Iraq

I realize this is my third post of the day, but I had prepared the book entry at home and this one is simply too good to pass up on.

Foreign Policy has created a ranking of the Top 10 winners of the Third Gulf War.
Here we go:

1. Iran
2. Moqtada al-Sadr
3. Al-Qaeda
4. Samuel Huntington
5. China
6. Arab Dictators
7. The Price of Oil
8. The United Nations
9. Old Europe
10. Israel

You can only read some of the articles for free (and you need to be registered for some, check www.bugmenot.com), so I cannot validate some of the selections which I don't quite understand (Israel? When Iran is the top winner?).

All in all, good job Mr Bush, Mr Cheney, Mr Rumsfeld.

Antisemitismus

Im Ruhwald Park (das ist am Spandauer Damm in der Nähe vom Wasserturm, für diejenigen von Euch, die diesen Park nicht kennen, meine Grundschule liegt direkt auf der anderen Straßenseite) ist in der Nacht zum Sonntag ein jüdischer Kindergarten verwüstet worden. Im Ruhwald Park! Der jüdische Kindergarten befindet sich anscheinend in der Villa in welcher früher Freunde von mir in den Hort gingen. Irgendwie hat mich das sehr geschockt, das ist so nah, da habe ich früher gewohnt. Ich war so oft im Ruhwald Park Basketball spielen, auf dem Spielplatz, Fahrrad fahren, rodeln. Ich habe da regelmäßig Kindergeburtstage gefeiert!

Der Vorsitzende der jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin, Gideon Joffe, 'hat [deswegen] gutwillige Menschen aufgefordert, einen "Kippa-Test" zu machen, um das tägliche Bedrohungsgefühl eines in Deutschland lebenden Juden nachempfinden zu können. "Nicht-Juden sollten sich einfach mal eine Kippa (kreisförmige Kopfbedeckung, die Red.) auf den Kopf setzen oder einen Davidstern an die Kette hängen" (aus der FR).

Genau das werde ich machen, ich habe Herrn Joffe bereits eine Email geschrieben, weil ich keine Ahnung habe, wo man eigentlich eine Kippa herbekommt (oder wie die dann auf dem Kopf hält), hoffe, daß er (naja, seine Sekretärin) mir in den nächsten Tage antwortet und dann bin ich mal sehr gespannt darauf was passieren wird.

Der Jakubijân-Bau

Ich habe Der Jakubijân-Bau von Alaa al-Aswani wieder einmal relativ schnell durch gelesen, zwei Tage brauchte ich glaube ich, aber ich habe halt nicht so sonderlich viel zu tun momentan. Das Buch war ein Geschenk (Danke Sarah) und - soweit ich mich erinnere - der erste Roman aus dem arabischen Raum (Ägypten um genau zu sein), welchen ich je gelesen habe.

Al-Aswani erzählt die Geschichten der Bewohner eines großen Apartmentkomplexes in Kairo. Oben auf dem Dach wohnen die armen Bewohner, in den Wohnungen weiter unten befinden sich die Mitglieder der Mittel- und Oberschicht. Es wird die Geschichte erzählt eines erfolgreichen, schwulen Journalisten, dessen armer und verheiratete
Liebhaber, eines Parlamentsabgeordneten, der sich selber zu einem Amt schummelt und dann trotzdem weiter gehorchen muß, eines Mädchens, welches bedingt durch ihre Armheit sexuell ausgenutzt wird, eines jungen Mannes, welcher sich radikalisiert durch seine Unterdrückung und die Beleidigungen, welche er erfährt, und, und, und.

Ich fand das ganze unglaublich fesselnd, man mußte sich anfangs ein wenig daran
gewöhnen, daß alle zwei oder drei Seiten der Protagonist wechselte aber nach einer Weile, sobald mit den wichtigsten Figuren ein wenig vertraut ist, erscheint dieser ständige Wechsel sogar sehr angenehm. Mein einziges Problem mit den Geschichten war, daß die meisten von ihnen absolut desillusionierend endeten. Ich kann zwar mit billigen Happy-Ends nicht allzu viel antun, aber viele dieser Menschen erlitten
dann doch sehr grausame Schicksale. Nichtsdestotrotz, ein sehr empfehlenswertes Buch.

