Coded Messages

France's Latest Literary Star Doesn't Love France

Much of Europe's artistic energy comes from its immigrants and ethnic minorities. Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie are just a few who have collected the U.K.'s Man Booker Prize. In France this year, the Prix Goncourt went to Marie Ndiaye, a French-Senegalese author. The Prix Medicis, arguably France's second most important literary honor, went to Dany Laferriere, a Haitian writer who lives in Montreal.

So there has been some embarrassment in political and literary circles when it turned out that Ms. Ndiaye has been living in self-imposed exile in Berlin. She says she moved there after the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, whom she accuses of bringing an "atmosphere of surveillance and vulgarity." She cited harsh measures against illegal immigration. "I find this France monstrous," she told a magazine.

Ms. Ndiaye has a background similar to President Obama; she had an African father, but was born and raised in France. She is the first black woman to win the award and the first female winner in a decade. She says she's never been personally discriminated because she's never applied for a job. Employment discrimination is blatant in France and repeated investigations by the news media seem to have little effect. However, she says her brother, a historian, is frequently hassled by the police. She says she moved to Berlin because it was a "freer city."

A member of President Sarkozy's UMP party called on her to recant, arguing that now that she was a literary ambassador, she had a duty to refrain from criticizing France. In a letter to French culture minister Frederick Mitterand, prominent parliamentarian Éric Raoult declared: "It seems to me that the right to express one's self cannot be turned into the right to insult or settle one's own personal scores.... A well-known person who defends France's literary accomplishments must show some degree of respect toward our institutions."

Ms. Ndiaye has not backed off. Her prize-winning novel, "Three Powerful Women," explores immigration and ends with an African woman who dies trying to reach Europe. It has set off the kind of literary tempest the French are fond of. And it comes at a time when Sarkozy's UMP party has launched a four-month discussion of French identity. They might learn something by listening to Ms. Ndiaye.

French TV's Toussaint Louverture Goes Awry

France 2's two-part, three-hour production of "Toussaint Louverture" should have been the fulfillment of a dream. For decades, black actors and producers have unsuccessfully sought funds to tell the story on screen of the great man who defeated the most powerful armies of the world and set the stage for Haitian independence. But Hollywood has never warmed to the idea that the tale of the black man who led the world's only successful slave revolt would be box office dynamite.

The French TV network's production, directed by French director Philippe Niang, is lavish, with authentic-looking sets, colorful costumes and great attention to historical detail. The producers gathered a stellar cast, led by Haitian-American Jimmy Jean-Louis, whom most Americans would remember as "The Haitian" in NBC's sci-fi series, "Heroes." Other performers include the beautiful Aïssa Maiga as Toussaint’s wife Suzanne, and former Miss France Sonia Rolland as the mulatto wife of French abolitionist Sonthonax. The actors speak French and Creole (which is subtitled).

The plot generally follows the historical facts, except for a few jarring side trips. There is Toussaint's gradual political awakening, the famed Bois Cayman voodoo ceremony that started the slave revolt. There is the intrigue and mistrust between blacks and mulattos and Louverture's masterful maneuvering of French, British and Spanish forces. And finally, there is Toussaint's betrayal by Napoleon and his imprisonment in the Chateaux de Joux in the Jura mountains where he finally dies. It will remain to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of his more ruthless deputies, to take the step toward independence in 1804.

The plot goes awry when the writers invent facts that seem gratuitous. At the beginning, when Toussaint and his sister are on the auction block, a buyer deems his father too old and has him drowned. In fact, Toussaint's father outlived him. In the famous Bois Cayman ceremony, Biassou, an early leader of the slave uprising, tries to shoot Toussaint but the gun fails to fire. There's no evidence Toussaint was at Bois Cayman. In another scene near the end, his faithful valet Mars Plaisir, who accompanied Toussaint to prison when Napoleon tricked him into accepting an invitation to France, played wonderfully by Magloire Delcros-Varaud, is shot by a French general on leaving the prison. Plaisir was sent in chains to Nantes, but eventually was released and died peacefully in Paris 20 years later.

