Embarrassed Germans

Did you see today's paper? Charges of Mistreatment of German Draftees Are Investigated , by Richard Bernstein in the NYT. "Particularly embarrassing to the German Army, which was carefully designed to be a sort of model of a civilized and democratic armed force, are comparisons being made between the reported abuses in Germany and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq." You know our "moral values" are in trouble when the *Germans* are embarrassed that their military abuses will be compared to those of the U.S. at Abu Ghraib.

Of course, Germany is not what it was 60 years ago. Unfortunately, neither is the United States. We seem to have reversed roles.

Also, this appeared on Reuters a day or so ago:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lawyers acting for a U.S. advocacy group will today file war crimes charges in Germany against senior U.S. administration officials for their alleged role in torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"German law in this area is leading the world," Peter Weiss, Vice President of the New York-based Centre for
Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human rights group, was quoted as saying in Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper's Tuesday edition.

According to the group, German law allows war criminals to be investigated wherever they may be living.

Those to be named in the case to be filed at Germany's Federal Prosecutors Office include Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet and eight other officials.

The group is due to present details of its case at several news conferences on Tuesday, according to invitations faxed to media organisations.

Rumsfeld's twisted history of El Salvador

Mark Engler has done fine work unraveling the extremely twisted history of repression, massacre and terrorism against democratic initiatives in El Salvador in the 1980s -- in Rumsfeld's (and Cheney's) version, the terrorists (Reagan-backed death squads) were the heroes! For some refreshing clarity, read Mark's latest essay in New York Newsday, El Salvador no model for the future of Iraq.

Manufacturing spontaneity

Were you too wondering how the youth protest movement in Ukraine suddenly got so organized? The U.S. State Department et al. have learned some tricks about mobilizing the masses. Check out the story by Ian Traynor in The Guardian, US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev. If only the Pentagon and friends had been so clever about handling regime change in Iraq! There are lessons for us here in the U.S., too, for mobilizing for regime change.

But the Pentagon doesn't do things the State Dept. way; naked force seems to be the only thing they understand, and it's why they keep losing. According to a front page story in the NYT today, Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids by John F. Burns, even our Marines patrolling the Euphrates (think of the Mekong) "privately admit to fears that this war could be lost."

Boosting ratings

My cheap ploy of Nov. 25 ("The naked blogger," below) worked! To my great surprise, that day I got 620 hits, as against my daily average (so far in November) of 297. But it's not something I'm willing to repeat; it gets chilly in November. I really should be infusing this blog with content. Right now, my writing time and energy is otherwise occupied right up to Xmas (book & article deadlines). I am going to make a renewed effort to post at least one substantial essay (say, 700 words, like an op-ed) per week after New Year's when we'll be in Spain. Meanwhile, it'll just be little stuff like you see this week. If you find that too boring, I hope you'll come back and look after 3 King's Day (Jan. 6).

Layers of injustice, a filigree of language

Another beautifully written piece by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this time an op-ed in the NYT, The Line of No Return. She describes the process of "Renewing my American student visa in Lagos, Nigeria, ... a trip through complex layers of injustice." I've praised her writing before: see Another great story from Chimamanda in my blog of 2003/10/09. I haven't yet read her novel, Purple Hibiscus, but plan to soon. Have you? What did you think?

Postscript: "books that made a difference"

À propos the 11/24 blog (below), California author Dirk van Nouhuys writes:
"I was working for the Department of agriculture as an editor when Silent Spring was published. I'll tell you it shook that organization to it's roots (which were in agribusiness). The Secretary, it was Orville Freeman, issued a directive that no dept. employee could comment on the book publicly except in the area of "his" expertise and with the permission of his supervisor. I agreed with my sympathetic boss (People like her understood what was going on) that I could say it was well written, but no one asked me."

The naked blogger

Happy Thanksgiving!

In a desperate attempt to boost ratings for this blog, I am writing this STARK NAKED!

Hey, it worked for Sharon Reed, anchor woman of Channel 19 News in Cleveland. The night she took off her clothes on camera, "WOIO-TV achieved a record 700,000 viewers, a 17.1 rating, far above the station's usual average of about 10. The station also registered a million hits on its Web site," reports David Carr in today's NYT.

Thanks for this candid portrait to Professor Sanders.

Different ways to make a difference

Novelist and journalist John Gorman (author of King of the Romans) recently (on an e-mail list) posed this question: "It has occurred to me recently, however, that books may not matter as much as they once did. In this connection, can anyone think of a book published in the last 20 years that has made an important difference, comparable to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or Upton Sinclair's Jungle?"

In response to John Gorman's question: His two examples show that he is thinking of books that change legislation or political order or a nation's whole moral outlook. The Pentagon Papers did that, and quite possibly the Report of the 9/11 Commission will also. Charles Patterson's book Eternal Treblinka aspires to make that kind of difference, too.

However there are many different ways of "making a difference." CATCH 22 has changed thousands, maybe millions, of people's ability to perceive the absurdity of military logic, a very useful lesson. Philip Roth's novels and even the somewhat less accessible ones by Thomas Pynchon are among many that have made readers ask uncomfortable questions, which is the first step in moving to change things.

Thoughtful and thought-provoking writing is more important than ever, as the flood of disconnected information and our awareness of the horrible consequences of state power have become overwhelming. Fiction is especially useful, affording an opportunity to explore possibilities and think through likely consequences of different courses of action. "Nonfiction" (if there really is such a thing) can also help change the world, especially in the forms of investigative journalism or clearly written (popularly accessible) reports on scientific discoveries. Books, blogs, plays, movies, poetry -- any writing that surprises and strirs us to think in new ways -- make a difference.

Recommended reading

Corey Robin's review of The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, by Greg Grandin (Chicago, 311 pp), Dedicated to Democracy. Corey Robin teaches at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea.

Don't misunderestimate him

A couple of my fellow recovering Kerry-voters have by now sent me this wisecrack : "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Sorry, friends. I don't believe G. W. Bush is a moron. He just plays one on TV. It's worked so far, so he has no reason to change. As for Mencken, who was basically a monarchist, his contempt for the American people is equalled only by Karl Rove's. Our people, as a collectivity, may be slow to learn and susceptible to being confused, but as someone wiser than either Mencken or Rove once pointed out, You can't fool all of the people all of the time.