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Entries by Huib (557)

Sunday
Apr152007

Leon, Donna- Sin Brunetti/ Without Brunetti

  • Sin Brunetti/ Without Brunetti (Biblioteca Formentor)

  • April 2007. I am into unconventional crime authors.

    Donna Leon, living and writing since 25 years in Venice, Italy, is one of them. Her Venice crime series is famous. You not only feel soon at home with the Brunetti family, but you'll miss them every time you finish another Donna Leon.

    There is one condition for your pleasure and satisfaction: You'll have to agree with (or be sympathetic to) Leon's comments on Italian and European mores, that are often sharp and liberal-leaning.

    I read her autobiographical essays called "Sans Brunetti" in French.  A first edition in Italian is being offered on Amazon.com. An edition of the English (American) written original text at Amazon.com has been added in spring 2008. 

    Amazonuk%20Leon%20Brunetti.jpg 

Saturday
Apr142007

The dividing anti-missile shield in Europe - Unity only comes from within! 13.4.07

Herr Helmut Schmidt is about the last person, I imagined, to become my ally in a strategic issue. But he is. Welcome to the Club, old (89) comrade, eternally capped like a sailor!

Philip Stephens, one of my favoured commenters in my favoured European paper, the Financial Times (it has definitively overtaken Le Monde), does not agree with Helmut and me. He considers the stationing of a small number of inoffensive missiles in Poland as something that does not endanger the balance of power in Europe, nor the 1988 treaty that banned short- and middle-range missiles from European soil.

I disagree, but that is not the issue of his interesting comment. Citing Schmidt, he says:

His ire was directed at Washington’s plans to deploy its missile defence system in Europe. The plan to site interceptors and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic, he said, was irresponsible and destabilising. It would divide Europe – a strategy, he added, that George W. Bush had pursued since his reckless (in Mr Schmidt’s
judgment) decision to invade Iraq. Nato had been the place for collective discussion and judgment on strategic security. Now it was reduced to a tool of the Americans.

Strong stuff, particularly if one recalls Mr Schmidt’s staunch advocacy of Nato’s deployment of short- and medium-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s. That
stance, defying the mood of his own Social Democrats, contributed to the then chancellor’s political demise.

The key to an eventual solution of this new US bilateral go-it-alone initiative, is, everybody agrees on that, Germany. Stephens:

German public opinion, which turned decisively against the US over the Iraq war, is overwhelmingly hostile. [...]

Ms Merkel wants to defuse the issue by passing it to Nato. [...]

Ms Merkel has invested much in rebuilding relations with Washington. She has eschewed the subservience to Moscow often shown by her SPD predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. But she will find it hard to ignore domestic opinion ahead of big regional elections in 2008.

1191208-771486-thumbnail.jpg
"Bush Strongman", source: The Weekly Standard (Washington DC)
So, no move to be expected from Germany. A situation that is exploited by Russia:

Moscow’s strategy – long evident in negotiations with European governments about the supply of Russian gas – is to divide and rule. Mr Putin sees in Russia’s energy reserves an opportunity to recover influence over his country’s near-abroad and intimidate the former communist states of eastern and central Europe. [..]

Curiously, the commenter leaves out the UK's responsability for dividing, and thus weakening, Europe on this issue. The UK sovereignly accepted a long time ago already to participate in the missile shield, stationing elements of it on its islands. If he considers in the next passage Bush and Rumsfeld 'stupid', and rightly so, when they created a "new" Europe as opposite to the "old" one, in order to win over "willing" partners in their Iraq war, what about Tony Blair then?

So what should the rest of us make of Russia’s warnings and Germany’s wobble? Well, the first thing to be said is that Washington must accept a share of the blame. If Moscow’s purpose is to drive a wedge between the former Warsaw pact states and the “Old Europe” of Germany and France, it is worth asking where the idea first came from.

Step forward Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, who thought it a clever wheeze to depict a continent split between Old and New when Washington was assembling its coalition for Iraq. Dividing Europe may have seemed a smart tactic then. It looks a pretty stupid strategy now.

And I cannot see, why Angela Merkel's proposal to reconsider the anti-missile issue within the NATO-framework, should not be taken seriously. What the US, the UK, Poland and Chechia did wrong, was that they left out multilateral consultation. NATO could be a forum for that. Moreover: It should be. If the North Atlantic Treaty still means something.

If there really is a danger of an Iranian nuclear attack, European multilateral consultations, plus consultations with the US and Russia, should cover a whole range of possible defensive measures, while unilateral decisions by individual countries could be judged by their possible effects on the security of others. And do not forget NATO-members like Turkey, one of the countries which would run more risks of being attacked, if that 'shield' would be located in central Europe.

Considering all that, Merkel's proposal is the right one, the one that should have been imposed on the Americans during the Iraq debates in 2002 and 2003. It cannot be dismissed as simply a move to avoid serious discussion in Germany in relation to regional elections coming up there.

I would say, Mr. Stephens, start at home. Change the "S" in "US" in the next passage into a "K", and you get the right text:

Nor has the US administration quite grasped just how powerful a pull anti-Americanism now exerts – not just in Germany but across Europe. The uncomfortable fact is that when it comes to matters of security, public opinion is disposed to believe the worst of any new US initiative.

When US officials talk about bilateral negotiations with individual governments about issues that do affect Europe’s collective security – as they have done about missile defence – they feed all these neuroses. That does not mean Mr Schmidt is right, any more than it means that Mr Putin has Europe’s best interests at heart.

It does mean that the US has a lot of bridges to rebuild.

Europe's unity on security matters can only come from Europe itself.

