The Republic of Dissenttag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-2856892012-05-22T21:08:33-04:00“Le bien et le mal doivent leur origine à l’abus de quelques erreurs.” Paul EluardTypePadOut of Commissiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016766b1cc06970b2012-05-22T21:08:33-04:002012-05-22T21:08:33-04:00I' m dealing with some fairly serious health issues, which make it impossible to blog until I get better. So blogging will be nonexistent until June or it may not be if I recover quickly. A sugary excerpt to say au revoir from Cornell West on Barack Obama: When you mobilise the legacy of Martin [Luther] King and put a bust of Martin King in the Oval Office, people elevate their hopes. Martin King is not just every brother (...) It’s like a novelist being obsessed with Tolstoy or Proust and then he ends up writing short stories that can...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/out-of-commission.htmlExtraordinary Sarkozytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eb46b7dc970c2012-05-07T13:51:20-04:002012-05-07T13:51:06-04:00I don't disagree Bruno Bernard with on this : Sarkozy was extraordinary in the sense that he was fundamentally different from the traditional French political elite, a lawyer of Hungarian descent born and raised in a Parisian suburb. Unlike France's new president, there were no grandes écoles, no political rural roots and no bourgeois family for Sarkozy. This fundamental difference is why people elected him in 2007 and why they rejected him in 2012. The French liked the unconventional candidate; they never liked the unconventional president. They had been accustomed to distant fatherly figures and instead they got France's first...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/extraordinary-sarkozy.htmlWinning by defaulttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0163054f8063970d2012-05-07T11:26:03-04:002012-05-07T11:26:03-04:00I agree with Paul Krugman on this: Hollande’s victory in France is no more a harbinger of a general leftward shift than Rajoy’s victory in Spain a little while ago heralded a general rightward shift; these are just the “outs” benefiting from the fact that they aren’t in, and the economy stinks. Sarkozy made it easier for the focus of the election to harsh economic times by behaving unFrenchly.Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/winning-by-default.htmlFrance wasn't waiting for Supermantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0167663dc1fb970b2012-05-07T00:23:20-04:002012-05-07T00:22:31-04:00John Lichfield writes a spot on 'obituary' of Sarkozy presidency : Mr Sarkozy wanted to break the mould of French politics and French society. He wanted, as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain in the 1980s, to mess with the mind of France: to make the country more outward-looking, more confident and more entrepreneurial. As recently as February, he invited Chancellor Angela Merkel to be his de facto running mate and argued that France should be more like Germany. He ended up fighting for political survival by aping the navel-gazing, ultra-nationalist language, themes, and tactics of the far-right National Front. Historians...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/france-wasnt-waiting-for-superman.htmlFlaubert, Madame Bovary and styletag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0167662f5c1d970b2012-05-05T18:51:42-04:002012-05-05T18:51:43-04:00Sugary excerpt of the weekend from Kate Summerscale : Writers before [Flaubert] had agonised about style. But no novelist agonised as much or as publicly, no novelist fetishised the poetry of “the sentence” in the same way, no novelist pushed to such an extreme the potential alienation of form and content (Flaubert longed to write what he called a “book about nothing”). No novelist before Flaubert reflected as self-consciously on questions of technique. With Flaubert, literature became “essentially problematic”, as one scholar puts it. Or just modern? Flaubert himself affected a nostalgia for the great unselfconscious writers who came before...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/flaubert-madame-bovary-and-style.htmlR.a.c.i.s.ttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016766243016970b2012-05-04T21:32:02-04:002012-05-04T21:33:37-04:00Words to munch on this weekend from Belle Waring slamming the idea hat racism has nothing to do with normalcy : If someone is “a racist” it is not because he is a like a Nazi with a uniform and everything, and pledges allegiance to the flag of racism, and goes around shouting “I hate Mexican people!” Well, to be fair, he might shout that if he were drunk and had smoked some of the cottonmouth killer, or were on MySpace. And those dudes in Stormfront exist. And racist skinheads too dumb to join Stormfront. Nonetheless, in ordinary speech one...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/racist.htmlThe end of the exception françaisetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eb1877b5970c2012-05-03T19:14:16-04:002012-05-03T19:14:16-04:00Brendan O' Neill on the French elections: The theme of this campaign is not ‘Should France be run according to left-wing or right-wing principles?’, but rather ‘Is France most threatened by Eastern immigrants or Anglo-Saxon culture? By poor foreigners or the princes of finance? By global jihadists or the “global mafia” (Le Pen’s term for the banking industry)?’