Monday, March 28th, 2011 
While the military intervention of Libya is both important and controversial, I am convinced that the importance and the controversy will be decided less by arms, more by speech. Talk, there and now, is decidedly not cheap, and this applies both to Libya and to the region. I have theoretical preferences that lead me to such an assertion. I admit. I am guided by a book by Jonathan Schell on this issue in general. But I think the specific evidence in Libya and among its neighbors is overwhelming.
The battles in Libya will yield one of three possible military outcomes. The Libyan resistance, with the aid of outside firepower, will overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Alternatively, Qaddafi and company will prevail. Or, there will be a stalemate. Of these three logically possible outcomes, I think it’s pretty clear that a regime victory with a return to the status quo ante is nearly impossible, given the level of internal resistance and external armaments. The best the regime can hope for is a military stalemate, which it would define as a victory. Yet, both in that case and the case of the victory of the resistance, the door will be opened for political change. The form of the change, then, will be decided politically not militarily, by the word, not by the sword.
And the direction of politics will depend on what people are doing in Libya and among its neighbors in the region off the center stage, as I explored last week. The young modern forces that played such an important role in the transformation in Tunisia and Egypt may very well be outmaneuvered by Islamists or by those privileged in the old regime cunningly maintaining their interests. (A New York Times report suggests that this is the unfolding case). These are the three main actors: those who are trying to maintain their privileges, the Islamists of one sort or another, and the young protesters who played a key role in initiating the present course of . . .
Read more: Arms and Speech in Libya and Beyond
Monday, March 28th, 2011 
Over the past week, I have been reviewing postings on other blogs which consider how things are going in the struggle in Libya. Particularly helpful were a series of posts by Juan Cole.
He developed a compelling account of why the war was necessary, i.e. to stop massacres , and to support popular sovereignty, and how the war was proceeding with international, including Arab and Turkish, support, achieving its goal of stopping a regime’s systematic murder of its own citizens.
He wisely warns against undo optimism and pessimism, “Pundits who want this whole thing to be over within 7 days are being frankly silly. Those who worry about it going on forever are being unrealistic. Those who forget or cannot see the humanitarian achievements already accomplished are being willfully blind.”
And he forcefully argued with critics on the left that they must learn “to chew gum and walk at the same time,” to support an intervention that saves lives and supports the developing autonomous democratic developments in the Arab world, and be critical of unwarranted international exploits of the great powers of Europe and America. “It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis…”
As I have already conceded, there are reasonable grounds to oppose this American and international involvement in Libya. The principled support for involvement is cogently presented by Cole. I’m convinced.
Later today, I will present my own judgment that the conflict in Libya will in the end be decided by words and not arms.
Saturday, March 26th, 2011 
This week Hannah Arendt’s notion of “past and future” has been revealed at DC. We have addressed a variety of different issues, trying to orient our future action, by thinking about our experiences. We have looked at the headlines, but also looked elsewhere and thought about different experiences to support the imagination.
I was particularly happy to receive Sergio Tavolaro’s post on President Obama’s visit to Brazil. Following cable news logic, it was a big mistake for the President to go to Brazil, given the pressing problems at home, centered on the impending budget crisis and the great debate about jobs and the deficit, and the military engagement in Libya and the growing uncertainties in North Africa and the Middle East. Yet beyond news sensation, there are important ongoing developments in the Americas, with very significant changes and challenges. Paying attention to Latin America, not only connected to drug and immigration issues, is a necessity especially when there are problems elsewhere.
Brazil is an emerging global power. Brazil and the United States have a long, sad history, marked by domination and political repression. As Brazil has emerged politically and economically, it often has defined its independence against the United States. Obama’s trip worked to change this. The highlight: the historic appreciation of the first African American President of the United States meeting the first woman President of Brazil. Tavolaro reports that there is a fascination with a shared progressive heritage, working against racism and sexism. And he notes that Obama embodied the declaration of equal partnership between nations: the President of the United States visited Brazil before he had an audience with the Brazilian leader in Washington, reversing the usual order. Using a sad past, the Brazilian population could and did imagine a hopeful future with the great American superpower to the north. This is important news for them and for us.
