almost a diary, compulsory reading, Europe, Germany, oddly enough, traveling, USA

My New Ralph Lauren Sweater.

So via Blogdex, I found this hilarious article published by USA today called “Ugly sentiments sting American tourists”.

I suppose it was pretty tough to write this article. You can literally sense how the evident editorial intention to publish yet another “peaceful American tourists tortured to death by mad and naked European pacifists”-peace made the newspaper’s European correspondents look desperately for something anti-American to write about. Their effort wasn’t too successful, even if you insist to count Bush-policy discussions as anti-American torture, as the article indicates –

“‘I am certain that a number of American visitors will be asked about the U.S. administration’s policy on Iraq. But if indeed there have been some unpleasant encounters, I strongly believe that they are few and far between,’ says Patrick Goyet, vice chairman of the European Travel Commission in New York. ‘Furthermore, speaking as a European and for the vast majority of my fellow Europeans, I consider any such behavior idiotic and embarrassing.'”

Period.

But the best part of the article is a bullet point list by Bruce McIndoe, CEO of iJet Travel Intelligence that tells American tourists how to behave when in Rome. Well, we all know what the obvious answer is, but let’s have a more detailed look at Mr McIndoe’s propositions.

Avoid American fast-food restaurants and chains.

Believe it or not, but McDonald’s and their competitors do not just cater American tourists in Europe. Like it or not, the deconstruction of traditional European eating habits is advancing rapidly, even in France, although they don’t like to talk about it for cultural and marketing reasons. So Starbucks has just announced to open more than 200 branches in Germany. And I had my last McBurger last Monday night. Remember “Pulp Fiction“? It was a “Royal With Cheese” – basically the same, but with subtle, metric, differences.

Keep discussions of politics to private places, not rowdy bars.

Well, it’s never a good idea to go to a rowdy bar anyway, if you aren’t a cowboy yourself. I seriously wonder what kind of etablissement Mr McIndoe had in mind here. What exactly are “rowdy bars”? There are hardly any cheap-western-movie-style saloons in Europe, should that be of any help. But wait, he might be concerned about the significant amount of Irish and English Pubs where it’s definitely a lot easier for American tourists to talk to Europeans as most interaction is in English….

Take a rain check on wearing clothes featuring American flags or sports team logos.

Damn. I just bought one of those Ralph Lauren US-flagged sweaters and I am not even American. And I did not even buy it for any ideological reason. And when I recently wore it during a generally leftist (read: European left, not its kinder, gentler, liberal US cousin) theatre company’s performance I was actually a bit stunned that no one cared at all. Seriously, the American flag is not something only Americans would wear in public in Europe.

The same goes for baseball caps or university logoed sweaters. If all the Germans who wear Georgetown or Harvard sweaters with Yankee baseball caps actually knew those universities and had any real idea about the baseball team whose logo they promote, Germany would have certainly fared a lot better in last year’s international secondary education assessment. But I will tell you, should I ever feel safer not wearing my Ralph Lauren sweater.

Keep your passport out of sight.

Indeed a good idea. But mostly because it really is a hassle to get a temporary one abroad.
Keep cameras, video equipment and maps tucked away.

Right – very interesting point. Sure, there are places where its safer not to be to easily identifiable as a tourist. Just like in Miami, a few years ago, remember? So this is good advice for all tourists if they choose to visit places they should rather not. But if this is an advice specifically aimed at Americans in Europe it does come across a tad bit arrogant – there are cameras and video equipment in Europe. We also have mobile phones, T-mobile hotspots and even ones with at affordable rates…

Soften your speech; Americans typically overshadow their hosts in the volume department.”

This, I have to agree, is partly useful advice. Some American tourists do overshadow almost everyone in the volume department. That is particularly true for shrieking female undergraduate students. Strangely though, it does not hold at all for all the Americans I know personally…

I wonder what Mr McIndoe’s ideas for blending in in the US would be? Maybe you, my gentle readers do have some suggestions?

compulsory reading, Iraq, US Politics

Paris, Texas.

