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Saturday, April 23, 2005

Coalition of the bribed?

Now that word's out that Canada may have been in the tank for Saddam, Instapundit asks:

I'm just interested in seeing how money seemed to be flowing from Saddam Hussein to pretty much every government that took an active role in opposing the Iraq war. And I wonder where else the money was going. I suspect we'll find out, in time.

We also know about French and Russian stakes. It's the "where else" that's going to be interesting. We know about the people buying oil on the cheap. What about the folks distributing the "aid"? Specifically, what will we find out about the NGOs pushing for the sanctions to be lifted for the sake of the Iraqi people? One hopes the majority will fall into that too common category - well meaning but frustrated by intransigeant governments - but I wouldn't be too astonished to discover that at least some of the relief agencies hell-bent on saving the Iraqi people from everything except tyranny had some benefactors with their hands in the cookie jar. The real blow to the UN/international community might ultimately not come with word that people involved in the oil biz were playing fast and loose but with the discovery that Save the Children types hyping the plight of the Iraqi people were keeping their mouths shut about oil for food money not actually reaching those in need. If word got out that UNICEF or the Red Cross knowingly allowed Saddam to starve out enemies while keeping quiet...

Don't know if something like this will pop up, of course, but I've run across more than one or two "for the children" type organizations that were mostly for the bureaucrats. Could the people who do such things pass up an opportunity like that afforded by pre-war Iraq?

posted by gbarto at 11:18 PM

Friday, April 22, 2005

If you don't know enough to know that you don't know, does that mean that someone who does know that they don't know is smarter than you?

Once you've got that all unpacked, the short answer is yes. Good links and thoughts at Natalie Solent.

posted by gbarto at 12:43 AM

Thursday, April 21, 2005

For those who question the conclusions of my post below: Note that the French, for all their dedication to sovereignty, rule of law and international institutions, did not send a force to Iraq nor amass a military coalition to prevent our destabilizing and illegal actions there.

The French leadership dreams of the glory of a France long past, and even of the noise that DeGaulle managed to make on the international stage. But it presides over a citizenry that is as unwilling to fight as it is willing to take to the streets on the side of whichever cause says it doesn't have to. If the French leadership calls on the French people to stay home and stay out of things to send a message to the fascist Americans, Old Glory will be burned on French streets. But if the French leadership calls on the French people to take up arms and sacrifice their sons and daughters to the ending of American hegemony, they won't know whether to burn Old Glory or the Tricolor and will end by burning both as well as (in effigy) the leader who asked them to stand by the worst of French bombast.

France is capable of getting troops for the Ivory Coast, where (some of) the French see a need to put right messes of their own creation. They are not cowards. Nor, however, are they fools. Rhetorical excess, aimed at keeping us in check, is dandy by the French. But they know instinctively that twisting our tail - confident that we'll indulge - is different from going on the attack, not least because they disagree more with how we do things than where we stand. It's worth arguing with us where disagreements arise, but the disagreements are unlikely, I think, to rise to a level where the French people are willing to shed blood over them.

posted by gbarto at 7:07 PM

The Indigent Blogger suggests that with French PM Raffarin backing China's stance on Taiwan and wanting to lift the EU arms embargo against China, we may be headed for a new arms race, this time against Europe, with China as...

The scenario is ugly of course, but it's somewhat amusing the way things are shaking out. Wasn't China supposed to be the next great power? Yet, to read the latest, it looks like it's just a proxy contest in a Euro-American bid for Pac-Rim hegemony. I wonder if China's new leadership realizes what a humiliation it is for the rising dragon to have been suddenly turned into a pawn in France's play for new and greater glory.

The French play, of course, won't work. They aren't really going to get anywhere till a Corsican is in charge again, the continentals never having done well at the hard stuff. And I'm not sure the Corsicans are today what they once were. The biggest problem with the French maneuvers is that once again the land of nuance and sophistication has demonstrated a profound lack of nuance and sophistication. Most of its alleged allies - i.e. fellow EU nations - to the east are just emerging from a half-century of occupation by a nation with which France could do business. If you're in the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland, you have a pretty good idea who to trust when it comes to judging who's an oppressive threat to freedom and stability and who's a legitimate potential ally.

In the long run, we are headed for a sort of showdown. But France has several showdowns on its own horizons. It's going to have to deal with an eastern EU that isn't sympathetic to restrained tyrants, alleged allies in the EU that don't particularly trust it. And worst of all, it has an alleged leader whose primary motivation for staying in office is the prosecutors waiting for him once he leaves. In that environment, Chirac has to be able to make the tactical case for going head to head with the U.S., because he lacks the moral authority to make any other case.

Chirac got a lot of French support when he was keeping France out of war. Once the moment wore off, people started remembering why they'd never much liked him to begin with. Raffarin is sharper and more likeable, but he's out of his depth here. In four years, all this will be forgotten after Sarkozy has taken over the center-right, Chirac has agreed to stay away from politics in return for avoiding prison and Raffarin has been carted out as too Chiraquiste.