The Crossing

The Crossing is Cormac McCarthy's second book that I've read and similar to the Coetzee book which I will discuss on Monday I have to say that I liked it a lot better than the respective first one. Maybe one has to get accustomed to a writes of a certain stature before one can really enjoy his writing (I remember that Faulkner As I Lay Dying did not please me all that much either when I first read it), whatever the reason, this McCarthy novel was really good. It had certain parts in Spanish that I only partly understood and some of the dream-like philosophical sequences were a little too abstract for me - I sometimes wonder whether that is just me, or whether the reader is supposed to understand these, help on this would be welcome - but the general story line made it a really good read.

A young man from New Mexico repeatedly travels into Mexico and is confronted with a society that is far more violent and less modern than the one that he comes from. The novel takes place during the 1st World War, so modernity has made its inroads already, yet Billy, the protagonist, is a representative of the past, someone who has not really gotten used to cars, airplanes or even basic legal issues (like death certificates or burial licenses). As one can imagine the novel is not a happy one, it does not even provide any kind of closure (whether negative or positive) in the end, yet it was a very thought-provoking book and I can only recommend it to anyone.

I should probably add that I am in general a big fan of stories on the beginning of modernity and how people dealt (or did not) with it, if you are not, this book might not be worth it for you after all.

Schande

Ich hatte von J.M. Coetzee schon irgendwann mal ein Buch gelesen, an welches ich mich nur dunkel erinnern kann, als ich dann bei meinen Großeltern Schande rumliegen sah und nicht viel zutun hatte, schlug ich es auf und las innerhalb eines Tages durch - ehrlicherweise las ich ein wneig zu schnell, weil ich am Anfang noch dachte, ich könnte es nicht mitnehmen und deswegen soweit als möglich noch bei meinen Großeltern kommen wollte. In meiner Erinnerung war ich von dem ersten Coetzee Buch nicht so begeistert gewesen, ich muß aber eingestehen, daß mich dieses fesselte.
Es geht um einen Professor der eine Beziehung mit einer Studentin anfängt und deswegen sich aufs Land auf die Farm seiner Tochter zurückziehen muß. Obwohl es zeitweise schwierig ist nachvollziehen, warum der Protagonist sich verhält wie er es tut, ist die Geschichte eine die man kaum absetzen kann. Der einzige Punkt der mich enttäuschte, war das Ende, der Professor vollzieht in einer gewissen Weise eine Wende, realisiert sein fortgeschrittenes Alter und scheint sich damit zufrieden zu geben. Dieser Wandel wurde in meinen Augen aber ncht vernünftig begründet, auch wenn er sich am Ende einem Lebensweg verschrieben hat, welcher am Anfang des Buches noch unmöglich für ihn gewesen wäre, scheint dieser Wandel nicht vollkommen nachvollziehbar, sein Lernprozess wird dem Leser gegenüber nicht wirklich abgeschlossen, sondern ein Teil desselben einfach übersprungen.

Political Leanings

If you are fearing (or hoping) to entertain some neoconservative notions, check out this test by the Christian Science Monitor. You have to answer 10 questions on foreign policy and then are grouped into the typical foreign policy belief groups (isolationists, liberals, realists and neocons). Not all that surprisingly I ended up a liberal (alongside Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter).

Ruther B. Hayes

I know this is getting old, I realize all everyone in Europe seems to do is bash the current US-administration. Yet, let me get this straight one more time. Since 9/11, the US has invaded Afghanistan, where the Taliban have still not been defeated and while something called a democracy is in placed every second (personal estimate) deputy in the parliament is a war-criminal. They have also invaded Iraq causing (if not directly) the death of over 500,000 people and leading to the re-emergence of Iran as an unopposed regional power. This latter invasion has crippled American military might as far as that any threat against Sudan (Darfur!), Iran, Syria or North Korea rings hollow. Well, no one said the War on Terror was going to be easy, but check out what the NY Times has to say about Al-Qaida:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counter terrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan.