Karl Marx famously said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Gary Alan Fine shows how sometimes it works the other . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Between Past and Future
Thursday, March 24th, 2011 
While Japan is struggling to avoid the release of large doses of radioactive material from the failing reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant after the earthquake and tsunami, Chernobyl has taken a step back into the limelight. It is a typical journalistic ritual to revisit disasters after any round number of years. Think one hundred years after New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (coming soon), sixty-five years after WWII, or ten years after 9/11. Currently, while witnessing Japan’s nuclear malfunctions, we are remembering the world’s worst nuclear disaster 25 years ago. The question is what the repeated and repackaged story of Chernobyl adds to our dealings with current and future failures at nuclear power plants.
Today, a trip to Ukrainian Ground Zero is accessible to all. Journalists can simply accompany tourists on special Chernobyl tours to venture into the thirty kilometer exclusion zone (19 miles) around the former nuclear plant. The tour operators’ program describes a trip to the plant, a stop at a cooling channel to feed the fish (!), and after some sightseeing in the spooky town of Pripyat, a return to Chernobyl itself for lunch. Visitors will return home with the images of the deserted apartment buildings, the unused Ferris wheel at the moss overgrown fairground, and of course photos of the sarcophagus and the remains of the reactor complex itself. So, what have we learned?
The eerie devastation that humans caused in and around Chernobyl is hard to describe. But it is much easier to retell the unearthly story than to analyze and act upon it. I still have fresh memories of my own visit to the site – as a journalist – in December 2000. Almost fifteen years after the explosion in reactor number four on April 26, 1986, I was there to attend the final closing of the nuclear complex. Up until then, the remaining reactors had been operating to some degree, providing electricity to the area and necessary jobs for the people. In exchange for a compensation package from the West, former Ukrainian president Kuchma had agreed to a ‘premature stoppage,’ and the loss . . .
Read more: Chernobyl on My Mind
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 
There are serious arguments for and against military intervention in Libya. Michael Walzer, who is often wise about such things, makes a strong case against. Yet, on balance I am convinced by Conor Foley’s minimalist position for intervention, presented at Crooked Timber. Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s decision to defend his power by any means necessary led Foley to conclude: “I think that the situation in Libya immediately prior to the intervention passed the threshold test … the UN is fulfilling its responsibility to protect the lives of civilians in this case.” Of course, there are many other situations where such intervention on these grounds should be called for, perhaps too many, but in Libya it became possible and has been immediately successful in the stated goal of reducing civilian deaths.
But there is also a greater hope that as their lives are being defended, Libyans will contribute to the democratic transformation of 2011. If Qaddafi would be defeated, a new democratic force may emerge, what Benoit Challand calls, “the counter-power of civil society.” My heart hopes it will be so. My head suggests extreme caution. Looking closely at the way the big political issues are enacted in everyday interactions, what I call “the politics of small things,” suggests why the caution is called for, but also where there may be hopeful signs.
There is a dilemma. For a successful democratic transition, the Libyans must develop a capacity to say more than no or yes to the dictator, as I put it while speculating about the Egyptians and when studying the Central Europeans. Yet, war generally doesn’t provide the time or place for this to happen. Opposition to the perceived evil source requires resolute action, disciplined unity of purpose. Democratic life is based upon diverse opinions and judgments and civil contestation. War generally does not support such civility and diversity. Significantly, Qaddafi’s regime worked against this throughout its history.
In politics the means are the ends. . . .
Read more: Libya and the Mission Creep I Hope For
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 
Tuesday August 10, 1948 was, as it happened, a turning point in American culture, a small moment but one of major significance. On this day, Candid Camera was first broadcast on American television. For over sixty years Candid Camera and its offspring have held a place in popular culture. The show, long hosted by Allen Funt, amused viewers by constructing situations in which unsuspecting citizens would be encouraged to act in ways that ultimately brought them some measure of public humiliation, documented by hidden cameras. These naïve marks were instructed to be good sports. “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera” became a touchstone phrase.
