Liberalisme di Arab Saudi

From The Washington Post, May 28, 2007

For Cloaked Saudi Women, Color Is the New Black
By FAIZA SALEH AMBAH

Manal Fageeh never liked the abaya, the long black cloak she was forced to begin wearing at 13. She resented the fact that it was obligatory for women in Saudi Arabia, and the black absorbed heat in the often-scorching climate.

When Fageeh, a health industry executive, appeared at a recent business conference in a floor-length white abaya made of light cotton and monogrammed with an M, some of the attendees were shocked, she said. But others were inspired.

"When I saw her, I said to myself, 'Yes! This is right,' " said Manal al-Sharif, an editor at al-Madina, a Jiddah-based newspaper. "Nothing in Islam imposes black on us. And I decided to make a brown abaya for myself."

Saudi women have long been known in the West for their all-enveloping black attire, widely considered a mark of their oppression. But Sharif and Fageeh are among a growing number of women and girls here who are rethinking and reinventing the abaya to more closely reflect their personalities and religious beliefs.

The change is most striking in Jiddah, the kingdom's most cosmopolitan city, where many young women now wear their head scarves around their shoulders and leave their abayas open to reveal pants and T-shirts. Medical students here often forgo the abaya altogether, frequenting malls and coffee shops in brightly colored head scarves and white knee-length lab coats over jeans.

Abayas with patches of fluorescent color, floral patterns, animal prints, embroidery and even zodiac signs have started to show up in other cities as well, prompting clerics to criticize the trend and reiterate that abayas were meant to deflect attention, not attract it.

The redefinition of the abaya mirrors the greater, though still limited, personal freedoms allowed in the kingdom over the past five years. A major factor in the change was the involvement of young Saudis in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Many people began to question the official Wahhabi ideology that was believed to have partly inspired the hijackers and that had long dictated the country's ultraconservative lifestyle.

Saudi women bear the brunt of that puritanical ideology. They are not allowed guardianship over themselves and need male permission to marry or travel. They cannot drive or work alongside men and are forced to cover up with the abaya in public.

Since shortly after the first girls schools opened here in 1955, the abaya has been mandatory beginning in middle school. Until several years ago, members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the enforcement arm of the Wahhabi establishment, patrolled streets and malls with sticks, making sure that women were properly veiled, that men and women who were not related did not mingle and that stores closed during prayer times. But the committee's influence has waned since the Sept. 11 attacks, and its bearded members are rarely seen in Jiddah these days.

"You cannot separate what is happening with the abaya from other issues related to women, including women's appearance in the workforce and having more say in their affairs," said Saad al-Sowayan, a professor of folklore and anthropology at King Saud University in Riyadh, the capital.

Until recently, the abaya was a plain black robe that women kept by the door and wore like a coat over their clothes when they left the house.

Today, abayas are often stylish, personalized wraps that women enjoy being seen in, said Thana Addas, an abaya designer. Addas's creations, many made with material from international fashion houses such as Roberto Cavalli, Burberry and Fendi and decorated with Swarovski crystals, can sell for more than $1,000.

Many conservatives see the new abaya as sinful, and orthodox clerics have issued fatwas, or edicts, decreeing that the robes must be dark, loose and shapeless.

The varied views here on women's dress stem from different interpretations of Koranic verses and hadith, anecdotes about Islam's prophet Muhammad and his followers that are considered an important source of religious practice and law. Though there is no consensus among Muslims regarding what constitutes proper dress, most believe that God ordered women to wear loose clothing that covers their contours.

The first verse in the Koran that deals with the Islamic dress code for women says: "O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognized and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful."

The day that verse came to Muhammad from Allah, according to hadith, women walked to dawn prayers "looking like crows." Ahmad al-Mussaed, a geography professor and the author of several books on traditional clothing, said Muslim women should therefore dress in black abayas to follow the example of women during the time of the prophet.

But some Muslims, including Sharif, the newspaper editor, say the women were said to resemble crows not because they were wearing black but because they were walking in the dark.

