Rubbing Obama's Lamp

January 20th, 2009 – An estimated 2 million people are expected this Tuesday for President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden to be sworn in as the American leaders of the next 4 years. Security will be extrordinarily over the top for this third president from Illinois and surely some organisers are aware that if just a hint of panic strikes the crowd we will have an unimaginable riot on our hands. That being said, Obama couldn’t care less, he is busy. In 24 hours, he will deliver his inaugural address, the most important speech of his life. Lewinskys, cherry trees, black lovechilds, watergates, misunderestimates and assasinations may be remembered for a while but it is the inaugural adress that can potentially traverse the centuries and grant immortality to an administration. In fact, the only four president that didn’t give an adress are Chester A. Arthur, Millard Fillmore, John Tyler and Andrew Johnson (better known as ‘Who?’). Furthermore, as some other columnists have stated, Obama is seen by the mainstream media as ‘ The Magic Negro’. He is supposed to project a royal sense of youthful confidence while he rectifies the recession, as he justifies the last 50 years of the civil rights movement, fulfills Martin Luther King’s ‘dream’, as he pulls all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan yet brings undying democracy to them, as he personally cures AIDS and as he never EVER lets Michelle forget she’s a woman. As for me, I will simply be happy with a memorable inauguration and with 8 years devoid of Bushes.

Here are some memorable inauguration ceremonies from past American presidents :

In 1776, George Washington was still very tainted by the absolute monarchies of the Old World and was accordingly regal. He spoke from an elegant carriage and gave out specific instructions that no one was to touch him and that no one was allowed to sit down in his illustrious presence. The next few presidents were much more careful of their projected appearance.

In 1829, president Andrew Jackson’s carrige from the Capitol to the White House was followed by the cheers of a thousand black and white men. They followed him rigth into the White House and were encouraged to go shake his hand. Witnesses described that day as being the first true expression of democracy in the western world since the rule of ancient Athens.

In 1861, another president from Illinois faced great hardships and hastely tried to solve them without success. Abraham Lincoln stated in his inaugural speech : “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”. It denotes a great irony of history that the American civil war broke out days later and led to the emacipation of American slaves.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected at the head of a superpower and Adolf Hitler at the head of another. More than a threat from militaristic, Nazi Germany, FDR had to lift spirits and an economy out of the gutters of depression. He effectively did so with the radical economic policies of his ‘New Deal’ yet it all began with his inaugural address during which he reassured : “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address is beyond my measly attempts at commentary and I will thus let an excerpt speak for itself, attesting to the timeless quality of his words : “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ...Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. ...And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”. He was specifically referring to the Cold War against Communism yet the words speak true throughout every major conflict that America has had or will ever encounter.

Finally, we will vividly remember George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2005 inaugurations as painful and embarrassing. First in 2001, he was the first president in a very long time who did not walk from the Capitol to the White House. From the thousands upon thousands of protesters booing and screaming at him, he was forced to jump into his limo and dash behing the gates of the White House, evading and actively ignoring critique for the next 8 years. In 2005, he didn’t even try to reconciliate with the people (with the war in Iraq and all, he was even less popular). There were even more protests organised by dozens of interest groups against the bumbling disaster-waiting-tohappen that was President Bush Jr..

On the 20th of January, 2009, it will be a welcome and refreshing change to see the Americans enjoy the leader they have chosen.

(Pictured: President Bush was figuratively beat up by bad approval ratings and literally when he choked on a pretzel and fell - Obama will grant three wishes to everyone who truly believes in him, or maybe not)

End.

61 years of vicious circles

January 12th, 2009 – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict enters a third week as the Israeli army has begun encroaching on heavily-populated urban areas. Until now, the fighting was restricted to long-distance missile strikes by the Palestinian Hamas on Southern Israel (9 last night) and to strategic air strikes by the Israeli army on the Palestinian Gaza Strip (12 last night). Although the Israeli gouvernment denies its escalation of the conflict, a spokesman (Mark Regev) admits they are currently training thousands more infantry for a possible ground invasion of Palestinian territory. Furthermore, Mr. Regev insists that Israel’s military campaign into the Gaza Strip is purely defensive and aims to stop the Hamas missile strikes on its own land. Meanwhile, 15 Israelis have perished in the fighting and as many as 900 Palestinians, as much as a quarter of them being civilians, have lost their lives.