These script aberrations suggest the authors don't trust the integrity of the real story to hold an audience. Maybe they are aware of the shortcomings of their script. Some of this film plays like a school pageant, flat, two-dimensional, and clichéd. One one hand, it is exciting to finally see some of our nearly forgotten history brought to life for a large audience; on the other, it's disappointing once again that the characters never achieve the humanity that would make a truly great film.

Hello again. It's been a good year since I posted here. I spent the last two years editing The Root (www.theroot.com) and had little time for personal rumination. But I'm back and will start posting again after I relocate to Paris next week.

The Stench of Giuliani

The farther you get from New York, the better the reputation of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. So it was a surprise to many Americans when Mayor 9/11's presidential campaign failed so spectacularly. Not so to most New Yorkers, who knew that the World Trade Center disaster saved Rudy's career, which had fallen into a giant sinkhole of nastiness, pettiness and recrimination.

Any New Yorker who had forgotten Giuliani's track record got a rude awakening last week, when he emerged to endorse incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In his short speech, Giuliani quickly reminded New Yorkers why he was so reviled by so many during his eight year tenure at City Hall.

Addressing an orthodox Jewish group in Brooklyn, the Republican former mayor warned that failure to re-elect Bloomberg to a third term could be perilous to their safety. He reminded them that it was not that long ago that the city was dominated by “the fear of going out at night and walking the streets.” Giuliani never said explicitly who he was talking when he warned against the "wrong political leadership"regaining power. He never mentioned the name of William Thompson, the African-American city comptroller who is Bloomberg's main challenger. In case the sledgehammer wasn't enough, Giuliani added, “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” "This city could very easily be taken back in a very different direction — it could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership.”

It didn't take a Kremlinologist to know what the former mayor was falling back on one of his favorite tactics - race baiting. His eight years in office were marked by open hostility to New York minority communities, especially African-Americans. Any one could get a whiff of an old odor that has not permeated New York during the last eight years. That smell, of racial tension and recrimination, was a hallmark of Giuliani's administration. He was openly contemptuous of black elected officials, declaring that there was no point in meeting with them since they weren't likely to agree with him.

Giuliani's administration was marked by one racial incident after another. From the killings of Eleanor Bumpers and Amadou Diallo to the sodomization of Abner Louima in a police station, Giuliani's instinct was to side with the police. When an innocent Haitian-American student Patrick Dorismond, shoved away an undercover cop who tried to sell him drugs in Times Square, he ended up dead. Giuliani had Dorismond's juvenile record leaked to the media. For many non-white New Yorkers, the police was an occupying force, above the law and fiercely defended as always in the right by the mayor.

While Bloomberg has largely defused racial tensions in New York, his administration is hardly any more inclusive than Giuliani's. But by avoiding unnecessary racial confrontation, he has been able to escape any serious scrutiny of his senior staff. As a recent New York magazine article pointed out, the mayor, through generous  wage increases and largess with his own private money, has been able to marginalize not just minorities, but also other constituencies that have traditionally played a role in shaping policy in New York. Unions, civic groups, even corporations, have been silenced by Bloomberg's generosity or threats of retaliation.

Bloomberg's bottomless purse has already assured him of re-election despite the distaste for his strong-arm tactics in overturning term limits. He has spent $85 million so far, to less than $2 million by his opponent. In the New York Times last weekend, columnist Bob Herbert wondered why the mayor felt the need to bring on Giuliani and then allow his nasty message to go unchallenged.

Bloomberg's all-out blitz reflects his approach to business. He takes no chances and he want s to overwhelm the opposition. Most polls show his leading by double digits. But the mayor wants no November surprise. So he's willing to bring back New York's nasty past to close the deal. It tells us something about Bloomberg too, but he may also have unwittingly done us an important service. With Giuliani making noises about running for governor of New York, we're reminded of the unpleasant odor he brought to the city. It's not likely to make things smell any better in Albany.