. All the candidates share an obsession with the porousness of French borders, a feeling that the Republic is fragile and that it is all the fault of various ‘tribes’ or ‘mafia’. Here, we can glimpse the most significant thread in the campaign:...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/france-against-the-world.htmlVeiled Frenchnesstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eb0678b9970c2012-05-02T10:18:09-04:002012-05-02T10:18:09-04:00Jeremy Harding describes a scene of Sarkozy's last big meeting before Sunday's vote: ‘You’re 200,000!’ Sarkozy announced triumphantly, before he laid into the opposition’s preference for the red flag over the tricolore, quoted from Lamartine and promised a new kind of entrepreneurial capitalism to replace ‘finance capitalism’, but he’s been saying that for a while. A spat erupted just in front of me and a woman fought her way to the edge of the crowd in tears, her hands pressed either side of her hijab. ‘I’m French after all,’ she shouted. Someone in the crowd had thrown a racist insult....Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/veiled-frenchness.htmlWishy washy and fluffy francophilestag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016765fc734d970b2012-05-01T18:45:16-04:002012-05-01T18:45:16-04:00Adam Gopnik on the French presidential elections and the more than likely future french president François Hollande: But it’s entirely likely that, after the second round of voting, on May 6th, the next President of France will be François Hollande, the inoffensive, myopic, weight-conscious Socialist candidate, a man so milky-mild that one has to project onto him a secret life to make him seem not just a fully credible politician but a fully credible human being. (And, indeed, Hollande’s love life is more intricate than one might expect: having fathered four children with his lover, the previous Socialist Presidential candidate,...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/05/wishy-washy-and-fluffy-francophiles.htmlThe press and the Church of the Savvytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016765eebe6b970b2012-04-30T13:43:19-04:002012-04-30T13:43:19-04:00Sugary excerpt of the day from Glenn Greenwald: When I first began writing about politics, I mistakenly thought that the bias of the Bush-worshipping establishment media was a pro-GOP bias. It isn’t (and it’s obviously not a “liberal bias”). That’s not how they function. They aren’t nearly so substantive as to be driven by any sort of belief or ideology or anything like that. Their religion is the worship of political power and authority (or, as Jay Rosen says, their religion is the Church of the Savvy). Royal court courtiers have long competed with one another to curry favor with...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/the-press-and-the-church-of-the-savvy.htmlColonial mentalitytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eaef0257970c2012-04-30T10:20:27-04:002012-04-30T10:21:51-04:00One of my favorite songs at the moment is Fela Kuti's Colonial mentality. I find it to be both profound and hip while disagreeing fully with its title and its message, which is a proof of the universality and greatness of Kuti's music (it is difficult but to enjoy it, I have to ignore his politics and his misogyny). I stopped a long time ago to believe that there is such a thing as blackness and africanness/africanity. I have realized that the quest for authenticity is similar to Caligula's destructive and impossible one for the sun in Camus's play in...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/colonial-mentality.htmlWhite man's international justice tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eace637f970c2012-04-27T11:32:56-04:002012-04-27T11:32:56-04:00Adrian Hamilton on the Charles Taylor's trial by The Special Court for Sierra Leone and its verdict: Taylor's trial still has the smack of white man's justice to it – and not a little hypocrisy. Taylor has been condemned for stoking up a rebellion in another country with appalling consequences for its civilian population. But what else was the West doing when it armed the Taliban to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, and how else would you describe the calls to send arms to the insurgents in Syria, however noble their cause? Taylor's defence was right on one point. He...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/white-mans-international-justice-.htmlDangereux!tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eac40c1e970c2012-04-26T14:59:23-04:002012-04-26T14:59:23-04:00The cover of the next edition of the Economist making the argument than the more than likely future president of France, François Hollande, is 'rather dangerous': It is very difficult to take the Economist's views of French politics seriously for although most of its analysis are pertinent, it never reaches the right conclusions in great part because it never understands that France isn't Britain as most American commentators don't understand what it means to a French socialist.Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/dangereux.htmlThe post-post partisan presidenttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016765b2da10970b2012-04-25T12:30:30-04:002012-04-25T13:45:37-04:00Fascinating (and old) stuff from Ryan Lizza: Obama sprang coatless from his limousine and headed up the steps of Will’s yellow clapboard house. He was greeted by Will, Michael Barone, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Rich Lowry, and Peggy Noonan. They were Reaganites all, yet some had paid tribute to Obama during the campaign. Lowry, who is the editor of the National Review, called Obama “the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Krauthammer, an intellectual and ornery voice on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, had...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/the-post-post-partisan-president.htmlMisogynistic Vaticantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016304beab5c970d2012-04-25T11:16:43-04:002012-04-25T11:16:43-04:00Sugary excerpt from Garry Wills on the Vatican's slap of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious: Last week, following an assessment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican stripped the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most American nuns, of its powers of self-government, maintaining that its members have made statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle has taken control of the Conference, writing new laws for it, supplanting its leadership, and banning “political” activity (which is what Rome calls...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/misogynistic-vatican.htmlDistinctions et différencestag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168eaab39a7970c2012-04-24T21:02:10-04:002012-04-24T21:02:10-04:00The Economist's Élysée blog asks and answers the question of whether 18% of the French are racist because they voted for the extremist right candidate Marine Le Pen for president: All this to say that it is too simplistic to see Ms Le Pen’s score as a mere manifestation of French racism. Nor is it simply a protest against the system. People like her, and are not afraid to say so, in a way that few were about her father. Her electoral success reflects, rather, a mix of disappointment with Mr Sarkozy, despair at the level of joblessness, bewilderment in...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/distinctions-et-diff%C3%A9rences.htmlEnnuitag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef016304a5e3b2970d2012-04-23T15:24:21-04:002012-04-23T15:24:21-04:00The current French presidential elections bore me so I have nothing original to say. However, Gideon Rachman is correct when he asserts that there won't be a blowout in 13 days. Nevertheless, to the contrary of what he asserts Sarkozy's resilience isn't surprising, it was predictable and it is unfortunately an impediment to him being able to understand that France isn't America and that the French, unlike Americans, really want their president to be better than them.Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/ennui.htmlA stubborn nostalgia for America's racist pasttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168ea812448970c2012-04-21T11:17:50-04:002012-04-21T11:17:50-04:00Sugary excerpt of the month from Shelby Steele's article on Trayvon Martin: In fact Trayvon's sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America's civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the "poetic truth" that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth. The civil rights...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/a-stubborn-nostalgia-for-americas-racist-past.htmlInside Baseballtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef0168ea766660970c2012-04-20T13:30:18-04:002012-04-20T13:30:18-04:00Via Marbury fascinating stuff about Obama and Clinton (Bill) : Obama's political identity was formed in part through opposition to Clinton, as a president and a personality. Where President Clinton was a trimmer and a compromiser, Obama would be a bold Reagan-style reformer (hmm). Where Clinton was a natural politician, who loved and lived for the game of politics, Obama would disdain Washington and its ways. Where Clinton was undisciplined and messy in his professional and personal lives, Obama would be self-controlled, precise, punctual. (You could, by the way, say pretty much the same about Bush and his relationship with...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/inside-baseball.htmlThe world of Astérixtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341cc25853ef01630470b861970d2012-04-19T12:00:57-04:002012-04-19T12:02:55-04:00Sugary excerpt of Eric Hobsbawm's article in the London review of books on Tony Judt: Four things shaped French history in the 19th and 20th centuries: the Republic born of the incomplete Great Revolution; the centralised Napoleonic state; the crucial political role assigned to a working class too small and disorganised to play it; and the long decline of France from its position before 1789 as the Middle Kingdom of Europe, as confident as China of its cultural and linguistic superiority. It was ‘the capital of the 19th century’, especially for foreigners, but after Waterloo the path led slowly if...Christelle Nadiahttp://www.globalclashes.com/2012/04/the-world-of-ast%C3%A9rix.html