Burggie on the Daily Show.

For a more fun take on the Burka ban question (or else see our previous post)

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Liberté and the Burka?

As Jon Stewart pointed out last week, there's been serious talk in France about banning the "burka" (which is mostly the niqab, i.e. the full body veil worn by some Muslim women) in public places in France.

It all started with a call by 65 French MPs to create a parliamentary commission to study a small but growing trend of wearing the full body garment in France.

Then last week, president Sarkozy himself said that the burka cover for Muslim women is "not welcome on French soil".

"The burqa is not a sign of religion. It is a sign of enslavement. It is a sign of subservience."
"I want to say officially, it will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind netting, cut off from any social life, deprived of any identity.This is not the idea the French Republic has of a woman's dignity", he said. (BBC news)

The wearing of the niqab/burka is probbaly growing in some places in France (on all accounts, you see more of them than before for sure, but just one in your neighborhood will get your attention).

However, it remains miniscule even though there is not clear study on the extent of this new trend. You certainly see fewer of them in France than in Great-Britain for instance - probably because the French Muslims tend to be more integrated in France.

Needless to say that just like anyone else, I was in shock the first time I saw this garment in France (previously, you'd just see the niqab worn by rich Saudi tourists in Paris). Covering the face and hands cannot be compared to any other form of clothing. In this respect, it cannot be compared to a nun 's habit or even the hijab (the 'regular' veil). Covering the face makes communication very hard if it doesn’t prevent it at all. It also causes all sorts of issues with regard to identification.
That being said, does my malaise justify a ban by the law? Is the law the proper response to something that remains marginal and is not yet well understood?

There are different speculations as to why some women have begun to wear them.
What is certain is that neither the burka nor the niqab belongs to the tradition of north-African and African cultures (from where most Muslims in France originate). The former is worn in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the latter in the Gulf States. So it is easy to see this as a sign of import from extremists in the Gulf region (from the Wahhabists and Salafists).

The center of the debate has been about whether these women are forced to wear the full garment (by their husbands, fathers or family) or whether it's a choice of their own.

French president Sarkozy has made up his mind by framing the topic as an issue of women's right and not as a religious issue.

Two possibilities : either those women choose to wear the niqab or they are forced into it. However, in this (latter) case a ban on burkas/niqab would most likely only confine those women to their homes which would be counterproductive and might only alienate them even more.

Martine Aubry, leader of the Socialist Party, says: "If a law bans the burka,
these women will still have it but will remain at home; they will no longer be
seen." (source)

If, on the other hand it is a choice, then a ban would not be about "them" (the women wearing them) but about our discomfort and our fear that Salafist and Wahhabist extremist views might take hold. Can a law really change that? I doubt it. My take is that only education and integration can. In fact, all French Muslim leaders have taken strong stances against the garment :

Dalil Boubakeur, the moderate head of the main Paris mosque, described the burka
as a radical import that is alien to the tradition of Islam. (USA Today)

At the same time, French Muslims fear that a law would stigmatize Muslims. French Muslims are overall very moderate and in fact, it is suspected that most of them are not even practicing Muslims:

A number of surveys indicate that a solid chunk of Muslims [in France], possibly the majority, do not go to the mosque regularly or observe Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. (USA Today)

In any case, Sarkozy has rejected the notion that the niqab/burka is religious expression. If it is a question of women's rights, he said, and if most of these women are not forced but choose to wear it, then, what would be the legal base for a ban?

If the niqab is a means of expression (of values or ideas, however offensive they might be) then it is and should be garanteed by the law. And indeed, rights are only meaningful when they garantee views not supported by the majority.

As John Stuart Mill argued, (see On Liberty) freeedom of speech should not be constrained by "the limits of social embarrassment" but only by "the harm principle" :

"the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member
of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to other"

What is interesting though is that very few French people see the issue as one of the state encroaching on the rights of individual.

But what sort of society should give the state the power to tell people what to wear and what not to wear?

In this particular case, I agree the niqab is not simply a garment like any other because it covers the face. But the only limits for someone to hide her face should practical and moslty situations in which identification is required

For instance, a teacher should be able to legally ask the woman who comes to pick up her kid at school to show her face so he can be sure she’s the right person. This right should be extended to the administration, banks, etc… and of course the police.

Those circumstances in which a woman must show her face must be defined by the law, and other than those it is not the business of the government to tell people how to dress or to show their faces if they choose not to - unless their clothes represent a clear danger to society.

I am afraid most French people do not really see the issue this way, and it seems that many other European countries have taken considered similar bans (in Belgium, the Netherlands, for instance).

No doubt that such a law banning the burka/niqab will have to be in accrod with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which both guarantee the right to freedom of speech as "the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression".

That's going to be an interesting debate.....

Obama, Sarkozy, and the meaning of "friendship" in France and the U.S.

What is interesting when you see Obama abroad is the reaction of world leaders who he visits.

Obama is actually the cool guy on the block that everybody wants to be friend with and seen with because it makes them cool and popular.

It is to the extent that there is a competition as to who is the best friend of the cool guy. And no one in Europe has been more eager to compete for Obama than French president Sarkozy - as boyish if not childish as he is. Of course, the French media have played along, spending hours of live coverage of every move of Obama during his visit for the D Day commemoration. (Sadly,the European elections today don't seem to get the same attention!)

There has also been a lot of speculation in the French and German media as to why the U.S. president was spending so little time in Europe, the French press making ironic comments about how Sarkozy's ambitions was thwarted by the White House.

But finally, Sarkozy got his much anticipated "Obama moment" when the two presidents gave a joined press conference yesterday-.

Very important things were said about Europe, Turkey and North Korea but that's all in the news media. I'd like to focus on something that President Obama said, which I find culturally interesting -

Asked about the alleged snub of President Sarkozy, he said this:

The United States is a critical friend and ally of France and vice versa. I personally consider Nicholas Sarkozy a friend. I think he feels the same way. And so since I know I can always pick up the phone and talk to him, that it's not necessary for me to spend huge amounts of time other than just getting business done when I'm here. (Fox)

What is interesting in this short quote is that it defines very well how American see friendship, which is very different from the way the French see it, even though the term has apparent very similar meaning in both cultures.

Americans tend to emphasize reciprocity and balance ("vice-versa") as well as a strong sense of independence. Distance between friends is not a problem ("no need to spend huge amounts of time") and in fact, it may be guarantee of good friendship which needs not to be proven by constant reminders of its existence. On the contrary, depence is perceived as a problem which could become "co-dependence", a term that simply does not translate into French and means that the relationship is unhealthy and should be terminated.

The French have a very different view of friendship. For one thing, the term "friend" is not as lossely used as in American English. (as an example, a lot of French people find the use of "friends" on Facebook a bit... excessive). Contrary to the U.S., you don't call someone you hardly know a "friend". The reason is that friendship in French culture implies more intimacy to the point that it may even be ok to burden your friends with your problems without expecting reciprocity. In fact, the French tend to think that true friendship should weather just about anything including the feeling of invasion, being teased, discussions bordering disputes, etc... - things that would be unbearable to most Americans.

Raymonde Caroll - a French anthropologist who wrote about French-American cultural misunderstandings - argues that American friendship is similar to love: your friend are there to support you, approve of you, give back to you a confirmation of yourself", while French friendship is based on family relationships, and resembles a family circle - the only difference is that it is freely chosen. In fact, friends in French culture can be seen as a substitute for family ties which I think, is very telling about the central role of family life in France, even today.

This difference partly explains some problems in international relations and why so many Americans find French criticism at odds with their sense of friendship, while the French think that only criticizes people precisely because they're your friends (which you would not do with strangers).

Raymonde Caroll also makes another observation which, in my experience rings ver true :

A French person without friends would be [considered] asocial, an American without friend would be [considered] anti-social.

This whole topic may seem trivial to you but I believe if world leaders took intercultural crash courses before they meet, the world might run slightly more smoothly. Personally, as it turns out, if I had been told about some of those differences, I might have avoided a lot of unpleasant moments of embarrassment and misunderstandings - if not downright conflicts - with a number of "friends" on the other side of the Atlantic, the trick being precisely that appearance of commonality can be all the more deceiving that our cultures seem similar enough, only the same words sometimes carry totally different connotations and meanings.

Latino or Hispanic?

Sonia Sotomayor - President’s Obama nominee to the Supreme Court - (in case you have lived in a cave in the last 2 weeks) has been accused of racism by some conservative pundits - Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh to name the most famous ones - for saying:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life,".

As expected the Republican party is divided between its most extreme wing and its more pragmatic members who understand quite well that the GOP needs the Hispanic vote.. well, excuse my French, the Latino vote…. Well, actually which one is it?

Obviously, Sotomayor refers to herself as “Latina” and while the L.A.Times talks about the “Latino population” the New-York Times uses the word “Hispanic”. What to make of it? Slate had an enlightening article (Is Hispanic the Same Thing as Latina ?)on this topic :

Hispanic is an English word that originally referred to people from Spain and eventually expanded to include the populations of its colonies in South and Central America. Latino is a Spanish word—hence the feminine form Latina—that refers to people with roots in Latin America and generally excludes the Iberian Peninsula.