Could it be that there is something going on we don’t really know about? Spiegel online [link in German] is suspicious that Joschka Fischer’s surprise visit at the Quai d’Orsay today could be induced by a possible UNSC-voting-moodswing of Jaques Chirac. I don’t know. Not that I am actually convinced he would not change his opinion, but I just can’t see what could possibly have led to this change right now? The French humouristic weekly “Le Canard Enchainé” apparently reports that Chirac told people in private on Feburary 26 that a French UNSC veto would be useless given the Bush administration’s determination to go to war.

Hmm, what is being played here? Seriously, why would anyone allow this kind of speculation just now? With Blair cornered in the Commons, Turkey’s decision to wait and see befoe more US troops could be allowed to enter the country, and last week’s capture of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan, some people already see (saw?) the possibility of a non-war exit strategy for the US president given the opposition in the UN –

“‘The arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gives us some breathing room,’ says a Bush strategist. ‘We can concentrate on the favorable publicity generated by the arrest and the valuable intelligence we have gained from that event.’ … Right now, only the U.S., Britain and Spain favor immediate military action against Iraq. With most of the other allies lining up against the U.S., Bush faces both a diplomatic and public relations nightmare if he proceeds against Hussein without UN backing. ‘We’ve always needed an exit strategy,’ admits a White House aide. ‘Circumstances have given us one. Perhaps we shouldn’t ignore it.'”

Well. If Spiegel Online is right, they can safely ignore it.

What’s going on in Paris?

almost a diary, compulsory reading, US Politics, USA

American Exchange Students In Germany.

Yesterday, my sister published an article about American exchange students’ perception of the Iraq/media induced rift between the the Bush and Schroeder administrations in the local edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [it’s not online, unfortunately].

I’m glad she found some American students to talk to. There are not too many of them. At the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz, only seventy-nine Americans are enrolled. Seventy-nine out of a student body of approximately 30,000. Seventy-nine out of approximately 4,000 non-German students. But let me be clear here – this is by no means an unusually low number. All those US students here at the moment must have made the decision to go to Germany a fair amount of time before the anyone used the word rift to describe German-American relations.

Sure, talking to people is not quantitative research. But it does give you some idea of what’s going on, if those you talk to do have an opinion. I’m glad my sister found some who had. I met two American undergraduate students in Munich early in Febuary who replied to my question about their opinion of the ongoing quarrel that they were not sufficiently well informed about the issue to have an opinion of their own. That was on the day when another American, Donald Rumsfeld, was in town and was told by Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, that he had not yet been convinced of the necessity of war in Iraq.

In their defence, I don’t think the two girls were particularly interested in politics in general, so their reply also had a touch of intentional modesty, rather than just one of unfortunate ignorance. Actually, their ignorance shows that there are Americans in this country whose personal reality has only marginally been affected by the international politics, if at all.

It shows that at least those not professionally involved in shaping opinion have learnt to differentiate between those governed and those who govern. The students who were interviewed by my sister basically stated the same – they very much enjoy their stay and have never been bullied by anyone because of their being American, the only notable difference being more political discussions than before.

Those discussions, on the other hand, may not have become too heated, as the Fulbright Commission’s American programme manager Reiner Roh reckons that less than ten percent of the American exchange students who receive Fulbright scholarships support the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq.

Sure, not all American exchange students are Fulbright scholars and there are clearly a lot of possible reasons for such an extreme divergence from the general American attitude, not the least of which is the fact that these students do understand foreign media.

But personally, I believe that there likely is a significant correlation between a person’s willingness to learn about different cultures and her political acceptance of an international order constraining even the most powerful, which is fundamentally at odds with divide-et-impera policies of a Kagan-style (neo-Bismarckian) system of ad-hoc axes and alliances.

So I would like to repeat something rather important these days – there is German-American life beyond governmental quarrels. And it’s a lot more fun. I really wonder what the American students dressed up as for yesterday’s raving Monday parade?

compulsory reading, US Politics

Some Things, They Never Change…

So someone sent The Observer an email that is rather embarrassing for the Bush administration and even more so for the US agency community. They will probably have to sit down and discuss the meaning of “secret” after this. And for the media effect, it does not even matter if it’s really true. I doubt there will be any official reply to the alligations. So it will take some decades until we will finally know what really happened – if at all.

