Culture

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> In 1776 Adam Smith published his “Wealth of Nations” which has guided economists and political thinkers ever since. It marks the start of the Industrial Revolution that began in England and then spread throughout most of the world. That was 237 years ago. It is not that long ago – only 4 life-spans or so, the time of your great, great, great, grandparents. Where will we be 237 years hence? Presumably just as today we listen to Mozart, born 257 years ago, and watch or read Shakespeare, born 439 years ago – they have survived all changing tastes and spread well outside their original orbit of European culture to countries as varied as Japan, China, Argentina, Tanzania and South Korea – we can be sure that generations to come will have much the same cultural interests. In all likelihood in 2250 we will probably still enjoy tastes picked up...

There is something particularly distressing about the ongoing debate on authorizing an internationally illegal and immoral military attack on Syria: a show of political support on the right. Such a ‘coming together’ of some of the center and much of the right in the American Congress has been sadly absent during Obama presidency until now, whether the issue was health, taxes, social services, keeping the government running, and immigration. And this support emerges on the rare occasion when a majority of American citizens, not known for their cosmopolitan sentiments or affection for the UN Charter, oppose attacking Syria, as was the British Parliament, and as is public opinion throughout Europe. In such a setting, it is not only international law and the UN are being repudiated in a war/peace situation, but the whole fabric of democratic accountability to law and the judgment of the people. At least we can conclude...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Fifty years ago Martin Luther King made his earth-shattering “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Is there anybody who watches and listens to it on YouTube not moved to the soles of their shoes? I’ve heard it a hundred times and still it stirs me. His dream that one day his children would “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” is one of the greatest lines in all oratory. The south of the US, he said, was “sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression”. Within ten years of the end of America’s civil war, fought over the issue of slavery, southern white Democrats had established state constitutions that stripped black citizens of their newly won political rights. Terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan destroyed black...

The Orwellian features of the military takeover in Egypt have received attention, although the use of language to evade unwanted truth continues because incentives to do so persist. For this reason, Washington has remained unwilling to call what happened in Egypt on July 3rd as a coup, despite its unmistakable character. The nature of Egypt’s coup has daily become more and more evident. It is now clear that not only was the takeover properly described as coup, but it has turned out to be a particularly bloody coup that is now being reinforced by a total lockdown of opposition forces and democratic options, including even dissenting opinions.

While international envoys failed to broker an end to the political deadlock between Egypt’s Armed Forces and the Muslim Brotherhood, there was still room for diplomatic solutions to the turmoil, as Vice President El Baradei was quoted as saying before he resigned from his post yesterday following the brutal clean-up operation of two of the Bortherhood’s biggest sit-in protests. Why did mediation fail? Anyone who has done the rounds of Tahrir and has subscribed to various social networks in Egypt would know- it is not rocket science- Egyptians are against Obama and everything the US stands for. They see the US as a cause of much of this divide in Egyptian society and anti-US rhetoric is omnipresent. Funny thing is that the US would send Republican senators who are so opposed to internationals even within their own country. Some may argue that it was a wise step, as Congress would...

 Civilization: there are six sources of inspiration today, vying for the attention of a humanity looking for goals and means. Two of them are Western secular, liberal and Marxist, defining to a large extent the USA and the former Soviet Union, but not identical with them. Two of them are Oriental amalgams of civilizations, the Japanese Shinto-Confucian-Buddhist civilization, trying to be Western liberal, and the Chinese Daoist-Confucian-Buddhist civilization with strong elements of Western liberal and Western Marxist. And two of them are in-between: the Islamic and the Buddhist civilizations.[i] Dialogue: it simply has to happen.

