Avuncular American

The Sea in Between: Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Project

A Project Dear To The President’s Heart

On Monday’s July 14 Bastille Day in Paris, spectators will be treated to another grand military parade, one of the few such martial national day displays remaining in the democratic West.  The audience will include the leaders of the European Union member states as well as those from the (mostly Arab, but including Israel and Turkey) countries bordering the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean.  They will be gathered in the French capital for one of the most important events in the early days of the French EU Presidency, the launch of the “Union Pour la Mediterranée (UPM)” or the Union for the Mediterranean.

In Arabic, the Mediterranean Sea is poetically called Al-Bahr Al-Abyad Al-Muttawasit, "the middle white sea.”  President Nicolas Sarkozy was a schoolboy when Algeria (where his father had served in the Foreign Legion) became independent, though he may have had occasion to hear the geopolitical adage taught to generations of French schoolchildren: “The Mediterranean separates France, like the Seine separates Paris.”  Algeria was an integral part of France, and then suddenly, it wasn’t.  A million European settlers left independent Algeria, and in the intervening 46 years, millions of Algerians have settled in France.  The Med is definitely a middle passage between North and South.

With his present and former family connections in Ottoman-era Greece (mother's family), Corsica (first wife) Spain (wife No. 2, Cecilia), and Italy (current wife Carla), it is perhaps not surprising that the Mediterranean has had a special place in Sarkozy’s heart, even before his election to the Elysée Palace in spring 2007.  And this has all the hallmarks of a personal project: in June 2007, Quai d’Orsay diplomats responded with quizzical looks when asked about the new president’s Mediterranean ambitions.  Even now, on the eve of the summit, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs website gives much more space to the EU-Mediterranean Dialogue (an ongoing program) than to the Presidential UPM, which still has much to be defined (not the least of which, where will it be headquartered: Tunis on the southern shore, or Barcelona on the Spanish coast?).

Emotion-Laden North-South Relationships

The love/hate relationship between France and its former “colony” (the word was never used by the French, but the Algerians still pride themselves, sometimes even define themselves, by being at the forefront of the anti-colonialist drive from the Fifties through the Seventies) has in some ways been the bellwether of the Sarkozy Mediterranean proposal.  France and its policies are always treated with circumspection in Algeria, and few domestic points are gained in Algeria by seeming to kowtow to the former masters. (Though Algeria's ace political cartoonist Dilem has it right when he shows what Algeria's unemployed "hittistes" want out of the UPM: calm Mediterranean seas for their rafts, or preferably, French visas; emigration is still a big drain/safety valve).  At one point, it seemed that Algeria would scupper the whole deal.

In the end, Algerian President Bouteflika’s foot dragging on the Mediterranean project was overcome by careful French diplomacy, though not in the case of the one remaining holdout, Colonel (do we still call him that?) Kadhafi of Libya.  Despite blandishments (nuclear project, arms deals, wife No. 2 Cecilia as emissary-of-charm, week-long state visit to Paris last year), Kadhafi has condemned the Sarkozy Med Union.  Anyway, his life long ambition has been to unify (often literally, through mergers and sometimes with weapons) the Arab and African worlds that are Libya’s home turf.

Sarkozy’s ambitions for a French-led Mediterranean project were severely modified by Germany, which succeeded in EU-izing (opening up to non-Med EU countries what had previously been seen as a Mediterranean riparian state grouping) Sarkozy’s vision.  As former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said today on France-Inter radio, the test of the new Med Union will be whether it can create a co-secretariat to build on the high-level co-presidential (France and Egypt) kickoff summit, and not just become a subcommittee of the EU.  Egypt, with its concentric Arab, African, and Middle East (especially longstanding relations with Israel) circles, and its experienced diplomatic corps, is an inspired choice to help France get the new grouping off the ground.

Another “Machin” or An Essential Tool?