Sharif, 39, said it is possible for a woman to flout God's orders even if she's wearing a black abaya. She said she dresses conservatively in hats, long jackets and scarves even when she travels outside the country. "God ordered women to dress modestly, to be respectable and to avoid provoking lust. Many young women here wear the abaya and yet are all about provocation."

At a mall on fashionable Tahlia Street recently, a line of young men trailed three fully covered young women wearing the niqab, or face veil, with slits that exposed only their eyes. The women, who had stopped to look at cellphone accessories, wore tight black abayas, green and blue contact lenses, heavy mascara and eyeliner, and strong perfume.

The black abaya came to Saudi Arabia from Iraq or Syria more than 75 years ago, as did most textiles and goods at the time, said Leila al-Bassam, a professor of traditional clothing and textiles at Riyadh University. The robes caught on in the kingdom after King Abdul-Aziz, who conquered the country's disparate regions and formed a state in 1932, distributed them as presents to various tribal leaders, said Mussaed, the geography professor.

Before that, women wore modest but often colorful regional costumes, and in the more conservative areas did not leave the house until they were married, Bassam said.

As the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice started enforcing the dress code across the country, the abaya slowly supplanted the traditional regional costumes and became the national dress.

On weekends, 20-year-old business student Laila Yamani replaces the abaya she wears in town with capri jeans and T-shirts at the beach resorts where young men and women wear Western clothes and mingle freely, far from official eyes.

Yamani said she was excited when she went shopping with her mother for her first abaya when she was 13. "It was like I was grown up," she said.

Now, like many Saudi women, Yamani unwraps her head scarf and removes her abaya as soon as she boards a plane leaving the country.

Sharif, the editor, called such behavior an instance of Saudi Arabia's split personality. "We act one way in Saudi Arabia and differently when we travel," she said. "As if God is to be observed only here."

Malaysia Dalam Percaturan Politik Kuasa Besar

Malaysia telah lama menjadi perhatian kuasa besar dunia disebabkan kedudukan penting Selat Melaka, laluan perdagangan paling sibuk di dunia pada masa ini. Kini, perhatian terhadap Malaysia ditingkatkan lagi dengan rancangan pembinaan saluran paip minyak merentasi utara semenanjung dari Kedah melalui Perak ke Kelantan.

Baru-baru ini, Perdana Menteri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi mengumumkan rancangan pembinaan saluran paip minyak sepanjang 320km bernilai hampir RM24 bilion apabila siap.

Sekiranya berjaya disiapkan dan beroperasi seperti dirancang, Malaysia bakal menjejaskan sedikit perniagaan penting Singapura; penapisan petroleum. SKS Ventures, syarikat taikun terkenal yang rapat dengan pemerintah, Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary dan Merapoh Resources Corporation pula akan membina fasiliti penapisan bagi projek saluran itu.

Menurut Rahim Kamil Sulaiman, pengerusi syarikat pembina saluran itu, saluran minyak itu akan berkapasiti 20 juta tong sehari pada peringkat awal operasinya. Saluran paip ini memendekkan perjalanan eksport minyak dari Timur Tengah ke Asia Timur, kerana mengelakkan kapal tangki daripada melalui Selat Melaka yang terdedah kepada ancaman dan semakin sesak.

Selat Melaka ialah satu kawasan yang disifatkan sebagai kawasan bahaya atau hotspot dan salah satu kawasan laluan paling sempit atau chokepoint.

Antara pihak yang bakal mendapat manfaat daripada pembinaan saluran ini ialah China, pengguna minyak kedua terbesar selepas Amerika Syarikat dan Jepun, yang sebahagian besar import minyaknya bersumber dari Timur Tengah.

Kedua-dua negara ini menyaingi satu sama lain untuk menjadi negara paling berpengaruh di Asia. Syarikat dari Iran, Arab Saudi dan China akan melabur dalam projek berprofil tinggi itu.

Prospek penglibatan Iran telah pun mendapat perhatian pemerhati di AS, yang melihatnya sebagai peningkatan kerjasama dua negara majoriti Muslim yang mempunyai pengaruh masing-masing.

Kepentingan Iran dan China

Kepentingan Iran dan China dalam projek ini jelas, iaitu mengurangkan jarak perjalanan kapal tangki dari barat ke pasaran di timur.

