002, with many accusing shopkeepers of greedily rounding up prices in the new currency.
"I don't want Europe. I want Italy. I want a return of the lira and all that," grumbled Trieste furniture salesman Mariano Gianella, lighting cigarettes with a matchbook inappropriately emblazoned with the blue-and-yellow EU flag. "They've doubled the prices and that's it."
One strong proponent of European unity outside the EU is Pope John Paul II. The Polish-born pontiff argues that this continent's Christian history helps define Europeans.
Several countries don't like the sound of that, especially those trying to appear inclusive to growing populations of immigrants, many of them Muslim. The issue is one of many that have deadlocked the proposed constitution.
Awkward as it may be, debate over religion and European values has become unavoidable. France and Germany are struggling over allowing Islamic head scarves in public settings, while Italy was scandalized when a court ordered Christian crosses removed from a school – a ruling later overturned.
Immigration and the expansion of the EU both throw doubt on whether it's possible to define "Europeans" as their numbers and nature shift.
Trieste businessman Cheng Tsu Jung is an immigrant from China and an Italian citizen, firmly rooted on this continent and holding strong opinions about it.
He argued that Europe still has to win over its own people – offer something tangible and sweet to sell the idea of being European.
Cheng looks to his 14-year-old Italian-born son, fluent in this country's language but struggling with Chinese.
"The new generation," he says, "will feel more European than we do."
EDITOR'S NOTE – AP writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Karl Peter Kirk in Budapest contributed to this report.
Here are a few different newspapers spinning the same story: the Arabic European League (AEL)--lots of membership in Belgium and Netherlands--has "warned" traders in Antwerp that they could be the next target of a terrorist attacks.
The majority of traders in Antwerp are Jewish with strong ties to Israel.
Newspaper accounts differ from calling it "Islamic fundamentalist threat" to "Hamas" to a general "terrorism threat"
This was an aspect I didn't expect to cover in Antwerp initially, but from my reporting there, tensions at the business person-to-person level between Muslims and Jews was very little. But so is the interaction. The majority of traders are Hindu, not Muslim. Though these supposed threats are not from the immediate community.
For the most part, people felt (obviously i'm not there now) very safe and had little to say about March 11. September 11, was tragic, they said, but far away.
This is a blurb from a diamond industry trade magazine published by the International Diamond Exchange.
Antwerp's diamond traders fear terror attacks
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=6478
This is the belgium expats mag's take
Antwerp Security Tightened Following Threats
http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp
Reuters
Belgium Investigates Email Threats Against Jews
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4794541
Israeli news
Belgian Jews Threatened By Euro-Arab League
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=60711
Antwerp Security Tightened Following Threats
(April 8, '04, 10:56 Edahn Golan)
Antwerp police has beefed up security after the Arab European League (AEL) said it could become a target of a Hamas terrorist attack if the local Jewish community did not denounce Israel and its policies.
Ahmed Azzuz, the AEL's local leader, was quoted in an interview saying Hamas planned to attack foreign targets following the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin adding that Antwerp was an “obvious target”.
“The diamond sector openly supports the Zionist regime,” Azzuz said in the interview, adding, “Every year 200 Belgian-Israeli reservists leave for Israel to kill innocent civilians”.
The Diamond High Council (HRD) has filed a complaint against the AEL, accusing the group of “intimidation” and “threatening behavior”.
“It is the first time the diamond sector has been named as a target in such an explicit manner,” HRD Managing Director Peter Meeus told Reuters.
Antwerp's diamond traders fear terror attacks
BRUSSELS - Businesses in Antwerp's famous diamond traders' district fear they could soon be targeted by an Islamic fundamentalist terror attack, the Belgian press reported on Thursday.
The majority of Antwerp's diamond traders are Jewish. They say have been particularly concerned since the Arab European League (AEL) warned they could be considered a terrorist target.
"Ever since the AEL made its statements, we have obviously been asking ourselves questions," diamond industry spokesman Peter Meeus told La Libre Belgique.
"The quarter was already targeted in 1981, when terrorists attacked a Portuguese synagogue," he added.
Meeus wants the Belgian government to step up even further the already tight security measures in place in the diamond sellers quarter, which is near to Antwerp's main station.
The AEL insisted that it was not trying to threaten Antwerp's diamond traders but warn them.
"We want to warn Antwerp's Jewish community in its entirety to be on its guard. The community's support for Israel is no secret," Ahmed Azzuz, head of the AEL in Belgium told La Libre Belgique.
"It could therefore be targeted because of its support for Zionism, in the same way that innocent people in Spain paid for their leaders' pro-American policies during the war in Iraq.
"We are not anti-Semitic. It is recent events that have led us to sound the alarm bell," he added.
Belgium Investigates Email Threats Against Jews
ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) - Belgium is investigating a series of e-mail threats against the local Jewish community to avenge Israeli attacks against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
Investigators were looking into the e-mails sent to the prime minister's office and several newspapers that threatened attacks on Jews in the northern port city of Antwerp.
"We have opened a file and we are checking it out," Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office, said.
"We don't really give it that much importance," she said, adding the office received such reports regularly.
The daily Gazet Van Antwerpen reported that e-mails sent on April 1 threatened to attack the Jewish community, as well as buses, trams, and shops.
The messages contained the name of Abdelkarim el Mejjati, suspected of being one of the masterminds behind the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, it said.
Mejjati is also suspected of being the operational leader of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which investigators blame for last year's bombings in Casablanca.
Gazet Van Antwerpen said the e-mails carried the mobile phone number of a group of Cameroon students. The newspaper contacted the students who denied any knowledge of the threats.
Antwerp is the world's largest diamond distribution center and many members of the port city's orthodox Jewish community of about 20,000 work in the business.
Earlier this week, the diamond sector called for extra security after a local Arab militant group said the industry could be attacked by Islamic militants if the Jewish community did not denounce Israeli policies against Palestinians.
Antwerp police say they have increased protection.
Israel killed the wheelchair-bound Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a helicopter strike on March 22, accusing him of being behind suicide bombings in the Jewish state.
Since the start of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000, Belgian Jews have complained of a rise in anti-Semitic violence and virulent anti-Israeli propaganda.
Belgian Jews Threatened By Euro-Arab League 15:13 Apr 09, '04 / 18 Nisan 5764
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=60711
Belgium's Jews, in particular Antwerp's Jewish diamond merchants, have been put on notice by the Arab European League (AEL).
"We want to warn Antwerp's Jewish community in its entirety to be on its guard. The community's support for Israel is no secret," Ahmed Azzuz, head of the AEL in Belgium told the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique.
"The AEL calls on the Jewish community in Antwerp to cease its support of, and distance itself from, the state of Israel. If not, attacks in Antwerp are almost unpreventable," Azzuz had earlier told the Belgian Flemish magazine Knack, adding, "Every year, 200 Belgian-Israeli reservists leave for Israel to kill innocent civilians."
According to an Israel Channel 1 television report, the Jewish community is taking the threats seriously, and has already contacted elected Jewish officials, the local police and the nation's justice minister. A member of the Belgian diamond merchant's community interviewed on the program confirmed reports that members of the Jewish community are afraid and at present, refrain from being outdoors during the nighttime hours.
Peter Meeus reminded La Libre Belgique, "The quarter was already targeted in 1981, when terrorists attacked a Portuguese synagogue."
The AEL's Azzuz insisted in the media that his statements were not threats.
A spokeswoman for Antwerp police said rigorous security measures had already been introduced.
O.k., so it's off topic, but considering our travels and our group's encounters with proposals for dates and even marriage, the article seems worth a smile for the play on stereotypes.
It's a small vignette in the New Yorker on a group of NY-based French bachelor businessmen who've started cocktail parties ("French Tuesdays"). The group of French expatriates has grown so big that Playboy magazine sponsored the last one where Rachel Hunter was the guest of honor.
It makes interesting observations about what the group considers a way to socialize in "the French way." The comments of the French men's views of American women and men are the best. ("American girls are very liberated, but the American men are uptight." "We French, we think the Americans are too gentlemen, they are afraid of the girls. So we make sure the girls don't get ignored.")
Some of this rang true in our travels, I think.
It's online!
PEPE LE PEW DEPT.
BRUSH-OFF
By Leslie Schillinger
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040412ta_talk_schillinger
or April 12, 2004 New Yorker (Eggs on the cover). It's page 30.
A year ago, when the French President, Jacques Chirac, declared that France would veto a United Nations resolution in favor of war against Iraq, “whatever the circumstances,” he probably did not consider the potential collateral damage it might do to French bachelors overseas.
But this circumstance was of grave concern to many Manhattan-based French businessmen. And so, on March 18, 2003—the day before the United States started bombing Iraq—Pierre Battu, a textile importer with the compact proportions and purposeful intensity of a Jack Russell terrier, decided to act in self-defense. He threw a cocktail party for French expatriates and the Americans who liked them. Fifty people turned up, mostly men; the evening was such a success that he held another the next month. Battu named the party “French Tuesdays,” and at the second one a lanky young banker named Georges Benoliel, fresh out of business school in Paris, showed up with a dozen young women. After a brief discussion of their mutual aims (more women), Battu invited Benoliel into the French Tuesdays junta, which included Battu and his partner in the textile business, Gilles Amsallem, who runs around snapping photographs.
Battu put up a web site so that he could post the party photos and explain his raison d’être. It reads, “You have a particular taste for red wine, cheese, smokers, you like bubbles, play pétanque, enjoy taking a few days off in Paris or Saint-Tropez, qualify yourself as a Francophile / Francophone, speak French or just enjoy to socialize the French way. . . . You have already qualified to join our happy, trendy, hip ‘French Tuesdays’ parties.”
By this winter, the party had evolved from a small monthly cocktail hour to a biweekly all-night extravaganza that moves among various large night clubs. When the group celebrated its first anniversary last month, at a place called Marquee, a party given by Playboy for its April cover model, Rachel Hunter, was bumped to an upstairs lounge in order to make room for the Frenchmen. Lucas Labat, a party regular, spent most of the evening surrounded by American women. He had theories. “American girls are very liberated, but the American men are uptight,” he said. “They want to be perfect, they get the chest wax, they wear nice clothes. We French, we think the Americans are too gentlemen, they are afraid of the girls. So we make sure the girls don’t get ignored.”
Battu elaborated. “We French have the image of being arrogant and loving women and wine and cheese and all that,” he said. “And, you know, it’s true, we are that way!”
Benoliel poured out jeroboam after jeroboam of champagne. “When American girls go to a party, they’re hoping to meet a man,” he said. “But the men keep to themselves and drink beer, and ignore the women. It is a terrible waste.”
Although the party was going strong, something was troubling Battu and his friends. Up in the lounge, Hunter and some model friends languished, their charms squandered on American men who, presumably, were drinking beer and ignoring them. Playboy guests wore special plastic bracelets that gave them access to the party. “Those girls were separated from us,” Battu said. “For us, the Playboy playmate—it’s an American icon! We couldn’t believe it when we heard Playboy would share this party with us. We thought we would meet our dream in reality! But no. They would not let us in, because of our heavy French accent.”
“I could not go there. I had no bracelet,” Benoliel said sadly. “The man at the rope wouldn’t let us pass.” He paused. “Except for Charles-Henry. Yes, Charles-Henry. He slipped in. Many times.”
Charles-Henry Kurzen, a twenty-five-year-old banker from Paris, happened to know a close personal friend of Hunter’s, and he was able to get past security. “I was determined to go upstairs, because Rachel Hunter was there,” Kurzen said. “She is a woman born in 1969—she is thirty-four!—but she is a beautiful, mature woman; a woman of character, a woman of history, a woman who has lived!” Kurzen tried to persuade Hunter to join his countrymen downstairs, but she declined. “Maybe because her party was a business gathering and she could not leave,” he speculated. “Maybe because she found me too young; maybe because she did not like the idea of a French party.” He thought a little longer. “Or maybe it was a question of chic. I do not know.”
— Liesl Schillinger
Of course, many of the people we spoke to in Europe want Bush out of the White House. I heard no support for the Bush White House in Europe except for the wife of a U.S. State Department bureaucrat living in Brussels.
But, that doesn't mean that trans-Atlantic relations will be any better, according to this article. Kerry might not be so blunt, he may be able to discuss nuances of European politics in French, but, as this article points out, the US and Europe will likely continue to approach the world's problems differently.
The comments from Sen. Joe Biden amplify this. He doesn't believe the Europeans are willing to do what it takes (i.e. spend the money) to create a ESDP and the prospect of an EU army is risible, to him. (He needs to listen to Sarah's report.)
International Herald Tribune - Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry
Politicus: Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry
John Vinocur IHT
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
WASHINGTON At one end of a marble hall in the U.S. House of Representatives' Sam Rayburn office building, George W. Bush's re-election aspirations were taking a jostling. Testimony before the Sept. 11 commission contended that the self-described war president had not paid attention early or fully enough to warnings about Al Qaeda's murderous capabilities.
About 100 strides down the hall, at the same time last week, some of Europe's grandest illusions about what a new Democratic administration might mean to the European Union were also being jarred, minus the din and camera lights next door. Congress's leading Democratic voices on foreign policy, with a trace of the disdain that so rankles Europeans, suggested that their critical view of the European Union's weaknesses was intact, and that in puckering up for a November embrace Europe might have to settle for a formalistic kiss.