The human crisis provoked by the perpetual Israeli-Muslim conflict remains difficult to ascertain because the Israeli gouvernment has not allowed the international press access to the affected regions. It is also impossible for international aid workers to assist the damaged zones or for the local emergency services to possibly deal with the massive amount of casualties in Gaza therefore the casualties can only increase from here on out. The International community and especially the UN representatives to the Middle-East (former British Prime-minister Tony Blair), are promoting an immediate ceasefire yet both the HAMAS and Israeli heads of state have categorically refused to abide by the calls of peace: “Nobody should be allowed to decide for us if we are allowed to strike” claimed Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert.

We can seldom predict the future when analysing armed international conflicts yet this particular context provides us with an impressive amount of history. Indeed, we can observe several repetitions of brief, armed conflicts at regular intervals since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Additionally, one can observe the inefficiency of international mediation, especially by the United Nations who have been involved since the very beginning.

The UNTSO or United Nations Truce Supervision Organization was the very first peacekeeping mission attempted by the United Nations. Still operational today, it is therefore the oldest peace mission by the UN and has little or nothing to show for it.

Not 24 hours after the State of Israel was proclaimed (May 14th, 1948), a conflict broke out when an Arab league (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) began attacking Israel. The UN quickly mediated a truce and the Middle East has been politically stable and peaceful ever since.

End.

…actually, you may have guessed that the truce lasted but a few days and the UN mediator was assassinated. The following decade was host to constant or even increasing blood shed as the Arab world reviled the Israeli presence on their ancestral lands and as the unarmed UN garrisons of UNTSO only had the mandate to observe and report possible violations of the successive cease-fire agreements. From their headquarters in Jerusalem and from their eventual observation posts across the Middle East, the UNTSO soldiers took note of Arab and Israeli complaints about the opposing side. You may again have guessed that this secretarial role played by the UN was largely reactionary to the conflicts of 1948 yet to this day; the mandate of the UN in the Middle East remains static and has never truly confronted the relational and diplomatic problems between the countries concerned. They have rather consisted of a minimal presence that observes and reports; it DOES nothing.

Further on in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956, the six-day war of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973 represent only three major examples of escalating tension, outbreak of war and international-community mediated truces. Again with the Israel-Lebanon conflict of 2006, the United Nations were completely powerless, and seemingly unwilling to intervene if we consider the unchanging nature of UNTSO’s mandate, to prevent Arab-Israeli violence and could only help evacuate tourists.

This weekend, Olmert confirmed that a renewed cease-fire was close and thus we will once again have a UN mediated agreement that will really only be upheld and eventually broken by the warring factions and in no way influenced by the limp-wristed interventions of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation.

(Pictured: Israel/Palestine in 1948 - Israel/Palestine in 2009)

Happy new year; now go and repeat history.

End.

Hitler was also a swell guy!

December 29th, 2008 – A Russian television station held a month-long poll to determine who the greatest Russians were, as seen by the people. Close to 5 million votes propelled Alexander Nevsky at the very top of the 12 place chart. The Western World does not know much about Saint Alexander; simply put, he defended the Russian territory from invading Germanic and Mongol armies during the thirteenth century. He was a great man of the people and a paragon of Christianity. Second on the list is another relative mystery for the rest of the world, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. In office for a short period before the communist revolution (1906-1911), he is remembered for his vastly successful reforms in agriculture as well as his clever and brutal repression of revolutionaries. Once again, he is a valued man of the people and a symbol of stability. Further down on the list are the writers Pushkin (4th) and Dostoyevsky (7th), Revolutionary Lenin (6th) and a few of Russia’s most provocative and reformist politicians such as Peter the Great (5th), Ivan the Terrible (10th) and Catherine II the Great (11th).

Here is normally the part where I criticise and analyse the choices of the Russian people. Specifically, I would comment on the questionable prioritisation and incomplete public memory of these larger-than-life figures with my western glasses of capitalism, consumerism and greed. This would surely provoke Russians into brushing off my comments as random hatred by someone who knows nothing of Russian culture. It could also convince my western readers that I have no right to criticise the memory of History as seen by a different culture than mine. I would then promptly state that they are both wrong and that it is both my business and my duty to criticise the third rank on this TV poll, with 519,000 votes: Josef Vissarionovich Stalin.

Firstly, Stalin was not Russian; he was Georgian so I think it should disqualify him immediately. Secondly, Stalin is very much a part of world history and I have studied him through the goggles of the Russian revolutions, his reforms of the twenties and thirties, World War 2, his interaction with the Russian people, his command of the Red Army and his short-lived political legacy; I thus propose that the scope of Stalin’s actions goes well beyond Russia. Finally, when his successor Nikita Khrushchev renounced Stalin and all his accomplishments in 1956, it was not out of political gain but out of pure hatred for a man who is a stain on Russia, Georgia, Europe and the whole of Human history.