Bagi Iran, operasi saluran paip minyak itu akan membolehkan bekalan minyak disampaikan dengan lebih mudah kepada pelanggannya China, yang juga sekutu politiknya yang menduduki kerusi tetap Majlis Keselamatan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu.

Sehingga kini, hampir 80 peratus bekalan minyak China melalui Selat Melaka yang terdedah kepada ancaman, termasuk senario terburuk bagi China dan perdagangan dunia iaitu peneutupan laluan itu, yang mampu menyekat bekalan tenaga ke negara kuasa Asia itu.

Sekiranya ini berlaku, ia akan menjadi pukulan maut buat China. Menurut senario terburuk ini, yang dibayangkan oleh pihak AS, serangan kapal tangki minyak di laluan paling sempit Selat Melaka, selebar hanya 1.5km, akan menyekat laluan penting ini dan menjejaskan dengan teruk perdagangan global. Ini juga bermakna bekalan minyak China tersekat.

Pembinaan saluran paip minyak merentasi Semenanjung Malaysia itu mempelbagaikan laluan penghantaran minyak ke China, sesuatu yang memberikan kelebihan strategik kepada negara itu. Saluran merentasi semenanjung itu hanya satu daripada perkembangan yang boleh memberi kelebihan kepada China.

Negara itu kini sedang giat melabur di Asia Tengah untuk memastikan pembinaan saluran paip minyak menyalurkan sumber penting itu kepadanya. Satu usaha yang dipertingkatkan ialah Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai, SCO, yang turut melibatkan negara kaya minyak Asia Tengah seperti Kazakhstan dan Uzbekistan.

Perkembangan ini juga bermakna syarikat minyak milik negara China, Syarikat Minyak Nasional China (CNPC) dan PetroChina akan meningkat pelaburannya di luar negara, agenda yang sedang dilaksanakan dengan agresif dari Asia Tengah hingga ke Afrika.

CNPC atau PetroChina turut dijangka akan melabur dalam projek saluran paip minyak merentasi semenanjung itu, kerana jelas sekali ia adalah pihak yang paling berpotensi mendapat faedah.

Syarikat Minyak Nasional Iran (NIOC) pula terlibat melalui pelaburan pembinaan saluran paip itu. Iran dikatakan bimbang dengan kawalan ketenteraan AS terhadap Selat Melaka yang mampu menjejaskan penghantaran minyak ke pelanggannya di Asia Timur, sekaligus menjejaskan pendapatan pentingnya.

Petronas

Dari satu sudut, perkembangan ini memperlihatkan peningkatan kerjasama tenaga Malaysia dengan Iran dan China, dua negara yang tidak sehaluan dengan AS dalam banyak hal, meningkatkan profil negara dalam sektor tenaga dunia.

Petronas, syarikat minyak negara Malaysia, sejak beberapa tahun lalu telah mendapat perhatian ekoran penglibatannya di negara seperti Sudan, Iran dan Uzbekistan. Petronas semakin dikenali di peringkat antarabangsa dan dilihat sebagai syarikat minyak yang lebih beretika berbanding syarikat Barat.

Bagaimanapun, di AS, Petronas mendapat perhatian bukan kerana hal itu. Petronas pernah dikecam kerana terlibat di Sudan dan Iran, sekaligus didakwa membantu rejim yang tidak demokratik. Petronas, NIOC dan CNPC kini disenaraikan sebagai syarikat minyak utama dunia yang baru, atau "the new seven sisters" menurut akhbar perniagaan dari London, Financial Times.

Petronas terlibat bekerjasama dengan China, Rusia dan Iran dalam perniagaan minyak dan gas, dan turut mendapat perhatian apabila membeli saham syarikat minyak Rusia, Rosneft tahun lalu.

Disebabkan peluang pelaburan lebih besar di negara-negara yang kurang disenangi AS, Petronas memberi perhatian kepada negara-negara terbabit.