“The Secrets to Finland’s Success with School—and Everything”, The Atlantic (11-Jul-2013), has many messages to a US readership from that particular welfare state. One of them is a school system which ranks as one of the world’s best with no standard testing or South-/and East!/Asian “cramming”; limiting student testing to a necessary minimum; there is less emphasis on competition. And another, closely related, Finns have an incredible equality and very little poverty; an extremely low child-poverty rate. The two points are related. The article, written by Olga Khazan, wisely points to smallness and high homogeneity as two factors underlying the “success”, also known to the other Nordic countries. However, as pointed out, there are “sizeable Swedish and Russian-speaking communities – the former ruling the country till 1809, the latter on till the Russian 1917 revolution–took time to even it out. What the article has not picked up is the closeness...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Observers say that what drives President Vladimir Putin is to make Russia respected. But perhaps Putin overestimates how much power Russia already has. He has overlooked which trumpets to blow – it is not his “hang tough” policies in international affairs, especially vis-a-vis the United States. It is Russia’s culture. These thoughts were prompted by watching the opening of the new, quite beautiful, extension of the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg on Mezzo television, the French cable station for classical music. (You can see it on U-Tube.) The Mariinsky is run by Valery Gergiev and he arranged a show (and conducted it) so rich and of such supreme achievement that it overshadowed in my memory all the great performances I’ve seen, whether in London, New York, Paris or Moscow. Each segment lasted a bare 4 minutes and it alternated between opera, ballet and two solo violinists and one pianist....

Prelude To begin with, I know of no truly mature political democracy on this, although to be sure some rest on a more stable political base than others. Most importantly, some forces of opposition despair of ever succeeding by democratic procedures, while others pin their hopes on the next election, or the one after that. Some democracies have greater economic stability or can boast of high growth rates, possess a larger private sector and bigger middle class with more to lose, than others. Some states are more vulnerable to foreign interference than others, and some have formidable foreign enemies that seek regime change or something worse. Perhaps, more victimized than any most modern societies, Germany devastated after World War I was caught in the midst of recovering from a humiliating military defeat accentuated by vindictive victors, a resulting economic depression featuring high unemployment and runaway inflation. Its pathetic enactment of...

Alfaz del Pi, located between Mediterranean beaches and a couple of majestic mountains, Campana-Aitana (Man and Woman) 1500 meters high. Today this small town generously accommodates 21,500; surrounded by fertile soil, orange and olive trees, vines. Benidorm – the famous tourist resort – and Altea, more for artists, are at hand stretching distance; on the Costa Blanca – white seen from the sea – in Spain. So far nothing special. But that little town is home to close to one hundred different nations; 57% are foreigners. The English and the Norwegians are the most frequent; the Norwegians arriving already some 45 years ago. Close to half a century of peaceful coexistence; and not only absence of violence but also positive, cooperative peace. We, a Japanese-Norwegian couple, arrived June 1969. First time in Spain was in 1951, hitchhiking to understand fascism better. Franco had evolved from dictadura, dictatorship, after a brutal...

During this apprentice period as a blogger I have learned and relearned how difficult it is to reconcile my interest in constructive dialogue on highly contested subject-matters with sustaining a tone of civility. Especially with respect to the Palestine/Israel struggle I have periodically failed, angering especially those who feel that their support of Israel is either inappropriately rejected or ignored. This anger is turned in the direction of personal insults directed either at me or at writers of comments, which induces those at the receiving end to reply in kind, and the result is a loss of civility, which alienates many other readers who tire of such futile and mean-spirited arguments. By way of clarification, let me acknowledge that I regards two types of interaction as satisfying my goal of ‘constructive dialogue’: conversations between like-minded on matters of shared interest; exchange of views between those who adopt antagonistic positions on...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> It goes back to the French revolution of 1789. At the Revolutionary Convention the most radical of the insurgents decided to seat themselves on the left side. “Why not on the other side, the right side, the place of rectitude, where law and the higher right resided, when man’s best hand could be raised in righteous honour?” wrote Melvin Lasky in Britain’s intellectual monthly, Encounter. “Anyway they went left, and man’s political passions have never been the same.” When Oskar Lafontaine, the West German finance minister, broke with Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in the early days of the last Social Democratic government, he explained it was “because my heart beats on the left.” The right could never say that, even David Cameron, prime minister of Britain, who likes to make out that he is liberal, at least on the environment and foreign aid. When Humpty-Dumpty insisted on his own “master-meanings”...