What happened – according to the Oberserver’s article –

“[t]he disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency – the US body which intercepts communications around the world – and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input. The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations ‘particularly directed at… UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)’ to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.”

Seriously folks, what’s the story here? The only interesting thing I can see is that a classified email leaked from the NSA, should that actually be the case. As The Observer backs the story somewhat credibly, someone could lose his job and pension over this. But the eavesdropping bit?

Honestly. How surprising is it that the U.S. administration is actually using its intelligence services to gather intelligence about foreign diplomats living on US soil? You’re right. Not at all – as those observed will know and as The Observer finally admits –

“While many diplomats at the UN assume they are being bugged, the memo reveals for the first time the scope and scale of US communications intercepts targeted against the New York-based missions.”

Fair enough. As for previous scale and scope of US eavesdropping on the UN delegations – below are a few paragraphs about the humble beginnings of both the NSA and the UN from James Bamford’s book “Body of Secrets – Anatomy Of The Ultra-Secret National Security Agency” [taken from pp 21, hardcover edition]. These paragraphs really offer something for everyone, even notorious French-bashers… some things, they really never change. Enjoy.

“On April 25, 1945, as TICOM [Target Intelligence Committee, a predecessor of the NSA ] officers began sloshing through the cold mud of Europe, attempting to reconstruct the past, another group of codebreakers was focused on a glittering party half the earth away, attempting to alter the future.

Long black limousines, like packs of panthers raced up and down the steep San Francisco hills from one event to another. Flower trucks unloaded roses by the bushel. Flashbulbs exploded and champagne flowed like water under the Golden Gate. The event had all the sparkle and excitement of a Broadway show, as well it should have. The man producing it was the noted New York designer Jo Mielziner, responsible for som of the grandest theatrical musicals on the Great White Way. ‘Welcome United Nations’ proclaimed the bright neon marquee of a downtown cinema. The scene was more suited to a Hollywood movie premiere than a solemn diplomatic event. Crowds of sightseers pushed against police lines, hoping for a brief glimpse of someone famous, as delegates from more than fifty countries [yup, a little bit of diversification has occurred since…] crowded into the San Francisco Opera House to negotiate a framework for a new world order.

But the American delegates had a secret weapon. Like cheats at a poker game, they were peeking at their opponents’ hands. Roosevelt fought hard for the United States to host the opening session; it seemed a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests.

Coded messages between the foreign delegations and their distant capitals passed through U.S. telegrpah lines in San Francisco. With wartime censoship laws still in effect, Western Union and the other commercial telegraph companies were required to pass on both coded and uncoded telegrams to U.S. Army codebreakers. … By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points. …

The decrypts revealed how desperate France had become to maintain its image as a major world power after the war. On April 29, for example, Fouques Duparc, the secretary general of the French delegation, compalined in an encrypted note to General Charles de Gaulle in Paris that France was not chosen to be one of the ‘inviting powers’ to the conference. ‘Our inclusion among the sponsoring powers,’ he wrote, ‘would have signified, in the eyes of all, our return to our traditional place in the world’. …

The San Francisco Conference served as an important demonstration of the usefulness of peacetime signals intelligence. … From the very moment of its birth, the United Nations was a microcosm of East-West spying. Just as with the founding conference, the United States pushed hard to locate the organization on American soil, largely to accomodate the eavesdroppers and codebreakers of NSA and its predecessors.”

And now that I have actually written something about the NSA in my blog… I would like to welcome you guys and your computers. Enjoy my posts.

compulsory reading, Iraq, US Politics

It’s A Fine Line…

between gratefulness and subservience as well as between provoking journalism and tasteless propaganda.

Yesterday, Gentry Lane told me about this report from Normandy, published in the New York Post. The article tells the story of Howard Manoian, an American who participated in the D-day liberation of France in 1944, and has settled there 18 years ago.