Is Europe Turning Prudish?

The common perception of Europe among American conservatives is that it is a den of libertine immorality. This is reinforced on the U.S. side by Europeans'  frequently condescending reactions to our Puritanical uproars over such scandals as Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. On the other hand, American can be shocked by events that are impossible to imagine in our political universe, like seeing the mistress and illegitimate daughter of late French President François Mitterrand standing next to his family at his funeral.

Could Europe be changing? The reaction in Europe to a recent series of events suggests that Europe's famed laissez-faire attitude may have limits. The first sign that  European tolerance is not unlimited came after the arrest of film director Roman Polanski in Switzerland in connection to a sexual assault case of a 13-year-old girl dating back to 1977. Predictably, European (and some American) intellectuals and artists came to his defense, calling his arrest "shocking" and "unfair."

But an unexpected backlash quickly erupted, with many European politicians, intellectuals, and even some of his film industry peers saying that Polanski, who fled the U.S. before his sentencing, needed to go back and face justice. No one was above the law, some of the European critics suggested, not even an Oscar-winning director with a large circle of influential friends.

Supporting Polanski turned out perilous for French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, a nephew of the late President. Landing Mitterrand for the post was considered a coup for right-of-center French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But Mitterrand's backing of Polanski prompted a second look at a best-selling novel he wrote four years ago. In the book, The Bad Life, the first-person narrator boasted of paying for sex with young boys in Southeast Asia. Suddenly, there were questions about Mitterrand's role in the sex trade and calls for his resignation. The minister found himself having to argue that the book was not autobiographical. “Yes, I've had relations with boys,” he said, “but you can't confuse homosexuality with pedophilia.”

Then, there's the ongoing saga of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian leader and media magnate has fought off critics of his behavior for years. But a nasty breakup with his current wife exposed a series of escapades involving prostitutes, and possibly, underage girls. Italian voters, have backed Berlusconi through thick and thin -- guided, it must be said, by his near-total control of the media in his country through his own holdings and his influence on government public networks.

However, public support seemed a lot less enthusiastic this time. It didn't help his outlook that an Italian high court took away his immunity from prosecution last week, overturning a law his parliamentary majority had passed just a few years earlier or that his holding company, Fininvest was ordered to pay 1.14 billion euros to a rival company for bribing a judge. Fond of saying, "Hey, I'm no angel,"  the Prime Minister faces rough flying as the mood in Europe seems to be turning, dare we say, more American.

What the debate about Afghanistan leaves out

Last night I attended a vigorous, challenging debate on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan at New York University. The event was part of a series called "Intelligence-squared", and sponsored by the Rosenkranz foundation. It was a welcome break from the shouting matches that have become the dominant style of political discourse in the U.S. However, I found a large and disturbing gap in the debate that I will get to later.

The participants included Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation (who writes the popular blog Washington Note), and his boss, former Washington Post reporter Steve Coll, who took opposing sides of the issue. The rest of the panelists included several former military men and a former assistant secretary of defense under George W. Bush.

Organized along the lines of a formal Oxford debate, each side was asked to challenge or defend the proposition: American Cannot and Will Not Succeed in Afghanistan/Pakistan. It was testament to the quality of the debaters that at the end, those who argued against the resolution (and for a renewed effort in the region) actually won over a lot of the undecided in the presumably-liberal New York audience.

However, both sides admitted they had a lot in common: neither side wanted a complete U.S. pullout; their disagreement centered on tactics: a continued engagement on a limited scale, more effective counter-insurgency, more focus on economic development. Where they disagreed most sharply was on the effectiveness of the U.S. involvement so far and whether Afghan troops can replace or supplement the U.S. effort. The other unstated agreement was the conceit that America can project its power and intentions while viewing other players as passive or peripheral.