Complaining about other imperia, or would-be imperia, who use quite naturally, as always in history, "divide et impera" as their policy, is somewhat hypocrite. Although it is good that it is being said.

Putin learnt from Bush. May Europe learn from Putin.

Powered by ScribeFire.
 
(This article was first published in At Home in Europe, April 13, 2007. It is republished here, in order to show, that even intelligent and sympathetic comments on international affairs, should not be taken in at face value.) 
Saturday
Apr142007

Attaques d’Alger: Solidarité transméditerranéenne demandée.

Alger a vécu son 11/4, ce jour.  

La tour gouvernementale à Alger, 11/4/07.En juin 1963, j’ai monté en ascenseur jusqu’au sommet du bâtiment gouvernemental, jusqu’aux bureaux présidentiels d’Ahmed Ben Bella. C’était le printemps de l’Algérie libre. La gestion des biens vacants (les propriétés des émigrés, principalement vers la France) y résidait. Mohammed Harbi (actuellement lui-même émigré depuis longtemps au monde académique parisien) m’a fait assister à une réunion du Comité d’(auto-)gestion d’un ensemble algérois de barres d’appartements, abandonnées par leurs propriétaires et pas encore récupérées par l’État-Boumediene qui devait arriver deux ans après.

(Source:)
Al Qaida aurait réussi à fédérer l’islamisme radical au Maghreb
LEMONDE.FR | 13.03.07

© Le Monde.fr

Dans une pièce caverneuse, deux ou trois femmes avec la petite voile triangulaire blanche drapée sur le nez aquilin, parlaient, en faisant bouger la pointe inférieure de celle-là. Trois ou quatre hommes parlaient moins, il me semblait. L’atmosphère était orgueilleux, confident. On avait pris les choses en propres mains.

Un jour plus tard: Excursion vers la ferme de torture, un peu à l’est d’Alger. Le jeune homme qui nous y accompagnait, y avait été incarcéré lui-même. Habillé d’une façon que les Américains auraient jugée “crisp”, il était plein d’assurance, plein d’espoir, tourné vers le futur de son pays. Il avait mon âge, 22. Mais comment n’avais-je pas su prévoir que, étant arrivés devant l’édifice basse blanche du centre de détention du service de renseignement français et en ouvrant les petites portes dans son mur qui avaient été destinées auparavant d’abord aux cochons de la ferme, puis utilisées comme cellules déshumanisées des prisonniers algériens, comment est-il que je tremble encore maintenant d’indignation, en me souvenant que ce jeune homme, si “crisp”, si sûr de lui, si sûr de son contrôle sur lui-même, à l’ouverture de la porte-couvercle No. 5, tout d’un coup se tassa, cria, pleura, perda tout contrôle sur lui.

Honteux. Une honte de remplacement m’envahit. La torture, l’abaissement d’un homme par l’autre, est une fracture vitale, un fardeau éternellement présent, qui pèse sur trop d’Algériens et qui me pèse, par contumace, encore toujours. Car je me sens obligé de me définir un rôle dans tout cela. Je suis incapable de me définir comme spectateur non-engagé. Et mon rôle, en étant né du côté des tortionnaires, n’est pas joli. Je suis solidaire avec les victimes, bien sûr. Mais je suis aussi un survivant indemne. En vivant dans la sécurité relative de l’Europe occidentale, je profite des actes inhumaines des “miens”. Celles des militaires français appelés en Algérie comme Le Pen et comme Chirac.

Je ne peux pas ne pas souffrir avec les “pieds-noirs”, chassés de leur pays qui était très souvent aussi le pays de leurs parents. Eux aussi, ils sont victimes. Mais, pardonnez-moi, dans l’hiérarchie de la victimisation, les Algériens, nos voisins, viennent chez moi d’abord.

Une nouvelle génération (car il y a eu un tsunami de naissances dans l’Algérie libérée) a souffert les atrocités de la lutte entre les militaires et le GPRS. Tueries ténébreuses, probablement des deux côtés, ont terrorisés la campagne algérienne il y a dix ans. Violation des filles et des femmes était courante.

Il y a trop de gens chez nous qui rassurent leur conscience, en se disant que cela se passe loin de chez nous, chez les Arabes qui soi-disant souffrent du malheur d’une religion inadéquate. C’est faux, archi-faux! Ce qui se passe en Algérie, se passe chez nous, sur notre seuil. Le Nord de l’Afrique est notre miroir. Et le Maghreb nous regarde à son tour. En permanence. Depuis l’antiquité. L’al-qaedisation du GPRS n’est PAS la faute des Algériens! C’est la nôtre. Une faute par abandon, par lâcheté.

Il faudra mesurer la réaction européenne à l’aune de celle qui a suivi le 11/4 de Madrid. Est-ce qu’on va lancer une opération anti-terroriste comme l’on l’avait faite après Madrid? Est-ce qu’on va partager les informations ’sensibles’ des services secrets? Est-ce qu’on va considérer les Algériens comme les nôtres?

Questions. Questions à suivre.

(Cet article a été publié dans Toto Le Psycho, le 11 avril 2007. Il est repris ici à cause de ses éléments autobiographiques. Des versions moins personnelles se trouvent sur In Europa Zu Hause [DE] et sur At Home in Europe [EN].) 

Tuesday
Apr102007

Verjaarstoespraken van mijn 2 oudste dochters 8.4.07 [NL]

 
Oudste dochter Mirjam (*1961) overhandigt CD met toespraak. Slechte opname. Niet haar schuld, natuurlijk!

En dit is Henriette (*1968) die bijdraagt aan de aankoop van een TomTom.