Let me expose some of the exploits of the great comrade Stalin. Immediately at Lenin’s death in 1924, he began his first of many political purges that saw the execution of many and notably the expulsion of Leon Trotsky, co-instigator of the Revolution. The Russians had just begun to elaborate their communist, egalitarian Utopia when Stalin decided this would be a secret dictatorship based on propaganda and the enrichment of himself and his friends. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Stalin forced the collectivisation of farming and agriculture. More than the immediate displacement and deportation of millions from Ukraine to Siberia, this policy resulted in the deaths of over 6 million of his own people from famine. Also around this time, Stalin was not satisfied by his initial political purge and therefore sent over 2 million political dissidents and counter-revolutionaries (these accusations were exclusively decided by Stalin) to Siberian work camps (gulags) and to the gallows for execution.

We will now transition into his greatest achievement, the repelling of the Nazi army and their ultimate victory during World War II. I can accept that some less educated or attentive Russians would think he was a notable character for this accomplishment but they must have stopped reading or listening right after ‘Stalin was the leader of the USSR during Berlin’s defeat in 1945…’. I think they would be quite surprised if they read on. Notably in Stalingrad, Stalin held back the Nazis with a pretty simple solution: if I send hundreds of thousands of hungry and mal-equipped soldiers towards the German bullets and tanks, they will eventually run out of ammo and will find it difficult to manoeuvre atop mountains of Russian corpses. The life expectancy for a Red soldier here was less than a day but there were plenty more where that came from. Stalin ordered the execution of 500,000 Prisoners of War (another courageous and moral policy) but in a way, he ordered over 20 million of his people to their deaths by arbitrarily throwing them at the German war machine for three years.

Quick math will let us bedevil the Nazis for the extermination of 6 million Jews, homosexuals and gypsies yet somehow Stalin gets a post-mortem crown of laurels for…I don’t know what exactly. Directly and indirectly responsible for the death of over 30 million of his own people, the Russians must be masochistic in their remembrance of history and their cultural heritage. Thankfully some hosts from the TV station in question pleaded for people to vote for others because Stalin was at the top of this chart ‘the Greatest Russian in history’ up until last week.

Next week, Nixon becomes America’s greatest president and the ultimate Frenchman in history will be the Marquis de Sade.

(Pictured: A mugshot from Stalin's youth; maybe people thought the award was for best mustache - These two were conspicuously missing from the poll)


End.

More than just a salad

December 13th, 2008 – The inhabitants of Greece enter their seventh day of agitated protest. It was fomented by the killing (accidental we assume) of a young teenager by policemen last week. Everything points to a gouvernmental cover-up and to the officers being acquitted very soon therefore the victim’s family, their friends, their friends’ cousins and by extension the majority of the Greek people have gone ballistic. They have called for the immediate fall of the current parliament in Athens to replace this seemingly corrupt and uncaring administration yet Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis refuses to step down and trigger a fresh round of elections. Needless to say, the Greek capital is falling prey to rioting and massive vandalism. Furthermore, the police forces that are supposed to re-establish the peace are being directly targeted by the projectiles and bombs of the population. One could possibly call this civil unrest and frustration (as Karamanlis did) yet I am willing to side with the protestors and call it a revolution against a corrupt government.

Of course, being a historian, I am constantly terrified by earthquakes, fires and civil unrest that encroach on the priceless heritage of Greek history. Yet this time, it must be said that the people of today outweigh the concerns of the past. They would know, this is not the first time that the administrators of Greece go too far and are slaughtered in a legendary demonstration of violent revolution and nationalism.

Greek patriots declared independence in 1821 and had to fight with everything they had for eight years before they could accede to their sovereignty from the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Vastly outnumbered, Greek volunteers had to take city by city back as the massive Ottoman reach could feed legion after legion of forced volunteers from Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Bulgaria… Somehow, through sheer determination to be free or die fighting, Greece was the first nation to break away from European empires and monarchy in the XIXth century. Although this was not the first time that an insurmountable hoard of foreign invaders aimed to subdue the Greek people.