Perhaps the show was all in good fun; perhaps it contributed to a climate of distrust whereby citizens thought twice about helping strangers. Still as long as the show remained in its niche on television it attracted little public concern and less disapproval. Candid Camera was, one might suggest, beneath contempt. What happened for sure is that in time the use of hidden cameras has mutated. CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras; the tracking of citizens by governments and corporations, is so endemic to the modern polis, it has become unremarkable. Surveillance is not merely an obscure commentary by Jeremy Bentham or Michel Foucault, but a reality of which we instruct our children. These cameras are treated as fundamental to security. And perhaps they are.
Technology has its way with us. As cameras have become more portable and as video has become more viral, the hidden camera has become an essential tool of the political provocateur. At one point both law enforcers and investigative journalists (think Mike Wallace) relied on hidden cameras to catch the bad guys engaging in despicable acts. The scenes made for effective prosecutions and mighty television.
But today the offspring of the old show have run amok, shaking American politics. Hidden cameras are everywhere. And they are used in a fashion that is quite different from the civic-mindedness of the journalists of 60 Minutes. Today, secret puppet masters are not inclined to trap their targets . . .
Read more: Candid Camera Politics
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 
Sergio Tavolaro is a sociology professor at the University of Brasília. He presents today his account of Barack Obama’s recent visit to his country. -Jeff
It is nearly impossible to speak of one Brazilian approach to the United States, given Brazil’s domestic diversity and complexity. Indifference, suspicion, admiration, anger and interest can all be found among Brazilian citizens when invited to reflect upon the North American giant partner. Yet, by and large, it is fair to say that President Obama’s first visit to Brazil was widely welcomed. More than a mere encounter of two heads of states simply complying with protocol obligations, the meeting had a great deal of symbolic charge. To be sure, the historical importance of Obama’s rise to the presidency was greatly appreciated by Brazilians from the very beginning. As the rhetoric tone of his campaign was closely followed by the local media, a significant portion of Brazil’s public opinion shared the excitement experienced by Americans when Obama was sworn in.
But many additional ingredients contributed to the success of this diplomatic event. To begin with, as President Dilma Rousseff herself highlighted, one should not underestimate the privilege of witnessing the encounter between the first US Afro-American president and the first Brazilian woman president – especially if one remembers how filled with racial problems both societies are and the subordinate status of women in Brazil.
National Congress of Brazil, Brasília © Rob Sinclair | Wikimedia Commons
Besides, there are signs indicating that Brazil – US relations are now changing in a positive way, in comparison with the recent past. One ramification of President Lula’s independent and bold foreign policy was a distancing between the two countries on a varied set of issues. The divergence over the recent political crisis in Honduras was just one manifestation of mounting diplomatic rifts, which also included different views regarding Venezuela, Bolivia and, for sure, Iran’s nuclear policies. The US reluctance to . . .
Read more: President Obama in Brazil: A View from Brazil
Monday, March 21st, 2011 
The DC discussion last week about the catastrophes in Japan, as well as about the photography of John Ganis depicting the degradation of the environment by human activity, suggests to me an important aesthetic issue, not immediately tied to the moral and political problems of the day, but illuminating them. We must remember in this time of crisis that the taming of the natural world doesn’t only degrade but also enhances our environment and its beauty.
I often think about this running around my neighborhood. I have two basic running routes, one involves just going out my front door, down a long winding road in the direction of Washington Irving’s House, Sunnyside, continuing my run on the Old Croton Aqueduct, a very beautiful and exhilarating experience. Even more spectacular is an alternative run requiring a short car ride to the compound of the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers still live in its many mansions and fine homes, but a significant portion of their estate has become a beautiful state park, with 40 miles of bridal paths, now making for a runner’s paradise.