While both terms are accepted, they seem to carry different connotations for different people. For some, “Hispanic” is too “Euro-centric”, while for others “Latino, Latina” is not gender-neutral enough.
Well, it gets even more complicated, if you start digging into the history of labeling the Latino/Hispanic population in the U.S.:

In the 1970 U.S. census, for example, people were asked whether they were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or "other Spanish." (The question caused much confusion because many Americans from the middle or southern regions of the United States identified themselves as "Central or South American.")
The word Hispanic was not used until the 1980 census, after the Office of Management and Budget imposed rules standardizing ethnicity statistics. (The change came after a federal committee on minority education complained about the lack of useful data.)
In 1997, the OMB changed its classification to "Hispanic or Latino," explaining that "Hispanic is commonly used in the eastern portion of the United States, whereas Latino is commonly used in the western portion.".
Today the U.S. Census Bureau makes no distinction between the two terms and defines Hispanics and Latinos as “persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spanish speaking Central and South America countries, and other Spanish cultures.".

Now of course, as Slate pointed out, what about if you’re from Brazil? You are from South America but not Spanish-speaking…. Ideally, they should be called Luso-Americans and evenhough they may be referred to as “Latinos” they are certainly not “Hispanics”.
In the end, classifying people only makes sense as much as it is about how people perceive themselves or are perceived by others.

It is one problem that the French certainly do not have since in France it is illegal for the state to categorize people according to their alleged ethnic origins or their religious membership. The idea is to avoid possible discrimination but it is also is in line with the non-essentialist French Republican ideal based on the right of the soil and not on affiliation (or bllod right) as in Germany.
This egalitarian approach may be great on paper but it has not stopped racism, and in fact, it may qomewhat make matters worse as it has made it harder for the French to face the reality of racism in France (particularly for people of Arab or African descent). Getting rid of the thermometer has never cured a disease.
Recently, the French government has considered changing the law but that has created so much controversy in France that I don’t think it’s going to happen soon. Old taboos die hard….

Les Malentendus

The previous post on the French state strikes at one of the fundamental differences between French and American society, one that lies at the heart of many of the misunderstandings between the two countries: American individualism vs. French solidarity. Understanding this difference is key to representing each other without resorting to caricatures.

This difference of which we write was already encoded in the nineteenth century and being taught in schools in little school books on moral and civic instruction. The American version went by the name of The McGuffey Readers and promoted virtues associated with the "self-made man" especially as it pertained to individual rights. G. Bruno's Tour de la France par deux enfants, on the other hand, taught several generations of French school children the virtues of solidarity in society, in particular one's responsibility to other members of society. Bruno narrativized the republican moral code. Other texts were more explicit about it. The image above comes from the table of contents to Louis Liard's nineteenth-century Morale et enseignement civique. Notice the emphasis on responsibility and duty (devoirs). There is only one section in the entire book on 'rights.' That section starts out by noting that "In exchange for the duties imposed on the citenzry, the citizens must receive from the State a guarantee of their individual rights." Thus does the State exist, to protect these rights. These civil rights are enumerated as freedoms:

1. Individual Freedom: the right to do as I please (in accordance with the laws of the State and the rights of others to do likewise).
2. Domestic Freedom: the right to live where and how I please (in accordance...).
3. Freedom of thought: the right to think/believe as I please (in accordance...)
4. Religious Freedom: the right to believe or not in whatever I choose and to practice these beliefs (in accordance...)
5. Worker's rights: the right to work in whatever profession I choose.
6. Freedom of Association: the right to join my intelligence, work and money with likeminded individuals for a common goal (in accordance...)
7. Political Freedom: the right to elect officials and be elected.

The French emphasis on responsibilities and duties stands in stark contrast to the American emphasis on rights. While the American Bill of Rights was enacted as a guarantor against injurious action by the State toward the individual (thus the emphasis on "freedom from"), the French moral code was predicated on the State's role as guarantor of those rights ("Cette garantie est la raison d'être de l'Etat). The State exists to provide these rights to its citizens. So while Americans tend to view the State with suspicion, the French tend to view it as a protector.

Such a difference helps to explain the vastly different views on many issues including, for example, taxation. Americans view it as the State taking what is rightfully theirs, while the French view it as their responsibility toward a State that provides for all. Entrepreneurship is another area of difference. The American desire "to get the government out of the markets" speaks of a desire for innovation and individual initiative but leaves the individual bearing the risk of failure and corruption. The French approach mitigates risk for the individual (health care, unemployment, social security, etc.) but his potential wealth as well. Hence, the dampening of individual initiative.

This means that in the US the wealthy are wealthier and the poor poorer. The French are generally shocked at what they see as horrible disparities of wealth in the US while Americans often mock the regulation that kills initiative and potential wealth in France. These are the caricatures that pundits resort to because they refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of any other form of society.

The French and L'Etat.

On of my FB friends had this video on his wall :



Then my friend - we'll call him M - made this comment which really blew my mind :

Why do people vote with their feet and line up behind the US embassy? Why does the US grow faster than France? Why does the US have more millionaires than anywhere else?May seem like small issues but over couple decades to couple hundred years, these small changes will make a huge difference. If we are concerned about preserving civilizations, we should do a better job than France.

It's an issue of where we as humans can propagate memes (ideas) in the most efficient manner and at the same time take advantage of these ideas. only in free societies! at some point the french culture may need to be saved from France.

So of course, I had to say a 'few' things back and decided to go into some details :

• First of all this woman is an ideologue with a clear agenda. (I checked her out on the internet – quite a resumé). I'dbe curious to see where her figures come from – no source quoted. Some seem ok, others a bit off. But in any case, “per capita income” is rather meaningless. By that account, Lichtenstein or Qatar or Luxemburg has the highest “income per capita”, but what does that mean?

• Her conclusion that “Americans are FAR wealthier” is just as meaningless. It depends where you are in the social spectrum. Every measure shows that over the last 25 years, those at the top have done better than those in the middle so it is those at the top who have benefited from this new wealth. Your argument that the US has more millionaires is certainly good for those that are, but for the vast majority of Americans, I don’t think they care. In fact, that should be cause for concern.

• People line up behind the US embassy, but they also do so at other embassies or other wealthy country. What is certain is that the US is more a land of opportunity. I give you that, but it is also a tougher country where you can win big and lose big. So the best part of the video is really when she says that “by any comparison, the American way makes EVERYone better off”, (she insists on “everyone” as you may notice on the video). This must be a joke!

The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. (OECD report)France is one of only five OECD countries where income inequality and poverty have declined over the past 20 years.

• Finally her use of the argument that “it is one thing to visit France, it’s a whole other thing to live there” is all the more ironic that she lives in the U.S. Besides, since when being born and raised somewhere makes you right about economics.

• Your concern about “preserving civilization” is mind-blowing…. Where does that come from? What’s your point? It sounds like a Dick-Cheneyish argument of fear.

• As far as freedom is concerned, there are freedoms other than economic freedom – the freedom to have access to healthcare for instance. What’s your point when you talk when you say “benevolent dictators have delivered better economic results than those that have embraced capitalism.”? What’s the link with our topic here? France is a capitalist country but with more regulations than in the US, that’s all. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the French model should be followed by Americans. That would be irrelevant. The two countries are two distinct. Comparisons are impossible.

• Just the way the French generally make false assumptions about the US, you, like most Americans, make false assumption about France. The meaning of the word “état” in France is so particular that it doesn’t translate. It defines the country and is at the core of its identity. “L’état” has not only guaranteed stability and common good (a very important concept in France) in the last few centuries in France, but it actually created France out of a much divided culture. Most countries favored federalism to accommodate the populations, but the French solution was centralization. You may not like it but that’s because it is foreign to you. It is thus part of the French identity and it is a concept entirely alien to Americans (and to most non-French people). (As a result, the French don’t want their politicians to promise tax-cuts, they want that the état do more and better.)

• By the way, this must not have worked so bad for the French – it is the only European society that never emigrated en masse to America at some point in history, a fact that has been much discussed by historians. I am not saying France is better than the US. It is just different.

• The French and the Americans have made different choices : The French emphasize equality, (a pillar of the French Republic) and common good, when the Americans emphasize individual freedom, self-interest and prosperity.

There are some things I prefer about the US not because they are intrinsically better but because they suit my personality and my aspiration, and in the same way, there are other things I prefer about France. But comparison requires a level of understanding that most Americans simply can’t have (not speaking French does not help). If you think France is like Communist China or India, think again.

DADT Sucks!

In the last couple of weeks, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has made the headlines as it seems that everyday the U.S. army is losing more valuable people simply because they're gay, as if the military could afford to.

• first a linguist in Arabic, Dan Choi was fired after announcing that he was gay on television. The reason for firing him was that he had "negatively affected good order and discipline in the New York Army National Guard" (ABC News)

.. as if the army had too many translaters of arabic to start with.

• Then, even more troubling is the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, a F-15 fighter pilot with nine air medals, including the medal of heroism. The reason why it's more troubling is that it is a cruel situation - this man served for 18 years and was only 2 years away from full retirement. Because of this discharge, he will not even qualify for retirement benefits. (Air Force News)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is more than 15 years old, society has changed and it is time to repeal that law. I understand that Obama made that promise in his campaign. I also understand that the Obama administration has a lot on his hands, and I can even understand that the president wants to change the law through regular channels (by asking Congress to repal it) for the long run - and clearly that's a break from the previous administration that ignored the law. However, in this particular case, it seems a but of urgency to at least stop implementing it until it has been reviewed.

Jon Stewart had the best argument to give those conservatives hung up on this principle that gays cannot be in the military - play the fear factor, it'll work.

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The "French Model" (2) : the Downside...

Like any economic 'model', it's always a trade off, and as the Economist shows it well in their report, there's always the other side of the coin (even if of course, the Economist supports an ideology closer to the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon model', the following facts are undeniable.).

