Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Shana tova

Had to take a few days off from blogging: too hectic at work, and ADSL at home on the fritz.

To my Jewish readers: Shana Tova umetuka umevorekhet (a good new year, sweet and filled with blessings).

St. Anger on my left

No, this is not about the sorry excuse for an album release by Metallica (the best part about it was the title: most people don't know that "Anger" can be a proper name in Scandinavia).

It's about AngryLeft blog, a new blog dedicated to the nominally far-left edge of the idiotarian spectrum. Needless to say, an endless source of inspiration. Go check it out!

"Down Under" rudery

Chris Textor is always a good source for "Down Under" rudery and verbal whackings, particularly when he takes on Idiotarian Ozzie politicians and mediacrats. This story he links to is in the same fine tradition.

Bush is from Mars, Chirac from Uranus

(Via Merde in France:) French academic Guy Millière returned from a visit to the USA and discusses (in French) his conversations with several Beltway 'neocons'. My translation of the moneygraf:

The first observation I could make was the extent of the damage inflicted by the Chirac-Villepin duo to Franco-American relations. Not only have the French rulers come across, and continue to come across, as treacherous, cynical, and devoid of moral scruples, but they are also considered morons ("imbéciles").
[Whether] the point was safeguarding [French] contracts or economic interests [or] saving Saddam Hssein, the [steps taken]were [counterproductive]. Washington has come to the conclusion that France desires a containment ("enlisement") of the US and has a tendency to mistake its wishes for reality. Chirac, and particularly Villepin, are seen as living in a fantasy world. I have on several occasions heard Villepin described as "demented", an adjective generally accompanied by figures of speech or attributed behaviors too obscene to repeat here.

However, Washington is not worried about a real chasm developing between the US and Europe, and notes that most European countries (much of "old Europe" and essentially all of "new Europe") take a more realistic attitude, and that the only countries which France and Germany were able to recruit for their new "independent European defense organization" are Belgium and [the Grand Duchy of] Luxemburg. As a journalist friend put it to Millière: "Once France could come across as arrogant: nowadays, in the current state of affairs, it can only arouse derision or pity." He also mentions T-shirts here and there with texts like "My cat was neutered ["gecastreerd"], now it's French."

Yasser MobutuArafat

According to an IMF (International Monetary Fund) audit, Arafat "diverted" some US$900 million into his private bank account.
Interestingly, according to the World Bank, the Palestinian economy would need about US$1 billion/year in aid.

Anybody see the similarity not just between these sums, but between the "leadership of their oppressed peoples" of Arafat and the late and unmourned kleptocratic dictator of the former Belgian Congo, sergeant-majorgeneral Joseph D&eactute;siréSese-Seko Mobutu?

And of course there's another similarity. Hint: arrange the words "tongue", "backside", and "Belgian politician" in a sentence...

"Targil Masriah bet"/Stinking maneuver II

I just saw on the Haaretz news ticker that MK Zevulun Orlev of the National Religious Party (NRP) calls on PM Sharon to kick the centrist-anticlerical Shinui ("change") party out of the coalition and replace it with Labor.

One of Shinui's coalition demands --- accepted by Sharon and written in the coalition agreement --- was the dismantling of the Religious Affairs Ministry, which in practice serves no useful function other than as a source for patronage jobs. By dismantling the ministry, some NIS 2 billion could be saved. During negotiations on the latest round of drastic budget cuts, the NRP applied heavy pressure on Sharon not to carry out this measure, and Sharon relented. In response, the Shinui ministers did not vote for the budget.
As a result, Sharon p*ssed off a party with 15 seats in parliament in order to placate a party with 5 MKs.

Let me get this straight. The NRP is widely known, for good or bad, as the "settlements party". Because of a petty fight over a source of patronage, they would risk replacing the centrist Shinui with a more-dovish-than-ever Labor party. Moreover, they would open the door to the return of the ultra-Orthodox parties (mutually exclusive with Shinui), whose interests are inimical not 'just' to those of the general tax-paying and not religiously fanatic population, but also to those of the NRPs own rank and file.

Call me a paranoiac, but I cannot help seeing the similarities with a Shimon Peres-engineered attempt to form a Labor/Ultra-Orthodox alternate coalition in the late 1980s, which entered Israeli political history as the "targil masriah" (stinking maneuver). Rak ze haser lanu/nur das fehlt uns noch/dat ontbrak er nog aan/only that we are missing right now...

Saddam seeking deal with US?

The Sydney Morning Herald, quoting the not always reliable British tabloid the Sunday Mirror, claims that Saddam Hussein is seeking a deal with the US, under which he seeks safe passage to Belarus in exchange for information on where WMD are hidden and on his secret bank accounts. The tabloid claims he is running out of people willing to hide him, and getting desperate. We link, you decide. (This was also quoted on the Israel radio news.)

Peres: I am right, reality is wrong

Caroline Glick bitterly comments (must-read!) on tomorrow's lavish 80th birthday celebrations for Shimon Peres (with a guest list to include Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela). There the peace processor elite will once more come together and, far from the Yossi Sixpack sheeple, engage in an orgy of self-congratulation/zelfbewieroking/se féliciter/le-hishtabeah. (Tellingly, the Hebrew word is very close to the one for "getting in trouble", le-histabekh.)

Peres' contributions to the State of Israel were great and manifold, despite a malignant and in some ways self-destructive penchant for backroom intrigue that earned him the memorial epithet hatran bilti nilea (inveterate schemer/"onverbeterlijke intrigant") from Yitzhak Rabin. It is precisely because Peres would otherwise go down in history as one of Israel's greatest statesmen that his current behavior --- desperately clinging to political power (in his case, the 'ad interim' Labor Party chair) while completely dissociated from reality --- is pitiful beyond pitiful.

