All Swedes shaking their heads and laughing at Trump's 'Swedish terrible event' is the makings of a great cartoon .. on the flip side, everyone in the world has fingers crossed that the unfunny moment
"The unfunny moment will come when Trump lashes out based on nothing but fervid imaginings and the “post-West” order stumbles from confusion into conflagration."
never happens .. it'll be interesting to see if the number of tight-rope walkers in the world goes up during the cretin's presidency.
Leading French academic threatened with deportation at Houston airport A Customs and Border Protection officer works at George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, where Henry Rousso was detained. Henry Rousso was due to take part in a symposium at Texas A&M University Ten-hour ordeal highlights ‘total arbitrariness and incompetence’ 26 February 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/26/henry-rousso-french-academic-deportation-houston-airport
The Vichy Syndrome History and Memory in France since 1944 By Henry Rousso Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Foreword by Stanley Hoffmann From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. In this provocative study, Henry Rousso examines how this proud nation—a nation where reality and myth commingle to confound understanding—has dealt with les années noires. Specifically, he studies what the French have chosen to remember—and to conceal. “Rousso has set out to provide not just another narrative of les années noires—the years of defeat, occupation, of the phantom ‘French State’ and the civil war—but a study of the way the Vichy episode has been perceived and perverted by the French ever since. The result is a brilliant and intemperate book that is also a tract for the times.”—The Economist “Succeeds as a practical demonstration, for a particularly vivid case, of how to study a people grappling with a past. It is remarkable how few similar works there are… One understands a historian’s hesitation before the poorly documented and ill-defined wider popular memory as a subject. Rousso shows us, however, how dramatic and revealing this genre can be.”—Robert O. Paxton, The New York Review of Books “This is an original and thought-provoking work, a ‘must’ for anyone interested in the political and cultural psychology of post-war France.”—Nelly Wilson, Jewish Quarterly http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674935396
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Is The United States Still The United States?
A Continental Airlines Inc. Boeing plane lands at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. Bloomberg via Getty Images
My 10-hour detention at the Houston airport suggests otherwise.
02/27/2017 09:57 am ET | Updated February 27, 2017
On February 22, I was arrested at 2:30 p.m. at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston landing from Paris. I had to attend a symposium at Texas A&M University. I was interrogated for several hours following a random check of Customs and Borders Protection. Because I was in possession of a simple tourist visa, the policeman who was in charge of my case explained that I wasn’t allowed to give a lecture and receive an honorarium. I replied that it was the university that did all the formalities and that I have been doing this for 30 years without any trouble. Examining my passport, the policeman noted that I recently received a “J1” visa, granted to academics, having been a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York from September 2016 to January 2017. He concluded that I was returning to work “illegally” in the U.S. with an expired visa. I was therefore in breach, a decision confirmed by his hierarchical superior who I didn’t have a chance to meet.
This was followed by an extensive interrogation, the recording of my fingerprints, a search of the body in order. I protested, but “this is the procedure.” The policeman then informed me that I would be deported back to Paris on the next plane. He added that I will never be able to enter the country again without a specific visa. I couldn’t do anything but call my colleague from the university. The policeman called the consulate of France, but after several hours and with an inappropriate number, so I couldn’t benefit from this assistance.
During my detention, which lasted a total of ten hours, I mostly sat in a chair, without a telephone, but with the possibility to drink or eat. Most policemen had a regulatory tone, but some sneered discreetly as they watched the population under their control. A female police officer bawled at a woman whose three-year-old was running in all directions. A man suddenly had to sit down after getting up to inquire about his case because three police officers immediately reacted.
By 9:00 p.m., there were only half a dozen people left. I was the only European, the only “Caucasian.” Two police officers arrived and headed for the gentleman seated in front of me, maybe a Mexican. They were coming to take him to the boarding gate. Then they handcuffed him, chained him at the waist, and shackled him. I couldn’t believe it and I wondered if I would have to endure the same fate. As far as I have understood from what an officer told me later, this was indeed the procedure for all the people to be deported, a shameful practice apparently required by the airline companies.