On the one hand, the article is telling Mr. Manoian’s personal D-day story – and as so many personal war stories, his story, too, is a reminder of the horrors of war. On the other hand, the author, Steve Dunleavy, is using this powerful tale to denounce France as ungrateful traitor. Unfortunately, Mr. Manoian’s story is not even really representative of Mr. Dunleavy’s ranting – if you read the article, you will realize that almost all of the jingoist rethoric is not between speechmarks. It has leaked out of Mr Dunleavy’s pen.

Today, I find an instapundit.com link to the comment section of Mr. Dunleavy’s article, which features an interesting, and intense discussion of the subjects I mentioned above – the fine lines. Europe will always be grateful for D-day. But the very success of the American attempt to help the torn continent back to its enlightenment roots logically excludes thoughtless subservience.

When it comes to more than words, the difference between gratefulness and subservience becomes a fine line indeed. As for the other fine line, the one between provoking journalism and tasteless propaganda, I recommend you read the comments yourselves. Here are two that indicate the wide range of opinions concerning the article.

February 11, 2003 — As I opened my Post this morning, the anger I’ve felt over these past few weeks reached a total rage when I read Steve Dunleavy’s column from Normandy (“Sacrifice,” Feb. 10). I was born in France, married my wonderful American husband of 41 years in Paris, came to the United States in 1963 and became an American citizen. France can now disappear into the ocean as far as I’m concerned.

Claudette Davison, Brick, N.J.

The twisted logic and blatant antagonism of using the Normandy cemetery as an indictment against French reluctance on Iraq is worthy of Joseph Goebbels. Rather than exploit the dead of a just cause like WWII, why don’t you run a piece about the massive folly of Vietnam? You could show a French military graveyard with the headline: “The French warned us, and we were too arrogant to listen.”

Mark McCarthy, Manhattan

almost a diary, compulsory reading, Iraq, USA

Ever Lasting Love?

PapaScott translates a a blog entry from WorldWideKlein Live –

“Before they were impossible to find, now the German embassy is giving them out by the handful: the German-American friendship pins with the German and American flags side by side. These days they’re probably no longer needed.”

I don’t think so. Sure, there are people who boycot Camembert and Chrysler (hehe) these days. So what? They will start buying again pretty soon after CNN has stopped broadcasting “Axis of Weasel” advertisements. Moreover, “Die Zeit” mentioned last week (could not find the article online) that Germany has become extraordinary popular in NON-CNN-US, a country in which people carry Schröder-portraits during anti-war demonstrations.

But I found the most convincing reason of all last September, one day after the infamous remarks by former German Justice Minister Herta Däubler Gmelin had made it to the frontpage of the NY Times – German brass players in New York’s Upper East side.

Talk about Weasels as much as you want – as long as this kind of musical pollution does not make Americans want to strangle the perpetrators, things are in pretty good shape.

almost a diary, compulsory reading, self-referential

Life Offline / FAQs

It’s been a long time since I haven’t been online for almost a week. It must have been at some point in 1999, I suppose. So, at first, it felt a bit strange not being able to read my email or drop a note in this blog. But then I realized that it’s probably a good thing to renounce to the comforts of cyberspace every now and then. If only to see if it is still possible. And I think it’s reassuring that it is.

So, having to catch up with a lot of things, I will write more later, but I just have to comment some questions I received by email from Roman reader Marcus Tullius Cicero, in case his questions should be common ones –

Q: “Is that really your picture?”

If you are referring to the picture in the upper left hand corner of the page, the reply is probably “yes”. But no one knows what a browser does to your looks ;-).

Q: “Is that a gun nestled in your left armpit?”

Well, I guess some people are indeed able to turn a pen into a weapon as or even more powerful than a gun. But I am not sure if such a compliment is the correct interpretation. So I am slightly disturbed by this question. I am German, after all, not American. See “Bowling for Columbine” for further reference.

Q: “Why don’t you allow comments on your site?”