Bush may be derided as lacking intellectual sophistication, but unlike some intellectual sophisticates, he mastered a basic survival skill for the CEO of even a small company: recognizing a failure when he sees one.

UPDATE: from haYefeNefeshHaaretz a nauseating puff piece about the celebration and the "modest" Peres. The final quote left me absolutely speechless:

Peres, for his part, said: "This is an extraordinary opportunity to express solidarity with Israel, whose people want peace. No publicity campaign in the world, at the cost of dozens of thousands of dollars, could have done it more effectively."

We watch in reverence as Narcissus is turned into a flower...

Dutch (academic) disease?

The magazine section of the NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch) has a long feature article about the malaise in the Dutch academic system. Eleven professors (several of whose names I recognized) are interviewed, most of them Dutch(wo)men working in top universities abroad ranging from MIT to ETH-Zuerich [=the Swiss Federal Polytechnic], one American woman professor working in Holland.

Many of the reasons the expat professors (most of them in the "hard" sciences) cite for having left Holland, and for staying where they are, apply to Belgium as well.

• Unmotivated, uninterested, "slacker" student population that in addition is afraid of "hard" subjects. Several respondents noted that the Dutch "take life too easily" and that both students and faculty are complacent and not used to working very hard. One Belgian academic who moved to Holland found that his Flemish former students were much more industrious.
  
• A system that discourages differentiation among students.
  
• Excellence is neither rewarded nor encouraged, if not actively discouraged
  
• Uninspiring scientific climate (direct consequence of the above)
  
• Relatively poor governmental support for basic and applied research coupled with meddlesome governmental bureaucracy. (Either one in isolation might be tolerable, the combination isn't.)
  
• Poor mobility. Researchers stay forever in one spot and keep doing the same thing forever.
  
• One respondent cited the criminally insanemisguidedly egalitarian policy of admitting students to certain disciplines by lottery rather than competition.
  
• Subsidizing universities by number of students, rather than on basis of merit, or allowing them to compete in the marketplace
  

Paradoxically, one of the positive points of Dutch academics (their "international" outlook, including their generally very good English) itself contributes to the brain drain: those good enough to be in demand abroad are well prepared for working in what is basically an Anglosphere environment. (The physical chemist who moved to Zuerich would have little trouble with the 'native' language as well, as German is a sister language of Dutch.)

Also oddly, one of the measures aimed at discouraging academic dormancy (the requirement that junior academics publish at least two papers a year in peer-reviewed international journals) comes under fire from the American-in-Amsterdam. She feels that this 'publish or perish' system (itself American in origin, it must be said) discourages people from embarking on ambitious, 'risky' research or from developing things to the full before publishing. [Israel took a somewhat different tack: part of a professor's salary is paid as an 'academic achievement bonus' contingent on a certain minimal level of scientific productivity.]

One respondent at an elite private American university points out that the high tuition (up to US$40,000/year) leads to a student audience that is both highly motivated and more demanding of the professor (they want "value for their money"). [One unintended consequence he did not speculate upon is grade inflation.] When asked whether the tuition does not create an economic barrier to entrance, he responded that he has students from all layers of society, and that freshmen ("eerstejaarsstudenten") from poor families are generally helped out in various ways, such as campus jobs or interest-free tuition loans. At the sophomore ("tweedejaars") level, many of these students get scholarships on the strength of their freshman exam scores. [I would venture to say that an economic factor will come into play among students who are merely good --- not brilliant --- although this may be compensated to some extent by Mr. Richkid graduating with a fairly low average from an Ivy League institution and Ms. Poorkid graduating with high honors from a more affordable Just-Upper-League institution. Not to mention the way ethnicity-based reverse discriminationaffirmative action programs tend to disproportionally favor black and Hispanic students from rich and well-to-do families, as they do not eliminate the economic obstacles. A merit scholarship program aimed at these populations would be much more effective.]

At any rate, do not expect a flood of returning Dutch (or Belgian) expat academics anytime soon.

Political triangle

George Orwell's "1984" foresaw a world locked in eternal conflict between three competing totalitarian superstates. John Fonte sees a three-way ideological war emerging between Islamofascism, traditional liberal democracy, and transnational oligarchic collectivism.

Perhaps the socio-economic conflict is fundamentally really a triangle as well.

At one apex one has the paleoconservatives. They believe (static) inequality to be a positive good ordained by G-d or Nature, seek to perpetuate inherited individual or group privilege, and are generally antipathetic to upwardly mobile individuals or groups ("uppity n**ger", "pushy Jew",...). They see the role of the state first and foremost as protection of the established societal order.

At a second apex one has the (post-)Marxists, including many of those who call themselves 'left-liberal'. They believe inequality to be an evil in and of itself (if not the root of all evil), seek to coercively redistribute wealth and influence through state power, and combine a professed sympathy for real or perceived 'oppressed' groups with indifference or outright antipathy to individuals or groups who make it on their own.

At the third apex, finally, one has classical liberals. They believe (dynamic) inequality to be a natural condition resulting from competition, but reject inherited privilege as well as preferential or discriminatory treatment based on mere group allegiance. They see the role of the state primarily as upholding the rule of law, and particularly of the individual's freedom from assaults on property, life, and limb. Classical liberals tend to be highly sympathetic to upwardly mobile individuals or groups, but somewhat impatient with groups perceived as unwilling to help themselves.