At 1:30 a.m. - I had left Paris over 26 hours earlier - a policeman summons me, gives me back my phone and my passport, and declares me eligible to enter the United States. The restrictions imposed on me are lifted – but I don’t know what will remain in the files. He explains that the officer who examined my case was “inexperienced” and didn’t know that some activities, including those related to education, enjoyed an exceptional regime and could be carried out with a simple tourist visa. He lets me know that, having a lot of experience, he saw the problem when he took his post earlier in the night. He is kind enough to drive me out of the airport, a totally deserted place, telling me the address of a hotel nearby. At no time did he or his colleagues apologize. I will later learn that my release was not fortuitous. It is the result of my colleague’s call to the president of Texas A&M, who immediately alerted a law professor in charge of immigration issues [ http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/egyptian-born-professor-set-to-speak-at-hias-detained-by/article_2ffe7467-c576-5220-9743-895cec0a3079.html ]. Without them, I would have probably been handcuffed, chained, and shackled back to Paris.
This incident has caused me some discomfort, but I cannot stop thinking of all those who suffer these humiliations and legal violence without the protections I was able to benefit from. A professional historian, I am aware of hasty interpretations. Meanwhile, I can raise some questions. Why did the random check fall on me? My “case” visibly presented a problem before even thorough examination. Maybe it’s my birthplace, Egypt, maybe my academic status, maybe my recent work visa expired, maybe my French citizenship too. Perhaps also, the current context. Even if I had made a mistake, which was not the case, did I deserve such treatment? How can one explain this zeal if not by the concern to fulfill quotas and justify increased controls? That is the situation today in this country. We must now face arbitrariness and incompetence at all levels. I heard recently that “Paris isn’t Paris anymore [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/02/24/trump-trashed-paris-in-his-cpac-speech-the-citys-mayor-fired-back/ ].” The United States seems no longer quite the United States.
Muhammad Ali’s son was not detained because he’s Muslim, Customs officials say Muhammad Ali Jr. is shown with his famous father in 1975. February 26, 2017 Muhammad Ali Jr. and his mother[, both native-born U.S. citizens with valid U.S. passports,] were detained at a Florida airport and asked about their religion as they returned from Jamaica, according to a family spokesman who said they were flagged for their “Arabic-sounding names.” However, Customs and Border Protection said that it treats “all travelers with respect and sensitivity.” Ali Jr., the son of the late boxer whose fame and outspokenness made him one of the most visible and instantly recognizable sports figures on the planet, was with Khalilah Camacho-Ali, who was Ali’s second wife, and was asked at least twice about his religion, according to family friend and attorney Chris Mancini. Ali, who was born in Philadelphia in 1972 and has a U.S. passport, and his mother, who had delivered a speech on black history in Jamaica, are both Muslim, as was Ali’s father, who converted to Islam in 1964. “To the Ali family, it’s crystal clear that this is directly linked to [President] Trump’s efforts to ban Muslims from the United States,” Mancini told the Courier-Journal [ http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/02/24/muhammad-ali-jr-detained-immigration-fla-airport/98376180/ ] in Louisville, where the senior Ali was born and was buried last June, on Friday about the alleged incident, which occurred Feb. 7. Mancini said that Ali and his mother were initially flagged by immigration agents for their “Arabic-sounding” names. He said Camacho-Ali was not detained after she showed officials a photograph of herself with her ex-husband, but when Ali Jr. could not produce a photograph of himself with his father, who died last year, immigration officials separated the two and detained Ali for approximately two hours. Mancini told the Miami New Times [ http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/muhammad-alis-son-illegally-detained-at-fort-lauderdale-hollywood-international-airport-attorney-says-9164544 ] that immigration officers asked Ali Jr. about his religion within the first 30 minutes of being detained and again when he was taken to a small holding room where he was held for another 90 minutes. “What right does the United States have to inquire about somebody’s religion when they enter the country?” Mancini told the New Times. “There was no other basis for a secondary inspection. This is