So after the upside in our previous post, (and to be fair) here's the downside :

- More endemic unemployment

A generally disappointing macroeconomic performance, with low growth and high
unemployment
One reason why French workers are more productive per hour than Americans is that firms employ so few of them. Many make widespread use of rotating interns and temps. France’s jobless rate (8.6%) may now be the same as America’s (8.5%). But, unlike America’s, it never falls much below 8% even in good times.

- Too much dirigism from the top for some things :

The Colbertist engineering culture is on the whole much better at devising and managing big planned projects than it is at dealing with bottom-up ideas and uncertain markets. France lacks start-ups, and its small firms have difficulty growing.

- A discriminating school system (even if it's a bit more complex that the following sentence seems to indicate):

In reality, France has two-tier higher education: its world-class grandes écoles cater to a tiny elite, and its broadly second-rate universities fail the masses. Tuition at universities is free. There is no undergraduate selection at entry.

- More protection and Less dynamism

As for the state as regulator, it may have protected the French economy from extreme volatility, but that goes for the upside too.

A more stable economy in a recession also means a less dynamic, less innovative economy in good times. For all its positive elements, the French model has not yet not incorporated enough flexibility, leaving it with the task of ensuring solidarity, but not the dynamic growth needed to sustain it in the long run.

So in the end, it's just a matter of choice. you can't have your cake and eat it too. My take is that there is no such thing as a 'model' for everyone to follow anyway.

Even if both France and the United-States are essentially capitalistic, each country handles its local economy differently and that's just fine because that's their prerogative. The US will never be France and France will never be the U.S. and in fact, comparisons are fultile since economic systems are also highly cultural (hey're the results of historical particularisms) and you can't expect people to adopt a paradigm that's alien to them. So let's just enjoy this diversity.

The "French Model" (1) : the Upside...

Just a few interesting figures and points found in last week's The Economist, in their report called "Vive la différence"on the French economic 'model'.

First the upside :

[France's] GDP is expected to shrink by 3% this year, according to the IMF, against 4.1% in Britain, 4.4% in Italy and 5.6% in Germany.
The government, usually reprimanded for profligacy, is set to have a deficit in 2009 (6.2% of GDP) well below those in America (13.6%) and Britain (9.8%).

- Living less on credit and borrow what you can pay back :

The French are great savers and most have not taken out unaffordable mortgages or spent heavily on credit. Household debt as a share of GDP is less than half that in Britain or America.

- More equality, less disparity

The income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10% is far smaller than in Britain or America.
[.../...]
Even Peter Mandelson, a former European trade commissioner whom the French regard as a high priest of economic liberalism, recently turned up in Paris to learn more about what he calls industrial activism. “We have something to learn from continental practice,” he said, identifying French long-term strategic planning in such sectors as energy and transport.

- Safety net of l'Etat :

Across France, 5.2m workers, or 21% of those with jobs, are employed by the public sector. If you count others whose incomes or jobs are not exposed to the economic cycle, 49% of those either in work or retired are only moderately vulnerable to the recession,.....

- Better cheaper health system

France’s health system, a mix of private and public provision, manages both to guarantee universal coverage and produce a relatively healthy population for half the cost per person of America’s, and with shorter waiting lists than Britain’s somewhat cheaper version. The French have higher life expectancy than both the British and Americans.

- More regulated banking system .

France’s big banks may have lost plenty of money, but they have certainly performed better than their British or American peers, and most are still in profit. One reason is tighter regulation. Take the mortgage market. French banks have generally been far more wary about lending to homebuyers.

In 2007 French mortgage debt represented only 35% of GDP, according to the European Mortgage Federation, less than in Germany (48%) and way off that in the housing-bubble economies of Britain (86%), Ireland (75%) and Spain (62%). French house prices did rise strongly. But the Bank of France argues that this was as much because of demographic growth, higher real disposable income and limited housing supply as speculative buying.
The French government has not yet had to rescue any big French bank from collapse, let alone nationalise one.
[.../...]
Banks are under a legal obligation not to push borrowers into more debt than they can manage, and cases are regularly brought to court. So caution is built into the system.

What is certain is that the French "model" has raised the attention of the U.S. (granted, mostly 'liberal') media in the last few months :

Time ran an article entitled “How we became the United States of France”. Newsweek published one claiming that “The last model standing is France”. When Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister, appeared recently on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”, an American comedy programme, she joked that “maybe you are moving in our direction.”

Europe's New Pecking Order?

Last Week The Economist had a very provocative cover whichI think is worth putting on this blog :

Of course, The Economist has normally always been a pro-free market, pro-globalisation and free-immgration magazine, hence the shock. But this cover, as often with the Brits, should be taken with humo(u)r and a grain of salt (even hough lately, they have indeed been a bit self-critical of their philosophy).

This cover acknowledges some modest philosophical change, but in their editorial, they still claim that with respect to models, Anglo-Saxon capitalism remains the best one.

The strengths that have made parts of continental Europe relatively resilient in recession could quickly emerge as weaknesses in a recovery. For there is a price to pay for more security and greater job protection : a slowness to adjust and innovate that means, in the long run, less growth …

The United States and Britain could rebound from recession faster than most of continental Europe.

France and Freedom of Speech: the HADOPI case AGAIN!

This is not the first time that we have called into question freedom of speech in France, but this is a pretty 'good' one.

Here's "le premier martyr d'Hadopi." - a man sacked by a French tv channel for criticizing HADOPI to his Member of Parliament(see our previous post)

A Web executive working for TF1, Europe's largest TV network, sends an email to his Member of Parliament opposing the government's "three strikes and you're out" proposal, known as Hadopi. His MP forwards the email to the minister backing Hadopi, who forwards it to TF1.

The author of the email, Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, is called into his boss's office and shown an exact copy of his email.

Soon he receives a letter saying he is fired for "strong differences with the [company's] strategy" — in a private email sent from a private (gmail) address. French corporations and government are entangled in ways that Americans might find unfamiliar. (Slashdot)

This should not be a surprise given the "incestuous relationship" between French president Sarkozy and Europe's largest TV network

TF1's owner, the construction billionaire Martin Bouygues, is godfather to Mr Sarkozy's youngest son, Louis. Mr. Bouygues suggested to Mr. Sarkozy that he ought to ban advertising on TF1's rival stations in the public sector, which was done in January.

Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Mr. Sarkozy's presidential campaign, is now number two at TF1.

Last year, TF1 sacked Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the station's star presenter for the previous 21 years. Poivre had angered Mr Sarkozy by saying he "acted like a little boy" at a G8 summit. He was replaced by Laurence Ferrari. Mr. Sarkozy reportedly told Mr. Bouygues he wanted to see the young blond on the news.

(Irish Times)

France and Due Process : the case of HADOPI.

What would you say if a country decided to create a state agency that would have both judicial and police powers and no accountability?

What would you say if this new state agency could decide to cut off internet connections after 3 warnings without proof or trial simply because your IP address has been pointed out to this high authority by a business group that holds Copyrights and accuses you of illegal downloading?

What about if there was no substantial burden of proof on your accusers to show that you committed the alleged piracy?

What about if you were unable to contest the decision before the connection is cut off and if the contestation did not lead to a suspension of the sanction anyway?

What if there was no appeals process for addressing those piracy accusations anyway?

What if you would not only be cut off from the internet but you’d still have to pay your internet connection to your provider for up to one year?

It sounds like China could be doing this, but, no, it is France, the country of “freedoms and human rights” that is trying to pass this anti-freedom bill called HADOPI (name given to state agency in question). This is of course totally contrary to the way justice normally works in France, where you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and where, as in any democracy, the burden of proof is on the accuser.

But then, if you read the details of this bill, you quickly see that the law, if passed, would open the door to loads of issues that would make it hard to enforce anyway – both technically and legally.

Once more the incompetence of this government blows my mind - they don’t seem to have figure it out all those problems before – not even the technical problems. Someone in this government must know that there are always technical alternatives to circumvent the law.

Finally, there is Europe, and that’s no small problem to Sarkozy.
On Wednesday, the European parliament voted in favor of an amendment to the Telecoms Package (by 404 votes, – 57 ‘no’ and 171 abstentions) which goes as follow:

“Applying the principle that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a “prior ruling by the judicial authorities,” notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened in which case the ruling may be subsequent.”

The problem for the Sarkozy government is that they intended to use a state agency instead of regular judges to cut off “a thousand connections a day” (which would, by the way, leave only 25.20 seconds for the three members of the HADOPI to make a decision). Regular judicial process, on the other hand would not only delay the mechanism (with already overburden judges as it is), and it would also be more costly. That would be the price for due process – a concept used in England since Magna Carta in 1215.

The Telecom Package with the new amendment must still be approved by the European Council of Ministers and France may block it. If they do, it will be another showdown between Sarkozy and the rest of Europe as it will generate delay for a Telecom law that addresses great economic interests. Not something worth a fight given all the other problems generated by the law.

But then, you never know with Sarkozy, he’s so stubborn and cocky that he can be really idiotic about it. That would not be the first time!

The Torture Debate.

The debate about torture has been raging in the last few weeks in the U.S media.

The most interesting (and real) discussion was between Jon Stewart and Cliff May (president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) on The Daily Show last Tuesday. The conversation ran longer than the show and an unedited version is available online. It was an opportunity for some great exchanges (see videos below).

One thing to notice is that those who more or less support the use torture - ‘in some cases’ at least -tend to use semantics to divert attention from the moral issue - 'where do you draw the line between torture and duress or coercion' (used for instance by the police in their interrogations) they say?

One of Cliff May’s answers was that water boarding as used by the CIA operatives does not qualify as torture because ... a doctor was present. What kind of argument is that? What about, say, Mengele? He was a physician too, wasn't he? Since when have scientists been a guarantee of moral behavior?