This may come as a surprise in Europe, where wide segments of opinion, official and public, confidential or boisterous, want Bush beaten. Many influential Europeans seem to believe that Senator John Kerry in a Democratic White House would restore both respectful equanimity to the American side of the trans-Atlantic relationship and, perhaps more naïvely, aim to redefine U.S. interests in a way that did not seem so self-interestedly American.
Pushed to the extreme, this might be called the European School for Reforming America. In this notion, a needy United States seeks out European counsel, converts to multilateralism and submits get-tough inclinations to the United Nations for the veto-ready muster of China, Russia and France. In the Rayburn Building's Gold Room, such tones were unmistakably absent from the remarks of Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and of Representative Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. At a seminar sponsored by the University of Michigan, Biden and Lantos were joined by Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House committee, and Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton, to talk about the European Union and the United States before a group that included the German and French ambassadors in Washington.
In looking eternally inward, Biden said, the European Union's leading members had for the most part had taken their eye off the ball about the rest of the world. Europeans misguidedly tended to regard the United States as an imperial power, he added. And their leaders offered no really constructive alternatives to the Iraq war.
Recalling that he had talked to six European government chiefs about the war, Biden caricatured how they would have done things better. "Blah blah blah, international cooperation," the senator mimicked. He added, in his own voice, "Give me a break, huh."
When Biden offered the possibility, beyond more civility, of a future in contrast to the Bush administration, it was in a plague-on-your-houses context. He said of the two, Europe and Bush, "You have fallen in love with international institutions to the extent that this administration has fallen in love with unilateral action."
For good measure, Biden threw in the view that the European Union will not have a unified foreign policy, and with it, the phrase, "I hope you do, I wish you well, but I see no evidence you're going to spend the money needed" to create a serious European military force either.
Biden left the prospect of a trans-Atlantic emotional healing to Lantos, who was born in Europe. He saw none at hand. There was no hatred in America for Europe, he said, just "disenchantment and disillusion." The new American college generation "couldn't care less" about Europe.
Indeed, for Lantos, the European-American bond was now "a cold-blooded, cynical relationship." Perhaps a bit ironically, he then explained the situation as a basis for optimism in that it perhaps made for more rationality on both sides.
All this, word for word, might not be Kerry's party's message in the strictest sense. Yet it came from the mouths of two influential Democrats who did not get to their leading roles in forming congressional opinion on foreign affairs by nonconsensual posturing or freaky one-man crusades. Indeed, Kerry would very much need their support if he wanted to reverse the Bush administration and participate in the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol on the environment - symbolic issues for Europe that European ambassadors here do not expect to rank high among the candidate's priorities if elected. In fact, since getting cornered with a remark that many foreign leaders wanted him to win (and for reasons of discretion, not being able to identify them when pressed by the Bush campaign), Kerry has had effectively to disavow two such endorsements with an advisory that he would neither seek nor accept support from overseas.
Part of this was a no-brainer in the American political context: A statement of backing for Kerry from former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia prompted Rand Beers, Kerry's foreign policy adviser, to describe the ex-leader as "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable."
The other pledge of support required much more subtlety, bearing as it did the mark of those in Europe who would cast Kerry as an American flagellant, ready for a virtual apology to all for America's size, strength, and national instincts. Before he was elected prime minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said he was "aligning" himself with the Democrat. After Zapatero's victory and his statement that Spain would pull its troops out of Iraq if UN authorization was not forthcoming, Kerry was caught in the position of having to deal with a self-appointed European ally apparently clueless about American politics. Kerry urged Zapatero to reconsider on Iraq and said he should "send a message that terrorists cannot win by their acts of terror."
Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, who served as foreign policy adviser to the Howard Dean campaign for the Democratic nomination, verbally shrugged. If Kerry wins, he said, there may be a new effort at better understanding, but "there's going to be real disappointment in Europe, in terms of their expectations, about everything being hunky-dory again. I don't think many Europeans understand U.S. politics."
Biden suggested at least one did. He told his audience of visiting an unnamed European leader whose government opposed the war in Iraq. Do you think it's more important to have the situation in Iraq righted than to see Bush defeated, the senator asked the European.
The leader cleared his throat, hemmed and hawed, began three different sentences, and, according to Biden, finally gave an answer. "Yes," he said.
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
These are only two of the many recent articles where Senator John Kerry is accused of being too French and of his cousin trying to distance Kerry from his Gallic relations and tendencies, presumably for his benefit.
But the undercurrents of such accusations tend to suggest that rift between the U.S. and France, at least with the Bush administration in the White House, isn't showing any signs of mending.
On the other hand, as the article mentions, the editor of Le Monde approvingly told a New York audience that Kerry "looks French."
International Herald Tribune - Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Chicago Tribune - Sen. Kerry's French connection
Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Roger Cohen IHT
Saturday, April 3, 2004
PARIS It is not going to be a pretty American election. Already the Bush administration has embarked on a campaign to portray John Kerry as a flip-flopping, tax-raising, European-educated wimp. The presumptive Democratic candidate has responded by describing the president as a job-destroying, budget-busting, alliance-breaking unilateralist.
But perhaps the surest indication that the looming political season will be ugly has come from repeated Republican suggestions that Kerry “looks French.”
Not only that: the senator is said to betray a dubious fondness for things French, even the language. A recent comment from Commerce Secretary Don Evans that the Massachusetts Democrat is “of a different political stripe and looks French” was only the latest of several jibes, mainly from conservative talk-show hosts and columnists, that have included allusions to “Monsieur Kerry” and “Jean Chéri.”
For some months now, the Republican House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has been opening speeches to supporters with an occasional routine. He says hi, then adds: “Or, as John Kerry might say, 'Bonjour.'”
The remark “always brings the house down,” said DeLay's spokesman, Stuart Roy, who added that its purpose was to highlight “Mr. Kerry's lack of support for the war on terror and the way he seems to be in agreement with the arguments of the French.” What is going on here? Ever since the Iraq war divided the Atlantic Alliance and the French government emerged as its most vociferous opponent, France has become a dirty word in some Republican circles. The France-bashing has had its lighter side - French fries disappearing from menus - but it has been no laughing matter. The criticism has carried the serious suggestion that France is not to be trusted. So if Kerry “looks French," the inference is clear enough.
Impugning the patriotism of a Vietnam war hero may seem an outlandish political tactic. But the Republicans have focused on other aspects of Kerry's life. He attended a Swiss boarding school and speaks good French; his maternal grandparents had a house in a village in Brittany, Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, where he spent several vacations; he has a French first cousin, the ecologist politician Brice Lalonde. The Republican National Committee recently circulated this last fact. Asked why, Christine Iverson, a committee spokeswoman, said the French family was not a big issue because Kerry would “be judged on his support for tax increases, not on his fondness for brie and Evian.” As for Lalonde, now the mayor of Saint-Briac, he is reluctant to be drawn into his cousin's campaign.
Many others in France have been less reticent. The broad French hope that Kerry will replace Bush in the White House is no secret. The Democratic candidate has been getting very good press; Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, recently told a New York audience that Kerry “even looks French.” This time, the tone was one of approval.
Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist, sees several reasons for the French embrace of Kerry. A conviction that Americans will not re-elect a president widely seen in France as arrogant, simplistic and dangerous. A belief that Kerry will embrace old allies like France. Neglect and incomprehension of the large swathe of American society that finds Bush attractive. A subliminal association of John Forbes Kerry with another JFK, one beloved in France.
“There is a nostalgia for the Kennedy years and a hatred of Mr. Bush that I have never known for another American president,” Bacharan said. “So the French have just blocked out the America of religious faith and straight talk that likes Bush.” Much, it seems, is being blocked out in the talk of Kerry's French side. It is true that some of his promised policies seem attractive to many Europeans. He favors diplomatic engagement - in the past with Vietnam, today with Iran. He has castigated the Bush administration for its “intoxication with the pre-eminence of American power.” He has said he understands the need to “cooperate and compromise with our allies and friends.” He has vowed “to replace unilateral action with collective security.”
But Kerry also voted in favor of the war in Iraq - a fact not much aired in France - and urged the new Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to refrain from withdrawing Spain's troops from Iraq.
The fact is that Kerry understands the reality of post-9/11 America, one often only dimly perceived in Europe. The attack, like Pearl Harbor, changed the country, pushed national security back to the center of the political agenda for the first time since the end of the cold war, and almost certainly made any candidate not strong on defense and tackling terrorism unelectable.
As a result, the differences on foreign policy between Bush and Kerry, while distinct, may be less radical than they appear. The president is not as isolated or as isolationist as he is sometimes portrayed, and Kerry is not as beholden to his multilateralist convictions as the French might wish. “Multilateralist when you can, unilateralist when you must” is how Richard Holbrooke, an adviser to Kerry, describes the candidate.
Still, in an election as tight as this one, the Republicans will do all they can to associate Kerry with what they see as the French penchant for conciliatory weakness and slow-moving international institutions.
The French theme in the campaign is likely to endure, much to the displeasure of Nathalie Loiseau, a French Embassy spokeswoman in Washington. “I regret that anyone would consider that portraying someone as French is negative,” she said. “This is a country of immigrants, after all.” Indeed: Kerry's paternal grandfather Frederick Kerry (born Fritz Kohn) arrived in America from Europe in 1905.
As for the Kerry campaign, it is adopting a certain hauteur in the French affair. “There are more important things to talk about, like affordable health care,” said Stephanie Cutter, a Kerry spokeswoman. “Mr. Kerry is an American citizen.”
Chicago Tribune
Sen. Kerry's French connection
Not wanting to hurt his election chances, relatives in Brittany downplay affiliations
By Jocelyn Gecker
Associated Press
Published April 5, 2004
ST.-BRIAC-SUR-MER, France -- John Kerry's relatives in France bristle at jabs from across the Atlantic that the presidential contender has a French connection.
They say Kerry has no link to France other than the home his grandparents bought here.
"John Kerry is incredibly American," says Brice Lalonde, Kerry's cousin and mayor of this seaside Brittany village. "He has absolutely nothing French about him."
For another cousin, Christopher Curtis: "This is an American story. John is an all-American guy with the benefit of having spent some time overseas."
With the race for the White House turning nasty--and France-U.S. ties not quite mended from the Iraq war--Kerry's Gallic clan, when questioned, talks up his American-ness. Some are keeping a low profile, saying too much talk about France could be political arsenic.
As Lalonde puts it: "I'm afraid to hurt him."
But that hasn't stopped the Frenchman from pasting Kerry bumper stickers on his car--hardly a common sight in this 16th Century village.
St. Briac, near the port city of St. Malo, is a place of rugged seascapes and narrow, cobbled lanes that inspired Renoir and other Impressionists. It was here that the senator from Massachusetts spent boyhood summers and has said he traced his first inspiration to become a politician.
But nowhere on Kerry's Web site does he mention his summers in France or the family estate, known as Les Essarts, a sprawling property on a bluff over the sea.
"Monsieur Bush is angry with France," says Ian Forbes, an 85-year-old Kerry uncle who lives at Les Essarts. "We don't want to accentuate the connection between Johnny and France."
Kerry's maternal grandparents, James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop--a descendant of Massachusetts' first governor, John Winthrop--bought the estate in the 1920s. They had 11 children, including the mothers of Kerry, Lalonde and Curtis, a British-American who lives in Paris. The home served as a summer hub for their cosmopolitan clan.
In his youth, Kerry joined the family gatherings while his father, a U.S. diplomat, was posted in Europe. Young Kerry also attended a Swiss boarding school and brought a touch of America to this corner of northwestern France.
"He introduced us to games like capture the flag. We still play something called kick the can," said Lalonde, who at 58 is two years Kerry's junior.
Politics also run in the family here. Lalonde was environment minister under then-President Francois Mitterrand. Like his American cousin, Lalonde ran for president. But that was 1981 and he received less than 4 percent of the French vote.
Kerry's campaign and his days in France have been widely reported here. A recent story in Liberation newspaper was headlined, "John Kerry, too Frenchy for the Republicans." It catalogued insults by allies of President Bush and the tendency of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to start speeches with: "Good afternoon, or as John Kerry might say, `Bonjour.'"
For Lalonde, Kerry's long, angular face "resembles Abraham Lincoln, without the beard."
The French media like to compare John Forbes Kerry, who speaks fluent French, to John F. Kennedy.
This is a survey published on the front page of The Los Angeles Times in the anniversary of the war on Iraq. It is an example of how the US media coverage of Europe is evolving. The terrorist attacks in Madrid seem to have somehow increased the attention of US media on the European Union. Will it last?
IRAQ: ONE YEAR LATER
Strained U.S.-European Relations Turn Pragmatic
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer
March 19, 2004
He's as ubiquitous as the Big Mac.
Europe can't shake the bowlegged cowboy peeking out from a too-big Stetson, arms bent and ready to draw. This political caricature of President Bush endures, even as transatlantic relations have improved from the derision and backbiting that one year ago marked the beginning of the Iraq war.
A lot has happened in that year. While the U.S. has been preoccupied with securing Iraq, Europe, in many ways, has set its own course. Perhaps more than the U.S. itself, Europe understands that the Sept. 11 attacks changed U.S. priorities and that Washington's old friends are often overshadowed by new strategic alliances.