Good question. The answer is that this site was originally designed to communicate with some friends. So the guestbook was easily sufficient to provide room for non-email based communication. And still, only a tiny fraction of visitors leave comments in the guestbook [ thank you ! ] But I will look into installing a commenting system.

The more discussion the better.

compulsory reading, German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

Further Right.

An article published by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute and former advisor to Ronald Reagon, indicates to me that the real rift concerning foreign policy could be neither the Atlantic nor the middle aisles in the chambers of the US Congress. It indicates to me that there seems to be a deep divide between socially conservative Republicans and Libertarian Reoublicans in the US.

The conservative, traditional, hierarchical model of social coordination favoured by the former is usually abhorred by the latter’s assertion that laisser-faire is the only just way to organise a society/economy. Of course, a two party system does not offer too many alternatives if you want to “make votes count” (Gary W. Cox’ book is really brilliant!), so both faction have teamed-up due to their even stronger disgust of the plans for social and! economic reengineering proposed by those who sit on the other side of the aisles. But from time to time, the internal divisions surface. Current US foreign policy is an example thereof.

In this article, which appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last Friday (link in English), Bandow pratically asks France and Germany to stand firm in their opposition to a US led war on Iraq –

“If Berlin and Paris back down after publicly avowing their opposition to war in such strong terms, they will reinforce the justifiable contempt in which they are held in Washington. And U.S. administrations will continue to ignore them in foreign crises. The credibility of European and other critics of Washington is at stake. Giving in will feed Washington’s conviction that it can impose its will without constraint.”

Bandow’s opinion does not look too isolated if you have a look at this page, which is listing the body of work Cato scholars have done since 911 regarding a potential U.S. war with Iraq.

However, if you compare Bandow’s view (or even the piece by Eric Alterman I already linked some days ago) to this interpretation of the US-European problems by the Carnegy Endowment’s (neoconservative) Robert Kagan, you’ll clearly sense a difference not only in style, but in content, too.

Kagan is a vocal proponent of what he calls “American benevolent hegemony“. And it seems, those who share his opinion are willing to pick up the tab for continued American hegemony – inducing all the parallels I already referred to on January 20th. Bandow, on the other hand does not see a point in paying for hegemony – and this is not just a different financial assessment. It’s a different world-view.

“Still, it is understandable why Europe has so little influence over American policy. Europe as a whole is a security black hole for America. … Providing a handful of special forces and lending a couple of AWACS planes would not have been necessary were the U.S. not devoting a substantial share of its military to defending Europe.

The Europeans would do far more for America by simply garrisoning their own continent, instead of expecting the U.S. to maintain 100,000 troops to protect populous, prosperous industrialized states, as well as another 13,000 to enforce order in the Balkans, a region of no strategic interest to America.”

He realises that Europe’s attitude may be one of rational free riding. But that, of course, feeds US demands of eternal subservience, which Europe is seemingly less willing to swallow these days.

In the end, the Iraq crisis is teaching all parties involved that it’s impossible to have the cake, and eat it, too – in Bandow’s words (from last September) –

“… neither side has conducted itself with much maturity in the ongoing international spat. The Bush administration believes that allies such as Germany should do what it says, no questions asked. The Schroeder administration believes that Germany deserves a significant say in international relations, while shrinking its military and relying on Washington to resolve tough global problems. … The administration wants doormats, not allies. Germany and Europe don’t have to remain irrelevant, however. The Schroeder- Bush fight offers Berlin and other European states a unique opportunity to strike a more independent course. It’s time for Washington to encourage such a change.”

As for the last sentence of the quote, the current administration does not seem to listen to Mr Bandow. At least, not yet. As always, time will tell.

compulsory reading

German Is Getting Sexy Again.

Bjørn Stærk , who kindly recommended my blog to his readers some days ago, has been wondering why there are relatively few European, particularly German and French, (political) blogs published in English.

Contemplating the deeper issue at hand – the relation of national cultures and supra-national languages – in this case English – in an age of global interaction – Bjørn makes an interesting argument concerning cultural imperialism, linguistic protectionism, linguistic economies of scale and scope as well as the advantages of publishing in English instead of one’s native language.