How do you spell miserable failure again? I don't think even Ruther B. Hayes will be able to compete with this administration in the long run. Five years after the worst attack on American soil, after billions of money spent, thousands of deaths, a changed - more multi-polar - world has come about and shouldn't there be something to show for the 43nd POTUS? Something, anything?

Je fais rire le monde ... mais le monde me fait pleurer!

Ali Akbar viens de Pakistan et maintenant il travail dans le quartier autour Sant-Germain-de-Près. Là, il vends Le Monde tout le jour. Il est assez connu dans ce quartier parce que il est sociable et surtout parce que il est un originial. Par exemple il écrit les titres imaginaire pour son journal tout le temps (Ca y est! Ca y est! La retraite à 35, c'est décidé!). Moi je le crossais tout le dimance quand je travaillais dans mon bar à Odeon. Il était pot avec mon collègue et on bavardait avec lui un peu tout le temps. Quand je découvrais qu'il avait écris une autobiographie je l'ai acheté.
Le livre n'était pas mal. Bien sûr, ce n'est pas la haute culture, mais sa vie était compliqué et assez intéressant. Il est né en Pakistan et il raconte dans le livre comme il arrivait à vendre les journal à Paris. Peut-être si l'on ne connait pas ce n'est pas vraiment la paine, mais pour moi, ca marchait bien.

The Reivers

Can I even say anything about Faulkner anymore? I love the way he phrases his sentences. I love his stories, his protagonists who in all their faults are so human. While the Reivers is not up to par to classics such as Absalom, Absalom it is nevertheless a great book and in the opus of virtually every other author would have to be considered a classic. A boy, a black servant and a white no-good steal a car and go off to Memphis. I have to admit that I prefer it when Faulkner deals with subjects that lie further in the past than 1905 - the time when this novel is set. Nonetheless, I can only preach to anyone who has never read Faulkner to get one of his books. I read this one in about 3-4 days and thoroughly enjoyed it.

:07 seconds or less

I got :07 seconds or less - My Season on the Bench with Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns by Jack McCallum as a late birthday/christmas combo present (danke, Christoph). I read it the last couple of days now on my commute into the city. Upfront I have to admit that I usually haven't enjoyed sports books all that much, they are often not that well written and contain nothing really new. A sport is something to watch or play but not really to write about (except as in a recount of facts). Also, the title is kind of misleading as it is not really the season that McCallum discusses but rather the playoffs.

Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It does of course help that I liked that Suns team and their style of basketball, but I found it interesting in general to see the inner workings of a team like that. How some players coast, how some players need more psychological attention. How other players have a precarious ego. How some play their heart out only to stay in the league. You normally don't consider players as a person, they are just an image on a screen. You judge how they play but you never consider how they got there or what they do after the game. Also, the tactical side is something undervalued by a gut player (not a compliment that) like me, crazy really how much planning goes into all this (not that that was something new really, but the book made me more (or again) aware of it). All in all definitely recommandable for anyone looking for an easy and quick read.

Porte de la Paix céleste

Oui, parfois je lis un livre lequel n'est pas de René Goscinny. Ce fois, c'était de Shan Sa. Elle une écrivaine chinoise qui habite en France et écrit en francaise. Je lisait un livre d'elle avant (La joueuse de Go) en allemand, et je l'aimais. Sa sujet est la Chine. Cette histoire raconte comment une fille qui organisait les protestes d'étudiants en 1989 fuit Beijing après le gouvernement avait terminé les manifestations avec l'aide de l'armée. Au même temps elle décrit l'officier qui est responsable pour l'attraper. Lui, il lit le journal de la fille et lentement commence à ses séparer de sa croyance à la Parti communiste. Le livre est assez court (même pas 150 pages), mais il me captivait vraiment. En comparaison avec La joueuse de Go je le trouvais mois fort, mais avec une livre aussi fort comme La joueuse ca ce n'est pas vraiment negative. Si vous lisez en francais et la ne connaissez pas, vas-y, l'achetez.