No matter how you cut it, few people of good faith will deny that water boarding IS torture. In this respect, the “torture memos” are fascinating - they are all about semantics and the manipulation of words and concepts. According to the memos, “torture” is constituted by the level of pain that “would ordinarily be associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions” (see here). No one quite knows where that definition comes from….

Here’s a a more objective international definition of torture (as agreed by the United Nations) :

the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. (UN)

Thanks in part to Mr Cheney, the topic of torture has mostly evolved around the more “pragmatic” question of efficiency. In fact, that’s where Cliff May tried to go too: wouldn’t you torture to save a thousand lives? The problem is that the assumption that you CAN save a thousand lives by torturing a suspect – a sort of Jack Bauer ticking-bomb situation – is precisely….fiction. Cheney or even Tenet who claim torture works have little - if any - credibility when it comes to truthfulness or even competence:

Vice President Cheney and the administration have mistaken information gathered via torture for valuable intelligence at least once before. In 2002, the CIA turned a detainee named Ibn Shaykh Al Libi over to Egyptian security forces for questioning. Al Libi provided his interrogators with details of a connection between Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons manufacturing capacity and Al Qaeda. (Huffington Post)

If nothing else, history shows that torture does not work, and the French would know something about that. Even, Churchill thought it was not a good idea.

Byt then there is a the legality question. If torture works, then why not make it legal and thus change the law?

The moral argument is definitely the better argument against the use of torture in any discussion you may have. It is one used successfully by Jon Stewart.
“Defining where we push the boundaries of torture has nothing to do with the person that we have with custody, it has to do with who we are”.

If a country has values, it is when those values are tried by difficult times that you know the real greatness of a country.
Praise Jon Stewart. He has also underlined the contradiction (that has always been obvious to me and that I’ve died to hear someone say) that if this is a “war on terror”, the suspected terrorists should be treated as enemy combatant.

The most important point is that what is at stake here is no less than the soul of a nation.
As Jon Stewart put it :

The country overstepped its boundaries after 9/11 only to come back later and say that was a mistake. Countries that can do that proved themselves to be great countries.

And indeed it is what made America great after the failure of Vietnam and what can make it great again after Abu Ghraib and Iraq.
Contrary to Stewart, however, I tend to believe that those who concocted this madness should be prosecuted. It may divide the country in the short run but it may be unavoidable in the long run, especially if you consider the legal obligation of any country in breach of the Geneva Convention.

Here are the videos of the discussions between Jon Stewart and Cliff May :

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 3
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

The Cost of Small Derrières!

A report by France's National Institute of Demographic Studies (INSEE) compared body mass indexes in western Europe and found French women had the lowest average body mass index, at 23.2.

This will not really be a surprise to any one who's travaled around the world but the funny twist is that, as The Independent notices :

The typical French woman is slim and thinks that she is fat. The typical British woman is plump but is convinced that she is thin.

Of course, the question may be: are French women thinner precisely because they worry about their weight and conversely are the British women fatter because they don't?

On the other hand, isn't it better to be fat and happy than thin and stressed? Well, it depends... Another study found that being overweight is bad for the planet.

The researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say overweight people cause excess greenhouse gas emissions because they eat more than thin people and are more likely to travel by car. (CTV)

Some suggest we should even go back to the 1970s lifetyle.... (without the bell-bottomes, let's hope..)

As for the European men :

Unsurprisingly, the research found that men across the EU are less concerned with their weight than women. Only French and Dutch men are, on average, within the ideal weight band.

Phew!

As for the American men and women, I won't even go there.... ;-)

The Poison in American Politics.

Last week, Lexington, in the Economist, encapsulated quite well the main problem in U.S. politics in the past decade...

What is clear is that the rapid replacement of Bush-hatred with Obama-hatred is not healthy for American politics, particularly given the president’s dual role as leader of his party and head of state. A majority of Republicans (56%) approved of Jimmy Carter’s job performance in late March 1977. A majority of Democrats (55%) approved of Richard Nixon’s job performance at a comparable point in his first term.

But today polarisation is almost instant, thanks in part to the growing role of non-negotiable issues such as abortion in American politics, in part to the rise of a media industry based on outrage, and in part to a cycle of tit-for-tat demonisation. This is not only poisoning American political life. It is making it ever harder to solve problems that require cross-party collaboration such as reforming America’s health-care system or its pensions. Unfortunately, the Glenn Becks of this world are more than just a joke.

Clearly, one of the reasons for this divisiveness in American politics is the 'culture war' launched by the religious right in the late 1980s. Thank you, Mr Pat Robertson. Of course, culture wars are nothing new. In the 1920s, it was urban vs. rural values, 'progressive' policy vs. 'laissez-faire', the 'Roaring 20s' vs. 'Normalcy'.

It started again in the 1980s and took momentum throughout the 1990s and 2000s on issues like 'abortion, guns, separation of church and state, privacy, gay rights, censorship, drugs' that have been the hot button issues with the help of the right-wing media (The O'Reillys and other Becks, to name the most influential figures). In that period, the left and the moderates showed little capacity to get to more political issues or simply to respond with any force as if intimated by the topic.

Well, of course it is not easy to change the paradigm. Besides, how can you even argue moral absolutes and issues supported by God himself? Hence the danger of mixing politics and religion.

Unfortunately, the Republican party let itself be hijacked by the religious right (cf. the Christian Coalition) and people like Pat Buchanan who in his famous 'culture war' speech at the 1992 Republican convention said :

There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.

So today, the far right may have conceded it has 'lost' the culture war (Thanks Mr Dobson for acknoledging the obvious!) but it has damaged America's ability to solve issues for years in the process and its poison will have a long lasting effect.

Thank God, so far, Europe has been able to avoid culture wars.

Capitalism and Tea-Bagging.

So what has become of the love affair between America and capitalism?

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has some surprising results :

• only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
• 27% are not sure which is better
• 20% say socialism is better.

If you consider that most Americans equate "socialism" with "communism" (and not the European version of social-democracy), the results are actually shocking.

Of course polls by phone only mean so much, but even if these results are exaggerated, they show that there is great doubt in the minds of many Americans that the type of capitalism of the 90s and 2000s is "good" for America.

So it seems that the tea party protesters this week were really out of touch with grassroot America, despite claimming precisely that they were (a grassroot movement).

[for our non-American viewers, tea-parties are protests held to protest increased taxes and government spending under the Obama administration, and the name is of coruse used as a reference to the Boston Tea Party in 1773 against taxing tea. Of course, back then, it was "no taxation without representation" which is hardly the case today, but who cares about dubious historical parallels if it sells the whol package]

Just for the fun of it, I have made a "fair and balance" selection of photos of the signs in the protests (found online) :

A very tactful sign.... when you have the first black president in US History

Of course, there is always worse....

This last one is actually mt favorite - since tea-bagging (as a verbal form) actually carries sexual inuendos.

France is loved by most Americans.

According to this poll by Research 2000 (published by the left-wing US blog Daily Kos) Europe and France are almost universally loved by Americans. (66% having a favorable view)

Not surprisingly, more so if you live in the Northeast, if you are black, if you are a woman, and if you vote Democrat. But in all segments, including Republican voters, the majority view is positive. Only one exception: the South but even there, opinions are simply split.

One interesting thing is that this represents a major shift from what polls said in 2005 when 57% of Americans had an unfavorable view of France. It shows that people’s views are flexible and probably depend on international affairs. (2005 was in the wake of the crisis between France and the U.S. over Iraq). Most Americans have come around.

This may also show that the Republican party should reconsider its agenda and shift to the center a little bit more if they want to win elections. It shows that their usual spooks (France, Europe, or even large liberal cities) won’t get them very far. In fact, the Research 200 poll shows precisely that most Americans also hold positive views of SF and NY, with strikingly similar results.

So much for divided America....

French Obama.... not yet!

As we have mentioned before on this blog (here and here), Obama’s election has resulted into some soul-searching in France with regard to racial minorities and their lack of political representation.

This New York Times article sums up the real issue here: the reason why French minorities do not have access to political leadership is not racism, it is cronyism (also called “copinage” in French). Although cronyism is not exclusively French (and does exist in the U.S. - read here, or here) and the holding of leadership positions by the old guard.

Their [the French minorities’] frustration stems not from an electorate open-minded enough to vote in a gay mayor of Paris, they say, but from their own political parties, whose lack of transparency is a tool that the old guard uses to retain its grip on power.
(…/…)
Their situation is compounded by the absence of party primaries, with candidates selected instead “on the basis of alliances, networks and intrigue,” according to Mr. Sabeg. That disadvantages minority politicians, who lack the contacts of those who have passed through the elite colleges that forge the French governing class.

Sarkoy, Bush and Words

Even though this may seem very trivial to most Americans, the idea of a French president not speaking properly may irritate a lot of French people, and lately much has been said about Sarkozy's butchering the French manguage :

Mr Sarkozy jangles nerves with colloquial tics such as dropping the “ne” between pronoun and verb in negative sentences. “J'écoute mais je tiens pas compte,” he said the other day. (I listen but I don't take notice).
He often uses the slangy “ch'ais pas” for “je ne sais pas” and “ch'uis” instead of “je suis”.