Petronas dilaporkan menerima sekitar 30 peratus pendapatan korporat dari luar negara dan beroperasi di lebh daripada 26 negara. Sebagai contoh di Sudan, Malaysia dipandang tinggi disebabkan peranan Petronas yang dilihat membawa kemajuan untuk negara itu, atau sekurang-kurangnya di tempat Petronas beroperasi.

Penglibatan dalam industri tenaga Iran juga satu prospek yang menarik bagi Petronas, kerana hubungan sesama negara Muslim dan sektor tenaga Iran yang masih kurang dieksploit.

Bagaimanapun, faktor politik menghalang penglibatan lebih luas Petronas di Iran. Projek saluran paip merentasi semenanjung itu bukan yang pertama memperlihatkan hubungan tenaga Malaysia dengan China.

Malaysia juga merapatkan kerjasama tenaga dengan China baru-baru ini, yang dijelaskan melalui lawatan presiden Petronas, Mohd Hassan Marican ke Shanghai, China baru-baru ini.

Dalam satu projek yang dipersetujui, Petronas akan bekerjasama dengan China untuk menghantar gas petroleum cecair ke Shanghai. Projek itu dilaporkan sebagai kontrak perdagangan terbesar melibatkan kedua-dua negara.

Saluran paip dari Kedah ke Kelantan yang dirancang itu kini menjelaskan lagi hubungan baik Malaysia dengan Iran dan China. Walaupun prospek keuntungan amat besar, kos politik juga tidak dapat dielakkan.

Malaysia akan mendapat perhatian lebih rapat kuasa besar dunia, disebabkan kepentingan strategik projek itu kepada China dan Iran. Projek itu meletakkan Malaysia di tengah-tengah persaingan kuasa-kuasa besar.

Bagaimanapun, penglibatan China dan Iran bukan satu-satunya faktor penentu, kerana syarikat Arab Saudi turut akan terlibat, dan seperti mana-mana projek tenaga di seluruh dunia, syarikat AS juga akan terlibat, terutama syarikat perkhidmatan minyak seperti Halliburton dan Sclumberger.

Di Chad sebagai contoh, Petronas melabur dalam projek diusahakan konsortium diketuai Exxon Mobil.

Jelas sekali, industri minyak ialah satu perniagaan yang sangat kompleks, melibatkan percaturan politik dan ekonomi yang rumit. Apa pun masa depan saluran paip yang berprofil tinggi itu, tidak wajar untuk menjangkakan pembinaannya akan berjalan lancar, tanpa halangan-halangan ekonomi dan politik yang tidak dijangka. - 21 Mei, 2007

Dingin

Pertembungan Dua Empayar

"Pemerintah Rusia pimpinan Presiden Vladimir Putin semakin jengkel dengan sikap Eropah dan sekutunya Amerika Syarikat yang tidak henti-henti berkhutbah tentang hak asasi manusia dan demokrasi, memberi gambaran Rusia masih belum mencapai taraf kemajuan tamadun seperti Eropah dan AS, walaupun telah menyertai kumpulan negara industri G8."

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Arsip Buku: A History of Malaysia

The ostensible source of (the May 13, 1969) communal conflict was the federal elections of 1969. Fought on the highly emotional issues of education and language, the pre-election campaign exposed deep and abiding concerns among all communities regarding their situation within the new Malaysian nation.

In the wake of a tireless campaign mounted by Chinese opposition parties supporting non-Malay rights, the volatility of the public mood became all too evident. Held in a Kuala Lumpur suburb the day before the elections, the funeral procession of a young (allegedly communist) Chinese man killed by the police became the magnet for a huge demonstration of around 10,000 people.

Although the Alliance retained a majority in the Dewan Rakyat, its seats fell to 66 from the 1964 figure of 89, and its popular vote had declined from the 1964 total of 58.4 per cent to 48.5 per cent. Of equal concern were Alliance losses in the state assemblies, and the failure of the coalition to deliver communal votes as it had done in the past. In some electorates with Malay majorities a DAP or Gerakan Chinese candidate won because the Malay votes was split between UMNO and PAS. More seriously, the Chinese vote deserted the MCA, which held only 13 of 33 contested seats, while the election of Indian candidates standing for non-communal parties showed all too plainly the lack of Indian confidence in the Alliance.

On 12 May jubilant Gerakan and DAP supporters took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur in a victory celebration, taunting Malays and predicting future Chinese successes. A counter-rally by UMNO supporters the following day quickly deteriorated into unprecedented and uncontrolled ethnic violence.

A History of Malaysia by Barbara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y. Andaya. Palgrave, 2001.

Bono, G8 dan Photo Op Terhebat Masa Kini

Some photos of U2 frontman Bono (probably the rock star most photographed with politicians) with world leaders, in his effort to chage the world, or something. From top, Bono with European Commission president, Jose Manuel Baroso, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, with statue of former chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt, with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (with Bill Gates looking on) and German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Woo-hoo

From The Nation, May 15, 2007

The Simpsons Hit 400
By SIMON MAXWELL APTER

"Then I had this crazy dream that my family were all just cartoon characters and that our success led to some crazy propaganda network called Fox News." --Bart Simpson

If Seinfeld had lasted as long as The Simpsons has, its finale would have featured a graying foursome closing in on 55 (60 for Kramer), far nearer, of course, to that much-derided condo in Miami Beach or to those discounted movie tickets than their selfish, or childish, or birdbrained shenanigans would have you believe. Eighteen seasons of The Sopranos--which ends in June after "only" eighty-six episodes--would make it statistically impossible for any of the original cast of wise guys not to be dead or incarcerated. And God only knows who would watch a Friends featuring a menopausal Monica and a Flomax-popping Chandler suffering from, as it's wont to be called these days, BPH. No half-hour comedy has ever enjoyed as long of a run as The Simpsons, and, if Seinfeld (nine seasons), Friends (ten seasons), The Cosby Show (eight seasons, one of which matched Cliff and Claire directly against Homer and Marge on Thursday nights) and the other NBC Must See TV warriors are any indication, no half-hour comedy ever will.

Terribly animated (at least by Pixar or Dreamworks standards), unabashedly crude and, at times, prone to deus ex machina endings (including one featuring a robed, sandaled and bearded God who actually booms, "Deus ex machina!" as he sets things right), The Simpsons will present its 400th episode on Fox on May 20. It's important to note the "on Fox" part, as there would be no Fox, let alone a Fox News, without The Simpsons. Indeed, the importance of The Simpsons to Fox was perhaps best illustrated in an episode of Family Guy, another Fox cartoon (and cheap Simpsons knock-off to some, delightful refurbishment of the genre to others), in which its protagonist rattles off some twenty-nine failed Fox programs that network execs had used to try and bolster the paltry Simpsons-Cops-America's Most Wanted triad they were currently (and quite lopsidedly) using to entice primetime viewers.

Further proof of Homer's influence on American culture was later made manifest when a Fox animator, Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane, crashed the gates of the Establishment and delivered the Class Day speech at Harvard's 2006 commencement exercises. (Tim Russert did the honors in 2005; former President Clinton will take to the rostrum this year.) And though The Simpsons is typically associated with (and sometimes berated for) a leftist/liberal outlook, its pure literary, comedic and intellectual appeal is such that, during the run-up to the Iraq War, even National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg swiped "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," an epithet for the French coined by Groundskeeper Willy, for his own criticism of French refusal to join George W. Bush's Coalition of the Willing.

Remarkably, after eighteen years, The Simpsons never strays far from a "smartest show on television" discussion. Actually, it never strays too far from much of anything it laid down in Episode 1, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," a Christmas special aired December 17, 1989, which featured the first mainstream animated characters who drank beer to excess, bet the family savings at the dog track and said "damn," "hell" and "ass" like the rest of us (and like their nonanimated TV cousins). The Daily Show, a current contender for that "smartest show" claim--and, like The Simpsons, often bandied about by the likes of Olbermann when they aspire to hipness--has juggled formats, correspondents and hosts (even if Craig Kilborn's two-year tenure was long ago eclipsed, if not downright forgotten) during the show's eleven-year stint on Comedy Central. The Simpsons, in contrast, has featured in three different decades the same characters, the same settings and the same scenarios. The Simpsons is the Gordie Howe of sitcoms. Creator Matt Groening has watched as knockoffs, heirs apparent both worthy and unworthy and even an entire network devoted to cartoons of the swearing, non-Saturday morning variety, come, struggle for a time and--more often than not--go.