Vedrine, along with a number of right and left of center European and southern Mediterranean luminaries, signed an “open letter” to the leaders gathering in Paris this weekend, published in Thursday’s Le Monde.  Though the letter enthuses about the Med Union’s potential for peacemaking (all eyes will be on the body language between Israeli and Syrian leaders this weekend), Vedrine on the radio spoke to the more nuts-and-bolts projects for the Union.  One not so trivial matter: North-South cooperation on cleaning up what is essentially massive a salty lake, one that gets dumped on, literally, with every effluent man and industry can produce.  If nothing else, Union for the Mediterranean success in this one crisis area could make the nascent organization worth all the hoopla.  As one commentator put it, success in "small" practical matters counts, and cited the EU's beginnings as a post-WW II coal and steel cartel combining the victors and the vanquished.

In his definitive work on the fall of France in 1940 “To Lose a Battle,” British historian (of France and Algeria) Alistair Horne starts off with a vivid portrait of another Bastille Day parade, that of the victorious French Army in July 1919, the first such parade after the end of the carnage of World War One the previous November.  At the time, the consensus was that the French Army was the biggest and best in the world.  True, but we know what the inter war period did to its relative standing against the Wehrmacht.  There was no follow up to the big show.

For the EU and Mediterranean leaders lined up on the Champs Elysées for Monday’s parade, what comes after will be the true test of the fine new Union For The Mediterranean to be unveiled this coming weekend.  Those 40 plus leaders, if not backed up by painstaking staff work, may be present at the creation of another “machin” (probably best translated as “thingy” - Charles De Gaulle’s ironic description of the UN and like multilateral organizations, which have to struggle to avoid being labeled talking shops).

Haraka mush Baraka: The Dangers of Perpetual Movement

Machin vs. functional coalition: does Sarkozy himself have the wherewithal and patience to stick with his bright shiny idea in the long term?  Wherewithal: yes (once the Quai d’Orsay is convinced that this is a going concern, it will apply itself to making it work).  Patience: this is Sarko’s Achilles heel.  The man, once described by an observant Brit as a kind of Tigger, bounces around from idea to proposal to next inspiration, whether domestic or international.  Bitter Lemons also has misgivings about his "frenetic" pace, and has devoted several articles to the Mediterranean Union plan from Arab, Israeli, and Turkish viewpoints.

The Mediterranean is timeless, but action is urgent; Sarkozy is a man in a hurry, but he’ll need to down shift and focus in this forum which will juxtapose cultures with different notions of time.  After all, his Maghrebi counterparts know the meaning behind a traditional expression, "Haraka mush Baraka."  Movement - for movement's sake - does not equate with benediction.

War - If You Can Afford It

Aid groups say the crisis in Ethiopia was the worst since 1984, when a famine captured the world's attention and killed around one million people. The current drought, in a country where more than 80 per cent of its 79 million people live off the land, has been compounded by global food price rises. The famine comes as Ethiopian troops fight a bloody battle [in] Somalia, backing the government against Islamic insurgents.

The Telegraph (UK) 9 June 2008

On the face of it, there is absolutely no correlation between the Ethiopian famine and its intervention in neighboring Somalia.

Nor is there a link between the events in the Horn of Africa and the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Except for this: sustainability, and "affordability."  Just as a thoughtful observer might reflect "What the hell are the Ethiopians doing... occupying a neighboring country when they can't feed their own people?..." so too might that same question be asked of the United States in Iraq.  "What the hell are the Americans still doing in Iraq when _____?"  Here you get to fill in the blank:

• they allow huge swaths of their population to go without health care?
• bridges collapse, cities sink because "it's too expensive" to fix them?
• millions are evicted from their homes, and the financial system teeters?
• they allow the dollar to fall through the floor, and China owns what's left?

War, which leaders assure us they want to avoid at the very time that they are sharpening their swords, is an expensive matter.  In the case of Iraq, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz puts it at 3 trillion dollars.  Ethiopia, which is waging its war in Somalia with the encouragement of the United States, is presumably getting aid from same, but there is an opportunity cost.  Money spent on military hardware is often in place of, not in addition to, spending on helping the Ethiopias of the world grow food.  And where does the money for US military aid really come from?  If the Bush Administration has run budget deficits since it came to office, which it has, then isn't much of government spending like a national credit card?  See reference to China, above.