The terrorist bombings in Madrid last week — possibly orchestrated by Islamic extremists to punish Spain for supporting the Iraq war — are forcing some European nations to reevaluate their partnerships with the U.S. The leader of the newly elected Socialist Workers Party in Spain has vowed to withdraw the nation's 1,300 troops from Iraq, a prospect that would undermine U.S. efforts to build an international coalition.
The specter of terrorism and differences over world security are turning the Cold War-era transatlantic friendship into steely pragmatism. The continent has a two-dimensional view of the U.S. Although most people in London, Paris, Berlin and other capitals feel an affinity for Americans, that closeness does not extend to a White House seen as rash and militaristic at a time when globalization needs patience and diplomacy.
"The last four years have been hell," said Francois Heisbourg, a foreign policy expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "The Bush administration's view of things is, 'You're either a poodle or an enemy.' The Bushies don't tend to forget."
Such widespread attitudes are softened by nostalgia many Europeans have for U.S. forces who liberated them more than half a century ago.
"If you go to the American cemetery in Cassino or the cemetery in nearby Anzio," said Italian waiter Dario Di Tiello, 40, speaking of his nation's World War II battlefields, "you can see how many Americans are buried there, how many came to save us from hell. We always forget these things. For me, the American people were a great people, they still are a great people."
The spate of across-the-pond name calling — Euroweenies versus cultural bimbos — has largely subsided. But Europeans have been reminded that they are more different from Americans than they once thought. Attitudes toward gay marriage, capital punishment and other social issues reveal the chasm between a liberal-leaning Europe and a conservative-tilting America.
And the Bush administration's weaving of religion through politics — especially when the president invoked God as he was going to war — unnerves European secularism.
"There's an extraordinary element of fundamentalist type of religion in American life," said Roger Duclaud-Williams, a political science professor at the University of Warwick in Britain, adding that he was bemused that Janet Jackson's flashed breast at the Super Bowl caused so much hand-wringing. "It's a kind of Christian-based Puritanism for which our educated governing class doesn't have much sympathy."
Europeans have tried to move beyond rancor when discussing Washington. Conversation is as dignified and proper as a tea party on the Thames. There are the occasional snide asides about Europe's moral authority and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been unearthed in Iraq. But when the brandy is poured in the anterooms, or pints are hoisted in pubs, Europeans swoon and giggle over John Kerry, the continent's new poster boy.
"Kerry has Europe's Vote," said a headline in the Economist.
The Financial Times Germany has written of Kerry: "His first cousin is a French mayor. His father was a diplomat. He spent school years in Switzerland. He thinks the death penalty is bad and thinks the Kyoto Protocol, intended to protect the global climate, is good. If the Europeans were allowed to vote for the U.S. president this coming November, a triumph for the Democratic challenger John Kerry would be assured. Never has a U.S. president been so disliked in Europe as George W. Bush."
Some Europeans are quick to add that Kerry would be a pleasant change of personality, but that terrorism and shifting world hotspots would prevent him from significantly altering U.S. foreign policy.
The Madrid bombings have given Europe a keener understanding of acting within one's own interests and have raised challenging questions: Does supporting the U.S. mean bringing Islamic terrorism to European cities? If Spain withdraws troops from Iraq, what domestic pressures will Britain, Italy and Poland face to do the same?
"It comes down to fundamental differences in our societies," said Bernhard May, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations. "American society seems to be more inspired, a society with a mission. But Europe doesn't want to go around the world telling people how to live.
"What really is going on now between Europe and America is a working out of a relationship for the post-Cold War era. We should have had this discussion back in the 1990s, but we didn't. The fundamental question is, what kind of world order do we want?"
The iconic images of a gunslinger Texan helped change the political dynamics of the continent.
Antiwar fervor strengthened the Berlin-Paris axis. But it created animosity with countries that supported the war, such as Spain and Poland, and has strained the atmosphere as the European Union prepares to expand from 15 to 25 nations this year. Despite the EU's goal of cohesion, the continent is increasingly discovering that it can be compared less to a chorus than to a jazz ensemble, with each player fighting for his own solo.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair — whose backing of Bush cost him in the polls — these days wants to be known as a statesman "at the heart of Europe." Many in Blair's liberal-leaning Labor Party believe that staying cozy with Washington is political peril.
"We need to get George Bush out of the White House," Anthony Giddens, an unofficial Blair advisor, told a recent Labor Party gathering. Even members of the conservative Tories, who bonded so well with Ronald Reagan, see Bush as an impediment to transatlantic relations.
"Some of it's jealousy, the frustration that after [Bill] Clinton we thought we'd have our own guy in the White House and then it didn't turn out that way," said George Osborne, a Tory member of Parliament who supports Bush. "But the Bush frontier-style talk just doesn't go down well among Tories."
Europe's own problems often eclipse its worry about U.S. relations. The French and German economies are struggling. Health and social reforms are triggering voter anger. Immigration problems are roiling governments. Many wonder what will happen to the EU — once a privileged Western club — when it admits the Czech Republic and other former Soviet Bloc countries in May.
"The relations with the United States should not be our priority today," said Jean-Luc Turcouin, a French retiree. "We have to deal with our own national problems, the elections, the euro, the unemployment, the terrorism. This is what we should worry about."
But the U.S. is the new hyper-power, and Europeans acknowledge that the harsh rhetoric against Bush's military policies should not jeopardize the transatlantic alliance. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, for example, has declined French President Jacques Chirac's suggestion that Europe form a counterbalance to Washington. Analysts say the U.S. and Europe need each other, especially in the Middle East and in fighting terrorism.
For all the recent nastiness, Europe and the U.S. often complement each other. European diplomacy backed by a veiled threat of U.S. military prowess helped defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis and prompted Libya to renounce its chemical weapons programs. The continent and Washington are cooperating on a new role for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as strategic interests move eastward. And Paris — the major European capital most estranged from Washington — is working with the Bush administration in Haiti.
"We have come to the conclusion that we went too far in the divorce," said Dominique Moisi, an analyst at the French Institute for International Relations.
It may never be a love fest. Europe and America have had more than 200 years of skirmishes and spats. America has been cast as the ambitious upstart less concerned with high culture than with making a buck, Europe as a bit of a relic that speaks eloquently but is skittish when it comes to action. The Cold War put a veneer over the rifts as Europe and the U.S. faced a common enemy. Now there are more mercurial foes — as the recent Madrid bombing reaffirmed — and the bonds of friendship are being recast.
Moisi said Europe and the U.S. might grow closer in coming years through an ironic twist. Under Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, Moscow is growing autocratic and restive as Europe integrates and becomes more of an economic power. This trend concerns European officials, some of whom believe Cold War ghosts are stirring.
"You suddenly start to be worried," Moisi said, "and you start to want a blend of U.S. and European cooperation."
*
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Times staff writers Janet Stobart in London and Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris, and special correspondents Nancy Meiman in Rome and Bruce Wallace in London contributed to this report.
Even before the Madrid attacks, and despite hints that US-EU relations were starting to thaw, global public opinion voiced increasing distrust of the United States.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the International Herald Tribune, nearly a third of respondents in Turkey thought that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq was justifiable.
Support for the U.S. since the "end" of Iraq war continues to drop in Britain, France and Germany and nearly 60 percent of Brits responded that they had mistrust for Uncle Sam.
Americans, however, still think that they are merely viewed as misunderstood crusaders for good, and 70 percent believe the U.S. considers other countries' interests. American opinion of the French and Germans have even improved slightly since the end of the war.
But with Rodriguez Zapatero's strong stand and move back toward Europe the unilateral approach the Bush administration took seems to be pretty cold. The survey found that the majority of respondents in Britain, Germany and France (in, as can be expected, ascending order) believe Europe should be more independent.
These sentiments have led to increasing support, it appears, to make the EU as powerful as the U.S., and perhaps, the establishment of its constitution.
International Herald Tribune - European distrust of U.S. role sharpens
European distrust of U.S. role sharpens
Meg Bortin/IHT IHT
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
'No healing of the wounds' a year after Iraq war, global survey finds
PARIS One year after the war in Iraq, European distrust of the United States has intensified, with sharp doubts among America's closest allies of the Bush administration's motives in the war on terror, a global opinion survey has found.
The poll of more than 7,500 people in nine countries, conducted in late February and early March by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, before the bombings in Spain, showed that anger toward America is still fierce in Muslim countries, too, 12 months after the war began.
Resentment is so strong that majorities in three Muslim countries surveyed - Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco - feel that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable.
The poll, carried out in association with the International Herald Tribune, found that even in Turkey, an American partner in NATO, 31 percent felt such attacks were justifiable.
Still more worrisome perhaps for Washington in an election year, however, the trans-Atlantic confidence gap has deepened since a Pew survey carried out in the immediate aftermath of the war, when public ire over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was still hot in Europe.
"There has been no healing of the wounds," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Unfavorable opinion of the United States, which skyrocketed in the run-up to the war, has become still more negative in France, Germany and Britain since President George W. Bush declared hostilities over in May, the survey found.
British views in particular are more critical, with a 12 percent slide in favorable opinion of the United States. The decrease, from 70 percent last May to 58 percent now, "reflects dropping support for the war" in Britain, Kohut said.
In France, favorable views dropped to 37 percent from 43 percent in May; in Germany positive opinion fell to 38 percent from 45 percent 10 months ago.
Majorities in the three countries - historically Washington's closest NATO partners - also said that as a consequence of the war they had less confidence that the United States is trustworthy. Mistrust was expressed by 82 percent in Germany, 78 percent in France and 58 percent in Britain.
According to François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, alienation is increasing in Europe "because there's been no give on the Bush side."
"There is a widespread perception in Europe that we have the choice of being treated as a vassal - a poodle in the case of Britain - or being treated as an antagonist," Heisbourg said.
As grounds for resentment, he cited continuing American neglect of European sentiment on issues ranging from the Kyoto Protocol on the environment to the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In France, he noted, anger flared anew recently when the State Department came out against the banning of the Islamic head scarf in French schools.
The survey results also indicate that there has been no rebound among America's allies of post-Sept. 11 sympathy for the United States, which dissipated in the glare of European disapproval during the build-up to war.
Quite the contrary: Majorities in France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco said they thought the U.S.-led war on terrorism was not sincere. Instead, most said it was an effort "to control Mideast oil" or "to dominate the world." Even in Britain only the slimmest majority - 51 percent - viewed the war on terror as sincere.
In fact, people in many countries were dismissive of U.S. attitudes toward the threat of international terrorism.
While fully 84 percent of Americans questioned said the United States was right to be concerned, majorities in France and the four Muslim countries in the survey - Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco - said America was overreacting.
Kohut said the survey results might have differed had the question been asked after the March 11 carnage in Spain.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a strong supporter of the war on terrorism, said the Madrid attacks "could even widen the rift."
Kristol cited remarks this week by Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, that the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism had failed, and added: "If that's going to be the European conclusion of the past two and a half years, I think Americans, and not just Bush, are going to reject that."
In foreign policy in general, the view that the United States acts unilaterally is more widespread now than at the war's end, the survey found.
In France, 84 percent said they felt the United States did not take their country's interests into account in international policy decisions, up from 76 percent last May. Similar strong feelings were expressed in Turkey (79 percent), Jordan (77 percent), Russia (73 percent), and Germany (69 percent).
In contrast, 70 percent of Americans surveyed felt that the United States takes other countries' interests into account.
"Americans think we're cooperative and popular," Kohut said of the perception gap. "Americans think, 'We're the ones on the white horse who do good things for the planet, like dealing with terrorism and evil dictators, and we're misunderstood.'"
The trans-Atlantic chasm in thinking translated into desire in Europe for looser ties with the United States in security and diplomatic affairs, the survey found. Majorities in France (75 percent), Germany (63 percent), Turkey (60 percent) and Britain (56 percent) said Europe should be more independent.
Majorities in the five European countries in the survey - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Turkey - said it would be a good thing if the European Union became as powerful as the United States. In France, 90 percent expressed this view.
European dislike of President George W. Bush, too, has not diminished. Majorities in every country surveyed expressed unfavorable views, with negative opinion of Bush in France and Germany - 85 percent - higher than in Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey.
"I think what has hurt Bush the most, both in Europe and the United States, is his failure to explain why no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq," Kristol said. "We're paying a real price for that."
Most people questioned in the survey said they felt that Bush and Tony Blair, the British prime minister, had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to have a pretext for war.
Only in the United States and Britain did a majority say their leaders had been misinformed by bad intelligence, and even there sizable minorities said the two leaders had lied: 31 percent in the United States and 41 percent in Britain.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is still viewed as a hero in parts of the Muslim world. Sixty-five percent in Pakistan and 55 percent in Jordan expressed favorable views of the Qaeda leader. In Turkey, however, 75 percent expressed unfavorable views.
As for American attitudes, the anger felt toward the "coalition of the unwilling" - notably France and Germany - has subsided slightly since the war's end, but is still strong.
Thirty-three percent in the United States now express favorable views of France, up from 29 percent in May; 50 percent hold positive views of Germany, up from 44 percent. Enthusiasm for Britain is declining, however, with 73 percent now holding favorable views, down from 82 percent in May.