For example, I was disturbed by the lack of focus on what Afghans themselves want and what kind of country they imagine. In fact, some of the discussion was about whether Afghanistan was a country at all or a hopeless collection of disparate tribes and cultures. The other missing element was the role of other players in the region, other than Pakistan. It is hard to imagine a lasting solution without the heavy involvement of Iran and Russia, China and India.

Pakistan got short shrift in the discussion (which the participants admitted toward the end) other than as a safe haven for the Taliban or Al-Quaeda.  Yet India, the most economically-successful country in the region hardly came up. One reason Pakistan's intelligence forces have nurtured radicals in Afghanistan and Pakistan is as a sort of buffer against India. Many Pakistani leaders consider India a far greater threat than radical Islam.

While in India last year, I spoke to a former military leader turned entrepreneur about U.S. fears that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would fall into radical hands. The former officer, drew himself up and said very quietly: "We would never allow that to happen." I shudder to imagine an Indian invasion, or preemptive strike, of Pakistan and the possible impact on the region.

One of the flaws in most discussions about Afghanistan is the persistent myth that the U.S. can still go it alone in foreign policy, a myopia that President Obama,despite his strong internationalist leanings, will have a difficult time changing.Giving the generals what they want, as the right is arguing now, suggests that once more troops are committed we are closer to solving the problem.

But unless we take into account the national interests of Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iraq, and find ways to draw them into a common solution, we face the danger of stepping more deeply into a swamp that has swallowed some of the most powerful armies in the world.

Elections and Reality

U.S. governments have long been promoters of elections as a measure of democratic progress. But a series of election in the past few days have demonstrated how going to the ballot box can be a rather flimsy measure of political advancement. Americans too often assume that the institutions they take for granted also exist or work as well in other countries.

The presidential election in Afghanistan is probably the most blatant example of less is less. A growing number of accounts indicate that the electoral process in that embattled country has been thoroughly corrupted by ballot stuffing, intimidation and indifference. On one side, the Taliban, who are fighting the Western troop allied with President Hamid Karzai, have warned Afghans not to participate; on the other, warlords and tribal leaders, many of them Karzai supporters, have apparently stuffed the ballot boxes and rigged the count to give the incumbent lead and possibly avoid a runoff.

The U.S. has wanted an election - and a win by Karzai - to reinforce his legitimacy and proof that the sacrifice in lives is making progress. But the problem at the heart of the dispute is that Afghanistan is barely a country. It is an agglomeration of tribal leaders, warlords, and regional governors whose loyalties overlap and shift easily. President Karzai, who has strong support from the United States, barely has any clout beyond Kabul. His brother is suspected of being heavily involved in the vast drug traffic that keeps the country's economy afloat.  Many news reports indicate that even the concept of being an Afghan is a tenuous concept often trumped by loyalty to tribe and region.

Then there's the election in Gabon. Just a few hours ago, Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba declared that he had won that country's election for President. He would succeed his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled the small West African country for 40 years, enriching himself and a small coterie of cronies while the country remained destitute. Bongo had close ties to France and is said to have even secretly financed the election campaigns of some French politicians.

If the results hold up, the young Bongo would defeat 16 other candidates to only become the third president of Gabon since its independence from France in 1960. The win was expected, with the political establishment and the state security apparatus fully behind the son of the former president, who died in June. Gabon is the world's fifth-largest oil producer but after 40 years of dictatorship, democratic institutions are few and far between.

Finally, there's the election in Japan, where the ruling party lost an election for the first time in 50 years. The landslide win by the opposition Democratic Party may mean a lot less change than could be expected. Japan's elected politicians never had much clout in running their governments, which remained in the hands of powerful bureaucrats as Liberal Democratic Party administrations came and went. The real issue will be whether the new government will have the will and the levers to unseat the unelected mandarins who have formulated policy, written legislature and instructed legislators how to vote for half a century. Here too, the election may have less impact than the frustration of citizens tired of policies that have dealt Japan 10 years of stagnation and runaway public spending.

False Praise for Novak

We are so dishonest in our eulogies.
Robert Novak sided with evil too many times. Burning Valerie Plame was just one of last acts that reminded us of his eagerness to side with power.