Which brings me back to Iraq.  This Administration likes to outsource things that used to be the prerogative of governments.  Like the contracting out of security, infrastructure, even intelligence functions, in Iraq.  If you can't win their hearts and minds with your power or principles, you just open up your purse strings.  This is from "Buying Security in Baghdad" by Anna Badhken in last month's Salon.com:

[In a Baghdad neighborhood] ... the U.S. military here pays a monthly salary of approximately $300 to about 300 people, [Sgt. James] Braet says. Some of them work on the neighborhood council, and some of them are members of a pro-government Sunni militia called Sons of Iraq.

"I'd say 80 percent of these people we pay don't do anything," Braet said. "It's just free money"

"So, in other words, you are buying security," I say.  "Pretty much," he responds, and goes back to his steak.

I figure that if the population of Iraq is about 26 million, and if around 7 million of those are adult males (sorry, ladies, but you probably don't have to be paid not to kill), it would cost, at the rate of $300 x 7 million = $2.1 billion a month to buy peace in Iraq.  For some reason, this free-market (of sorts) approach to peace purchasing hasn't gotten sufficient attention.  It might have to do with scruples about noble causes.

$2 billion a month.  The US is currently spending about $12 billion per month in Iraq.  This money is not only "off budget" in the form of funding "supplementals," it's also "off shore."  It's money that the US has to "borrow" from China and Gulf oil investors who currently deign to buy US debt.  So, in one sweeping feat of Bushite outsourcing, I say let's NOT "cut out the middleman" - let's bring him in on the deal: outsource the occupation of Iraq to China.  China has few scruples about dealing with dodgy governments in its quest for raw materials for the Chinese industrial machine.  China might not quibble about human rights, freedom of the press, all those things that the US government spends lots of effort promoting.  China just wants whatever raw materials you possess, thank you.  Maybe they'll even get Iraq's huge oil reserves secured and sell us what they can't use.  With $10 billion saved every month, we might be able to afford some.

Iraq has oil; China needs oil.  The US needs out.  We can't afford Iraq.  They can.

Now, on Ethiopia's famine and Somalia dilemma: do they have anything that China can buy?

Living Like Europeans

Last week Paul Krugman wrote "Stranded in Suburbia" in the New York Times.  His dateline was Berlin, and he marveled at the sheer livability of many urban neighborhoods:

To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

Krugman laments that "many Americans [are] stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas."

(images: STIB Brussels Transport)

As expats familiar with both suburban American and urban European lifestyles, we can relate to Krugman's depiction of the dilemma.  We live in a leafy part of Brussels, in the kind of apartment building and neighborhood described by Krugman.  We have a car, and it is parked in the building's underground garage.  Unless we take a ride in the country (and even then, we can reach greenery by public transport), we only use the car to do major food shopping about once a week.  Everything else is by tram.  We can use the same ticket for Brussels' metro or bus systems, and for those train lines that cross the city.

This is not to gloat - far from it, since we do all this on a declining dollar - but to illustrate Krugman's point about the oil-induced reasons for Americans to change, the "strong incentives to start living like Europeans."  My fellow Americans... it's not that hard, "living like Europeans."  Once freed from the tyranny of the internal combustion engine, possibilities open up.

Last week a delegation of Brussels regional officials traveled to Malmo, Sweden, just across the water from Copenhagen, Denmark.  They saw Scandinavian examples that some would like to emulate, like urban planning that incorporates energy efficiency in building design, something which is now catching on in Brussels and elsewhere in Belgium and in Europe.  Though Brussels has a long way to go before it can resemble Malmo or Freiburg in Germany, it at least has a massive head start in its integrated public transport network.  And it didn't make the monumental mistake made by Los Angeles and other cities in ripping up their "quaint" tramway/trolley lines for "modern" freeways, like LA did in the fifties ("At its peak, the Pacific Electric Railway was huge: 1,150 miles of track covering four counties and 900 cars. 1944 marked the highest ridership: over 109 million passengers)."  Imagine the cost of recreating that.