Like Tony Blair with his pseudo estuary-speak, Mr Sarkozy is a lawyer with a posh education who uses low-class tones as a way of endearing himself. The style grates because of France's attachment to language as a unifying force. Most previous leaders have cultivated a literary side, including military ones such as Charles de Gaulle and Napoleon Bonaparte.
The President stands accused of setting a bad example when he is trying to stem a
decline in literacy. (Times)

His language mistakes are even compared to those of George W.Bush (An insulting comparison in France,) with a smilar goal of trying to reach "everyday Joe". There is for sure a comparison to be made in the divisive nature of both presidents' rhetoric.

".... the visceral dislike of Sarkozy that is so widespread in France [is likened] with the Bush phobia that was until recently so rampant in the US." More interesting, is the idea that "one of the reasons Obama won was that he never ceded to the facility of Bush-bashing. I think there's something to this observation."

On his blog, Arthur Goldhammer says...

[he] has been struck at times by Sarkozy's fluency without a teleprompter. Bush could never have survived if presidential debates in the French format were a part of American campaigning. He could occasionally read a speech well, but on his own he was helpless, and his face always revealed his panic. Sarkozy is never at a loss for words, and he doesn't always "parler peuple" when on his own. He is an actor, who knows how to control his effects and his voice. His body language needs work, as does his superego: his greatest vice, it seems to me, is his inability to conceal contempt without great effort. He likes to let people know how little he thinks of them.

As for recognizing that reasonable people may disagree with what he says, yes, but with one caveat: he has a (lawyerly) habit of reducing complex issues to a stark alternative: it's either X or Y, and Y is so clearly inferior that what would you have me do, if not X? I've remarked on this before, and on the often obvious R,S,T, U,V,W, and Z that might be discussed as alternatives. It's a lawyer's trick, but one that he uses well, unlike Bush, who occasionally tried it ("You're either with us or against us" comes to mind), but so crudely that the gambit was pointless.

As for the penchant for "parler peuple," times change.
Roosevelt could become a secular saint even with his patrician accents, but I don't think any American politician with that accent could be elected today (think of how Bush Sr. was ridiculed whenever he showed patrician touches). Even Obama does it. Even I do it: I don't speak with the same grammar or diction to the UPS deliveryman or the carpenter as I do to my colleagues. It's instinctual, not calculated. And I am more likely to think of an American-born professor who affects an Oxbridge accent as a hypocrite than I am of a politician who modulates his tone to what he believes his audience expects. And as for literature, Richard Poirier thinks that the distinctive mark of one of our greatest literary stylists, Saul Bellow, was his unparalleled ability to veer from the high-flown to the demotic in mid-sentence. In a sense this pliability is the essence of the American language, and in this respect, perhaps, the epithet "the American" really does attach to Sarkozy. Destarching official French has its virtues.

I agree Sarkozy is more convincing than Bush ever was and he is in his own way a master of (populist) rhetoric, but even though Sarkozy's speeches appealed to the French when he was a candidate for the presidency, they have made people really tired. The French expect more from a man who represents their country anyway.

Besides, however powerful it may be, Sarkozy's habit of reducing complex issues to binary solutions is something that makes me uneasy. I suspect it is not the sign of good pedagogism (as in Obama's case) but that it reflects his lack of understanding of the complexity of many of those issues. This binary view may be the reasons for many of the hasty decisions and the ill-conceived laws he has initiated.

As a note on our previous post on "Optimism in the American news", here's a not so-surprising study : optimists live longer, healthier lives than pessimists.

It makes sense as optimists are also less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes or smoke cigarettes but of course there's more to the secret of long healthy life. Indeed, the French live longer and healthier than the Americans... so pessimism may not be so bad after all.

I also suspect that the French like the idea they're pessimistic and cynical because that's the way to be cool in France, but really they aren't.

But, shush.... don't tell them or they might take offense!

Optimism in the American News.

It is often assumed that one of the major differences between France and the United-States is that whereas the French are a pessimistic or even cynical people, the Americans are always more upbeat and optimistic - and in many respect it is true.

Of course, the current economic crisis offers a very serious challenge to that old time American optimism......Or does it? You wouldn't believe it anyway if you've been following NBC news this month.

Only in America do people write their news anchor to complain that the news is too depressing and the anchor (Brian Williams on NC) actually responds by giving people what they want : more positive news!
Even he [Brian Williams] was shocked at the thousands of responses he has received in less than two days after asking viewers to suggest some good news to report.

"I'm looking at a stack of printed e-mails," Williams said Friday. "We have more stories than we could humanly cover if we combined all three network newscasts. It's hit an unbelievable nerve."
Williams said he's been hearing it repeatedly from people he meets on the street or viewers who send e-mails: The news is so bad every night that it's a burden to watch. Wrote one viewer: "We all know it's bad, but the news makes us feel like crawling under a rock." (NBC)

I have often been very impressed with American optimism. A lot of French people may see it as naive, but I find it more helpful than cynicism which is so pointless and makes things just a little bit tougher to go through.

Of course, the French have many perfectly valid reasons to feel a bit cynical and our different histories have shaped how we see the world - the French have had revolutions, the Enlightenment, world wars and have somehow managed to make sense of it all and find comfort in their reverence for those intellectuals and philosophers who have helped them to put it all into perspective. Hence the high suspicion of the French towards idealism. (of course, this is all gross generalisation)

The Americans, on the other hand, have been busy settling the land, fighting indians and building a new country isolated from any threat with great military superiority. In a nutshell, it has escaped some of the worst disasters of Europe and its success has given its people many reasons to be optimistic. (and this is also gross generalisation as things are necessarly more complicated about it, but let's not be too French here).

But as much as I can appreciate optimism, it can also sometimes amount to denial, and I think that's exactly what Brian Williams has been condoning here. The news should not be feel-goodism. It is just the news - period. If you don't like it, or think it's too depressive, find something else to do. God knows there are plenty of ways of being entertained these days - go watch Foxnews for instance!

The stories Williams has run like "nominating people doing good work, perhaps a random or regular act of kindness in a cruel economy" may "FEEL GOOD" but those are just cheap anecdotes, NOT NEWS.

The problem is precisely that people see the news as a form of entertainment and they judge its value by how they feel about it. That's why (some) conservatives watch Foxnews. - not because it is "fair and balance", but because it re-enforces their political bias and makes them "feel good" about it (even by making them feel angry at times which feels good at times).

So I am disappointed that a great journalist like Brian Williams should into into such a cheap trap.

Happy B-Day!

While the U.S. invented the Net, the Europeans invented the World Wide Web (at the the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Cern, in Geneva), which just turned 20 last week.

Definitely, the one European-American invention that changed our lives the most!

Note : Cruel irony; Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, fell victim to online fraudsters who set up a bogus store on the Internet.

Are Americans from Mars and Europeans from Venus?

I may disagree with them on many points, even on their basic political-economical pro-free trade/globalisation phislosophy but at least The Economist offers very well-informed news, sharp arguments, and consistancy, and that's why I read it.

This week, they tackled the arguments of many right-wing thinkers in America that the Obama's policy is turning the U.S. into Europe (read "freedom-killer socialists").

Roger Cohen, a liberal New York Times columnist, worries that “one France is enough”. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist, says “I take the 2008 US elections as marking a turn toward continental Europe.” Six years after Robert Kagan claimed that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus”, there is a growing feeling that the two planets are destined to merge.

Because their editorial is (really) fair and balance they disproved that right-wing argument that you hear these days.

There is nothing particularly “European” or “socialist” about Mr Obama’s stimulus package. Countries the world over are spending public money in a bid to boost demand and shore up the banks. Indeed, some of the most stubborn resistance to deficit financing has come from Europe, particularly from
Germany and the EU finance ministers. Messrs Gingrich and Romney might note that the man who set this ball rolling was not Mr Obama but Mr Bush, the most
un-European politician imaginable.

What about Mr Obama’s plans to raise taxes and redirect policy? There are plenty of plausible criticisms of these (such as the fact that his numbers do not add up), but the idea that they entail “full-scale Europeanisation”, as Mark Steyn, a columnist, argues, is one of the least persuasive. Mr Obama’s budget will return the top tax rates to 36% and 39.6%—back to where they were during Bill Clinton’s administration.

I would ad that whenever right-wing conservatices use this argument (that the US is becoming dangerously European), ask they what they mean exactly, ask for specific examples , and ask what they know about Europe, and you'll soon find out about their abyssimal cluelessness of European politics and economics.

Just for the beauty of it and because I think the last part of the article reflects in the best possible way the vision of this blog, here's the end of it:

The fury about “European socialism” is not just wrong as a matter of fact. It is foolish as a matter of policy. Europe has plenty of things to teach the United States (particularly about running a welfare state), just as America has plenty to teach Europe (particularly about igniting entrepreneurialism). Indeed, a more telling criticism of the Obama administration is not that it is borrowing too much from Europe but that it is learning too little.

(.../...)

Europeans and Americans are never likely to coalesce: their cultural traditions are too strong and their solutions to the problem of regulating capitalism too distinctive. But they nevertheless have plenty in common—ageing populations, exploding entitlements and above all, at the moment, a wrenching recession. Europeans have thankfully toned down the America-bashing that was popular a few years ago. Americans might consider returning the compliment.

Shakeaspeare's True Portrait

According to scholars, this is what Shakespeare may have looked like after all.... more a handsome bard than the "hippie uncle — balding, moustached, longish hair in back." we usually imagine. This is may be no less than "the only true likeness we have of the greatest writer of the English language" (Time)

(looks smart too - must have to do with the large forehead....)

Deregulation and the Economic Crisis (part 2)

I am baffled by how so many conservatives (see CPAC or the comment by one of our reader on a previous post) continue with same old “cut tax” and “less regulation” remedy as if nothing had happened. Their denial that deregulation is at the core of the current economic crisis we are in is beyond reason to me.