We should not forget how he embraced Ian Smith of Rhodesia and fanned opposition to African liberation movements by smearing them as Communist. The same red smear was applied liberally to Martin Luther King Jr. by him and his co-conspirator Robert Evans.

His knee-jerk support for the right-wing in Latin America was typical of the role he played.
For the next three days, we'll be hearing all the b.s. about how nice a guy he was and how charming he was at Washington cocktail parties. Please. Let's not glide over his nasty acts and nasty positions in some ritual of final niceness. Evil is evil and I hope he burns in hell.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-bronstein/robert-novak-the-prince-o_b_262254.html?show_comment_id=29284401#comment_29284401

FCC Eyes the Phone Monopolies, Finally

It's about time. The FCC has decided to look into Apple's decision to block Google Talk, which would let users make cheap or free calls with the iPhones. Why the surprise? The mobile carriers have blocked anything that challenges their monopolies or profits. They've blocked using cellphones as wireless modems, forcing customers to buy a separate data plan and cellular device. Some have blocked Skype and Vonage, the leading VoIP services.

It's time to open up the airwaves to new technologies and new applications. The phone companies should have realized by now that the walled garden approach is hopeless and try to find other ways to make money.

My beef is international data roaming. When I land anywhere outside the U.S. I get a warning on my iPhone that data calls cost $19.95 per megabyte over AT&T's network. I didn' t get those warnings when I started going to Europe with my Palm and I choked on my phone bill when I came back. Routine downloads of email quickly ran into hundreds of dollars. There's no cost justification for this. Fortunately, the iPhone has wi-fi and I can easily enough find a free or cheap connection when I'm not using my European phone.

I'm not surprised that Apple collaborated with AT&T on blocking Google Talk. Apple has always controlled third party access to its devices. You can say that's one reason they work so well; but it's also a reason they've been more expensive, too.

I recently switched to an iPhone and have been pleased by how well it works. But some of the other limitations on apps have also been frustrating. I used an app called Agendus on the Palm that nicely integrated your tasks, appointments, follow-ups and phone numbers on the tiny screen. When I saw a version for the iPhone, I immediately downloaded it, only to discover that it had none of the calendaring abilities because Apple has not given developers access to the calendar function.

Why? Who knows. Agendus apps on other phones shows that you can overlay an application without altering the core database. It might simply be that Steve Jobs doesn't like the idea. So we'll have to wait for that wall to come down as well.

Post-Racial? Spare Me

The reaction in the black community to the arrest of distinguished Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates is bound to puzzle some white Americans and those who live outside our American racial dynamic. The outrage will be seen by some as an over-reaction. Some critics will argue that Gates’ run-in with the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was unfortunate, but an aberration, and that the man who is arguably the most famous college professor in America could have avoided confrontation with a policeman on his doorstep by being more cooperative.

 In an American moment that some pundits desperately wanted to label as post-racial, the arrest of a black Harvard professor on his own doorstep was a stark reminder of the fragile status of black men, despite the success of Barack Obama in reaching the white house.

The Gates incident forces us to take frank measure of the racial divide that manifests itself in the divergent views of black and white Americans on the continuing significance of race.  Major polls show that the vast majority of whites no longer believe that racial discrimination is a big deal; a majority of blacks still believe it’s a major issue.

What happened in Cambridge, of course, could have been worse. Dr. Gates could have been beaten or shot – or killed. And there would have been a lot of hand-wringing about how sad it is that these things happen. Confrontations between white policemen and black men don’t usually end well. The danger increases when black men talk back. Not only did Professor Gates resist showing his ID to Sgt. James Crowley, according to the police report, he actually gave him lip.

Policing in these United States has always involved a dual role. The primary role was to prevent crime or to arrest those suspected of crime. The other role, much less explicit, but embedded in police culture since the days of slavery, was to maintain the racial order. For hundreds of years, police officers North and South sought to stamp out black militancy. They spied on civil rights groups. They harassed and arrested interracial couples. Their superiors turned a blind eye to racial brutality. And white cops didn’t tolerate black men who talked back.