Along with Bart's hyper-aware gem printed above, "Yokel Chords," a recent episode first aired March 7, 2007, also featured what is perhaps to date the most succinct summation and critique of President George W. Bush's foreign policy. "Brandine!" a startled Cletus--the show's stereotypical hillbilly--exclaims upon stumbling across his fatigues-clad wife, "You're supposed to be in Iraq, stoppin' 9/11!" It's a hilarious sentence, wrong in too many ways to count, and yet at the same time stunning, for--as we've seen for the past six years and change--this is actually how President Bush seems to think, speak and preside over history and his place in it.

Critics of The Simpsons often point to the lean years, the period roughly spanning the show's ninth through fourteenth seasons that saw the introduction of a bevy of one-dimensional peripheral characters (the Afro'd, trapped-in-1976 Disco Stu and the overweight, misanthropic, and pony-tailed Comic Book Guy, to name two); and, by the producers' own admission, an inundation of trite and contrived plots, such as a Martin Guerre-like scenario involving Principal Skinner, and a string of musical guest stars who always seemed to find backing band, stage, amps and time for an ill-fitting solo at some point during the show. And the family went to Japan, to Brazil, to England. Bart spent an episode stuck in Knoxville, Tennessee; Homer fled PBS fundraisers (actress Betty White among them) by absconding to a South Pacific atoll. Stephen Hawking even came to Moe's Tavern (and landed a couple of punches with a mechanical fist attached to his wheelchair) a couple of times. A rumor even fluttered about in 1996 that Springfield would be abandoned for "Cypress Creek," a ridiculous planned community primed to spoof the likes of Disney's Celebration, Florida. But in leaving their ranch home at 742 Evergreen Terrace in Springfield, and by letting flesh-and-blood guest stars fill in for the fictitious and familiar Springfieldianites (as Marge calls them), The Simpsons had also abandoned the skewering satire of middle American life that had engineered the show's initial success.

Writing in Slate in 2003, Chris Suellentrop denounced Matt Groening's "sitcom" for degenerating into a "cartoon." In short, longtime fans felt, the show had become a parody of itself; the characters were merely behaving as zanier versions of their earlier selves--drinking more beer, getting worse grades, belching more often--and it had become boring. Still, demonstrating the self-awareness that had always made The Simpsons unique among its primetime peers, it was during this creatively barren period that the show spawned Comic Book Guy's catchphrase, "Worst. Episode. Ever," perhaps The Simpsons's most famous contribution to American slang since Homer's ubiquitous "D'Oh!"--and a fairly accurate interpretation of diehard fans' reactions suddenly emanating from their Internet soapboxes.

After a lackluster 300th episode (featuring skateboarding legend Tony Hawk and MTV-band-of-the-month Blink-182), though, The Simpsons struck back. Bush 43's America, after all, had begun to resemble the Bush 41 America from which the show originally had spawned. Homer was sent to India after Mr. Burns outsourced every job at the nuclear plant, only to be sent home after conferring benefits, transferable sick days, vacation time and general laziness upon his South Asian employees--"the American sense of entitlement," according to Lisa--and Mr. Burns was financially forced to bring the plant back to Springfield. Another time, after suffering from amnesia caused by a head injury, Marge was prematurely released from the hospital because, according to her doctor, she's "as well as her insurance will pay for." Life, perhaps, had become more ridiculous and, in turn, more susceptible to ridicule.

And after Number 400, while indomitable rumors about Tony Soprano's impending doom will continue to swirl about, Matt Groening and Co. will prepare for The Simpsons Movie, set to open July 27. The film may soar; the film may bomb; but, come autumn, Season Nineteen will begin on Fox, and Bart will be 10, Lisa a second-grade know-it-all and Maggie an incommunicative infant. Scheduled to guest star is Stephen Colbert. Which network was he on in 1989?