Given the intense media coverage of the Iraq war and the resulting tensions between the United States and Europe, another surprising finding is that 7 percent of Americans surveyed have never heard of the European Union. That figure, however, is an improvement since early September 2001, when one-fifth of Americans surveyed - 20 percent - said they had never heard of the allied bloc across the Atlantic.
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
The EU Internal Market commission has unveiled a new potential regulations for coporations following the book-cooking ways of Italian coporation Parmalat. The multinational dairy corporation collapsed in December after several employees were arrested for fraudulent bankruptcy and criminal association.
These regulations have been inspired by Enron and other U.S. corporate scandals. They have been something that has made the EU more mindful in detection, at least that's what this EU business article says.
This is another way that business exchange is happening between the US and EU.
Brussels unveils auditing clampdown in wake of Parmalat
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040316132355.uif12pga
Brussels unveils auditing clampdown in wake of Parmalat
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040316132355.uif12pga
16 March 2004
Stung into action by the Parmalat scandal, the European Union executive on Tuesday unveiled a raft of proposals to beef up corporate auditing and stop crooks "cooking the books".
The European Commission called on EU member states to adopt the proposals quickly in a bid to prevent accounting skullduggery of the type alleged to have brought down the Italian food group.
Among the headline proposals are a requirement for EU companies to set up audit committees staffed by independent directors, and to switch their auditing partner periodically.
"Auditors are our major line of defence against crooks who want to cook the books. Parmalat was a reminder of what happens when that defence fails," EU Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said.
"No one is naive enough to think any directive will stop accounting fraud at a stroke. But what we are proposing would inject more rigour and a stronger dose of ethics into the audit process," he said.
Parmalat collapsed in December amid allegations of spectacular fraud to rival the downfall in 2001 of US energy giant Enron, another case that has inspired the EU commission's review.
Auditors Grant Thornton were responsible for checking the Parmalat group's accounts until 1999 and were succeeded as group accountants by Deloitte and Touche, although Grant Thornton remained responsible for auditing some offshore accounts.
Parmalat was declared insolvent on December 27 after money believed to have been in offshore accounts was found to have been missing.
Under the commission proposals, EU governments would require a company to change the person responsible for doing its auditing every five years, while staying with the same accounting firm.
Or, they could require the audit firm itself to be rotated every seven years. The aim is to stop the accountancy giants building too close a relationship with the companies under audit.
The proposals also lay down guidelines to prevent conflicts of interest for an accountancy company, which currently make most of their money from management consultancy and tag auditing work on as a cheap extra.
External directors would ensure the quality of the audit work and prevent untoward pressure being brought to bear on the audit firm by the company's board.
And the commission proposed to enshrine international cooperation with other corporate regulators, notably with the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).
That is recognition of the opaque financial structures favoured by some companies which make it harder for regulators and auditors to detect cross-border wrongdoing.
The commission said it hoped the European Parliament and EU member states would adopt the proposals by mid-2005, underlining the issue should be a priority for the bloc.
Many young Europeans are not clear on how to charactize what it means to be European, according to this International Herald Tribune article, except to say that it is everything that the US is not. The lack of self-identity has to do with the long history and various cultures that make up the European Union, blurring a clear identity, which will become even more unclear as 10 more countries join the union.
I think this article is very insightful for non-Europeans in general, but especially for us, since it delves into the minds of Europeans in their 20s and 30s and shows how they view themselves and the difficulties and complexities involved. It's as if they need America to define who they are, which signifies how strong of an influence the US has had globally and supports the notion of Imperialism.
International Herald Tribune
For young Europeans, identity questions
BY Sarah Lyall
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
For young Europeans, identity questions
Sarah Lyall/IHT
Thursday, March 4, 2004
PRAGUE As one of the new generation of European businessmen who fly around the Continent as readily as others might take the bus across town, Petr Eisler feels at home in Europe, mostly. It is only now and then, like when he arrives at the immigration desk at London's Heathrow Airport, that he is suddenly flung back into his old role as an outsider at the European party.
"They're always asking me how long I plan to stay, and do I have enough money with me," said Eisler, 39, who founded his software company in the Czech Republic more than a decade ago, speaks fluent English and recently opened an office in London. Once, he was traveling with a former industry minister of the Czech Republic and was startled to hear the same questions being asked of him, too - a sign, at least, that such Western inhospitality is nothing personal.
As the European Union prepares to open its doors to 10 new countries in May, people in their 20s and 30s interviewed here and elsewhere in Europe say that they feel part of the Continent yet separate from it. The feeling has partly to do with the way European countries have historically perceived each other, and partly to do with puzzlement about what Europe - not the physical place, but the philosophical concept - really is.
To the extent that there is an entity called Europe, with a distinguishable identity, culture and world view, many young Europeans say they are not so sure how to characterize it, except perhaps in describing what it is not. With America now the only real world power left in the post-Soviet landscape, there is a growing sense that Europe, in so far as it exists as an idea, can best be defined as the anti-America.
This appears to be true among the younger generation in Prague, part of the former communist Europe that has lately allied itself with the United States, even as Western Europe shies away from it.
"As with all identities, the easiest way to create an identity is to create it as against something else," said Adam Pulchart, 26, who is studying for a master's degree in European studies at Charles University in Prague.
"The rudimentary European identity I have is formed against the United States, against the image of America as the new imperialist superpower that regards everything that happens in the world in the context of its own national interest."
To some Czechs, American patriotism, particularly in the Bush era, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Soviet rhetoric of old.
"I remember all of this from the Russians, the same treatment of history," said Tereza Spencerova, who writes for Mlady Svet, a weekly magazine. Spencerova said she recently heard a joke about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a hapless student who asked an uncomfortable foreign policy question and later mysteriously disappeared. She said she had heard the same joke 15 years ago, but with a Soviet official in place of Rumsfeld.
"Once Bush started the war against terrorism, he started to use strong language that was the same as what the Russians used, like 'Who's not for us is against us,'" Spencerova said. "Europeans get nervous when someone comes and says that his truth and his world view are the only acceptable ones."
If Europe is not America, then what is it? Is there such a thing as a recognizable European identity?
It depends on whom you ask.
"Unfortunately, the answer is no," said Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the 37-year-old founder of the low-cost airline EasyJet. Born in Greece, Haji-Ioannou has homes in London, Monaco, New York and Athens, and is almost always on the road. He says he feels Greek in England, English in Greece and European in America.
"I wouldn't expect that everyone should suddenly feel European," he said. "Is someone from Alaska the same as someone from Florida? I think not."
Jan Vavra, the director and co-owner of a public relations firm in Prague, agreed. "For me, integration is good when it comes to commercial contracts and common legislation, but I don't believe there will be a new European man - there are too many differences in language and tradition from country to country," Vavra said in his office in a quiet corner of Prague.
"We can cooperate and be friends; we can make businesses and art together; and we can study in different countries. But that doesn't mean we will lose our nationality."
The more one scratches the surface, the more one realizes that many stereotypes still apply, at least in people's minds. To their European neighbors, the French are regarded as supercilious, the Germans as hyper-organized, the British as repressed and the Italians as chronically late.
"The global thinking is the same, but there are small, specific differences," said Zuzana Pitrova, 28, an executive at the Czech edition of Metro, a free newspaper with editions in 16 countries.
Pitrova said she was horrified when her boss, a Swede based in London, remained in his chair with his feet propped up on the table at their first meeting. "I'm a Czech woman, and I expect that a man will at least stand up when I walk into a room," she said.
Pitrova's European acquaintances do not consider her one of them, exactly. Her husband is American, and when they run into British friends, she said, "They look at me like, 'Oh, an Eastern-bloc chick who got married to an American so she could move to America.'" (For the record, the couple plans to move to Tokyo in the autumn.)
She said that with colleagues, too, her nationality can be a handicap. "They don't consider me European," she said. "They don't think my skills are as good as theirs, being from the Czech Republic."
The more Europeans come together, it seems, the more their differences are emphasized, even under an umbrella of similarities.
David Cerny, a 36-year-old sculptor in Prague, said "exaggerating national distinctions is part of the fun" of the new Europe.
Last summer, Cerny - who learned English from Beatles records and says he feels equally at home across the Continent - described the Czech population in an interview with a local newspaper as "an unmixed, uninteresting, slightly dumplingish, untanned mass" and lampooned "this constant stroking oneself on the belly stuffed with pork, sauerkraut and dumplings."
He applies the same broad view to other countries, too, particularly Germany. "It's like someone from New York talking about Texas," Cerny said. "Except that Texas never attacked New York and killed a couple of million people."
The tendency of national pride to slide into militant nationalism and even xenophobia is the dark side of European integration.
As the countries of Europe move closer together, their differences become exaggerated, especially to those who are suspicious of outsiders and worry about permeable borders, the influx of newcomers and a loss of national identity. Anticipating May 1, most West European countries have passed laws restricting the entry of workers from the new EU member countries, a cause of dismay to the poorer eastern countries.
In the Czech Republic, the post-Communist era has been marked by an increase in racial violence, particularly against members of the Roma minority, who have long been persecuted in central Europe.
Isolated during the Soviet era, Prague is more international than ever.
Americans by the tens of thousands moved here in the 1990s. Charles University is awash in students from across Europe who spend a semester or two under the auspices of the Erasmus and the Socrates programs, EU-sponsored exchanges.
But the country as a whole has a reputation for not welcoming outsiders.
"We're afraid of foreigners," Spencerova said. "A lot of people think that five minutes after we join the EU, our villages will be full of foreigners, and our traditions and language and culture will be destroyed. This fear is real. You can feel it in street corners, in newspapers, in political discussions."
What do the new Europeans have in common? Language, to a certain extent. When they travel, they tend to speak English, which has emerged as Europe's most readily accessible common language.
"I come from a generation where everyone pretty much speaks English, or at least tries to," said Gabriela Tomsikova, 29, a Czech who works in the Prague office of a Dutch electronics company.
"It's growing bigger and bigger. Even the French are speaking English now."
There are also shared political and cultural traditions. The United States is a country created from the bottom up; European countries were created from the top down. "There's a greater sense of history here," said Lucie Konigova, 28, a research fellow in the center for European analysis at the Institute of Foreign Relations in Prague. "We don't think in terms of individual rights as much, but in terms of social and community rights."
Cecile Antoine, 25, a Belgian who lives in Paris, said she felt that "Europe has a common thread that joins everyone together," at least for the younger generation, which has been raised on that notion.
"I feel like a European, though my roots are of course Belgian," said Antoine, who says she is just as happy in Paris as back home. Years of being part of the EU have instilled in her a sense that she is "part of a greater European community."
"All the countries from the Union have something in common, and I don't feel very different from a French person," she said.
There are signs that those who are even younger - teenagers who never knew the cold war - may be even more impervious to old-world national distinctions.
"My son is 15, and his way of thinking and seeing the world is very different from my point of view," said Spencerova, the Czech journalist. "It's 14 years from the revolution and he's just learned a new way of living which is completely different from the way that we were brought up. This new generation won't have a problem with definitions, with the difference between being Czech or German or something else."
Those in countries who are about to join the Union seem hopeful that long-established borders will fall away.
"The EU is looked at with a mixture of hope and trepidation," said Zuzanna Ziomecka, 27, who returned to Warsaw three years ago after living in the United States. "There's the thought that the EU might set standards we are having trouble setting ourselves, and might offer travel."
Not only will crossing Europe be easier for Poles - "I won't have to stand in long lines at the airport," Ziomecka said - but it will open Poland up to a new group of visitors.
"We'll be getting more people coming to Poland to see what a crazy place it is," she added, and "how much good can come from chaos."
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
The Bush Administration is urging NATO to expand its prescence in Iraq and Afghanistan to ease some of the military burden off of the U.S. The International Herald Tribune article says the administration's goal is for NATO to make a "headline-grabbing commitment" by the end of June and a few months before the presidential election. The administration has struggled to reduce its military prescence and vulnerability in the two countries, the article said.
I think this story touches a broad range of topics from national identity to defense to perception. While Europe tries to unite and build up its military defense, the U.S. request to expand NATO into Iraq and Afghanistan would cause a significant drain on European forces but at the same time make Bush look good for the elections. Its also interesting that France's president Jacques Chirac is trying to mend his political differences with the Bush administration after clashing over the Iraq war.
Nato role expanding at urging of the U. S.
Elaine Sciolino, International Herald Tribune
NATO role expanding at urging of the U.S.
Elaine Sciolino/NYT NYT
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Bush wants alliance, now in Afghanistan, to add Iraqi mission
BRUSSELS NATO is back.
The much-maligned cold war military alliance lost its mission when its primordial enemy, the Soviet Union, collapsed, and was ridiculed by the Bush administration and rendered impotent by its own division over the American-led war on Iraq.
Only 16 months ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lectured NATO defense ministers in Warsaw that if NATO did not transform itself, "it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century." Now, the Bush administration is struggling to reduce its military presence and vulnerability in Afghanistan in Iraq. And it is turning to NATO to expand its mandate in Afghanistan and play a substantive role in Iraq. "I believe in NATO," President George W. Bush told Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the new NATO secretary general, when the two met in the Oval Office last month, senior NATO officials said. "I believe NATO is transforming itself and adjusting to meet the true threats of the 21st century." When de Hoop Scheffer pledged to work hard to get NATO to do more in Afghanistan, Bush replied, "I'm with you." And when the conversation turned to Iraq, Bush said, "The more of a NATO role the better."
De Hoop Scheffer, the Bush administration's choice to lead NATO, came home and pitched the new line. At a speech in Brussels on Tuesday, he said that the alliance was willing to deploy in Iraq. "Under the right conditions we could do it," de Hoop Scheffer told the German Marshall Fund's Trans-Atlantic Center. If a sovereign Iraqi government with United Nations backing were to ask for NATO's help, it would be difficult to "abrogate our responsibilities." Until NATO took command of the force that policies Kabul and the area around it, NATO was in the midst of an identity crisis, uncertain of its role, its future and what constituted a military threat in the post 9/11 era. Its role in stabilizing Afghanistan represents NATO's first "out of area" mission beyond Europe; Iraq would be the second. The United States wants NATO to deliver on an ambitious plan to extend its peacekeeping presence outside Kabul and create links with the American-led offensive military operation in the south, which is struggling to rout the remnants of Taliban rule. It also wants NATO to take command of the vulnerable 9,500-strong multinational brigade in central Iraq, which is now run by Poland, and possibly the larger British-led operation in the south. The goal is for NATO to make a headline-grabbing commitment to both missions at the NATO summit meeting in Istanbul, just days before the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis at the end of June and five months before the U.S. presidential election. The problem in expanding NATO into Iraq is that it already has failed to persuade countries to do enough in Afghanistan. In the four months since the UN authorized NATO to expand its peacekeeping mission of about 6,000 outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, the alliance has managed to send only a few hundred troops under German command to the relatively safe northern city of Kunduz. It took months of high-level arm-twisting of NATO members last year to get them to pledge to send desperately needed helicopters to Afghanistan.
George Robertson, the former secretary general, was forced to lobby hard for the helicopters at the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels and at every farewell meeting in December, finally getting commitments of three Black Hawk helicopters from Turkey and three or four from the Netherlands. "Lord Robertson had to use everything he had to bludgeon the foreign and defense ministers into committing helicopters," said Robert Bell, a former White House and senior NATO official who is now a private defense consultant in Brussels. "NATO can't operate that way." General James Jones, NATO's top commander in Europe, told a Senate committee last month that Afghanistan was a "defining moment" for the alliance as it adopted a broader global agenda, but then complained that NATO members were not providing enough troops for the country's reconstruction. "The alliance has agreed, the donor countries have been identified, and yet we find ourselves mired in the administrative details of who's going to pay for it, who's going to transport it, how's it going to be maintained," he said. On Wednesday, Jones presented NATO members with a wish list of what it need to enable NATO to deploy in five provincial cities, senior NATO officials said.
De Hoop Scheffer also has acknowledged his failure so far to persuade NATO nations to send more troops to Afghanistan, saying on Tuesday that force protection was a continuing problem. No member of parliament in any NATO country would approve the new request for troops if there was not an answer to the question, "Who will come to the assistance" of the troops "in extreme circumstances," he said. Asked whether the alliance could contemplate moving into Iraq when there was so much to do in Afghanistan, de Hoop Scheffer launched into a long answer about how the mission was possible, and then said that he could not be expected as secretary general "to bang my head on the table and say, 'This has to work.'" On the positive side, France, whose opposition to the war in Iraq damaged its relationship with Washington, sees NATO as a vehicle for projecting its own military and political power and repairing its American ties. In recent weeks, the United States quietly has welcomed two French one-star generals onto the staff of the NATO Response Force, a creation of Rumsfeld's set up to move rapidly in case of crisis. Jones pushed hard for the administration to grant the French request that the two generals be placed, but the issue was so divisive that Bush himself had to made the final decision, according to NATO officials. France has not been part of NATO's military command structure since President Charles de Gaulle, on a campaign to assert France's military autonomy, withdrew from it in the 1960s. But now, with about 2,000 troops in the first rotation of the 6,000-troop Response Force, France is the force's largest troop contributor. France and three other NATO countries - Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - have also dropped plans announced at a summit meeting in Brussels last April to build a separate European Union military headquarters in Belgium that the United States vehemently opposed as duplicative of NATO and counter to American interests. Instead, last Friday, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy envoy, unveiled a much more modest - but face-saving - plan to ambassadors of member countries.
A golden opportunity for Bush to patch up differences with both President Jacques Chirac of France and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will come with the 60th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has recommended that Bush accept Chirac's offer to dine at the Élysée Palace the night before and visit the Normandy beaches together, but Bush had not yet accepted, senior administration and French officials said. Senior American and French officials have said privately in recent weeks that Bush has no choice but to accept, given the historic importance of the event. They also noted that a photo of Bush standing side by side in Normandy with Chirac and Schröder could help deflect charges by Democrats that he has squandered good relations with two of America's most important allies.
This Times story goes into the shiny new threat to the diamond market. London based De Beers, the world’s largest diamond business, has finally admitted there could be a potential threat from the U.S. Late last fall Boston-based Apollo Diamond filed a patent for a nearly flawless — at least to the naked eye — synthetic diamond.
I’m fascinated by this interplay of business on the global market. Add on to it that the port of Antwerp — second largest Belgium city and major port — is where 8 out of 10 mined diamonds are handled. If the synthetic diamond takes off, this could have a great economic effect.
I think there are a lot of factors into play about identity here also — the tradition of diamonds, what could happen to the African diamond mines and miners, (where De Beers has about a $4 billion stockpile), and how a manufactured little U.S. gem could usurp all of it. This is something I’d like to pursue for my story.
De Beers plans war on synthetic gems
By John O’Donnell
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9065-995202,00.html
February 08, 2004
De Beers plans war on synthetic gems
By John O’Donnell
Oppenheimer aims to open diamond stores worldwide and launch a marketing blitz
TWICE a week an armour- plated van picks up an anonymous consignment from Heathrow airport’s cargo terminal. Its driver makes his way to the fringe of Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery district, to an imposing grey building where tall black gates open, admitting the truck to an underground complex.
It is here, in the offices of De Beers, that jewellers sort through the delivery of African gems, and where Nicky Oppenheimer, patriarch of the dynasty that controls the world’s biggest diamond mines, manages his empire.
Diamonds and their emotional value have not altered in the century since Oppenheimer’s grandfather Ernest, a German emigrant, left his homeland for South Africa and eventually won control of De Beers.
Today the family still owns 40% and has a further stake of less than 5% through a separate company. Anglo-American, the mining group, has owned 45% of the firm since it was taken private two years ago. “It hasn’t changed much,” said Oppenheimer. “Whether to mark success in the East or love in the western world, a diamond has always been the ultimate gift.”
Although the product is unaltered, the marketplace has changed. Last week De Beers announced a 7% rise in annual sales to £3 billion. But the company, once a cartel that controlled 80% of diamond supply, has seen its power dwindle in the face of competition from Australia and Canada.
Today Oppenheimer is chairman of a business that controls just over half of the world supply and one that is threatened by synthetic diamonds so sophisticated that it is impossible for the naked eye to distinguish them.
In the company’s South African home, De Beers faces the forced sale of 15% of its mining business to black workers. The sensitivities of “conflict diamonds” — sold to raise money for war — pursue the company. The British government is investigating De Beers’s alleged links with parties that bought diamonds in war-torn Congo. And Oppenheimer, who travels to work by helicopter, is unable to visit America because of an indictment, following claims that his company fixed industrial diamond prices.
Despite this, the 58-year-old king of diamonds is optimistic. “What you have seen in the 10 years to 2000 is diamonds losing out to other luxury goods,” said the Oxford- educated baron. “Now they are regaining ground.”
He credits this revival partly to an industry advertising push initiated by De Beers that aims to treble total marketing expenditure to more than $1.5 billion.
De Beers has pressured its site holders — those who buy its diamonds — to increase their contribution to the marketing budget following the introduction of its so-called “supplier of choice”, which cut the number of dealers to which the company sells. And it is recruiting retailers such as Tiffany to cover further marketing spend.
The company’s move to improve its product’s branding has been helped by a venture with the French company LVMH to open diamond stores worldwide, including a flagship site on London’s Bond Street.
Oppenheimer pledged further investment. “If you look at the new De Beers store in London, it is a step change in what jewellery stores look like. Traditionally, the bravest thing you could do was to go in the door of a jewellery store — that has to change. People have to market jewellery in a modern way.”
The brand offensive will also target one of the biggest problems faced by the industry. “Synthetic diamonds are a threat we have been aware of for some time,” said Oppenheimer. “It is much closer now than it has been before.”
De Beers’ marketing drive hopes to beat competition from the synthetic rocks with a simple message: real men give real diamonds. “Diamonds are created by nature over millions of years of volcanic activity,” said Oppenheimer. “They come from the bowels of the earth — not a laboratory.”
The company is restructuring its South African mining business ahead of the forced sale of the 15% stake. This division contributes about a quarter of the company’s diamond haul. “It has always been our attitude and something my grandfather said, ‘We operate to make money but also to make a real contribution to the country where we operate’.”
Oppenheimer defended his company’s handling of the controversial diamond buying by De Beers clients in the Congo. In a UN report being followed up by the Department of Trade and Industry, De Beers was criticised for links with a group of diamond traders who bought gems in the war-torn country. The sellers used the proceeds to fund conflict. De Beers said that after the report it had warned its buyers to stop the trade.
“We are co-operating with the DTI,” said Oppenheimer. “I am certain that De Beers’s name will be cleared. When you produce something like diamonds you have to be extremely careful that your product is untainted. That’s a matter of concern for us every day.”
With the rising demand for diamonds, he has cause for optimism. Prices are going up following the depletion of gem stockpiles. De Beers sold many of its diamonds after it was taken private to pay off debt raised to buy the company. It believes that high demand and stock shortages will lead to annual price rises of about 5%.
Taking advantage of this favourable outlook will most likely be the responsibility of his 31-year-old son Jonathan. Oppenheimer said he “certainly hoped” his son would take his place on his retirement, which he has already started planning.
With diamonds more popular than ever, it appears that human vanity — as Oppenheimer’s grandfather explained the emotional appeal of gems — is as strong today as it was a century ago. “A really beautiful diamond doesn’t do you any good,” said Oppenheimer. “But it fills a niche in the human psyche. It’s a symbol of something emotional and it has a very exciting future.”
Not too long ago Spain was suffering a fascist government. The extreme right is powerful, the Opus Dei is strong, the Church cannot be ignored, and still, I have found several editorial and articles recently that criticize very harshly some aspects of American puritanism, or, to be more precise, its double standards.
This editorial from El País, the most respected of Spanish newspapers, and one of the best in Europe denounces the scandal around Janet Jackson and the use some conservatives have made of the incident. It, reminds Gary Hart's problems in 1987 and Ross Perot's sentence according to which: "the one who betrays his wife might betray his company," and foresees a dirty presidential campaign. It concludes: "Continental Europe has gone beyond this form of politics long ago. One cannot consider that lying about a relationship that involves the private life of a politician is immoral while deeming acceptable a lie whose ultimate purpose is to launch a war such as the one in Iraq."
El País - Editorial: "Política puritana"
EDITORIAL
Política puritana
EL PAÍS | Opinión - 16-02-2004
El puritanismo acompañó la formación como país de Estados Unidos, pero los más ultras entre sus dirigentes actuales se han lanzado a una cruzada que impone una agenda insoportable en la nación que se reclama adalid de las libertades
. Bastó hace unos días que la cantante Janet Jackson enseñara fugazmente un pecho con el pezón cubierto por una joya, durante el descanso de la retransmisión de la Super Bowl, para que se desatara un vendaval. La cadena CBS pidió todo tipo de perdones y los ultraconservadores han aprovechado para exigir la imposición de nuevas normas de censura.
Con ser grave este retroceso, aún lo es más el uso electoral de hechos que atañen a la vida privada de algunos candidatos, manipulación que alcanza sus cimas en campañas presidenciales. La acusación de infidelidad conyugal hace temblar a cualquiera en EE UU. Ross Perot acuñó en la campaña de 1992 el principio de que "el que engaña a su mujer puede engañar a su empresa" o al país. Gary Hart tuvo que retirarse en 1987 de la campaña para la preselección demócrata a la Casa Blanca cuando se probó una relación extramatrimonial que había negado. Las mismas huestes se lanzaron contra Clinton por su relación con la becaria Lewinsky.
Ahora, ante el peligro que supone para la reelección de Bush el demócrata John Kerry -le lleva nueve puntos de ventaja en los sondeos-, la maquinaria se ha puesto de nuevo en funcionamiento. La campaña empieza a ser sucia antes de haber comenzado oficialmente. Es una forma de hacer política que en Europa continental fue superada hace tiempo. No se puede considerar inmoral mentir sobre una relación que atañe a la vida privada de un político, mientras se considera aceptable mentir con el propósito último de desencadenar una guerra como la de Irak.
Europeans seem to enjoy the many shades of "gray" which might be a very important attitude in this world. This story shows that a new form of commitment between people which is a little bit more than a fee union and less than an actual marriage is quite popular. Read it.
My main point here is that we often learn much more about different places, countries, and culture by looking at the way people live and feel rather than by only sticking to politics and business. Fiction is not bad either.