Their argument can be summed up in these few points: it is the fault of the FED (who of course regulated too much), Freddie and Fannie (which are institutions created by the government and worse originally created by the Roosevelt administration), as well as the Community Reinvestment act of 1977 (“which encourages lenders to lend to uncredit worthy borrowers”) and the “too big to fail institutions which became too big because of regulatory capture”.

The culprits may be the right one (the Fed and F&F for instance), but the reason is not too much regulation, it is not enough of it added with much encouraged greed.

1. Yes, the Fed and Alan Greenspan are largely responsible for a lot of the subprime mess but it is because he encouraged bad mortgages and refused to reign in. Here’s a good example:
"American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage," Greenspan recommended in a speech to the Credit Union National Association in February 2004.
(Greenspan, by the way, has been a proponent of Ayn Rand’s political philosophy of “Objectivism” which is basically a glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest).

2. As for Freddie and Fannie, the main problem was indeed that profits were privatized but the risks were socialized – a bad combination if there is no regulation. It is the need for more profits (and the pressure of shareholders) that caused them to push for unreasonable measures. The Clinton administration is also partly guilty as they pushed for more mortgages for poor(er) people. Their intention may have been good but the consequences, not so much. However, it is in 2004 (under the Bush administration) that the problem got worse and got us into this mess. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of the risky lending and got F&F into that sort of business they previously shunned – and that was a political decision. Not only did HUD not play its regulatory role over Fannie and Freddie but it forced them to take risks.

3. As for the idea that the 2007 mortgage crisis was the result of a 1977 law, it is obviously ludicrous. Besides, most subprime loans were made by firms that were not subjected to the CRA anyway (which is not surprising since the CRA program required higher supervision)

4. There’s been a coherent path towards deregulation in the last 8 to 10 years so I am curious to see how the argument of “too much regulation” may be even remotely used to explain the current mess.

Before deregulation banks were restricted to certain businesses and could not for instance enter into the insurance or brokerage business. Regulation also obliged banks to evaluate risk and the creditworthiness of borrowers (loans could not be sold to the secondary bond). So banks could not package the subprime loans into complex financial instruments.
Not only did deregulation eliminate all the firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms but it also resulted in dangerous mergers.
It is also the lack of regulation in the loan industry that allowed all sort of dubious people to “sell loans” without any background check - no state or federal regulatory body required a license. The pizza guy could become a loan officer!

In the banking industry, it is because the FEC did not do its job (since it relied on “voluntary” supervision program) that banks could run amok.
Competition and free-market are good but just like anything else in human nature, there needs to be a balance. For competition to work, you need fairness. When companies become too big, they disrupt the market. (hence the need for anti-trust laws such as the Sherman laws of the 19th cent.).
The market alone does not have the “the discipline ensued from competitive forces would allow things to be put in check”. With freedom comes responsibility and when companies become too big, the risk they take has ripple effect onto the community at large, and they know it (indeed they become “too big to fail”).

Back to the Farm... or to the Show?

Last week French news was marked by the success of France's Agricultural Fair. To put it a nutshell, it is as if the biggest American state fair were hosted in Manhattan. This year it reached an all-time record with 670, 000 visitors over 9 day.

This week's The Economist suggests that this success may be partly due to the recession and the desire to go back to something reassuringly tangible (le terroir) as the "French remain intimately tied to the produce of their local terroirs through reguional cuisine and open-air markets."

With its roots in the soil, farming is everything that complex financial capitalism is not. You know what you put in—and what you get out usually ends up on the dinner table.

That may true, but as they also did not fail to notice : "there are 80,000 unfilled farming jobs, even though unemployment in France is 8.3% and rising". Will French now flock to these jobs and back to the countryside? Maybe, but the Paris Farm Show seems so much better when you can dream of an ideal past without doing the hard work.

The New Media

I was jogging on the treadmill this morning (something about preferring not to run on ice and slush that pushes me indoors in the winter) listening to a podcast of one of my favorite shows (On Point with Tom Ashbrook). The topic was television and new media. I learned that Americans on average watch 151 hrs of television per month. Not just on the television, of course, but through a variety of media: podcast, Hulu, TiVo, etc. I'm a fan of Hulu myself. We watch Battlestar Galactica, SNL and The Office online. Rarely do I watch anything anymore on the actual television screen, mostly just sports and political broadcasts.

The manner in which we get our news and entertainment is fundamentally changing. Newspapers are closing their doors left and right in the US. I was on the receiving end of some criticism recently for my viewing habits, something about ruining the good ol' American newspaper. I read all my news online. I read my hometown paper online rather than buying the print version. That paper is now in bankruptcy court. I readily accept my role in the paper's demise. And to be honest, I have no regrets. There is an evolution going on in media right now. While the content remains largely unchanged, the delivery of that content is the subject of much speculation and negotiation. Print newspapers are going to die. It's as simple as that. Certain family members disagree with that prognosis, but mostly because it's an uncomfortable reality for them. Large regional papers cannot survive when so much of what they print is redundant by the time of its printing (which is, paradoxically, why smaller local papers may survice, because they provide local coverage that local readers can't find anywhere else). Television provides immediate coverage of events and issues. Magazines survive by providing a narrative to these events and behind-the-scenes access to the players. Newspapers trying to find some middle-ground are left with nothing. As the generation of print subscribers dies off, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for a physical newspaper. And as connectivity improves and news content moves to centralized sites of distribution on the internet, print papers will cease to exist.

The NY Times may survive the longest given its important status. I'm certain that its cultural role will survive, if only in modified form. USA Today, the McPaper of the America press, survives for now based on its non-local coverage and its contracts with the many hotels that distribute it for free to their guests. Already in the last two weeks we have heard that the Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest paper, has folded and that Hearst has put the San Francisco Chronicle on the chopping block. Every newspaper of note has had to build its web presence. Some have tried to charge for access to this web-based content, most notably the NY Times, but none has been able to make that revenue model work for them. It remains to be seen what sort of model will come from this. We can complain all we want about declining international coverage in the news media, but unless it provides revenue what is there to motivate its inclusion?

Ten years ago who could have imagined the ways in which news media would have shifted? We may not have even seen the new new media. My bet is that within ten years the majority of American newspapers will have either closed their doors or migrated online. Any takers?

Environmentally Friendly Consumption.

Doing what is right for the environment can be complicated if you want to take everything into account. Here are some surprising numbers I just read in this week's The Economist :

Consumers may already be aware of the environmental impact of producing goods in terms of energy or pollution, but they might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods.

A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot. According to a new book on the subject, 1,120 litres of water go into producing a single litre of the beverage, once growing the beans, packaging and so on are measured. Only 120 litres go into making the same amount of tea. As many as four litres of water are used to make a litre of the bottled stuff. Household items are even thirstier. Thousands of litres are needed to make shoes, hamburgers and microchips.

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Picture of the week.

Don't you love it?

A carnival float depicting a flying U.S. President Obama with Europe being dragged along is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. Rose-Monday-Parades in the carnival strongholds of Duesseldorf, Mainz and Cologne are watched by hundreds of thousands of revelers and mark the highlights of Germany's carnival season. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Deregulation and the Economic Crisis (part1)

In case you are also getting fed up with the anti-government-intervention/anti-regulation rhetoric of the conservative free-marketer Republicans who have nothing better to offer as a remedy for the economic crisis than more of the same (tax cuts, and tax cuts and even… more tax cuts! - where does it end, no one knows...), here are a few facts and dates that show the correlation between deregulation and the current financial meltdown to throw at them :

- 1982 : The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 : deregulated the Savings and Loan industry and allowed adjustable rate mortgages.

-1999 : the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act eliminated the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which controlled speculation and separated investment and commercial banking activities, opening up competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies (law was passed to legalize mergers like Citibank and Travelers Group, an insurance company, and in 1998)

Other restrictions which prohibited bank holding companies from owning non-financial institutions were also repealed by the same law.

-2000 : The 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, “regulatory relief” provided deregulation for products offered by banking institutions. The law was partly written by Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the free-marketer Republican chairman of the Senate Banking Committee AND lobbyists for Enron (the bill also exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms - see the Enron scandal)

- 2004 : On April 28 the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) ruled that investment banks got rid of the Net Capital Rule which allowed "voluntary" inspection of the SEC and also meant that banks could essentially determine their own net capital. (In late September 2008, the commission decided to end the 2004 program of voluntary regulation.).

In fact, corporate self-regulation was the philosophical cornerstone of the Bush economic (and environmental) policy. But following the meltdown, even Christopher Cox, the former U.S. Securities Exchange Commission Chairman and longtime proponent of deregulation admitted lack of oversight helped cause the financial crisis.

"The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work," Cox said in a statement, adding that the program had been shut down and authority to regulate investment banks had been transferred to the Federal Reserve. (NYTimes)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for capitalism (since there is no alternative anyway) and freedom but not free-market anarchism. Regulated capitalism is and has always been the right way to go and it suits our philosophy on this blog that true solutions come with moderation and that excess is often bad.

I’m always wary of incongruous and easy historical parallels but nonetheless I find it somewhat ironic than the Great Depression also followed a period of more laissez-faire economic policies in the 1920s (doing away with the regulations of the Wilsonian progressive era) during which the top tax rate was lowered to 25 percent and the stock market began its spectacular rise.

It is basically the same recipe and only the ingredients have changed a bit: too much borrowing, too much speculation with other people's money, and too little regulation.

Small and for Rent.

In 2006 we wrote a post on the now-famous derogatory term McMansions and how the size of American homes had more then "doubled since 1950 with a median single-family home at 2,349 square feet (218 sq meters) against 1,570 square feet in 1980."

This increase in house size is also true in Europe but to a lesser extent (927.85 square feet or 86.2 m² in 2000- a rise from the 731.9 square feet or 68 m2 in 1970).

Well, it looks like the current economic crisis is taking its toll on big houses. According to this week's Economist, "Small is now Beautiful".

The trend is to scale back. According to the Census Bureau, the median size of home starts dropped to 2,114 square feet in the fourth quarter of 2008, down more than 100 square feet from the first quarter of the year. And 100 square feet is a significant slice of space.

The other trend in housing may be to favor renting over owning homes.

That was the interesting theory I heard on NPR Week-Edition Saturday in the discussion with Richard Florida who also wrote an article in The Atlantic this month about How the Crash Will Reshape America.

Here the word "reshape" should be taken literally in its physical and geographical sense for Mr Florida makes a link between the economy and geography :

To a surprising degree, the causes of this crash are geographic in nature, and they point out a whole system of economic organization and growth that has reached its limit. Positioning the economy to grow strongly in the coming decades will require not just fiscal stimulus or industrial reform; it will require a new kind of geography as well, a new spatial fix for the next chapter of American economic history.
He even sees the end of suburbanization and low-density sprawl and because "the economy is driven by key urban areas; a different geography is required".

Mr Florida also sort of debunks the myth of ownership as part of the "American Dream":

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there.

I don't necessarily agree with him on this. I think it has been part of the American Dream since the Letters of an American Farmer and Jefferson's dream of an ownership society. However, faced with this crisis, the Americans may have to reshape their Dream indeed and be a bit more creative and flexible with regard to their "pursuit of happinness" .

On the Shameful Hysterical Rant of Rick Santelli.

Former trader and financial executive now turned “journalist” Rick Santelli’s hysterical rant about the mortgage bailout plan on CNBC last week struck a raw nerve at the White House and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs spent several minutes criticizing the rant at his Friday (Feb. 20) press conference.

It got me unusually mad too.

Unfortunately such outbursts have become rather common on MSNBC (think of Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews or even Keith Olbermann) but Santelli’s resentment is so typical of what we have heard from other divisive right-wing disconnected populists over the last decade (the Rugh Limbaughs and other Sean Hannitys) that it gets really REALLY old and tiring – especially in hard times when other people should really be angry.

Those free-market ideologues should have the decency of keeping a low profile since it is precisely their extreme elitists’ ideologies of deregulation and Wall Street values of making an easy buck that got us into this mess.

It is not the government that’s promoting bad behavior, Mr Santelli, it is THE BORKERS, THE BANKS, WALL SREET and DEREGULATION and GREEDY POPULISTS like you that have been promoting bad behavior.

But Mr Santelli lives and breathes through Wall Street and sees nothing else. His world is a world made only of losers and winners (in which he is a winner), and of course if you happen to be a “loser”, it’s because you deserve it. If you are behind in your mortgage, you must be a loser so why “Subsidize the losers’ mortgages”?

Santelli should leave the trading floor every once in a while and see what the world is like out there.

No, not everyone behind on their mortgage knowingly took out a loan they were incapable of making payments on. In this day and age, job losses happen (in addition to the usual divorce, sudden illness, and so forth).

For Santelli to turn to a room full of brokers and traders making (not long ago anyway) six figures and say “This is America” is very telling of his disconnect from the rest of us.

As he put it later when he was grilled by Chris Matthews, there is indeed a “philosophical” issue here, and his view is indeed typical of extreme right-wing ideologues of his kind who think that just because some people might (emphasis on “some” and “might”) take advantage of the system (any system) then there should be no system – no healthcare, no welfare, no bailout, no nothing! Those who can’t make it may as well deserve death.

This economic and financial crisis is having such a great impact on our society that many of the free-market ideologues are bound to be either in denial, or become liars, schizophrenic or victims of post-traumatic stress - it is after all Hank Paulson, who under G. W Bush (both big fans of deregulation) first nationalized the cost of bad loans made by financial institutions.

And for the Republicans to now complain about government spending and get away with it is something else - as you can see on this chart, the debt has tripled under Reagan, it shrank under Clinton, and went up again with Bush now reaching about 8.7 times its 1980 level.

I suppose it is ok when the spending goes to phony star-war programs or unnecessary wars but not so much to help lower-middle class Americans who are losing their homes!

The good thing is that Santelli is so far out there that his call for a “tea party” from the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will be the laugh of the nation.

The moral of the story ? It is that there is nothing moral about it. Populism and anger still pay off in America :

Santelli, who doesn't have an agent, said he already has heard from several publishers, a prospect that interests him. And he previously has enjoyed doing talk radio. That said, he noted, "I'm pretty happy with what I do."

If nothing else, his value to CNBC has increased demonstrably with the exposure his commentary on the housing plan has brought to the cable network owned by General Electric's NBC Universal. His video has set a record at CNBC.com, scoring many times as many page views as the site's previous leader, a 2007 rant by Jim Cramer.

"I've been associated with them 14 years, 10 years on the payroll, and you never see me much in commercials and whatnot," Santelli said. "Boy, has that changed in the last 36 hours."

(Chicago Tribune)

Is Nationalisation Cultural?

On Friday the market fell to a 6-year low. It did not seem to like the idea of nationalizing the banks. In fact, it had fallen even deeper earlier (down to an 11-year low) when the head of the Senate Banking Committee said that some banks might have to be nationalized for a while. (NPR)

I can understand that Wall Street loathes the mere idea of nationalization , but what about the rest of America?

President Obama on Friday linked the economic concept of "nationalization" to "culture" when he compared the situation in the U.S. to that of Sweden in the 90s (a country that "took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again") :

Obviously, Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets and America's different. And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core -- core investment needs of this country. (ABC)

I am not an economist but when many of them, including Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, say nationalization is the only way out of the current financial crisis, given that the nation's largest banks are now carrying a crushing half a trillion dollars in bad debt (ABC), I tend to listen.

And the argument that our culture won’t stand for nationalization — well, our culture isn’t too friendly towards bank bailouts of any kind. Yet those bailouts are necessary; and even in America they may be more palatable if taxpayers at least get to throw the bums out. Oh, and not a week goes by without the FDIC taking several smaller banks into receivership. Nationalization is actually as American as apple pie. (Paul Krugman, NYTimes)

Personally, I like the pragmatic approach of the British. They may still fail, but it seems to me that they had the merit of being flexible and did not let free-market ideology blind them (they started nationalizing some of their banks as early as last October simply because they had to). I think the U.S. has suffered enough from an all-ideological approach.

Other Europeans, such as the French have always had a very complicated love-hate relationship with nationalization, and the French have been divided over this question along party lines, although it is not a concept as frightening to the French people as to a lot of Americans.

Interestingly the current conservative government in France (whose platform included precisely the privatization of the remains of the public sector) has agreed that nationalization may be necessary - just for a while anyway.

Nationalization is "not a dirty word", French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told Reuters on the sidelines of an event at Columbia University in New York.

"It's sometimes a tool and a way to restore a situation for a temporary period of time -- and then there's privatization again." (Reuters)

Paris Transformers

These are two stills taken from the trailer of Transformers 2 - a $300 budget Science Fiction/action movie. Of course, anyone who's been to Paris will be in shock

[Clue: look at the Eiffel Tower. Duh!]

The Eiffel Tower is not slightly misplaced, it is on the wrong side of the bank of the Seine river.

You'd think a $ 300 million might take things a bit more seriously.... So what to make of this?

Does that mean that the director (Michael Bay) and the Executive producer (no less than Steven Spielberg) are so ignorant about Paris that they don't know where the Eiffel Tower is?

Not even! In fact, the crew did shoot in Paris, so why add the Eiffel Tower where it is not supposed to be? Is there an artistic reason for it? Is it because they want dumb American teenagers to know that the scene actually takes place in Paris? Oh, I admit, I'm being arrogantly French! Not everybody has been to Paris.

But still, why not simply film the Place de la Concorde from the opposite angle, where you can actually see the Eiffel Tower?

Who cares anyway.... the audience is so dumb, right?

Americans and Europe.

In the New Yorker this week :

After the Senate passed the stimulus, which Sean Hannity, on Fox News, denounced as “the European Socialist Act of 2009,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pronounced it “a dramatic move in the direction of indeed turning America into Western Europe.

Matthiew Yglesias made an interesting point in his comments on "the right-wing’s new habit of issuing constant dire warnings that we’re about to plunge into the sort of [European] social democratic" .

I suspect that only a distinct minority of Americans have been to Europe. What’s more, the minority of Americans who’ve been to Europe are disproportionately drawn from the upper-echelons of the U.S. income distribution. And rich people have it pretty good here in the land of the free. By contrast, take a look at a “bad” neighborhood in Helsinki and compare it to a “transitional” neighborhood in DC—to say nothing of a genuinely down-and-out American ghetto—and it’s almost laughable.
But the beneficiaries of something like that aren’t going to Europe. Among what you might call America’s “traveling class,” the European alternative is going to look good to city-loving cosmopolitans (i.e., me and Rick Hertzberg) but pretty bad to your typical businessman.
In other words, it just replicates the cultural divide that already exists among the American elite. The people who would be the main beneficiaries of a more social democratic policy dynamic—a couple of non-college parents who could really use some free child care and and guaranteed health care and pension, for example—are relatively unlikely to have personal experience that cuts one way or the other regards to how terrifying Europe is.

In my experience of Americans visiting France, it is true that most of them come from the upper-classes and in cat, ironically, many Republicans who criticize Europe go there for their holidays... but it is not so true of Americans living in Europe for a good amount of time as they learn to appreciate better health care and public transports for instance. Interestingly, many missionaries sent to Europe by very conservative churches tend to become much less conservative over time, as they live outside America and they sometimes find it hard to connect with their communities (politically) as they return home.

"Hurray, Obama! Arrgh, Obama!" or America's Lack of Moderation and Perspective!

How relevant! From Salon.com

From Salon.com

Scary Reports on Climate Change...

I know people may be getting tired of hearing dramatic reports about climate change, especially global warming which seems a bit out far from our daily lives in the midst of one the coldest winters of the last few years in the Western atmosphere.

But personally, this sort of reports scare me more than anything else because unlike, say the economic crisis, there may be no going back, or at least not for generations....

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Field, a member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said emissions from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have largely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel's 2007 reports. The higher emissions are largely the result of the increased burning of coal in developing countries, he said.

(.../...)

"It's a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost," Field said.

(Washington Post)

Trouble in French "Paradise"

The French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe have been gripped by protests and strikes for more than 3 weeks now, and there is fear of contagion to Reunion. The local economy which is very dependent on tourism has come to a halt.

In case you’re not familiar with those islands, they are all French overseas departments and have the same political status as metropolitan departments and are integral parts of France, and the European Union.

The protests started because of the problems of living costs :

Prices of many staple items are much higher in the islands than in mainland France due to the cost of imports, while the average salaries are lower and unemployment is higher.

But there is a lot more to it - including racial and class tensions. Personally, I have never been to the French Caribbean, and I must admit I don’t know much about it and can hardly find anything worth adding to what you can read in the news.

I can just make a few observations about how I see it from Metropole (i.e. mainland France).

• I must that even though I grew up in France I never learned much about the French overseas departments and territories (also called DOM-TOM, an acronym used for départements d'outre-mer and territoires d'outre-mer ) in school, other than their legal existence and I suspect this is the case of pretty much all French citizens in Metropole.

• Then, there is never much about DOM-TOM in the French media anyway, other than a few reports on the touristic opportunities they may represent. Initially, the protests and strikes just made 30 second newsflashes (and usually only from the perspective of French tourists stranded there). Only when the government sent its minister for overseas territories, Yves Jégo, to the islands, did the news make the headlines – some 2 weeks later. Since then, there have been many reports and documentaries on Martinique and Guadeloupe.

• French president Sarkozy made his first public comments on the movement last Friday, 20 days after the strike and protest began and the topic was not even mentioned in his interview on Feb 6. Thisreflects the disconnection between the Metropole and its islands.

• From what we can see and hear, all the protesters are black and (almost) the owners are white in Martinique. The (almost exclusively white) elite group is mostly Béké (the descendants of colonists and slave holders) and makes up an estimated 1 percent of the population in Martinique, and owns the majority of industries while the (mostly) black workers are descended from African slaves brought to work on its colonial-era sugar plantations.

As reported by the International Herald Tribune:

Racial sentiments were inflamed after a one-hour documentary, "The last owners of Martinique," was shown on TV last week. The program focused on how the white minority group has dominated the economy.

One white business owner was quoted as saying historians should look at "the positive aspects of slavery" and that a mixed-race family lacks "harmony." Officials in France have opened an investigation against the businessman, Alain Huygues-Despointes.

Martinique's prefect, or political leader, Ange Mancini, had been renting from Huygues-Despointes but announced he has terminated his lease and found somewhere else to live. Mancini is white.

Of course, I am always wary of too simplistic a view. I have also read a few reports on unions forcing people to close their shops for instance or intimidating those who want to work, or making street blockades. There is fear the situation could escalate:

French riot police landed in the Caribbean territory of Martinique on Thursday to keep the peace.

[…/…]

Martinique's police chief, Col. Francois-Xavier Bourges, said 10 people have been detained for looting and stealing gasoline. Garbage piled up in the streets, and supermarkets were closed for the eighth straight day.

The Metropole is now paying attention and some say there is a risk of contagion to France. According to a recent poll, 63% of the French believe a similar movement might develop in France out of which 25% think it will and 38% think it is likely while only 38% do not.


Personally, I am skeptical that the movement will spread. Polls don’t mean much and people tend to be a bit dramatic about it, but of course, in this day and age, any prediction is hard.

The Side-Effects of English Domination.

The dominance of English in the world and in Europe is no news, and the current economic crisis and even the probable rise of nationalism won't change that.

This week The Economist gives another example of the rise of the English language in Europe :

The latest Anglo-surge comes from the European press, with a dramatic increase in the number of heavyweight publications launching English-language websites, offering translated news stories and opinion pieces [.../...] including big, established national journals and newspapers, whose bosses want to be more visible in English.

One of the great benefits of a common language is of course that you can read what other Europeans think about world events, and a Pole or a Czech certainly does not see things quite like a French or a Brit.

Should we deplore this and fear the risk of standardization of language and thought? We may but it won't change the reality of it :

Among Europeans born before the second world war, English, French and German are almost equally common. But according to a Eurobarometer survey, 15-to-24-year-olds are five times more likely to speak English as a foreign language than either German or French. Add native speakers to those who have learnt it, and some 60% of young Europeeans speak English “well or very well”.

Let's face it, what it comes down is 'practicality' :

Speakers at EU meetings automatically choose the language that excludes the fewest people in the room. They do not use the language best known, on average, by those present (which in some meetings will still be French). Instead, they seek the language that is understood, at least minimally, by all. Thanks to EU enlargement to the east (and poor language skills among British and Irish visitors to Brussels), this is almost always English.

It makes sense, doesn't it? So, are we in for more Anglo-Saxon domination? That has been the fear of the French since Napoleon which is why language has taken on such a nationalistic value in France.
The Economist's answer is 'no' - precisely because thanks a common language (i.e. English) and the internet, "a genuinely pan-European space for political debate is being created.". I tend to agree, especially if most Europeans become genuinely bilingual (which, by the way, most people in the world are! see footnote).

And that's precisely the problem of the Britons and, I would add, of Americans - ironically, the dominance of English is bad news for native English-speakers :

That means Britons find it ever harder to justify learning other languages. Even when they do, they have to speak other languages extremely well to avoid inflicting halting French, say, on rooms of fluent English-speakers.

One might think that Americans and Britons are at least in a favored position when it comes to speaking English. But they may actually need to un-learn their native English and learn World English (or even Globish) which is the new lingua franca of the world.

In Brussels, native English-speakers are notoriously hard for colleagues to understand: they talk too fast, or use obscure idioms.
Mr van Parijs [a economic, social and political sciences academic] has a prediction: Europeans will become bilingual, except for Anglophones, who are becoming monolingual. In other words, just when the British should be happy, some nasty storm clouds are gathering. You could say it sounds rather like a day at the British seaside.

This is something that all teachers of English have been aware of for years and it is a hot debate in the world of Academia? What variety of English should be taught?
It used to be (more or less) "American" vs. "British" English but now it is rather "Native English" v."World English". Of course there is also controversy as to what "World English" constitutes. It is growing, changing and absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide more rapidly than "traditional English" .
In recent years, there has been an emphasis on teaching the linguistic tools to communicate internationally as can be seen in international tests (such as the Cambridge ESOL General English exam) but a lot of teachers of EFL are reluctant to "simplify" their requirements and what they often see as a downgrading of quality standard. In the end though, they may have not have a choice and be a bit more Anglo-Saxon about it, (i.e. 'pratical') and adapt to the reality of a world of massive education and keep the native English to those few who choose to study it more thoroughly or show a greater interest in the English language.


NOTE : 1. : available data indicate that there are many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual. source here.

What makes a man change.... ?

This is the most positive news I have seen this week : a man who was a racist for years, who took part in multiple beatings of blacks in the 60s, joined the KKK and didn't even want his parents buried where blacks may be buried apologized to the man he attacked (John Lewis now a Congressman) at a South Carolina bus station during a protest in 1961.

Apparently, the catalyst was Obama's election. It seems almost too nice to be true. Can someone make such a dramatic turnaround in his life? Well, apparently it was a long process, the man said "he had felt an urge to voice his remorse for years" and according to Brian Williams (see here below), it was church and faith that helped him change.

Are We All French Now?

Will George W Bush by remembered as the president who closed the Age of laissez-faire philosophy when he effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries? Oh the irony would just kill me.

What is a certain is that idea of Big Government is in the air, and even the “S” word is not necessarily (just) an insult any more that you might be a traitor to the Republic.

This week, there was yet another daring article by Newsweek called provokingly “We are all socialists now”, comparing recent economic policies in the US to French socialism. Of course, we’re not there yet but beyond their easy association of France to berets and croissants, their analysis is interesting both in the short and long run. No doubt that, as we have seen this week, the classic laissez-faire ideology won’t go down without a fight. I am just impressed that the "S" word can now be uttered without the fear that you must be put to jail.

The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.

(…/…)

The story, as always, is complicated. Polls show that Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government. They do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense and, now, protections from banking and housing failure. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and "liberal" an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew. But the economy grew just as fast, so government as a percentage of GDP remained about the same. Much of that economic growth was real, but for the past five years or so, it has borne a suspicious resemblance to Bernie Madoff's stock fund. Americans have been living high on borrowed money (the savings rate dropped from 7.6 percent in 1992 to less than zero in 2005) while financiers built castles in the air.

Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace.

The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.

NOTE : It is also ironic that laissez-faire and Socialism both have French origins.