No doubt about it – English has become some sort lingua franca in many respects.

Who doubts that an age of global interaction needs a way to communicate beyond hands, feet and other body parts’ interactions? Those are clearly sufficient to guarantee human procreation, but as soon as things become a bit more tricky – which is not entirely unlikely in a globalised knowledge economy – they won’t carry the communicative day. And it will still take years, if not decades, for automatic translation to become useful. As long as hands and feet are a more reliable means of communication than electronically created translations, we will actually need to sit down and learn foreign languages – and probably one above all others.

There is hardly any language which could challenge the English dominance. Given India’s British colonial history as well as her linguistic fragmentation, there’s only one, in my opinion: Mandarin. Assuming a rapidly growing Chinese economy, Mandarin could become a lingua franca, too. But I am not too sure of that – it might simply be too late, as more than a billion Chinese, eager to contribute to the world economy, are equally eager to learn English, whereas the rest of the world is not too keen to learn Mandarin – ask *me* in seven years, as I bet a friend from Singapore that I will be able to speak at least a little Manadarin in 2010 (UPDATE: 04/2012 – I guess it depends on your defintion of *some*, but I suppose I lost that bet). Not least for this reason, Mandarin will become important. But it probably will not rival English in terms of global penetration.

Two weeks ago, in preparation of last week’s “Elyssée Treaty” treaty celebrations, the German weekly “Die Zeit” printed an interview (in German and French) with the French education minister Luc Ferry. Mr Ferry interestingly, and rightly, remarked that

“English as a language has to be treated differently.”

It is no longer just a foreign language. It has become a cultural technique, just like using the phone or sending emails. Today, less than 25% of Germans ever attempt to learn French (let alone speak it), less than 20% of the French try to learn German. Most Franco-German cooperation is handled in bad English these days.

And for everyone but the native speakers English, as a cultural technique, is about to solve an important problem that usually arises the more the better one speaks a foreign language. The better your use of a foreign language in a conversation, the more will native speakers assume that you also know the correct social code transmitted by the words you use as well as the correct instance for their application. But in all likelihood you will not be too familiar with a significant amount of semiotic subtleties in any given culture and language. Cultural misunderstandings are much more likely in this case than if both parties speak in a foreign language.

While this is very helpful for non-native speakers, it also means that native English speakers lose some of the advantage they have. They no longer control the development of their own native language beyond its application in their own culture. English, as a cultural technique, is likely to come in different semantic and possibly even syntactic flavours, spiced up with local cultural ingredients – far beyond the subtle problems arising from the use of “fit bird” in the US or “hot fox” in Britain.

As more and more people speak English, it will probably become more and more difficult to imply. A great example illustrating this is a story I once heard about an British woman working for the UN in New York. One day, she went to see her gynecologist only to realize he had sold his practice to an Italian who called himself “doctor for women and other diseases”. She tried to explain the error but the doctor insisted that it was perfect Italian-English.

Seriously, we will have to explain a lot more in the future. Just think about the current transatlantic communication problems. We might have a rough idea of what is being said – but I can’t help but wonder – do we really understand it? The more we hear from each other in (roughly) the same words, the more our cultural differences will become a nuisance to real understanding – there are also disadvantages to publishing in English. Clearly more noise. But more signal?

Having said all this, I would like point out that I agree with much of what Bjørn Stærk says regarding the value of publishing in English – particularly when he writes that

“[t]o practice linguistic protectionism in this age is cultural suicide.”