an instance where the ban has been enforced even though it has been thrown out. The government is still trying to find grounds to keep Muslims out.” In a statement emailed Sunday morning to The Post, U.S. Customs and Border Protection noted that its “officers adhere to the highest standards of professionalism. Every day CBP officers process more than 1.2 million international travelers. We accomplish our mission with vigilance and in accordance with the law. CBP does not discriminate based on religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. “We treat all travelers with respect and sensitivity. Integrity is our cornerstone. We are guided by the highest ethical and moral principles. “Privacy concerns prevent U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from discussing individual cases of travelers arriving at U.S. ports of entry. CBP follows the privacy policy of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).” [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/25/muhammad-alis-son-reportedly-detained-at-airport-asked-twice-about-his-religion/ [
Australian children's author Mem Fox detained by US border control: 'I sobbed like a baby' The experience left Fox feeling like she had been ‘physically assaulted’. Author of Possum Magic was aggressively questioned over her visa status and later received an apology for her treatment by border guards 24 February 2017 The Australian children’s book author Mem Fox has suggested she might never return to the US after she was detained and insulted by border control agents at Los Angeles airport. Fox, who is famous worldwide for her best-selling books including Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and Possum Magic, was en route to a conference in Milwaukee earlier this month when she was stopped. She told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-25/mem-fox-detained-at-los-angeles-airport-by-us-officials/8303366 ] she was detained for one hour and 40 minutes and questioned by border agents for 15 minutes in front of a room full of people – an experience that left her feeling like she had been physically assaulted. “I have never in my life been spoken to with such insolence, treated with such disdain, with so many insults and with so much gratuitous impoliteness,” Fox said. “I felt like I had been physically assaulted which is why, when I got to my hotel room, I completely collapsed and sobbed like a baby, and I’m 70 years old.” The author attributed the aggressive questioning to border police who had been “turbocharged” by Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban. Fox said she was questioned over her visa, despite having travelled to America 116 times before without incident. She was eventually granted access to the country. After lodging a complaint over her treatment with the Australian embassy in Washington and the US embassy in Canberra, Fox received an emailed apology from US officials. Fox said she was shocked by her treatment and “couldn’t imagine” returning to the US. [...] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/australian-childrens-author-mem-fox-detained-by-us-border-control-i-sobbed-like-a-baby
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British Muslim teacher denied entry to US on school trip Juhel Miah from south Wales was removed from plane in Reykjavik despite suspension of president’s travel ban 20 February 2017 A British Muslim schoolteacher travelling to New York last week as a member of a school party from south Wales was denied entry to the United States. Juhel Miah and a group of children and other teachers were about to take off from Iceland on 16 February on their way to the US when he was removed from the plane at Reykjavik. The previous week, on the 10 February, a US appeals court had upheld a decision to suspend Donald Trump’s executive order [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/09/judges-deny-trump-travel-ban-enforcement-uphold-order ] that temporarily banned entry to the country from seven Muslim-majority countries. The trip proceeded as planned but pupils and colleagues from Llangatwg comprehensive in Aberdulais were left shocked and distressed after the maths teacher, who had valid visa documentation, was escorted from the aircraft by security personnel. Miah, 25, from Swansea, said he was made to feel like a criminal and was so worried by what happened to him that he did not eat or sleep for two days. He told Wales Online that shortly before the flight was due to leave he was approached by an official who told him he could not board the plane. “Everyone was looking at me,” Miah said. “As I was getting my luggage the teachers and kids were confused. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was being escorted out. It made me feel like a criminal. I couldn’t speak, I was lost for words. “We got to the airport, and as soon as we got to check in, the lady behind the desk read my passport and then straight away said you’ve been selected for a random security check. [...] The school booked him on to a flight back to the UK. The school party was due to return to the UK on 20 February. The teacher’s employer, Neath Port Talbot council [ https://www.npt.gov.uk/ ], has written to the US embassy in London demanding an explanation and the issue is being taken up by Welsh politicians. A council spokesman said Miah was left feeling belittled at what it described as “an unjustified act of discrimination”. The council said the teacher is a British citizen and does not have dual nationality. The spokesman said: “Juhel Miah was with a party from Llangatwg comprehensive who travelled initially to Iceland en route to New York last week. Mr Miah boarded the onward flight in Reykjavik on 16 February but was escorted from the aircraft by security personnel. While the school trip proceeded as planned, Mr Miah’s removal from the flight left pupils and colleagues shocked and distressed. “The local authority understands that Mr Miah was refused permission by the United States authorities to fly to New York, despite being issued with a valid visa for travel. Mr Miah is a popular and respected teacher at Llangatwg comprehensive school. He is a Welsh Muslim. “We are appalled by the treatment of Mr Miah and are demanding an explanation. The matter has also been raised with our local MP. “No satisfactory reason has been provided for refusing entry to the United States – either at the airport in Iceland or subsequently at the US embassy in Reykjavik. Mr Miah attempted to visit the embassy but was denied access to the building. Understandably he feels belittled and upset at what appears to be an unjustified act of discrimination.” [...] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/20/british-muslim-teacher-denied-entry-to-us-on-school-trip
France’s Election Is Trump vs. Merkel vs. Modi vs. Corbyn
"The Unmaking of Europe"
The French are still undecided — and, increasingly, the rest of the world is, too.
By James Traub April 20, 2017
When she launched her campaign for president of France earlier this year, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front Party, reminded .. http://www.tdg.ch/monde/europe/Marine-Le-Pen-la-patriote-contre-les-mondialistes/story/30080571 .. a jam-packed crowd of 3,000 activists of “the two totalitarianisms” she had pledged to fight: “Islamism” and “financialism.” In the face of this “civilizational choice,” Le Pen solemnly pledged to “defend the outer walls of our society.”
The French go to the polls on Sunday. According to the most recent polls .. http://www.bfmtv.com/politique/sondage/ , Le Pen is one of four candidates who have a chance to finish in the top two and thus contest the runoff on May 7. If you made a matrix with Le Pen’s two master issues — national identity and globalization — along the side, and the two essential responses — “liberal” and “anti-liberal” — along the top, you would find that each of the four candidates fill one of the resulting boxes.
Le Pen’s chief rival, Emmanuel Macron of En Marche!, is liberal on both counts; François Fillon, the Republican candidate, is illiberal on identity and liberal on the economy; and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far left La France Insoumise, is the opposite. Astonishingly, then, on the eve of the election French voters are almost equally divided among the four cardinal positions on the great issues of the day.
This is clarifying. After the shock of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, there is a natural tendency to imagine that the Western world has been divided into great camps — the illiberal governments of Eastern Europe and the United States whose programs resemble Le Pen’s, versus the Macroniste liberal regimes of Western Europe. But beyond those frontiers lie Filloniste democracies like India and Turkey, increasingly nationalistic but nevertheless eager to exploit the benefits of globalization. Meanwhile, analogues of Mélenchon’s (or Bernie Sanders’) anti-globalization left have managed to reach national power only in Greece, with Syriza, but such parties are riding a wave of popularity in southern Europe, including Italy and Spain.
- The future may belong neither to the pure liberals nor the pure illiberals; the convulsion that has upended the politics of the West is still in its early years. -
The future may belong neither to the pure liberals nor the pure illiberals; the convulsion that has upended the politics of the West is still in its early years. The French election hardly exhausts the possibilities, but it does show that we need to think beyond our binary categories.