No, living like Europeans doesn't mean abandoning the car, but it does mean embracing what's best in urban life, recognizing that it requires public investment, and is sustained by improvements to the infrastructure.  It is the opposite of the throwaway car culture.

We Are Not Appeased

"Never ask publicly for a favor unless you know it will be granted"

Picking up where I left off yesterday on the matter of appeasement, now that Saudi Arabia has sent President Bush packing without his hoped-for oil production increase, I defer to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, not known for its anti-Bush sentiments.  In "Beseeching the Saudis," the WSJ lets the administration have it:

A cardinal rule of presidential diplomacy is never to ask publicly for favors unless you know in advance they will be granted. The same request by Mr. Bush had already been rebuffed by the Saudis during his visit to Riyadh in January. This time around, the Saudi response was particularly blunt and condescending: "If you want more oil, you need to buy it," said Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister.

Anyone who watched the video clip of the royal audience would have seen a jocular, squirming Bush in the presence of a wooden, unamused King Abdullah.  If ever there was a filmed testament to the sunset of a failed administration, this one will vie with "Mission Accomplished."

The WSJ suggests that the White House fire whoever put Bush up to "this second presidential humiliation" at the hands of his Saudi buddies.  Neither the newspaper nor the President need look very far: Vice President Cheney, whose ties with the oil industry rival the President's own oil credentials, was there on a similar mission in March (see the International Herald Tribune "Bush Hopes Cheney's Mideast Visit Will Rein In Oil Prices").  Oops.

We are reminded by the WSJ of another particularly galling aspect of the Saudi rebuff:

The Administration is defending its decision to sell the House of Saud billions of dollars in advanced weapons, over the increasingly hectic objections of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The Administration is also proposing to help the Saudis develop civilian nuclear reactors to provide for their energy needs. That may help the Kingdom export more oil by easing its domestic requirements. But we await the explanation for why the world needs another politically unstable Islamic theocracy in possession of radioactive fuel rods.

Need anyone remind the lame ducks on Pennsylvania Avenue that investing billions in arms for unpopular, unstable Gulf monarchies has a way of backfiring on the US?  And, given the "Want more oil? Buy it" response of the Saudis, what have these risky arms deals been "buying" for the US?  Good will?  Try again.

Talking to rivals: squarely in the tradition of American diplomacy

Luckily, there is another type of foreign policy realism being propounded by Senator Barack Obama, whose call for engagement with Cuban, Iranian, or Palestinian leaders has been the target of the "appeasement" slur.  In the wake of the much-criticized Bush remarks, brandishing partisan internal American politics in front of a foreign audience, Senator Obama noted that his approach has been in the mainstream of "the history of U.S. diplomacy until very recently."  "Recently" would be post-January 2001.

When John McCain taunts his Democratic rival about a supposed "endorsement" from Hamas, he is treading on very thin ice.   There's a parallel to the 2004 argument over Osama Bin Laden's supposed preference for Kerry vs. Bush.  In this prophetic piece in London's The Observer of February 15, 2004, Henry Porter notes:

The rather chilling thing is to consider how bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants view the election. Would they rather have a President Kerry or Edwards, who would make overtures to Islam, embrace the UN and heed world opinion, or would they prefer four more years of a man who had done so much to isolate America from the rest of the world?

Osama needs George, and to a degree George needs the mystical fear that Osama evokes. And it is this fear that will see this second-rate, isolationist, spendthrift President re-elected to the White House.

Fast forward to 2008.  If you were Iranian President Ahmadinajad and you wanted to gain domestic popularity and rally your beleaguered citizenry against a foreign foe, would you prefer a conciliatory Barack Obama whose overtures might threaten opening up your regime to outside influence, or a fire breathing John McCain, singing Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran...?  I don't really care who Bin Laden or Ahmadinajad want for president - but I really don't want Americans falling for fear mongering and electing presidents who are their enemies' dreams come true.