Samuel Huntington

I had to read The Hispanic Challenge by Samuel Huntington for a class on immigration in Paris and I've been wanting to post something on that for a while now. Finally have found the time to do so.

The basic argument that this famed scholar is proposing (The Clash of Civilizations should be a name most people have heard before) is that the current - Hispanic - immigration into the US is unprecedented (in numbers and social impact) and that these new immigrants unlike their predecessors in the 19th and early 20th century don't integrate themselves.

I was really shocked by his essay. A scholar as renowned, teaching at Harvard, only one of the elite universities in the world, basically argued completely incoherent and unscientific. While Huntington never actually can be put on the spot for being xenophobic, his lack of arguments coupled with the general sentiments he expresses certainly imply that he is thinking in that manner.

A couple of examples:

• "Will the United States remain a country with a [...] core Anglo-Protestant culture?"
  It seems clear that he cannot refer to pop culture here as the dominant strain in American pop music over the 20th century has been of Afro-American descent, whether it be Jazz, Blues, Rock n Roll, Soul or Hip Hop. Yet, even when focusing on high culture, it seems to me that Jewish or black contributions (Harlem Renaissance anybody?) are completely ignored.


• "The extent [...] of this immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration."
  I beg to differ, right now for every 1000 US-citizens there are 1,5 Mexicans living in the US. From 1840 to 1850 there were 3,6 Irish per 1000 US-citizens, from 1840 to 1890 more Germans than currently Mexicans and from 1901 to 1910 more Russians, Italians and Austro-Hungarians.


• "English language use and fluency for first - and second - generation Mexicans thus seem to follow the pattern common to past immigrants."
  "The [...] nature of this immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration."
  Sorry for the double double quotation. Do I even need to comment any further? Seems like Huntington can't really draw a connection between his statistics and the way he would like to perceive things."


• After he has admitted that language assimilation is actually similar to earlier immigrant groups he goes on to claim that "if the second generation does not reject Spanish outright, the third generation is also likely to be bilingual, and fluency in both languages is likely to become institutionalized." So, if the second generation (which according to his own numbers does not really speak Spanish all that well) does not refuse any contact with Spanish whatsoever, the third generation will be fluent and so will their children, grand-children and so on. Anyone care to explain the logic behind this to me?


• Finally, he reverts to a very clever idea to mask some of his more distasteful sentiments. He quotes Mexicans about Mexicans and thus gets away with expressing opinions such as that "almost no one in the Mexican community" "believes in 'education and hard work.'"


• More fundamentally, Huntington never even explains to the reader why bilingualism would be something so inherently bad that it needs to be challenged in order to preserve the American "political integrity."

Les vacances du petit Nicolas

Oui, je sais, c'est un peu trop, mais je lisais un autre Petit Nicolas. En fait je suis en train de réfléchir, si je m'acheterai le nouveau aussi. Je vais pas dire plus sur ca, sauf que je l'aimais encore et que je le lisais dans un après-mid. Mon prochain livre en francais sera un peu plus difficile, promis.

The Senate

A couple of words about me.
I am currently in Frankfurt and am working for the HSFK here. I am doing research on decision making in regard to defense affairs in the USA after the end of the Cold War. As part of this work I have to read a lot of biographies of Senators, because of that I stumble over interesting tidbits on American politics every once in a while. I will take advantage of this and post them here. Have fun.

• In the USA (all except three states currently) the governor names a replacement Senator in case the incumbent retires or dies. Thus, when Senator Frank Murkowski retired the Governor of Alaska named a new Senator. The only problem with this, the new governor was good ol' Frank and the new Senator his daughter, Lisa Murkowski.


• Apparently (this was new to me) there is a clause somewhere that says that any (1) senator can block any law anonymously (yes, you read that correctly). When Barrack Obama and Tom Coburn introduced The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (nomen est omen in regard to the content of this bill: "with an easily searchable database of the name and amount of every federal grant, contract or award of $25,000 or more") exactly this happened. By now it has been uncovered that Ted Stevens (Alaska again) is the culprit here. Can't really see anything less obvious you could do - short of admitting - to make everyone aware of what kind of politician you are.


• I kind of like McCain, his hero story is just too good, and I don't judge extramarital affairs either, but dumping his wife after he came back from the war because she "she had become 4 inches shorter, gained weight, and had to use crutches to walk" (because of some kind of sickness) seems so heartless to me, it is incredible.


• Don't we all love our hypocritical right wing Christians. I personally, am a big fan. Tim Hutchinson in his time in the Senate was a winner of the Christian Coalition’s Friend of the Family award, he also is a baptist preacher and was one of the leaders on the Christian right in the Republican party. Good thing then that he divorced his wife of 29 years in order to copulate with his congressional aide. I am sure Archangel Michael (or was it Gabriel?) will account for his missionary attempts when measuring his sins on judgement day.


• Joe Lieberman I never liked but I found out that he went down to Mississippi for several weeks in 1963 in order to help African-American register to vote. That impressed me, white people, black people, purple people, whoever tried that back then stood a good chance of returning to the North in a casket.


• And a quote from Max Cleland an Ex-Senator from Arkansas and Vietnam Veteran:
  "The president has declared 'major combat over' and sent a message to every terrorist, 'Bring them on.' As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in sight [...] Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance."


• Finally, if you want to check out some of the most intriguing story lines of Congress in 2006, check out this and if you are as surprised at the existence of a White Panther Party as I was, read up on it

Flags of our Fathers

Need to do some catching up here again, seems to be the story line of this blog, catching up that is.

Flags of our Fathers was written by James Bradley in cooperation with Ron Powers and has recently been turned into a movie by Clint Eastwood (a movie which I still haven't managed to watch). It tells the story of the men in the famous picture taken on Iwo Jima. The author (Bradley) is the son of one of the men in the picture. Of the six visible (more or less at least) in the image, three died over the next couple of days while the other three returned to the USA to a hero's welcome, because the image had become the most iconic one of the war.

The Pentagon tried to utilize these new heroes and ordered the three surviving men to come and appear on the 7th Bond Tour (in order to collect money for the last efforts in the Pacific theatre). The men had a hard time to deal with this new-found fame. Ira Hayes (a Pimo-Indian who was later the subject of a Johnny Cash song), developed a drinking habit that he was never able to shake again (he died an alcohol related death only a couple of years later). Rene Gagnon never managed to combine his status as a hero directly after the war and his job as a janitor only months after that, he never was able to rise out of his low-income and repeatedly tried and failed to benefit from his war-time status in some way. Jack Bradley finally, while having a successful career as the owner of a funeral home, never (literally) talked to his children or wife about neither his war experiences nor the advertisement tour he was obliged to go on.

While these traumatic events after the war might be the most interesting aspects of the book, about two thirds of it are dedicated to the run-up of Iwo Jima and finally the fateful attack on that deserted island. Considering I was (and still am) quite the ignorant in regard to the Asian War theatre, I liked obtaining some more information on this chapter of World War II. Plus, Bradley and Powers while no Faulkner (a stalwart of my author descriptions I guess) manage to portray the slaughter, the misery, the foolishness, the cruelty of this battle quite well. It is shocking to read what happened there, while none of the details were really new, usually I view them with a certain emotional distance due to the simple fact that I do not have any connection to any of the protagonists (the soldiers). The book made me overcome this (whether that is something positive remains to be answered, yet it was the case).

It honestly has been a while since I read this book plus I am not the most emotionally stable person right now, thus my incoherent entry, but I would definitely recommend the book for anyone interested in history, even if Bradley sometimes lets a little too much emotionally charged sentimality run wild.