Let’s start with culture and national identity. Unlike in Germany, Sweden, and Hungary, where the refugee crisis has suddenly provoked fears that traditional identity is under siege from a wave of alien newcomers, culture has been contested terrain in France, and in French politics, for well over a decade. As in the Netherlands (which I wrote .. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/13/the-geert-wilders-effect/ .. about last month), politicians have made hay by exploiting fears that immigrants, above all Muslim immigrants, do not integrate into the national culture, cluster in ghettos, commit crimes, and of course carry out terrorist acts. Trump’s electoral victory put to rest any lingering questions about the effectiveness of this political strategy.
This is Le Pen’s wheelhouse. She has called for restricting immigration to 10,000 per year, or about 5 percent of the current annual total. She has railed against “communitarianism,” the French term for group identity. She has trained her fans to shout “On est chez nous!” — “It’s our home!” — in response to red-flag words like “foreigner” and “Islam.” She also wants to withdraw from the European Union and the euro. For Le Pen, everything not-French is a threat to the French; the more not-French, the greater the threat.
Fillon, the center-right candidate, plays these notes in a more muted vein. All serious French candidates write a campaign book, and sometimes more than one; Fillon titled his Defeating Islamic Totalitarianism. “France doesn’t have a problem of religion,” he wrote. “It has a problem connected to Islam.” He has called for a new form of “administrative control” of French mosques, and would change the French Constitution to permit legislators to assign an annual immigrant quota, including country-specific quotas. The United States has long maintained just such a system, but it violates Article 1 of the French Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law irrespective of national tradition. Blatant appeals to France’s threatened Christian culture helped lift Fillon over his primary challenger, Alain Juppé, who bravely — and unsuccessfully — raised the banner of a French “identité heureuse,” or positive identity.
Though he has endured a good deal of mockery for his unwillingness to commit himself on controversial subjects, Macron has shown real courage on questions of immigration and identity. In the aftermath of the December 2016 terrorist attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, which left critics of Germany’s open-door refugee policy feeling vindicated, Macron took to the pages of Le Monde to proclaim .. http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/01/02/nous-sommes-tous-berlinois-nous-sommes-tous-europeens_5056268_3232.html .. that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and German society “have saved our collective dignity by welcoming refugees in distress, by housing them and by training them.” He has heaped scorn on Le Pen for seeking to divide the French against themselves. He is a passionate advocate of the EU. Macron is the candidate of the identité heureuse.
Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist, arrives at a cosmopolitan vision from a base of Marxist universalism. He urges his followers, as I heard him do in one speech, to stand up for “those dying abandoned in the streets, those driven to suicide at work, those drowned in the Mediterranean.” In the candidates’ debate in late March, he insisted that the French tradition of laïcité “must not serve as a pretext to attack Muslims,” and mocked Le Pen’s campaign against the veil by suggesting a clothing police to arrest people with green hair or women with short skirts.
But openness toward other peoples, religions, and tongues does not dictate openness toward trade and capital from beyond the border. On such matters, Le Pen and Mélenchon find much to agree on. Where the former speaks of “financiarisation,” the latter, more picturesquely, flays “the financial funds which are parasites and leeches on the productive body.” (Le Pen is not above the anti-Semitic dog whistle, as when she pointedly refers .. http://www.businessinsider.com/marine-le-pen-attacks-rivals-amid-protests-2017-2 .. to Macron as “the candidate of the Rothschild Bank,” where the leader of En Marche! once worked. Mélenchon does not descend to such calumny.) Both despise labor reforms designed to make it easier for French companies to hire and fire employees. [tick? depending on current rules] Both lavish obloquy upon the regime of austerity dictated by the EU. [tick] Both oppose free trade and believe, along with Trump, that the national economy would somehow flourish behind protectionist walls. [cross]
After standing aside during a feverish debate about France’s 35-hour workweek, Le Pen said drolly, “I didn’t want to intervene in the ultraliberal debate” between Macron and Fillon. She’s right to say that the two are outliers in French terms. Fillon writes on his website, “I want to finally break the lock of 35 hours. This utopia, which has remained a French exception, must be abandoned.” Macron proposes allowing individual companies to negotiate a longer workweek. The 2014 “loi Macron,” named after the then-minister of the economy, made it slightly less cumbersome for employers to fire workers and eased the rules around Sunday opening for retailers, among other things. The law has made Macron a reviled figure on the left. Fillon and Macron propose to further liberalize work and retirement rules, both want to cut corporate taxes, and they are free traders in a country that regards globalization with deep suspicion. However, Macron, an ex-socialist, focuses more on strategic government investment and Fillon more on budget-cutting; Macron favors a stronger EU, while Fillon caters to widespread public contempt for European governance.