Bill Clinton sometimes runs at Rockefeller, as does Khalid Khannouchi, a former world record holder in the marathon and many lesser runners from the area and way beyond. Running there is like running through a Jane Austen novel. This is no accident. The paths and bridges were designed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for John D. Rockefeller Sr. The hills and valleys and the streams are like those in the woods closer to my house. But I make a point to go to the park, as Junior’s gift for his great robber baron father demonstrates the beauty of human intervention and imagination. This is clear at all times, in good weather and in bad.
A few years ago, a hurricane brushed our area, washing away one of the bridges. Many of these (designed . . .
Read more: Man Enhances Nature? Reflecting on Two Bridges
Friday, March 18th, 2011 
“I believe that intellectuals have played crucial roles in the making of democracy and in the ongoing practices of democratic life.” With this sentence, I opened my book Civility and Subversion. Motivating the writing of that book was a developing misinformed (to my mind) consensus that intellectuals played an important role in the democratic opposition to the Communist order, but they would be relatively unimportant for the post Communist making and running of democracy. I thought that this was a terrible mistake, and I tried to show that in the book. In short, my argument was that intellectuals play a democratic role, not when they purport to provide the answers to a society’s problems, but when they facilitate deliberate discussion. Intellectuals are talk provokers. Discussions at Deliberately Considered over the past week demonstrate my point. We have considered and opened discussion about important problems.
On Monday, Vince Carducci introduced and analyzed the photography of John Ganis, art that confronts the damage we do to our environment, showing beauty that displays destruction. Carducci observes that “Ganis describes himself as a ‘witness’ rather than an activist. And yet his subject matter and its treatment clearly indicate where the artist’s loyalties lie.” But it is the ambiguity of the work, its internal tension that provokes and doesn’t answer political questions that facilitated a discussion between Felipe Pait and Carducci, comparing the destruction of the BP oil spill with the devastation in Japan. This could inform serious discussion about my reflections on man versus nature. We are present. We have our needs. How does it look when we satisfy them? What are the consequences? I think that this reveals that the power of the witness can sometimes be more significant than that of the activist. Carducci and I have an ongoing discussion about the value of agit prop. He likes it. I abhor it. I think Ganis’ work, with Carducci’s analysis of it, as the devastation in Japan was unfolding, supports my position.
![]() DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan
Thursday, March 17th, 2011 
This post follows Fine’s reflections on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. –Jeff
As we begin to find ourselves numbed by the tsunami of news, videos, and twittering from Sendai, we are moving from the tragedy (which is, of course, really, really sad) to find other topics that speak to our assorted emotional needs. We are not quite done with Japan, but our tears have dried. Soap operas can’t run over an hour. (The naïve Libyan rebels didn’t realize that their reality show was in reruns. But we have scheduled prime time grief for them next week).
Like clockwork, the topic du jour is joking after disaster. Af-lac! As folklorist Bill Ellis noted in his dissection of the jocular aftermath of 9/11, “Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster,” it routinely takes about three days for the first jokes to appear. Right on schedule, Mr. Gottfried, Mr. 50 Cent, and Mr. Haley Barbour’s press secretary.
Mr. Gottfried perhaps has it the worst of all as his gig as the voice of Aflac’s duck has been washed away. The duck will be “revoiced.” Hearing such offensive poultry would be too much. Who knew that Japan was the company’s largest market? (Fill in your own joke about the meaning of Aflac in Sendai.) Rather than quacking, Mr. Gottfried tweeted. His jokes struck me as rather mild (I have a strong stomach). For instance, “My Japanese doctor advised me that to stay healthy, I need 50 million gallons of water a day.” Drum roll, please.
Mr. Gottfried might be forgiven for thinking that he could ride out the storm since he had previously gained notoriety for his 9/11 joke at a comedian’s roast for Hugh Hefner in late September 2001. He joshed that he couldn’t find a direct flight because the plane had to connect with the Empire State Building first. After his roast appearance, he became something of a folk hero among comedians. One wonders what people thought they would get when they signed up for . . .
Read more: Ducks, Docks, and Disasters: Joking about Japan
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DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan