Nathan’s Musings

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the controversy following a Danish newspaper’s publication of 12 satirical drawings of the prophet Mohammed in September 2005. At that time Arab ambassadors demanded a meeting with the Danish prime minister to put forward their demand that he punish the offending newspaper. He correctly responded that he had no power to punish a newspaper for publishing controversial material in a democratic country.

During the past few days, the story has escalated into a diplomatic row between Denmark and several Arab countries. Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen, and Libya has closed its embassy there. Good riddance! I am sure that Denmark will be just fine without Libyan “diplomats.” Demonstrations have been held throughout the Arab world, with the Danish flag set on fire and trampled upon–an honour previously reserved for the great powers of this world, so as someone who grew up in Denmark and loves that country more than any other place in the world, I felt kind of proud of it.
More serious is the boycott of Danish products now spreading across the Arab world. Denmark exports a lot of foodstuffs, especially dairy products such as ersatz feta cheese to the Gulf states. The company responsible for much of this export, Arla, and business groups such as the confederation of Danish industry, have been putting pressure on the newspaper and on the government to apologise to the Muslims so that the crisis can be resolved. Once again, big business has shown that exports of cheese are more important to them than freedom of speech.

The newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, has now issued an apology (see it here) while standing by its right to publish the offending drawings, while the prime minister has reiterated that he has no power to do anything about them, regardless of what he personally thinks of the drawings. But that is apparently not good enough for the Arabs. A Danish MP interviewed on the BBC last night correctly said that you issue an apology when you have done something wrong–and since the Danish government had done nothing wrong, no apology will be issued.
So, to counteract the boycott, all free-thinking people should go and buy Danish products. I stopped at a local Albert Heijn supermarket on my way to work this morning and found the following items:

• Carlsberg beer
• Albert Heijn feta cheese
• Albert Heijn cheese spread
• Zeelands Roem caviar
• Arla Blue Brie
• Tholstrup Blue Castello cheese

Other readily available items, depending on where in the world you are, include Lego toys, Georg Jensen design items, Band & Olufsen hi-fi equipment. In the USA, a grassroots anti-boycott is also taking shape; for more information, look here.

Remember: expressions of moral support are nice, but the expression that matters even more is the statement you make with your Euros/Dollars/Pounds etc.

Today is the 27th January, a day which commemorates the lowest point in human history and at the same time celebrates one of humanity’s greatest artistic achievements. I am of course referring to the fact that today is Holocaust Memorial Day, the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; and it is also the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart– without question, one of the greatest composers in history, up there with the likes of Beethoven, Bach or Lennon/McCartney.

What is also a fascinating coincidence is that Mozart and the man responsible for the Holocaust were both born in the same country, Austria. Understandably enough, the Austrians put a lot more emphasis on Mozart than on that other famous son. What is, however, disconcerting (pun intended) is that Austria has never come to terms with its dark past, presenting itself to the world as a victim of Nazism rather than its enthusiastic supporter. After all, when Hitler’s troops entered Austria during the Anschluss in 1938, they were welcomed with great enthusiasm; there was certainly no resistance except possibly by the odd Communist.

This is in stark contrast to Germany itself, which has now raised two post-war generations that have been taught about the Holocaust and about Germany’s guilt. Today’s Germans are the most pacifist people I know–something George Bush should keep in mind when criticizing Germany for its opposition to the Iraq war.

Like other large companies, Google has now decided that doing business in China is more important than human rights. In a way, I am not surprised. Large corporations are not exactly known for caring much about human rights, and frankly that is not their chief responsibility. But Google is a special case. This is a company that has always positioned itself as being different, with its “Do No Evil” motto, its progressive image, its guerilla warfare against big bad Microsoft. So Google’s decision to cooperate with the Chinese regime by opening a special, censored google.cn site (to which all Google searchers with a Chinese IP address will be redirected) is, to put it mildly, somewhat hypocritical.

As an individual, what can I do about it? Internet searching is a necessity these days, and the other major search engine Yahoo has long ago jumped in bed with the Chinese authorities as well. And anyway, Google is the best search engine. So what to do? The only solution I can think of is to use Google but to try to deprive them of their revenue. So, from now on, when I do a Google search, I will never click on a sponsored link (this is Google’s main revenue source). Even if I really want to go to a sponsored site, I will first navigate away from Google and then go directly to the site in question. This way my visit will not be recorded as a referral from Google and hence Google will make no money from the owner of the site. Yes, it is a bit more work, but for me it is worth it–and I hope for others as well.

You will note that many of my posts are prompted by stories I heard on the BBC. I am absolutely devoted to it. I listen to BBC World Service on the car radio for 2-3 hours each day (the combined length of my commute), and I watch BBC News more than any other television channel.

The BBC is simply Britain’s greatest cultural treasure and its most important export, no less. London is full of grand buildings that we all know: the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral, etc. etc. But for me the BBC, even if it exists in the intangible world of radio waves, dwarfs them all. It has a glorious past, most clearly perhaps during the dark years of 1940-1945 when it was the only voice of hope for an occupied Europe. It was from the BBC that the people of Denmark heard the joyous news on May 4th, 1945, that German forces in Norway, Denmark, Holland and Northern Germany had surrendered.

But the BBC is no less relevant today, in a world saturated with media of all kinds. It is the foremost voice of reason and journalistic excellence in a world of electronic blather. Note that the Iranian government has just started blocking the BBC’s Persian language web site–the BBC should regard this as a badge of honour!

It sometimes irritates me when they interview people I hate or relay opinions I intensely dislike–but isn’t that what expanding one’s horizons is all about? Sure, there are other news channels, CNN for example. But they are to BBC what a hamburger is to an Argentine steak–easy to eat and satisfying for a short period of time but nothing more. I have learned more about the world from listening to and watching the BBC than from any other source, and that includes graduate school. This is especially true of the radio side; like all TV stations, BBC television has had to compromise a bit since even it must look at ratings and fill part of its time with mindless entertainment. But nonetheless, starting Sunday morning with Match of the Day and proceeding to the discussion programmes that follow is a glorious feast for the mind.
So I end this ode to the BBC with this thought: UNESCO has its list of World Heritage Sites, mostly old buildings. I think that the BBC belongs on this list. It does much more for humanity than, say, Taj Mahal or any other monument to vanity long gone.

Don’t be shocked, but I have something nice to say about a member (sort of) of the Bush administration. I watched an interview with Laura Bush on BBC yesterday, conducted by David Frost. Mrs. Bush had just returned from the inauguration of Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. She came across as an articulate, intelligent woman; she professed to be a Republican, but then again what else can she say? She can tell apart the different African countries; she can pronounce “nuclear”; she even made the Iraq war sound like a reasonable decision. She assured the interviewer that she had no political ambitions and looked forward to supporting Condolezza Rice for president one day. She talked about the US AIDS strategy and admitted that while condoms are good, abstinence is even better–hard to argue with that, given that abstinence does indeed have a 100% success rate in preventing infection.
All of the above brings up the eternal question: What the hell is a nice woman like this doing with that guy?!

Over the past week or two, the standoff between Iran and the rest of the world has dominated the news, especially on the BBC. What strikes me most of all is the relativism in many of the comments, both from Iran and other Middle East countries, and from elsewhere. This line of argument goes like this: since several other countries already have nuclear weapons, and many more have nuclear energy, why should Iran be singled out for international condemnation? And unfortunately, very few commentators have said straight out what the problem is. Yes, several countries indeed do have nuclear weapons. But none of them have ever made it official policy to eradicate another country from the face of the earth, as Iran has done; none of them has made denial of the Holocaust official government policy (one has to assume that when the president of a country speaks in public, he is expressing his country’s official policy); none of them is likely to make nuclear technology available to terrorist groups; and finally, none of them is an Islamic dictatorship with an ambition to destabilize its region and the wider world.

Some people say that if Israel has nuclear weapons, then why not Iran? The answer is very simple: Israel is an island of democracy in a hostile region, a country of 7 million people surrounded by hostile regimes with many times its population and resources. Israelis have fought several wars for their very survival, and attacking another country with their nuclear weapons is the furthest thing from its mind. But they do serve a useful function as a deterrent, and their value was already proven at least once–during the first Gulf War in 1991, when Saddam Hussein attacked Tel Aviv with Scud missiles, there is a very good reason why no chemical or biological weapons were used. He knew that mass casualties inflicted on Israel by unconventional weapons would result in a nuclear retaliation by Israel, and rightly so.

Iran is not threatened by anyone. Its sole purpose for wanting the bomb is to threaten others. For that reason alone, it must be disarmed. Right now, the Western countries are negotiating with the likes of Russia or China about a referral to the UN Security Council. That is all very interesting but totally irrelevant. The UN will do nothing to disarm Iran. When it comes to an issue like this, the Security Council is a talking shop and not much more. At the end of the day Iran’s nuclear facilities will be destroyed–whether it will be done by the US or by Israel. The world will condemn, hands will be wrung all over the place, the UN will be in a huff–but in private most leaders will be grateful to those who will pull the trigger, and the civilized world will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

During the past month, BBC has provided an interesting juxtaposition of Arab and European society. In December, there was a panel discussion on women in Muslim countries. In the context of Saudi Arabia, the (female) panelist argued that things are moving forward, that maybe some day they will be able to drive or even vote in elections…of course, there are no proper elections in Saudi Arabia anyway, but maybe one day they will have those too.
Then this morning, a story on the radio about a new law in Norway, requiring the 500 largest Norwegian companies to have at least 40% female directors on their boards within the next two years, or else face punishment ranging up to forced closure of the company. Norway is hardly a country where women are opressed: 16% of all board directors are women, 36% of the members of parliament are women–still not half, but getting there. A representative of Norwegian business argued, reasonably, that until recently few Norwegian women studied business or the sciences (the kind of degrees that usually lead to careers in management) and that this, rather than discrimination, was the main reason why they are underrepresented on company boards.

I wonder what Saudi women think of this new Norwegian law…

This morning I heard an interview on BBC World with the Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. Now, I have always felt that the US would be best served by giving Texas back to Mexico. After all, the oil is almost gone, and what else has Texas given America and the world? George W. Bush, Stetson hats, the most executions of any state in the past 30 years, arrogance, the Dallas Cowboys…you get my drift. It is the most reactionary of the big states. But now there is something else. Kinky Friedman’s slogan is “Why the hell not?” He is planning to appoint Willy Nelson as his energy advisor; he supports the war in Iraq and prayer in schools, but he also supports gay marriage, because “they should have the right to be as miserable as everyone else.” When asked about the less-than-stellar records of other entertainers-turned-governors, like Arnold Schwarzennegger and Jesse Ventura, he replied that Ventura’s problem was that he believed politics was real while pro wrestling was fixed, whereas he (i.e. Kinky) knows that it is the other way round.

If you live in Texas, this man deserves your vote.

I just got back from Poland this weekend, with a stop-over in Berlin. The German capital has become an amazing city since the wall came down 16 years ago. But despite the glitz, all the new construction, the shadow of history hangs over this place. In Berlin itself there is of course the new Holocaust memorial and a host of other landmarks. But it is more the prosaic sight of place names on road signs that really had me thinking. Driving out of the city, there are signs for Wannsee, for example. Just a town, right? Well, it was at the Wannsee Conference in 1941 or 1942 that Hitler gave final approval for the “final solution” to the Jewish “problem.” Another sign: Potsdam–site of the 1945 conference at which Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill made some of the fateful decisions about post-war Europe.

In Berlin itself I walked through the Kaiser Wilhelm church, bombed by the Allies and left as a propped-up ruin to serve as a reminder of the horrors of war. Inside there are pictures of Berlin as it looked in 1945–more or less a sea of rubble. I assume this is designed to make the viewer think about war and peace and (I suppose) to point out that the people of Berlin suffered too. I am afraid, however, that it did not have this effect on me; yes, Berlin was destroyed, but its people frankly brought it upon themselves. I like today’s Germany; I enjoy going there, I speak the language, I have friends there. But when I look at Berlin in 1945, I think of Warsaw; when I see pictures of Dresden, I think of Coventry; when I see pictures of starving Germans in the winter of 1945/46, I think of the Six Million.

Fortunately, Germany has moved on. It has come to terms with its past in a way that Austria and Japan have not. It has reared two postwar generations of peaceful, prosperous people (that is why the US should not be too upset that Germany did not support the Iraq war–the pacifist instinct was imposed on Germany by the Allies themselves, and a good thing too!). But there will always be something particular about this country, for lack of a better word.