Despite their reputation for Cartesian habits of thought, the French are not going to actually choose a candidate on Sunday based on categorical distinctions.
The likeliest beneficiary of the so-called vote utile is Macron, whom moderate leftists and moderate conservatives both feel they can live with. [tick, :)] Macron is young, handsome, dynamic, and feels more like the future than his rivals. Nevertheless, it’s very strange to contemplate the possibility that French voters, traditionally hostile toward the free market, and deeply worried about terrorism and “communitarianism,” may choose a genuine liberal as president. Macron may find that he has very little ability to bring his citizens to a more classically Anglo-American worldview, especially when the Anglo-American world is heading in the opposite direction. He could be a president without a mandate.
There are good reasons why three of the four viable candidates have rejected central elements of the liberal consensus — even if in doing so they have mined some of the public’s darkest instincts. The faith in free markets and free trade no longer speaks to a middle class that feels left behind by the forces of globalization. And the cultural universalism that welcomes refugees and immigrants has run into the reality that many Muslims do not accept the secularism and the progressive values of the West, even if only a minute fraction of them actively seek to harm those values. Thus it is not enough to repeat the shibboleths of the triumphal post-Cold War moment. Le Pen likes to say that the great struggle of our time is between “mondialisation” and “patriotisme.” Liberalism must find a language, and a set of policies, to pry patriotism from the clutches of the nationalists and the xenophobes. A cosmopolitan identity, or even a European one, is too flimsy a garment for most people to wear. The real struggle of the future may be the effort to define an affirmative patriotism. French voters will join that struggle on Sunday.
5 times U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed Donald Trump
"The Unmaking of Europe "
IMAGE: Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t minced words when it comes to his views of President Donald Trump and his policies. | Getty
By Kristen East 06/09/2017 12:15 AM EDT
With U.K. election results showing a rocky road ahead for Prime Minister Theresa May, President Donald Trump may soon have to forge a closer relationship with a British politician who has repeatedly criticized him: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The hard-left Labour leader hasn’t minced words when it comes to his views of the president and his policies. Here are five not-so-nice things Corbyn has said about Trump:
1. An "erratic" administration
While campaigning last month, Corbyn said this .. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/11/jeremy-corbyn-says-labour-manifesto-will-transform-people/s-lives .. of the months-old Trump administration: “The U.S. is the strongest military power on the planet by a very long way. It has a special responsibility to use its power with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts with care and to support international efforts to resolve conflicts collectively and peacefully. Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isn’t strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability.”
2. “Fake anti-elitism”
Not long after the 2016 election was settled, Corbyn jabbed both UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Trump as “rich, white men” who practiced “fake anti-elitism.” “The fake anti-elitism of rich, white men, like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, is farcical at one level but in reality it’s no joke at all,” Corbyn said in a speech .. http://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-donald-trump-anti-elitism-is-fake/ .. in November.
3. “Neither the grace nor the sense to grasp” communities' response to terror
“At this time it is more important than ever that we stay united in our communities. It is the strength of our communities that gets us through these awful times as London Mayor Sadiq Khan recognized, but which the current occupant in the White House has neither the grace nor the sense to grasp,” Corbyn said.
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