Those of us who covered police for any length of time noted how quickly white policemen grew angry when a black male resisted their authority. Who can forget the video of a confused and groggy Rodney King being beaten mercilessly for defying an order to lie down?

The police role in racial control has grown ambiguous as laws changed, animosities diminished, minorities acquired political clout, and police departments became more diverse. But even in a city like New York, we have had plenty of reminders of the lingering dangers of that second role, whether it is Amadou Diallo, shot 41 times for reaching for his wallet, or more recently, Omar Edwards, a young black off-duty policeman, shot dead by another officer, when he made the mistake of chasing a car thief with his gun out. It’s another aberration. It just doesn’t happen to white cops or suspects.

Race remains a contentious issue in America because we don’t like complicated discussions. We don’t do well with ambiguous reports or competing opinions about who is winning or losing. Is racism waning, yes or no? Blacks and whites would probably agree on “Yes.” It’s the “but” that divides us.

Yes, Obama’s election was one more step in a long arc of progress that started with Brown v Bd. of Ed in 1954. Over the following two decades, voting rights legislation and civil rights laws brought African-Americans closer to political parity. Fair employment laws and affirmative action opened the marketplace to broader competition and put blacks and whites in the same workplaces. Many white and Hispanic Americans saw the disconnection between the stereotypes they had grown up with and the reality of the black man or woman at the next desk or workbench.

By the time Obama ran for office, there was enough familiarity among blacks and whites and Hispanics and Asians that traditional Republican code words were not enough. Obama didn’t get a majority of the white vote, which went to McCain-Palin, but he got enough white Americans to choose competence over skin color to become the first African-American president.

That leaves us in a painful transition. The majority of white Americans don’t want to be seen as racist. The majority of blacks don’t want to be seen as blacks first.  And then we run into reality on a porch not far from Harvard Square on a Thursday afternoon.

Bongo Drummed Out

If you believed the flood of praise that flowed from French political leaders, you'd think that the late Omar Bongo was one of the planet's great statesmen. President Nicolas Sarkozy said the death of the Gabon president had caused him "great sadness and emotion." Former President Jacques Chirac called him a wise man who greatly contributed to peace and and stability on the entire African continent. Even Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, the sometime blunt-spoken founder of Doctors Without Borders, Bernard Kouchner, declared that France had lost a friend as had all of Africa.
The most prominent dissenting French voice came from a former judge who had presided over one of France's biggest scandals, involving French oil company Elf, and, of course, Gabon, a major oil exporter. Eva Joly won election to the European Parliament last weekend, but that didn't cause her to mince her words. Bongo mostly served French interests, she declared. She pointed out that although Gabon's GDP equalled Portugal's, Bongo built just five kilometers (2 miles) of roads a year and that his country had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. "He was not concerned about his citizens," was her blunt and refeshing epitaph.
Through 41 years of ironclad rule, Bongo was France's point man in its post-colonial African policy, known as Françafrique. Manipulating Africa through corrupt leaders and with timely show's of force, France supported friends and punished enemies with little concern about democracy or corruption.
Bongo was a reliable supporter of France at the UN and host to French military units. In the meantime, he took good care of family and friends. Transparency International's French branch estimated that his "ill-gotten goods" included 70 French bank accounts in the name of relatives and 150 prestigious pieces of real estate, including 10 Paris apartments worth more than 150 million euros.
Like a lot of strongmen, Bongo sought the imprimatur of democracy. He claimed to have received 79 percent of the vote in a 2005 election that a weak opposition judged to be a massive fraud. Despite being a country rich in oil, manganese and iron, Gabon ranks 123rd of 177 countries in the UNDP's human development index.
Gabonese may hope for better, but the country is likely to stay in familiar hands. Bongo's daughter was his cabinet chief; his son-in-law was minister of economics and finance, and his favorite son was minister of defense.