[ NOTE: But I don’t believe linguistic protectionism carries the day when it comes to explaining the absence of political blogs from, say, Germany or France, that are published in English. I don’t think there’s a simple explanation for their relative scarcity, apart from the obvious truism that English is not the native language of most European countries – as the discussion regarding Bjørn’s entry amply demonstrates. I think, the most important variables have been named by those commenting in his blog – penetration of internet connection, especially flat-rate connections allowing to spend a significant amount online reading, awareness of blogging as a concept as well as a technology, motivation to put one’s opinion out there – someone mentioned a possible connection between 9/11 and a rise in blogging -, the main topics of the blog in question, one’s native language’s market size, the target audience, and evidently, the ability to write in English in a way allowing to express sometimes complicated issues and thoughts in a (hopefully) clear and mostly coherent manner. Just by looking at this range of factors (and there are probably a lot more), it becomes obvious to me that c.p. only a small fraction of blogs will be written in English instead of their authorï¿½s native language. ]

However, he also makes some points I have a hard time to swallow (which he actually expected)). Most importantly, his assumptions that

“[l]anguage isn’t culture…”,

and that

“[m]ost of the _new_ contributions to Western culture are being made by the US and Great Britain…”,

which then lead him to the conclusion that

“…nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, if it could be written in English…”

I again entirely agree with him that it is crucial for Europe, especially the larger linguistic markets in Europe, to

“… drop our linguistic pride, get out of the audience and get onto the stage.”

I’ve been saying for years that having a large linguistic market can create problematic incentives if a larger one is around the corner, especially in academia. A lot of German professors still do not publish in English because the German market is sufficiently big to scientifically survive without doing so. Being exempt from competition has never really benefitted anyone in the long run. And it doesn’t in this case.

But there are things which can not – and which should not – be said in English. Abstracting from the brain-busting problem what contributions to Western culture actually are, I believe it is far from true that most of them are now being made by the US and Great Britain – certainly not in relative terms. If they are marketed in English, it is probably a sign of quality, as someone has deemed it useful to translate them and put them on the world stage. However, evolutionary variation is what made the Western model of social coordination a success story. Thus, in some respects, and I believe also in the linguistic one, diversity is a value in its own right.

Once again omitting impossible definitions, I would agree that “culture” does not only consist of language. But language is a very important part of culture. Just think of slang, think of thirteen year-olds inventing their own words to represent their own worlds, think of the fit birds and the hot foxes mentioned above. Even British English and American English are quite different today. Differences in language reflect differences in culture and thinking. I very vividly remember a discussion of three Norwegian fellow students in a seminar concerning ethnic conflict regulation about which language is the real “Norwegian”. Their discussion was a clear sign to me that, also in Norway, language is an important part of culture.

Using English, the cultural technique, will keep us afloat on the ocean of global interaction. But it will not enable us to see the beautiful maritime vegetation underneath the ocean’s surface. Even in Amsterdam, where almost everybody speaks perfect English (see my entries from December 2002), no one will ever be able to really understand Dutch culture without speaking their language – all the risks of misunderstanding included.

Cultural deep diving is never easy, always an adventure, and in most instances a rewarding one.

English, the cultural technique, will not enable non-German-speakers to find out first hand just why this entry is titled “German is getting sexy again.” Although, luckily, this wired article offers some diving advice ;-).

compulsory reading, Iraq

Clinton, The Honorary Weasel

Timothy Garton Ash must have read my last entry ;-) and turned it into what I think is a brilliant piece on “Anti Europeanism in America, published in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

Of course, his essay was already being printed when the “axis of weasel” became popular last weekend. But at least he remarked the popularity of “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” to describe the French.

According to Mr Garton Ash a study should be written about Sex And The Continents –

“If anti-American Europeans see “the Americans” as bullying cowboys, anti-European Americans see “the Europeans” as limp-wristed pansies. The American is a virile, heterosexual male; the European is female, impotent, or castrated. Militarily, Europeans can’t get it up. (After all, they have fewer than twenty “heavy lift” transport planes, compared with the United States’ more than two hundred.)”