The New York Times - In Europe, Lovers Now Propose: Marry Me, a Little
February 15, 2004
In Europe, Lovers Now Propose: Marry Me, a Little
By SARAH LYALL
ARSEILLE, France — Nathalie Ramirez and Djillali Antar have been together for eight years. But like many modern couples whose relationships are shaped by practicality and logistics as much as romance, they are not sure what they want in the future. Marriage, so far, has always seemed like a goal too much.
So two years ago, they presented themselves to a court in Aix-en-Provence and signed a pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, as they are popularly known, giving them many of the same legal rights as married people but not, Ms. Ramirez explained with some relief, committing them to be together forever.
Today they are happily, if somewhat ambivalently, "PACS'ed" in an arrangement that Ms. Ramirez, 28, and Mr. Antar, 31, say does not feel like conventional marriage, but a light approximation of it. They do not wear wedding bands. They still refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. When they visit her parents, Mr. Antar does not spend the night. He has not even told his parents, who are originally from Algeria, that he got PACS'ed.
"They wouldn't understand," he said. "For them, it is marriage or nothing."
Even as President Bush is proposing to spend $1.5 billion to promote marriage in the United States, European countries are moving in the opposite direction. They are granting new status to couples looking for some legal rights in the broad gray area between living together casually and "till death do us part."
What European laws have in common, said Kathleen Kiernan, a professor of social policy and demography at the London School of Economics, is that they take a pragmatic approach to their populations' changing attitudes about the role — and even the relevance — of marriage in contemporary life.
"In some ways, there has been an acceptance of cohabiting relationships in Europe," Professor Kiernan said. "There isn't a move in European countries to promote marriage — although care has also been taken not to undermine the position of marriage in formulating legislation. Europe has moved toward the idea of committed partnership and committed parenthood, and civil status is a secondary issue."
Gay groups have led the way to registered partnership laws in many European countries; nearly all governments in Western Europe have or are proposing such laws for gays. But today France and some Scandinavian countries also have similar plans for heterosexuals, and at least one other country is considering them.
The result, for the time being at least, is a legal patchwork in which rights and benefits bestowed in one country are not always recognized elsewhere.
For French heterosexuals with religious or political objections to marriage, as well as those suffering from modern angst over what kind of commitment they are prepared to make, the government-issued pacts offer the perfect halfway house.
Speaking in their small apartment here, Ms. Ramirez laughed sheepishly, trying to explain the many things they considered when they decided to get PACS'ed instead of married. Their respective parents, who come from different countries, have not yet met each other, she said. There are the geographical complications of combining her career as a journalist with his job as a secondary school administrator — not to mention her fear of a long-term commitment, and the issue of having children, which they both agree they would undertake only if they were first married.
The civil solidarity pact that they signed confers some stability and legal rights. It means, for instance, that Mr. Antar can remain in his civil service job in Marseille, living with Ms. Ramirez, secure that he will not be transferred to another area. It means that the couple share property rights and, after three years as official partners, will get the same tax breaks as married people.
But it also allows either member to dissolve the relationship, with little legal complication, on three months' notice, a source of some comfort to this skittish couple.
"At first, when we PACS'ed, we thought we would be de-PACS'ed after three years, but we changed our minds," said Ms. Ramirez.
The Scandinavian countries, where being unmarried is increasingly the norm, have long allowed such couples to register as domestic partners, mostly as a way to protect any children they have together.
Unmarried couples in Norway who live together with children make up the fastest-growing household census category, having increased to nearly 100,000 people from nearly 61,000 20 years ago, according to the national statistics office. The Norwegian Parliament is considering a proposal to increase significantly the rights of people who are living together, known by a Norwegian word that translates as cohabitants.
Under the proposal, people who have been living together for five years or more, or who have children together, would have inheritance rights like married people. Surviving partners would also be allowed to keep the house the couple lived in and its contents, regardless of what their partner's will says.
Even in Italy, where marriage is so deeply rooted as a foundation of society that it is codified in the Constitution, a proposed law would for the first time grant some legal recognition to unmarried couples.
Among other things, the proposed Italian law would allow the surviving member of a couple in which one of the partners has died the right to remain in the house they shared for a period roughly equal to the length of the relationship.
"No one wants to go against marriage," Alessandra Mussolini, a member of the Italian Parliament and one of the bill's sponsors, said in an interview with The New York Times last November. "I'm married, and I think that is an institution that needs to be respected. But there should not be discrimination against children from unmarried parents, and there still is."
For its part, however, Italy seems loath to grant comparable rights to gay couples; indeed, one of the biggest objections to the bill is that it might somehow open the door to legally recognized gay couples.
At the same time, several other European countries have taken the opposite approach, recognizing gay relationships but refusing to grant special rights to unmarried heterosexuals, on the grounds that they have marriage as an option.
A government proposal still being considered in Britain, for instance, would allow gay couples to register in civil partnerships that would give them inheritance and pension benefits, and next-of-kin rights in hospitals. But when the government announced its plan last summer, gay groups protested, saying that it discriminated against heterosexuals.
In Germany, too, the law on unmarried couples favors gays. Under the country's registered partnership program, gay couples are, among other things, allowed to choose one surname as a shared "partnership name;" they also have increased financial rights in issues like inheritance, housing and maintenance.
About 6,000 couples have registered under the plan so far, said Volker Beck, a member of the German Parliament from the Green Party and a supporter of the law.
The civil solidarity pacts in France, in fact, began as a way for gays to formalize their partnerships, but were broadened, when religious and conservative groups objected, to include heterosexuals. By the end of 2002, according to the French Justice Department, about 133,890 people had signed such pacts.
"The government is opening up to different lifestyles — although I'm not persuaded that being gay is that different from being straight," said Gilles Segrestain, the president of Gaipar, an organization for gays from different nationalities in Paris.
"I think one of the reasons why gay relationships often appeared as being short-lived is because there was no institution, no framework," he said in an interview. "And now when two gay men or lesbians say, `we're PACS'ed,' it's like a straight couple saying, `we're married.' "
Well, not always. For many, it is more like marriage training.
"It's an intermediate way between no commitment and a wedding," said Caroline Vinot, 34, a Frenchwoman who lives in Prague and recently had a baby with her Czech boyfriend. The two are now considering signing a PACS together.
"I think there will probably be one day when it will be convenient for both of us to have this situation be legalized and all the financial and property aspects to be organized between us," she said.
There is still the allure of a traditional wedding, but Ms. Vinot is not sure how ready she is. "I probably would be very excited, with the big cake and the big party and the white dress," she said. "But I'm too scared to get married."
Just to follow up on the class discussion, I think this op/ed in The New York Times shows a common contrast in criticism of the Bush Administration compared with the Spiegel article. In this column, the writer's tone and language are much calmer yet critical of his own administration. I think this approach is much more practical from U.S. newspapers.
"Lost in Credibility Gulch"
By Bob Herbert of The New York Times
Lost in Credibility Gulch
By BOB HERBERT
he question: What can we believe?
The president is genial enough, but it might be time for a bipartisan truth squad to follow him around, sorting out the facts from his musings, speculations, fantasies and mis-rememberings.
Iraq has shown us the trouble that can lurk in the gaps between reality and whatever it is that George W. Bush believes or says. Tim Russert, during his hourlong interview with Mr. Bush on NBC's "Meet the Press," displayed a quote from the president's address to the nation last March 17:
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
More than 500 American troops and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war that was launched on that faulty data. And the war goes on.
"I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons," Mr. Bush told Mr. Russert.
Here at home, the president has been as wrong about jobs as he was about weapons of mass destruction. More than two million jobs have vanished on Mr. Bush's watch and the recent uptick in job creation has, by all accounts, been meager.
The tax cuts signed into law by Mr. Bush in May 2003 were euphemistically dubbed the Jobs and Growth Act. Workers are still waiting for the jobs. Despite a surge in the economy, we've actually been going backward with regard to employment. There are 700,000 fewer jobs now than when the recovery from the recession began back in November 2001.
If I were advising the president, I'd suggest he form his own truth squad to vet his policies and public statements and advise him on ways to maintain a high level of credibility. That might have helped him avoid the fiasco over the cost of his recent "reform" of Medicare.
The bill, which established a prescription drug benefit, was supposed to cost no more than $400 billion over the next decade. The White House had a hard time rounding up support from conservatives who thought even that was too much. Less than two months after the bill was signed, the administration disclosed that it would actually cost an estimated $534 billion, one-third more than the original estimate.
Last week the president unveiled a $2.4 trillion budget that hardly anyone, on the left or the right, believes is credible. Among other things, it includes an increase in military spending of 7 percent, or $26.5 billion, to $401.7 billion. But it does not include the cost of continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Those estimated costs — scores of billions of dollars — will not be made public until after the November elections.
Samuel Butler said, "I care about truth not for truth's sake but for my own."
Mr. Bush presented himself in 2000 as an honest, straight-shooting Texan, an aw-shucks kind of guy whose word, unlike that of the sitting president ("I did not have sexual relations . . ."), could always be trusted.
The credibility that he enjoyed during that campaign, and which reached a peak in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, has steadily eroded since then. He said he was a compassionate conservative, but he has hammered programs designed to assist the poorest and most vulnerable among us. His administration has taken a blowtorch to the environment. And his fiscal policies are so outlandish that liberals, moderates and conservatives are asking if he's taken leave of his senses.
During the run-up to war, the public heard ominous references to mushroom clouds and was encouraged to believe there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.
It's time to put an end to the fantasies and the deceit, which have landed us in a quagmire overseas and the equivalent of fiscal quicksand at home.
It's not too much to ask that the president of the United States speak the clear truth about his policies and their implications. Mr. Bush would do himself and his country a favor by establishing a closer relationship with reality and a more intense commitment to the truth.
Those Americans who have put their trust in the president deserve nothing less.
Just a mention because all of us should have read that in The New York Times, and two questions:
How do you value, and define the differences, if you find any, between this article coming from a prestigious German newspaper, and the stories you have read in the Times, The Washington Post, or your favorite daily?
Do you see it as a valid example of how the Europeans view the United States?
Please answer by posting comments.
The New York Times - The Debate over Responsibility for the War
The Debate over Responsibility for the War
By DER SPIEGEL
George W. Bush is on the defensive. His CIA director confirms the absence of weapons stockpiles in Iraq and the national budget is moving toward a record deficit. With the election nine months away, the opposing Democratic camp is bursting with confidence.
The President is no friend of the press. George W. Bush, notorious for linguistic gaffes and muddled logic, doesn't like spontaneous questions, and he gives fewer press conferences than most of his predecessors. Whenever he does appear before the White House press corps, the dramatics have already been worked out to the smallest detail, even though Bush likes to give the impression of camaraderie by using journalists' first names ("Your turn, John").
This made the request that US broadcast network NBC received last week all the more unusual. The President, according to the request, wanted to appear on the Sunday program "Meet the Press." Of all people, George W. Bush had chosen Tim Russert, the intellectual grand inquisitor who moderates the weekend's best political talk show, to deliver a message to his fellow Americans: I am still here, and I am still in control. The public relations offensive is necessary. In recent weeks, the man in charge at the White House has lost a great deal of his reputation and support.
His last victory, the capture of Saddam Hussein, was quickly forgotten. The carefully staged State of the Union address on Capitol Hill proved to be a propaganda flop, and even fellow Republicans criticized the Bush budget proposal for 2005 presented last Monday as an irresponsible "fantasy budget." It gets even worse: According to a Gallup poll conducted last week, the sitting president had fallen behind John F. Kerry, the current favorite of the Democratic Party, by a margin of 46 to 53 percent. And the election is only nine months away.
John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, celebrated his biggest victory to date in last Tuesday's primary elections. He is emerging as a competitor who, thanks to his heroic record as a Vietnam veteran, could truly pose a threat to George W. Bush. And it was precisely in this unfortunate week that the troublesome issue of the war in Iraq landed on Bush' desk once again.
It was not just anyone, but CIA Director George Tenet, a confidant of the president, who addressed the public last Thursday at Washington's Georgetown University and bluntly exposed the propagandistic trickery with which commander-in-chief George W. Bush led the American nation into the Iraq war.
The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), chief coordinator of all US intelligence services, took matters into his own hands when it became clear that his people - and, most of all, Tenet himself - were about to be blamed for the US' costly military adventure.
The hunt had been triggered by David Kay. The former head of the Iraq Survey Group quit his job out of frustration, because his 1,400 specialists had been unable to find any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Kay told a group of surprised senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq had probably not had such weapons for years.
"It looks as though we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," complained the man who, as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq after 1991, was apparently far more effective in bringing about disarmament than Washington would like to admit. According to Kay, however, George W. Bush did not knowingly mislead the American people; instead, the intelligence services "misused" him.
The beleaguered Tenet fought back. He dutifully absolved his president of responsibility, claiming that the war was justified and, furthermore, that no one had coerced the CIA into doctoring its analyses to support a military campaign which, according to revelations by the administration's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, had been planned ever since Bush came into office in January 2001.
"Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful - or thoughtful - discussion of intelligence these days," the DCI complained, passing the buck on to someone else. "Our analysts were certainly of different opinions on many important aspects of this weapons program, and we believe that this debate was clearly expressed." They "never claimed that there was acute danger."
One person, in particular, is now feeling exposed: Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was first considered a voice of reason until, in late 2002, he transformed himself into the spokesman of the hawks. In a dramatic appearance on February 5, 2003, the retired general attempted to force the UN Security Council to approve military action just six weeks before the attack on Iraq. Powell had spent days at CIA headquarters collecting top-secret information to "report what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
"Any statement that I issue today is based upon sources, solid sources. These are not simply claims," Powell assured the council, and then proceeded to serve up one lie after the next. He told the Security Council that the "deadly weapons programs" were a "real and present danger" and that the United States had "first-hand descriptions of mobile biological weapons laboratories."
In contrast, Kay now says: "We found information that led to entirely different conclusions." Like the UN inspectors before him, he too concludes that defectors "said what we wanted them to say." The mobile laboratories were apparently used for a highly mundane purpose: to deliver hydrogen for weather balloons.
"Saddam Hussein has never accounted for 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents," Powell said. Today Kay says: "There is no indication that these warheads were ever filled."
By now, almost every one of Powell's claims based on CIA information has been refuted. No wonder that Powell, to the dismay of the White House, has now come to the conclusion that his decision on the war might have been different today: "The absence of weapons of mass destruction changes the political calculation."
But if the calculation was wrong, then only one person is responsible - not Tenet, not Powell, but George W. Bush.
It is this debate over responsibility for the war that now hangs around the President's neck like a millstone. Last week in Charleston, South Carolina, he too conceded that the often-cited weapons had not been found. However, he stubbornly stuck to his justification for the preventive attack: "Based on what I knew then and based on what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq."
Now he feels compelled to appoint a commission to determine the true reasons why the CIA supplied false information on Saddam's weapons arsenal. Bush, who can appoint the members of this body himself, asked former Democratic Senator Chuck Robb, once a conservative judge, to serve as its chairman. However, the commission will not present its findings until 2005, after the presidential election. Of course, the President is hoping to be cleared of any blame, just as Tony Blair has managed to stage his own acquittal.
These days, Bush is becoming increasingly driven by events he no longer controls. Shiite leader Ali al-Sistani apparently has more influence over the timing and course of the power transfer in Iraq than the superpower. Moreover, the occupying army continues to be powerless against devastating attacks.
Following the capture of Saddam, the United States had hoped that the attacks in Iraq would begin to subside. However, this has not proven to be the case. Last week, two suicide bombers wiped out a portion of the Kurdish elite, killing 110 people in the attacks in Arbil. Furthermore, American soldiers are killed on a daily basis - painful reminders of a military adventure that was thoughtlessly initiated by the Bush administration.
An opinion poll conducted by the Associated Press reveals just how much Bush' popularity has suffered: His job approval rating has dropped to 47 percent, which is even lower than it was prior to September 11, 2001. Contrary to expectations, Bush will not be able to simply coast toward reelection as a patriotic wartime president.
Until now, however, he has been able to rely on his luck. When his approval ratings suddenly dropped last fall, Saddam was discovered in a hole in the ground and then the economy began showing signs of recovery. Could Bush' luck return?
A healthy recovery at the right time would certainly increase his chances for reelection. This is exactly the way things seemed to be going when the economic figures for the third quarter of 2003 were released: The economy had grown by more than eight percent, a rate of growth that hadn't even occurred in the golden nineties. According to the prevailing wisdom, these conditions should have led to 150,000 new jobs in December. But then came the shocking news: only 1000 new jobs had been created. It seems that growth and employment have become disconnected.
As the months pass, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the economy will serve as a strong argument for reelection. Absent a miracle, Bush will go down in history as the first president since Herbert Hoover who has seen more jobs lost than created during his time in office. And Hoover had to lead America through the Great Depression after 1929.
Unemployment is currently at 5.6 percent. Since 2001, the year Bush moved into the White House, more than 2.3 million additional Americans have become unemployed. This number would be even higher if many of the unemployed hadn't simply given up looking for work.
Economists believe that the reason for this "jobless recovery" is that many companies continued to behave as if there were a recession. They laid off employees and increased productivity during the crisis. Now, instead of hiring new employees as demand grows, they prefer to continue with layoffs. This is good for the bottom line - and devastating for the employment market.
And then there is the issue of the federal budget. This year's deficit is expected to reach a record 521 billion dollars. The national debt is currently 3.9 billion dollars - a sum equal to the gross national products of Germany and France combined.
Deficits of this magnitude can do serious damage to even the strongest economies over time. They stand in the way of important future investment, fuel inflation, and ultimately lead to higher interest rates, which in turn has disastrous consequences for growth and employment.
The deficit is also dangerous for the President because it undermines his credibility. He has just presented a budget that contradicts his economic theory. Not too long ago, Bush said: "We can continue with tax cuts without having to worry about debt." The Bush administration believes that the tax cuts totaling 1.3 billion dollars over a ten-year period are its crown jewel.
Apprehension is spreading, even among loyal Republicans. They see the deficit as a symptom of unbridled spending. In fact, government expenditures during the past two years have increased by an average of 8.2 percent in those areas in which the administration felt it had spending latitude. Similar spending habits could not even be attributed to Ronald Reagan. "Truly shocking," noted an indignant Wall Street Journal, usually a Bush-friendly paper.
On top of all this, the President is promising improvements. He wants to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009. In the new budget the administration submitted last Monday, many government programs were frozen, at least temporarily. Exceptions? The Pentagon budget (up 7 percent) and the budget for national security expenditures (up 9.7 percent).
This is exactly what Bush' opponents are using to attack the President during the current Democratic primaries: The fact that this country has also lost its economic balance. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who is behind frontrunner John Kerry and could become his vice-president, talks about a two-class America. John Kerry himself, with his stentorian voice, denounces the amount of influence lobbyists have over the White House.
Nevertheless, the presidential candidates' proposed reforms are exceedingly moderate. Edwards and Kerry agree that higher taxes should only be imposed on those with incomes over 200,000 dollars
Neither of the two candidates has proposed cutbacks in spending for national security, a move that would be unpopular at this point. Even if a Democrat becomes president, the United States will not be immune against a high national debt.
Frontrunner John Kerry doesn't spend much time talking about economic policy during his campaign appearances. Foreign policy is his passion. "We are here today to introduce the end of the Bush presidency," Kerry announces in a booming voice when he approaches the podium in New Hampshire or Missouri.
It's been forgotten that the current favorite was behind his fellow Democratic candidates just a few weeks ago, that Kerry, the son of a diplomat who served as legal advisor to the US envoy to West Berlin in the 1950s, lacked just about everything: a message, a campaign song, enthusiasm and a belief in himself. But then his fellow senator, Ted Kennedy, offered Kerry the services of his capable office manager, Mary Cahill. Now, as Kerry's campaign manager, she is doing everything in her power to "tell the story of John Kerry the right way."
The new, softened image is working, with Kerry adding state after state to his list of victories. On last week's first "Super Tuesday," he won the primaries in five states across the entire country. "In American history, anyone who has won so many early contests has always ended up being his party's nominee," writes the New York Times.
Kerry is the man of the hour. Missouri and Arizona, North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico are a microcosm of the ethic and social diversity of America. The fact that he was able to prevail in such different states makes Kerry the only candidate with national appeal.
America's Democrats are already becoming caught up in a frenzy of confidence. They are united by a will, fed by deep resentment against President Bush, not to face four more years of neoconservative dominance in America and not to become involved in any more experiments with preventive war.
Upstanding Republicans must be furious about the fact that John Kerry, a scion of the wealthy East Coast aristocracy, and John Edwards, a nouveau riche upstart, are traveling around the country and accusing the Bush administration of creating tax laws that favor the rich. Their views, programs and political carriers have turned Kerry and Edwards into prime targets for the Bush camp.
The Republican campaign is also moving full speed ahead. Weaknesses in the biographies of the competition are being researched, and potential voters are being recruited door-to-door, by telephone, and by e-mail. The objective is to register at least three million new Republican voters.
The President's schedule routinely includes galas, dinners and receptions at which guests are given the opportunity to drop off checks for the campaign, a method that has already brought the Bush campaign about 135 million dollars. That number is expected to increase to 200 million by this summer - the largest amount of money ever spent by a single candidate in an American election campaign.
But does George W. Bush also plan to change his tactics? According to a rumor that has been making the rounds in Washington for some time, most of the orchestrators of the Iraq war - from Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - would not be part of a second Bush administration.
It may be that Americans are gradually becoming fed up with war, unilateral action and grandiloquent promises. It may be that they are thinking about trying a Democrat who has the charm of the worldly pragmatist.
That is what the President must expect. Otherwise he will succumb to the curse of the House of Bush once again: being voted out of office after a single term.
JAN FLEISCHHAUER, SIEGESMUND VON ILSEMANN, GERHARD SPÖRL
Translated by Christopher Sultan
I thought this article was interesting because it adds to a negative perception of the U.S. and Britain over the threat of Iraq's WMD's and the justification to go to war. With former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accusing Blair and Bush of acting like salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence, the story adds credibilty to the arguement that intelligence was exaggerated and reinforces the strong doubts and deep distrust of the Bush Administration that is apparent throughout Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1143930,00.html
Blix says war leaders acted like salesmen
Sarah Hall and Richard Norton Taylor
Monday February 9, 2004
The Guardian
The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, weighed into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction yesterday when he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support for war.
In a carefully worded attack, Dr Blix said intelligence communities were too ready to believe the "tales" of defectors, and the British prime minister and US president, while not acting in bad faith, were too preoccupied with spin.
Referring to the government's controversial dossier, with its suggestion that WMDs could be deployed within 45 minutes, he insisted: "The intention was to dramatise it, just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to exaggerate the importance of what they have.
"But from politicians or our leaders in the western word, I think we expect more than that. A bit more sincerity."
Dr Blix's intervention, on BBC 1's Breakfast with Frost, was immediately rejected by the government, with the leader of the Lords, Lady Amos, insisting that Lord Hutton had cleared the government of dramatising the 45-minute claim, and the secretary for constitutional affairs, Lord Falconer, urging the country to wait for the Butler inquiry, which will report in the summer.
"We shouldn't go on and on and on discussing the precise detail of this. Instead, we should let the inquiry proceed, not monster it in advance," he said.
But Robin Cook, the former leader of the Commons, ratcheted up his attack on the prime minister's credibility, and two other former ministers, the ex-defence minister Doug Henderson and former health secretary Frank Dob son, along with the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, and the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, called for Mr Blair to make a statement clarifying why he believed the 45-minute claim referred to long-range weapons of mass destruction when he took Britain to war.
Mr Cook repeated his allegation that the prime minister knew the intelligence only pointed to battlefield weapons when the two discussed the issue on March 5, 15 days before military action - a claim denied by Downing Street.
"I made it quite plain _ that it was obvious from the briefings that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and had only battlefield weapons _ I could not have been more blunt," he said.
Speaking on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, Mr Cook, added that "heads should roll" on the joint intelligence committee because of their apparent failure to adequately brief the prime minister - "an appalling failure of communication".
President Bush yesterday defended the decision to go to war, arguing that although weapons of mass destruction had not been found, Saddam Hussein "had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons".
"I expected to find the weapons," he acknowledged. "Sitting behind this desk making a very difficult decision on war and peace; I made the decision on the basis of the best intelligence possible."
The democratic frontrunner, John Kerry, accused Mr Bush of trying to revise his rationale for war. "This is a far cry from what the president and his administration told the American people through 2002," Mr Kerry said.
"Back then President Bush repeatedly told the American people that Saddam Hussein has got chemical weapons. They told us they could deploy these weapons within 45 minutes to injure our troops. It was on that basis that he sent America's sons and daughters off to war."
Downing Street had hoped the WMD furore would dissipate after an ICM poll suggested that 72% of people felt MPs spent too much time on the issue and should return to the domestic agenda.
But Dr Blix, who headed the UN team searching for Saddam's weapons from November 2002 until the eve of war last March, questioned the wording of the infamous September dossier: "They say some WMDs can be ready to be used within 45 minutes. Well, which ones?
"It certainly wasn't nuclear, because the report says that they were not developing nuclear, so they didn't have them. And what is meant by being ready? Is it a phial of anthrax that can be tossed at somebody? I mean, one can interpret it in different ways."
Asked about claims in the Observer that Britain had spied on UN allies in the run-up to Iraq, he said: "I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case _ I assumed when I was in New York that I might well have been bugged in my office."
The US Republican senator John McCain, a member of Mr Bush's inquiry into prewar intelligence, told a weekend security conference in Munich that there had been international intelligence failures, and added: "It's clear to me that the weapons of mass destruction were not there."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian
I think it's interesting that the author doesn't consider the fact that much of Europe's press has an overt political bias.
International Herald Tribune - BBC vs. Fox News: fair and balanced to you, too
BBC vs. Fox News: fair and balanced to you, too
Fletcher Crossman IHT
Monday, February 9, 2004
Media bias
MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina When Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, resigned last week, there must have been satisfied smirks at the offices of Fox News. After visiting the United States last year, Dyke had said that he was shocked by "the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism." He warned the British media: "In the area of impartiality, as in many other areas, we must ensure we don't become Americanized."
The irony will not be lost on the people at Fox News that Dyke had to step down because the BBC was found to be telling untruths that were politically damaging to the British government. The BBC has often been accused of having a liberal bias, and many interpreted its reporting of the Iraq conflict as being antiwar.
So it's official: the BBC messed up. But however much Fox News feels vindicated by the verdict, it should not ignore the fact that many foreign observers feel that the political right has taken over America's news media, and that the overt political bias of Fox News and Clear Channel Radio has become a serious obstacle to the fair workings of democracy.
The contrast between Fox News and the BBC crystallizes the difference between the cultures that gave them birth. Fox News was in many ways a brave experiment: a news channel aimed directly at a target political audience, albeit an audience that had previously been identified by Rush Limbaugh. The success of Limbaugh's conservative radio show, a daily diatribe against all that is liberal, caused a sea change in talk radio. In many parts of the United States it is now all but impossible to find a radio talk show that is not modeled on Limbaugh's pro-Republican format.
But few thought a mainstream television audience would accept the same opinionated personalities that make conservative talk radio work. The rapid growth in Fox News's audience caught other news channels off guard, and prompted a panicked shift toward the political right in cable news coverage. The buildup to war gave American networks the chance to outdo each other in patriotism and hawkish support for the administration. It was in this fevered climate that a shocked Dyke discovered the most ebullient of them all: Fox News.
If this fast-moving, money-driven change is typically American, then the monolithic introspection of the BBC scandal is typically British. The BBC, after all, was never a money-making enterprise; it was established by the government in 1922 to "inform, educate and entertain" the British people. It is paid for by an obligatory license fee. This protection from the forces of nature has allowed it to follow its own instincts in pursuing news stories and, some would say, has also allowed it to develop an institutional liberal bias.
It was not a fall in market share that finally forced the BBC to address the allegations - the corporation is immune to such things - but the Hutton inquiry. When Brian Hutton's report blamed the BBC for a series of blunders, Dyke and two other BBC employees fell on their proverbial swords in the traditional British way. The BBC can no longer assume the trust of the British people when it claims to be impartial. It must now prove itself.
In the United States such matters are handled differently. There will never be a Hutton deciding whether Fox News is politically biased. Its claim to be fair and balanced is no more than a knowing wink to its audience, and it has no higher master than the dollar. If the audience tires of the Fox News agenda then other stations will move in to fill the vacuum. If there is ever to be political balance in American news coverage it will happen by the law of the jungle, not the law of the land.
It is disconcerting to think that American opinion is being informed by such unpredictable forces. Yet in a typically American way, the political bias of its news stations is open, brash and strangely addictive. The British bias is subtle, covert and shielded by the myth of objectivity. There is no such thing. When Fox News claims to be fair and balanced, we're all in on the joke. When the BBC makes the same claim, they seem to actually believe it.
The writer, an English teacher, previously worked as a radio and television journalist in Britain.
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
America a narcissist? This really doesn't come as a surprise, but it is interesting to note the suggested personality disorder at the root of many concerns.
Perhaps, it is time for some kind of UN intervention, where America's buddies could get into their friend's home (D.C., UN headquarters) and wait for him to come home after a day or month (or however long the U.S. is in Iraq); they could sit him down, boldly look him in the eye, and let them know how concerned they are about Uncle Sam and his reckless behavior. The message: the U.S. needs some serious counseling.
International Herald Tribune - America in the world: A nation's narcissism
Perhaps, something at the UN or an offshoot of the Hague could be set up. Instead of an international war crimes tribunal, the U.S. would be required to see a global shrink and spend sometime on the couch; given some of the recent discord between Germany and the U.S., particularly over the Iraq invasion, it might be necessary to seek out a professional from somewhere other than the stereotypical German psychoanalyst.
This cursory piece, while not incredibly illuminating, does gather a sense of the global discontent with the United States.
H.D.S. Greenway The Boston Globe
Monday, February 2, 2004
DAVOS, Switzerland The corporate captains and the kings, prime ministers and Nobel prize-winners have departed. The armed helicopters assigned to provide security during the World Economic Forum no longer kick up clouds of snow in this alpine town. The forum, with its unrivaled convening powers, is always a good place to find what ails the world, and the conventional wisdom is that the hostility that divided many Europeans from Americans in the run-up to the Iraq war a year ago was less in evidence this year. Yes, the tension was less palpable at this year's forum. Europeans realize that what was done in Iraq is done and that it is now in everybody's best interest to put that bitter divide behind them. But the wounds have not healed. There is still dismay over the American tendency toward unilateral action. There is dismay, too, over the inability of the United States to deliver security in Iraq, and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has given credence to the strong doubts about American wisdom and even veracity.
If Europeans realize that American primacy is something they have to live with, the reality of Iraq is forcing the Bush administration to climb down from its disdain of the United Nations and international cooperation. Thus, sending the administration's archduke of anti-United Nations sentiment, Vice President Dick Cheney, into the lions' den of Davos was a bold move. He put his best foot forward, but little in his speech to the forum convinced doubters that the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive force would end anytime soon, even as the Bush administration begged for UN help with Iraqi elections.
Nor did Cheney leave much hope that America was going to step up its efforts to secure a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Censure was reserved for the Palestinians in the vice president's rhetoric. When a questioner mentioned the ideas of Shimon Peres, Cheney rapped the questioner's knuckles by saying: "Mr. Sharon is the one we pay attention to at present."
In much of the world beyond Europe, anti-Americanism is growing at an alarming and corrosive rate. President George W. Bush seemed genuinely shocked when he heard this from moderate Muslim leaders in Bali last October. In visits to four Muslim countries last year I came away equally shocked at how the high regard in which the United States was once held is slipping away, even among those who are still our friends. Whether it be Cairo's council on foreign relations or Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, the distrust of the United States is noticeably high.
Among those not predisposed to admire the United States, even America's good motives are misunderstood in the general climate of mistrust. Last month in Lahore, Pakistan, at a two-day meeting of Muslim clerics to celebrate the centenary of Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, speaker after speaker spoke of a Muslim world under attack and siege, saying that Bush's call for democracy was a cover for imperialistic designs to undermine Islam and spread Western culture.
Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, who is in a life-and-death struggle with Islamic extremists in his own country, told the forum last week that "there is a deep feeling of injustice, abandonment, hopelessness, powerlessness and a sense of deprivation" in the Muslim world. "The fallout of this has been resignation and desperation."
In the opinion of many experts at Davos this year, the United States had not successfully addressed the root causes of terrorism: It has concentrated its efforts on military solutions, which run the risk of recruiting ever more terrorists.
Even among America's friends there is something about the trumpeting of American exceptionalism, especially when wedded to what seems to many to be a desire to make the world over in America's image, that is profoundly offputting. It was during a panel on narcissism at the World Economic Forum last week that a Yale University assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, Dr. Bandy Xenobia Lee, quoted the standard medical description of narcissistic personality disorder from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. A sufferer of this disorder is defined as someone who:
Has a "grandiose sense of self importance, e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements."
"Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance."
"Requires excessive admiration."
"Has a sense of entitlement, i.e. unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations."
"Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes."
In light of current events, Lee thought the diagnosis might at times be applicable to nations as well as individuals.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
This is the story of a young French art student who spent 20 days at Rikers Island, the largest New York detention center. A crash course in surviving skills. He was declared guilty of "abnormal behavior" for cracking a bad joke aboard and American Airlnes plane. A crew member said he has used the word "bomb", but the student denies.
The French government declared that this incident has nothing to do with the tension between Paris and Washington. The student swears he will "never" go back to the States.
The meaningful part for us might be that the story was among the most read on the newspaper's website during the week-end.
Les vingt jours en enfer de Franck Moulet, écroué aux Etats-Unis pour avoir blagué dans un avion
LE MONDE | 31.01.04 | 13h19 • MIS A JOUR LE 31.01.04 | 17h27
Arrivé vendredi 30 janvier à Roissy, l'étudiant français raconte sa détention à Rykers Island, une prison connue pour son extrême violence. Il assure qu'il ne retournera plus jamais aux Etats-Unis.
Dans la prison new-yorkaise de Rykers Island, ils l'appelaient "The Frenchy". Les autres étaient afro-américains, hispano-américains. Il y avait aussi deux Américains blancs. Et lui, Franck Moulet, 27 ans, originaire des Bouches-du-Rhône, étudiant aux Beaux-arts, était seul dans son genre. Personne, parmi ses codétenus, n'avait l'air de comprendre ce que le Frenchy faisait là. Si seulement il l'avait su lui-même.
L'histoire commence le 10 janvier à bord d'un avion de l'American Airlines. Vol Saint-Domingue-New York. Franck Moulet s'attarde dans les toilettes. Une hôtesse tambourine à la porte. Et l'entend s'exclamer, alors qu'il regagne son siège : "Oh merde ! La bombe que j'ai posée dans les toilettes n'a pas fonctionné !" Version contestée par Franck Moulet : "Je n'ai jamais utilisé le mot bombe. J'ai juste dit (sic) : "My shit don't explose" (Ma merde n'explose pas)." Une nuance qui échappe aux policiers. Inculpé pour "fausse alerte à la bombe", Franck Moulet est d'abord incarcéré à La Barge, un bateau-prison amarré face au quartier du Bronx ; puis transféré au centre pénitencier de Rykers Island. Jugé devant le tribunal du Queens, il plaide coupable et s'en tire avec une amende de 595 dollars pour "comportement anormal".
Vingt jours de détention pour avoir fait de l'ironie : Franck Moulet est arrivé à Roissy vendredi 30 janvier au matin. Il passait le soir même sur Canal+, avec Emmanuel Chain. L'émission terminée, à bout de nerfs, il semblait vidé. Et puis soudain, c'est sorti. Cette vie en prison, il fallait qu'il la raconte. Les yeux hagards, il parle vite, pleure facilement. Ne s'arrête plus. Il veut raconter Rykers Island.
C'est un nom qui revenait beaucoup dans la bouche de ses codétenus de La Barge. Et Franck Moulet l'avait compris : il fallait se réjouir de ne pas être à Rykers Island. Une île-prison, comme un château d'If entre le Queens et Manhattan. Population : délinquants confirmés, peines minimales de quatre ans. "En espagnol, se souvient-il, ils l'appelaient "La Rocca", le roc. Ils disaient que c'était la loi de la jungle, là-bas. L'endroit où il ne fallait pas aller. Quand on m'a annoncé que j'étais transféré là, quand le fourgon a passé le pont, j'ai repensé à tout ce qu'ils disaient. Je me suis dit : c'est mon dernier jour."Il n'arrive plus à parler, le son ne vient plus, les larmes coulent.
Il se reprend : "Il y avait un grand dortoir. Des WC sans portes donnaient dessus. On était cinquante. Quand je suis arrivé, ils ont compris que je n'étais pas de ce monde-là. Ma chance, ça a été deux phrases, deux conseils. Il y en a un qui m'a dit : "Don't move and look" (Ne fais rien et regarde). Et un autre, en espagnol : "C'est à la roue qui grince le plus qu'on donne le plus d'huile". Ça voulait dire : celui qui fait du bruit, on va s'occuper de lui."Il a vu ce qui arrivait à une roue grinçante.
Quelqu'un a enfreint le règlement : un Hispano a utilisé le téléphone "en dehors de ses heures permises". Il explique : "Le groupe des Hispanos avait la priorité. Ils étaient constitués en gang, c'est eux qui dominaient. Entre eux, il y avait une hiérarchie. Les autres ethnies passaient après. Celui qui a utilisé le téléphone sans permission s'est fait massacrer... par sa propre bande. Ils lui sont tombés à quatre dessus. Les gardiens étaient présents. Ils ont tout vu. Ils ont juste demandé : "what's happened ?" (qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ?). Le type qu'ils massacraient s'est levé, a dit "rien", et les gardiens sont partis. Ils n'ont pas bougé d'un pouce." Franck Moulet a su éviter les coups. Sauf celui d'un policier, affirme-t-il, sur l'oreille gauche, à la sortie de l'avion. Mais à Rykers Island, il appliquait ferme le "Don't move and look", la règle d'or des rescapés. "J'ai fait comme on me disait. J'essayais de comprendre. J'observais. Je voyais quand je pouvais aller prendre une douche, laver mes affaires. Je passais surtout du temps sur mon lit."
"NE FAIS JAMAIS ÇA, JAMAIS !"
Ce sont les Afro-Américains, raconte Franck Moulet, qui l'ont le plus aidé. "Ils m'ont donné à manger, invité dans leur groupe, conseillé sur ce qu'il fallait répondre ou ne pas faire. Il y avait des gestes à éviter. Une fois, j'ai mis les mains sur les hanches, l'un d'eux a crié : "ne fais jamais ça, jamais !" Ce n'était pas assez viril pour la prison, on pouvait se faire massacrer pour ça. Il fallait aussi faire des exercices, cinquante pompes par jour. "Tu dois être fort", c'était la règle."Il précise, sèchement : "Les viols, non, il n'y avait pas de ça. C'était une violence de pouvoirs."
Me Olivier Morice, l'avocat français de Franck Moulet, ne s'explique toujours pas son transfert de la prison du Bronx à celle de Rykers Island, où se purgent les lourdes peines. Ni la durée de son incarcération. "Vouloir inscrire cette affaire dans le cadre des relations franco-américaines, affirme de son côté le Quai d'Orsay, n'a tout simplement aucun sens". Franck Moulet, lui, ne mettra plus les pieds aux Etats-Unis. "Jamais."
Marion Van Renterghem
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 01.02.04