In 480 BC, organised civilisation was blossoming and Greece was ancient. Although not a unified state, the various Greek cities that dotted the mainland as well as the littoral of the Mediterranean sea had a certain solidarity referred to as panhellenism. Athens, Thebes, Syracuse, Sparta, Corinth, Massalia and many others fought bloody wars against one another, often for economic superiority over the rest. One day, the Eastern world awoke and the Persian Empire threatened the panhellenic way of life and strictly regulated way of fighting. It was not perfect, but a tacit alliance held together the city states, offering a unified front against the millions of invading barbarians (the number may have been slightly exaggerated by Herodotus). But not really. Athens wanted Sparta to come defend Athens but the Spartans wanted to be stubborn so they just stayed home and waited to see how things would play out. Of course, the Athenians theorised more than they actually fought so they and their pathetic attempt at naval warfare were wiped out immediately, which brings us down to the Peloponnesian peninsula and to its timeless capital, Sparta. King Leonidas and 10,000 men under him confronted the Persian army (anywhere between 100,000 and 2 million) at Thermopylae. Unfortunately, the fairy tale endurance of the Greek people ends here because they succumbed quickly to the invading Persians (7 days) and the importance of their stand has been greatly exaggerated in recent history. They were simply a hiccup in King Xerxes’ invasion.

There is no great moral of the story here, except maybe “don’t piss off the Greeks; you wouldn’t like the Greeks when they’re angry”. They make the Rodney King affair and LA riots look like a vigorous backrub by comparison.

(Pictured: idealised version of the battle of Thermopylae - The Athens riot police have their hands full...so to speak)

End.

Hootenanny!

November 26th 2008 – Gun stores in the Southern United States are one of the few market sectors that have not been affected by the impending economic depression. In fact, gun sales have increased as much as 50% in certain states, to the great joy of gun merchants. This is mostly due, we are told on the BBC news service, to the election of Barack Obama.

The second amendment to the United States constitution states that all American citizens have the right to bear arms. To make a long story short, this was originally included to protect the inhabitants of America from Muslim terrorists. Just kidding, citizens were encouraged to keep weapons in an eventual repeat to the American Revolution.

In the late 17^th century, the Americans felt oppressed by their British gouvernment and violently usurped it. To summarize, Americans are always supposed to scrutinize their gouvernment carefully and be able to violently overthrow if they step out of line. Sure it sounds outrageous today but the US constitution is a static document that holds true to tradition, far past what makes it anachronistic or inapplicable in today’s dynamic. Once again in the 1870s, this amendment was greatly useful to Southerners who could easily get their weapons and kill their president (the bearded one who boldly told them they couldn’t have slaves anymore).

Today, the second amendment allows Americans to carry guns and in a few States, to hide them on their person. Furthermore, the term “arms” seems to mean anything that throws a bullet really, REALLY fast. The 50% figure I stated earlier actually applies to the sale of AK-47s (Automatic Russian assault rifles) in Texas in the past few weeks. Some may claim that their guns are for hunting or for personal protection yet all statistics show they are WIDELY more likely to shoot a family member or pet than an intruder or fawn. In fact, the American National Rifle Association is much more straightforward with their justification of massive gun ownership: the constitution says they can so deal with it.

Where does President-elect Obama fit in with all of this? God-fearing southerners are apprehensive that as soon as the Democrats enter office, they will restrain the purchase and ownership of assault rifles. Many bring up that, by their own logic, Americans could purchase and store short-range nuclear missiles and f-16 jet fighters in their chicken coops if the term “arms” is universal. The NRA says that this way of thinking is ridiculous and derogatory yet somehow an Uzi (automatic firearm) and an AK-47 are perfectly normal things for every unbalanced person with a driver’s license to own. Texans and gunowners of the south are seeing the stupidity of this claim without anyone telling them and are running to gun stores as if the red coats were coming.

To a point, I sympathise with these gunowners, some may even call them patriots. These people are the vigilant guards of American democracy who would have never let a president plunge them into an economic nightmare (Hoover and Bush), break electoral law (Nixon), sanction and organise the murder of various world leaders (Reagan) or enter the country into an unjust war against all common sense and international agreements (Bush). I may be being sarcastic but...oh screw it, these patriots will never let a gay sing at the Superbowl halftime show, let Washington outlaw their Malboro fields or let the rest of America elect a Negro. Southern gunowners, TO YOUR LYNCHING TOOLS!

(Note to the American secret service – please note that I have nothing but respect for president-elect Obama, he is a contemporary FDR and Kennedy. I was only demeaning the crazy hillbillies)

(Note to the inhabitants of the Southern Red States – Your traditional and conservative ways are the cornerstone of the American culture. You are much stronger than these democratic pansies and their criticism.)

(Pictured: The American constitution in terrible resolution - A patriot)

End.