Confirming the importance of listening to each other which I emphasized in my last entry he states that –

“As a European writer, I would not want to treat American “anti-Europeanism” in the way American writers often treat European “anti-Americanism.” We have to distinguish between legitimate, informed criticism of the EU or current European attitudes and some deeper, more settled hostility to Europe and Europeans as such. Just as American writers should, but often don’t, distinguish between legitimate, informed European criticism of the Bush administration and anti-Americanism…”

He states that American claims of indifference concerning the European attitude towards America are probably vastly overstated –

“Certainly, my interlocutors took a lot of time and passion to tell me how little they cared. And the point about the outspoken American critics of Europe is that they are generally not ignorant of or indifferent to Europe. They know Europe – half of them seem to have studied at Oxford or in Paris – and are quick to mention their European friends.” –

at least as long as more informed people are concerned. In Mr Garton Ash’s opinion –

“[i]n fact, the predominant American popular attitude toward Europe is probably mildly benign indifference, mixed with impressive ignorance. I traveled around Kansas for two days asking people I met: “If I say ‘Europe’ what do you think of?” Many reacted with a long, stunned silence, sometimes punctuated by giggles. Then they said things like “Well, I guess they don’t have much huntin’ down there” (Vernon Masqua, a carpenter in McLouth); “Well, it’s a long way from home” (Richard Souza, whose parents came from France and Portugal); or, after a very long pause for thought, “Well, it’s quite a ways across the pond” (Jack Weishaar, an elderly farmer of German descent). If you said “America” to a farmer or carpenter in even the remotest village of Andalusia or Ruthenia, he would, you may be sure, have a whole lot more to say on the subject.”

In the end, he also seems to conclude that a lot of America’s Amti-Europeanism simply mirrors the political and social divisions within the United States –

“Anti-Americanism and anti-Europeanism are at opposite ends of the political scale. European anti-Americanism is mainly to be found on the left, American anti-Europeanism on the right. The most outspoken American Euro-bashers are neoconservatives using the same sort of combative rhetoric they have habitually deployed against American liberals. In fact, as Jonah Goldberg [ “National Review Online editor and self-proclaimed conservative “frog-basher”, according to Garton-Ash ] himself acknowledged to me, “the Europeans” are also a stalking-horse for liberals. So, I asked him, was Bill Clinton a European? “Yes,” said Goldberg, “or at least, Clinton thinks like a European. […] There is some evidence that the left-right divide characterizes popular attitudes as well. […] It seems a hypothesis worth investigating that actually it’s Republicans who are from Mars and Democrats who are from Venus.”

The last interesting point he makes is one indicating that the solution to the current quarrels could indeed lie in the Middle East – just not in Iraq. When asking when the problem became a media issue he finds that is was –

“[i]n early 2002, with the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. The Middle East is both a source and a catalyst of what threatens to become a downward spiral of burgeoning European anti-Americanism and nascent American anti-Europeanism, each reinforcing the other. Anti-Semitism in Europe, and its alleged connection to European criticism of the Sharon government, has been the subject of the most acid anti-European commentaries from conservative American columnists and politicians. Some of these critics are themselves not just strongly pro-Israel but also “natural Likudites,” one liberal Jewish commentator explained to me. In a recent article Stanley Hoffmann writes that they seem to believe in an “identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States.”[20] Pro-Palestinian Europeans, infuriated by the way criticism of Sharon is labeled anti-Semitism, talk about the power of a “Jewish lobby” in the US, which then confirms American Likudites’ worst suspicions of European anti-Semitism, and so it goes on, and on.[A problem] difficult for a non-Jewish European to write about without contributing to the malaise one is trying to analyze…”

But there’s hope the Eagle and the Weasel are not going to keep fighting forever, as he says with reference to the argument that Russia united the West, and the Middle East separates it –

“[c]oolly examined, such a division is extremely stupid. Europe, just next door and with a large and growing Islamic population, has an even more direct vital interest in a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Middle East than the United States does. Moreover, I found two senior administration officials in Washington quite receptive to the argument – which is beginning to be made by some American commentators – that the democratization of the greater Middle East should be the big new transatlantic project for a revitalized West. But that’s not how it looks at the moment.”

And why doesn’t it look like that at the moment? Because (many, not all of) the most prominent Republican administration officials in the US show a clear lack manners when it comes to talking to a lady – oops, to Europe. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.

almost a diary

Tobias Schwarz's thoughts, opinions, and ideas of the moment

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