When Presidents Deliver Inconvenient Truths: The Carter Example

For the second time in a week, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times Op-Ed page inspires me to write a meager post in response.  Asking “Who Will Tell the People?” Friedman longs for an American leader who might level with the American people:

We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

Friedman comes close to recognizing the potential for such truth-telling leadership in Barack Obama.  It’s true that Obama has shown a willingness to talk frankly about difficult issues – his speech on race in America was one such example, though it’s still not clear whether the citizenry is ready for his message.

Almost thirty years ago, on July 15 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered what would come to be known as his “Crisis of Confidence” speech.  PBS, in its documentation for the “American Experience” series, provides the full text of Carter’s speech here.  Carter warned:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

Andrew Bacevich, in his 2005 classic The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, devotes several pages of analysis to Carter’s speech, calling it “prescient, but completely misconceived” – in that “his policy prescription reflected a fundamental misreading of his fellow countrymen.”  We know that little more than a year later his Republican rival Ronald Reagan won the Presidency with his upbeat “Morning in America” message.  But as Bacevich shows, Carter was right:

Carter... sensed intuitively that a failure to reverse the nation’s energy dependence was sure to draw the United States ever more deeply into the vortex of Persian Gulf politics...  This is, of course, precisely what has come to pass, with massive and problematic implications for the nation’s security and for U.S. military posture and priorities.

Bacevich goes on to document the downward spiral:

When Carter spoke, the United States was importing approximately 43 percent of its annual requirement for oil...  Some twenty-five years later, energy imports have risen to 56 percent of annual needs.  Today, increasingly, the profile of the American military presence abroad corresponds to the location of large oil and natural gas reserves.

Carter deserves credit for being ahead of his time, but the trick for the 2008 presidential candidates is how to provide the truth (the real thing, not McCain's “Straight Talk Express” variety that is really warmed over Bush) without further depressing an already shell shocked electorate.  This is where Obama comes in.  As Friedman says today:

... the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

Let’s try to remember the power of positive thinking – tempered with a dose of Carter’s realism – as we slog through what only promises to be a debilitating finale to an endless 2007-2008 election marathon.  And refuse to play the gotcha game, while ignoring the same fundamental problems that Jimmy Carter identified almost thirty years ago.

Mr. Eco-Security - Thomas Friedman Returns

Endless Energy, Limitless Wealth

Op-ed writer of the New York Times Thomas Friedman has spent the last several months on book leave, but returns today with a zinger of a piece, "Dumb As We Wanna Be."  Yes, the topic is a familiar one:

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

I never tire of Friedman's harping on this topic, because he is consistently correct: he was right about this when oil was at $10 a barrel, and he's still right now that is is at over $115/bbl.

In the May issue of Harper's Magazine, Wendell Berry's "Faustian Economics" touches on the American notion of "limitless" resources:

The entire contraption of "Unbridled Energy" [title of a conference on coal resources] is supported only by a rote optimism: "The United States has 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves - enough to last 100 years even at double the current rate of consumption."  We humans have inhabited the earth for many thousands of years, and now we can look forward to surviving for another hundred by doubling our consumption of coal? This is national security?

Berry goes on to speculate whether this American notion of limitlessness "perhaps arose from the coincidence of the Industrial Revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World."  Whatever the genesis of this type of conspicuous consumption, even climate deniers and Fortress Americans must be starting to doubt its "sustainability?"

The Bonus, the Malus, and the Horribilis

Contrast the picayune savings that the McCain/Clinton suspension of the 18.4 cents a gallon tax could mean to drivers, compared with the huge profits accruing to oil companies and Gulf kingdom exporters.  Contrast the American timidity on facing down the automobile and oil industries with a recent French innovation from a conservative, free market President, Nicolas Sarkozy: the "bonus/malus" system at point-of-purchase.

The French system, in effect since the beginning of the year, is by no means perfect, but it does recognize this: giving a "bonus" or tax refund for the purchase of an energy-efficient car will encourage more French drivers to buy same, as paying a "malus" or tax penalty for a gas-guzzler will discourage their purchase.

Instead of "pandering," as Friedman says, to Americans, politicians should show some leadership.  But "we are in the midst of a national political brownout," he concludes.  Spoiled by years of cheap gasoline with an already minimal tax (compare the 18 cent American excise tax, on gasoline that is now at $4.00 a gallon, with a French gas tax that is three quarters of the pump price of 1.384 € /liter (or a whopping $8.22 per gallon).

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I leave you, thanks to Chevrolet - who is to be congratulated for marketing small (South Korean-made?) Chevvies in Europe - pictures of Chevrolets available in Europe,  and a Chevy SUV for the American market.  It's a bit analogous to the size of a croissant bought at a French cafe and one from your local donut shop.  I could also post a picture of the typical French waistline compared to the US variety, but I won't... 

The SUV pictured here is the Tahoe, which is a hybrid, you'll be happy to know.  Personally, I would rather wait until GM puts out a Hybrid Hummer.  Really, what's the point?  You produce a vehicle that gets the worst gas mileage in the world, then you "improve" its "energy efficiency" by making a hybrid model?

By the way, the Chevrolet Belgium website (link below) advertising campaign shows a small Chevy next to a massive one, with the caption "Get Real."

(Photo source: Chevrolet)

The Media Week That Was - Bread & Circuses

In the Sixties, when I was a kid, I developed an early sense of the absurd thanks, in part, to the short-lived TV news satire “That Was The Week That Was,” or, as the original BBC series was dubbed, “TW3.”  These were the days before Saturday Night Live (I could never stay up that late anyway), or today’s Daily Show and Colbert Report.  But viewers of these programs are among those best equipped to deal with the media news worldwide this week.  It was a doozie.  Consider the following:

•    In the US, legendary network news of record, CBS, explores outsourcing newsgathering to CNN.  This is the broadcast equivalent of The New York Times subcontracting its Op-Ed page to the Fifth Grade debate team in Mrs. Gilbert’s English class.  Edward R. Murrow’s ghost is aghast.
•    In France, the midday half hour France Inter radio news devoted 29.99 minutes to breathless coverage of the Olympic Torch being assaulted by Tibetan and human rights protesters in the street of Paris.  It was a team effort to broadcast this political theatre, but the laurels went to a sports announcer dragooned for this “news” event, and his segment of the coverage sounded more like the narration of a photo-finish horse race than a news report.
•    In the US, two live TV days were devoted to coverage of the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, testifying that the US was (a) staying the course; (b) returning on success; (c) accomplishing its mission; or (d) none/all of the above.  Their non-news was pre-empted two days later by President Bush announcing that his successor would have to deal with the entire Iraq mess.
•    Meanwhile, in France, with everyone properly transfixed by the Olympic torch, Parliament debated the deployment of an additional contingent of French troops to Afghanistan.  In any case, the debate was just for form; President Sarkozy was sending the troops, no matter what.
•    Also in France, there was a mini-scandal over what a junior minister said about her boss the minister, accusing the Minister of Environment of “cowardice” for his handling of a bill dealing with GMO crops.  For days, it was nearly impossible for the normally sentient French citizen to find out exactly what was in the bill; what appeared to be important was the controversy, not the underlying facts.

It’s dog-bites-man banal to state that the media often has its priorities totally cockeyed.  Well of course.  The Mainstream Media is often accused in the alternative blogosphere of toeing the Bush Administration (or Sarkozy government, or whoever) line.  That may be true in many instances.  Bread, circuses, and Olympic torches have been around for a few millennia, and the public’s ability to be distracted by moving images and bright colors, as opposed to dull text and important facts, has only increased with time.

Meanwhile, speaking of bread, you can’t have been awake without having heard that several countries, including Egypt, Haiti, and Senegal, have had riots over the skyrocketing price of basic foodstuffs.  By “basic,” I’m talking bread.  Wheat flour.  Rice.  Corn.  Corn – you mean that great “green” raw material for “bio”-ethanol?  Even the American head of the World Bank, former Bush Administration official Robert Zoellick (photo, courtesy World Bank), said this week that government subsidies to “burn” food crops for fuel are a recipe for disaster.  The one “silver lining” story out of this was outlined on French TV and radio by French Ambassador to Senegal Jean-Christophe Rufin (like his boss the Foreign Minister, a doctor, and formerly of Action Against Hunger, an NGO).  Rufin said that subsidized exports from the US and Europe had displaced locally grown crops in many developing countries, but that the current inflation in world food prices will encourage importing countries to again grow their own crops.  The problem is that this will take years.

I have a suggestion for the financial luminaries meeting in Washington this weekend.  End, immediately, subsidies for crops used in ethanol.  Overnight – well, quickly anyway – the corn and other grains destined for distillation into fuel for Humvees could be added to the declining world food reserves.  Ethanol prices might go up and the fuel become scarcer, but which is more important: rioting throughout the world and the specter of starvation, or feeding the West’s (read American) appetite for consience-cleansing “green” fuel?

It was a hell of a week for the news.  But you might have been mesmerized by a little flame...

Overseas Americans Look At US Economy

If this post seems Spartan, shorn of all my usual links, quotes, indents – all those little touches that make for fun blogging – it’s because I am afraid that all that effort will be for naught, given my recent “Beta test group” problems.  So I’ll keep this short and sweet.

True to their serious wonk natures, members of Brussels’ Democrats Abroad gathered last night, in the presence of reps from economic policy think tanks, to discuss the “dismal science” as it pertains to their home country.

The discussion was lively, though the subject is indeed dismal: one think tanker read off a series of indicators (jobs created, poverty thresholds cleared, budget surpluses, etc.), which set off in very sharp contrast the Clinton ‘90s from the Bush ‘00s.  On all the indices, it’s clear that the Bush years have been a disaster in terms of economic stewardship.

Several overseas Dems, suffering from the de facto devaluation of the US dollar, looked for some ray of hope from the experts.  Others, who had just received their “Economic Stimulus Payment Notices” from the IRS, felt that this squandering of happy money (ludicrous when translated into Euros) could have been targeted to provide some measure of relief for the millions of Americans losing their homes.

The experts had little succor to offer in return, and marveled at the willingness of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to take over the helm of state, given the holes below the waterline.  With record budget and trade deficits, astronomic national debt, and a hemorrhaging housing market, the resources to solve crucial needs in health care, critical infrastructure, and energy diversification will be in short supply.

And John McCain, whose interest in economics mirrors his knowledge of Sunni and Shia Islam, seems to have a one note song to all questions of national security: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-Iran...”  No sense that indebtedness to China and the Gulf nations, credit card funding of endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dependence on foreign oil (and consequent enriching of foreign oil producers) – might too be matters of national (in)security.

So last night was a choir preaching to itself, convinced that – for reasons of economic self-interest, along with the broader goals of starting to bring back America’s reputation in the world – Election 2008 must be one of a sweeping Democratic victory.

Oh yes, and a question that us dollar-dummies should have asked last night: how many Wall Street mega-bonuses were awarded on selling the dollar short?  Surely the Gordon Gekko’s of 2008 know that when the Bush Administration repeats that it wants a “strong dollar” – but then does precisely nothing to strengthen it, and everything (chronic deficit spending, record-breaking national debt, a string of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts) to further its decline – surely the Wall Street whizzes know that it’s time to play in the Forex fields.  No wonder someone last night used “dollar” and “peso” interchangeably.

A Film To Watch On World Water Day

Whether you're marking World Water Day today, or if you already "celebrated" it on March 20, I recommend watching a clip from the Rima Essa + Peter Snowdon film "Drying Up Palestine."  As I wrote in an earlier post, "It should be essential viewing for all Middle East Peace Processors, because without water, there cannot be life, let alone a two state solution."

In honor of World Water Day, Peter Snowdon has decided to "serialize" the film, and it's now on three places on the web:

• "Drying Up Palestine, the film's website
• Through "Blip.tv" and Gourna films
• And on "The Hub" (be sure to look for screening dates in Chicago, New Orleans, and London)

As you watch the film, consider the remarks of Gareth Thomas, the UK International Development minister, quoted in today's Independent:

"If we do not act, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead," said Mr Thomas. "We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future."

How about taking the Minister's notion of investment to the next American administration, which may be amenable to the notion of "preemptive investment," to attack problems at their core?  Happy Water Day, and Happy Easter.

Water - Wastewater - Everywhere...

Clean Farming, Clean Water

World Water Day, whether you mark it today March 20 or on Saturday March 22, has sanitation as its theme this year.  Among readers in the developed world, I can hear the yawns already.  You take a shower, and the water flows down the drain.  You flush the toilet, and the sewers take the effluent to that round concrete plant in some forgotten part of town.  Out of sight, out of mind.

But even for those of us fortunate enough to live in places with such infrastructure and plentiful water supplies, today should be a day to pause and reflect on how safe our water really is.  And at what cost.

Today's "Ouest-France" (France's largest regional newspaper, read by rural and small town people in Brittany, which we're currently visiting) carries an article in its Agriculture section that I hope lots of farmers (and politicians) will read.  "How the Germans Are Getting Their Pure Water Back," by Anne-Francoise Roger, recounts how the introduction of organic farming techniques in a part of Bavaria in 1991 has led to dramatic improvements in water quality for the city of Munich.  Not only are nitrate and pesticide pollution down by significant levels (the former by some 43%), but the cost to the city of Munich - which purchases the organic produce for use in its city administration and school cafeterias - is a fraction of what French towns must pay to rid their water of nitrates.  Water costs have risen so much after years of privatization that recent electoral gains by Socialists (notably in Paris) have led to calls for returning to municipally-owned public utilities.

Brittany, with its rolling green countryside, also has a smelly underside: with its intensive industrial poultry and porcine production, its water is among France's (and Europe's) most polluted.  This time of year, liquid manure is sprayed over fields in huge quantities - I swear we smelled it as we were driving into Brittany yesterday.  What settles on the fields is absorbed by the crops, and the excess flows into the streams, and to the sea.  Finistere's wonderful coastline, rocky and rugged with miles-wide beaches appreciated by tourists, is at risk from the slimy green algae that thrives in the nitrate-rich waters.  And whatever treatment those sewage and water plants perform, you still want to reach for bottled mineral water during mealtime.

War & Peace and Water

With their plentiful rain, Bretons may be excused if they are not as conscious as they should be of the quality of their water.  Not the case with Israelis and Palestinians, whose populations crowd into a seemingly arid corner of the world.  Peter Snowdon, a documentary film maker friend whose "Drying Up Palestine" should be World Water Day essential viewing, sent me a recent article about a German hydro geologist active in Israel-Palestine water issues, Clemens Messerschmid.  Amira Hass' article in Haaretz is worth reading for this factoid alone:

In Berlin and Paris, he notes, annual rainfall is less than in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively: 550 millimeters in Berlin compared to 564 millimeters in Jerusalem. Paris gets an average of 630 millimeters, while the yearly average in Ramallah was 689.6 millimeters.

But Messerschmid documents how wasteful practices (using sprinklers for agriculture, allowing wastewater to flow into the sea, "making Israel one of the biggest polluters of the Mediterranean") negate these natural advantages.  And then you add the political aspect:

"Wherever Israel is located downriver, it uses military force to ensure that most of the water that flows in that river will reach Israel. It takes over the Golan, it threatens wars, and in the West Bank it uses military orders to prohibit the drilling of wells. What's going on here is not cooperation, but the dictation of an unequal division. Just imagine if Holland were to force Germany not to use the waters of the Rhine."

On World Water Day, which this year coincides with Easter Weekend, let's consider the importance of water - how it's safeguarded and who controls it - as one of the most crucial war & peace issues of this century.  What better place to get it right than in the crucible of "The Holy Land," where equitable access to water will make all the difference to Palestinian and Israeli peaceful (or not) coexistence.