Oh, and a few years after, we'll be right back here as the next presidential election approaches and Sarkozy or his leftist vanquisher kicks up the anti-American stuff in an effort to suggest that for all her lost glory, France still dares to dream that it can rivaliser with the United States and, more important, the Anglo-American vision of freedom.

posted by gbarto at 6:46 PM

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Cicero has been broadening his mind: he's just about done with Don Quixote. Next on his list is Rabelais.

I haven't read much from the Quixote. If you asked about it, my answer would more likely refer to The Man of La Mancha. But based on what I do know, Rabelais is a good next pick. Again, the work is sprawling, bizarre and ironical. Cervantes and Rabelais were both writing at times when no one before had quite done what they were doing, which gave them some latitude to play with a form that their own genius helped fix.

The curious thing about Rabelais is that while a first reading reveals a vulgar bunch of nonsense, underneath the birth of humanism is taking place. From the educations of the giants to the medical quackeries to the hardly subtle and somewhat mocking parallels with the Bible, Rabelais signals (by his success, if not his actual plotting) that a cultural shift is underway with old verities under challenge and older verities reaffirmed. Particularly sweet is the story of the torche-cul, in which we find a reverence for practicality, the childish knack for invention and the sentimentality of a proud papa all rolled together. Nice.

posted by gbarto at 7:53 PM

Papam habent!

Not being Catholic, I couldn't go with the preferred formulation for the day, but thought I'd go in for a little pontificating anyway.

Instapundit points to the Bainbridge/Sully reax. I had assumed Ratzinger was younger, perhaps because I hadn't gone out of my way to learn about the doings in a church not my own. And so, on hearing of his election, I thought there might be a signal the church was holding conservative. I suppose it is, in any case, but for a somewhat shorter if divinely determined time. I'm sure Benedict XVI, like a few of the savvier fellows before him, will have at the back of his mind the irony that he was chosen in part for his mortality.

I'm not Catholic. I'm Congregationalist by baptism and confirmation, but I think the quasi-nondenominational church I currently attend is sort of Baptist (but not the holy roller kind, thank the good Lord). In other words, the issue here is one I understand intellectually, but the idea that someone thousands of miles away can determine my faith other than by convincing me is wholly foreign to me. Perhaps that's why I'm not as shocked! as he is that the College of Cardinals would pick a catholic Catholic to be Pope. Or as upset.

As a detached outsider, though, it looks to me like the electors took the easy pick: They chose to continue John Paul II's papacy, but not too long. If you're in Andrew's shoes, there may be no such thing as not too long, but for most of the world, the pope's approach to the moral issues of the day determines the relevancy of the pope and the church, not the spiritual comfort or anguish of lay Christians. If Ratzinger is as bad as Andrew says, he'd better put on one helluva dog and pony show or he'll be just another marginal pope. But I suspect that the electors are smarter than that and that a worse fear may await Andrew: persuasive argument that the Catholic church is as it is and has been for a reason. On parts of that I agree; on other parts I disagree. But if I were a Catholic with Andrew's outlook, I would not fear a short papacy from the goblin he describes nearly as much as that of a pope who cut an attractive figure and moved by his committment to a world view out of sync with Andrew's.

posted by gbarto at 6:44 PM

Monday, April 18, 2005

My junk science is better than your junk science!

In a write-up of Exxon's funding of groups that question global warming, Howie Kurtz has this paragraph:

Milloy says Mother Jones has taken "old information and sloppily tried to insinuate that ExxonMobil has a say in what I write in my Fox column, which is entirely false. . . . My columns are based on what I believe and no one pays me to believe anything." Despite a mainstream scientific consensus, Milloy says that "the hysteria about global warming is entirely junk science-based" and that he sees no need to disclose the ExxonMobil funding in his writing because it's not "relevant."

Would that be like the scientfic consensus on phlogiston? The sun revolving around the earth? Atoms are the smallest units of matter?

A few months back, Scientific American had one hell of an article on the global warming question. Some researchers think it began when early man started chopping down trees and raising effluent animals in relatively confined spaces at the dawn of the agricultural revolution. And a good thing, else we'd be in an ice age. While the article was meant to be provocative, rather than indicating that climatologists had all changed their minds, it showed that the global warming issue is still in play. You may not approve of Exxon or Milloy, but Kurtz' summary dismissal of doubts about global warming indicates a lack of curiosity about a major matter of scientific inquiry and an equal lack of respect for readers of the Post, whom one presumes are capable of forming their own judgments without a cutesy reminder about the orthodoxy of the day.

posted by gbarto at 6:58 PM

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Cute! A little owl at Instapundit. While we're birdblogging, here's the mascot for the TurkeyBlog, perched atop my monitor:

Also pictured: Superdog Pascal and the old mission at Sta. Clara University.

Slow news day? Why do you say that?

posted by gbarto at 11:57 PM