The Bad Germans

From The New York Review of Books, May 31, 2007

Review

The Stasi on Our Minds
By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH

The Lives of Others
A film directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch
By Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 216 pp., Ä8.50 (paper)

One of Germany's most singular achievements is to have associated itself so intimately in the world's imagination with the darkest evils of the two worst political systems of the most murderous century in human history. The words "Nazi," "SS," and "Auschwitz" are already global synonyms for the deepest inhumanity of fascism. Now the word "Stasi" is becoming a default global synonym for the secret police terrors of communism. The worldwide success of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's deservedly Oscar- winning film The Lives of Others will strengthen that second link, building as it does on the preprogramming of our imaginations by the first. Nazi, Stasi: Germany's festering half-rhyme.

It was not always thus. When I went to live in Berlin in the late 1970s, I was fascinated by the puzzle of how Nazi evil had engulfed this homeland of high culture. I set out to discover why the people of Weimar Berlin behaved as they did after Adolf Hitler came to power. One question above all obsessed me: What quality was it, what human strain, that made one person a dissident or resistance fighter and another a collaborator in state-organized crime, one a Claus von Stauffenberg, sacrificing his life in the attempt to assassinate Hitler, another an Albert Speer?

I soon discovered that the men and women living behind the Berlin Wall, in East Germany, were facing similar dilemmas in another German dictatorship, albeit with less physically murderous consequences. I could study that human conundrum not in dusty archives but in the history of the present. So I went to live in East Berlin and ended up writing a book about the Germans under the communist leader Erich Honecker, rather than under Adolf Hitler.[1] As I traveled around the other Germany, I was again and again confronted with the fear of the Stasi. Walking back to the apartment of an actor who had just taken the lead role in a production of Goethe's Faust, a friend whispered to me, "Watch out, Faust is working for the Stasi." After my very critical account of communist East Germany appeared in West Germany, a British diplomat was summoned to receive an official protest from the East German foreign ministry (one of the nicest book reviews a political writer could ever hope for) and I was banned from reentering the country.

Yet this view of East Germany as another evil German dictatorship was by no means generally accepted in the West at that time. Even to suggest a Nazi–Stasi comparison was regarded in many parts of the Western left as outmoded, reactionary cold war hysteria, harmful to the spirit of détente. The Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele concluded in 1977 that the German Democratic Republic was "a presentable model of the kind of authoritarian welfare states which Eastern European nations have now become." Even self-styled "realist" conservatives talked about communist East Germany in tones very different from those they adopt today. Back then, the word "Stasi" barely crossed their lips.

Two developments ended this chronic myopia. In 1989 the people of East Germany themselves finally rose up and denounced the Stasi as the epitome of their previous repression. That they often repressed at the same time—in the crypto-Freudian sense of the word "repression"—the memory of their own everyday compromises and personal responsibility for the stability of the communist regime was but the other side of the same coin. After 1990, the total takeover of the former East Germany by the Federal Republic meant that, unlike in all other post-communist states, there was no continuity from old to new security services and no hesitation about exposing the evils of the previous secret police state. Quite the reverse.

In the land of Martin Luther and Leopold von Ranke, driven by a distinctly Protestant passion to confront past sins, the forcefully stated wish of a few East German dissidents to expose the crimes of the regime, and the desire of many West Germans (especially those from the class of '68) not to repeat the mistakes made in covering up and forgetting the evils of Nazism after 1949, we saw an unprecedentedly swift, far-reaching, and systematic opening of the more than 110 miles of Stasi files. The second time around, forty years on, Germany was bent on getting its Vergangenheitsbewältigung, its past-beating, just right. Of course Russia's KGB, the big brother of East Germany's big brother, did nothing of the kind.

After some hesitation, I decided to go back and see if I had a Stasi file. I did. I read it and was deeply stirred by its minute-by-minute record of my past life: 325 pages of poisoned madeleine. Helped by the apparatus of historical enlightenment that Germany had erected, I was able to study in incomparable detail the apparatus of political intimidation that had produced this file. Then, working like a detective, I tracked down the acquaintances who had informed on me and the Stasi officers involved in my case. All but one agreed to talk. They told me their life stories, and explained how they had come to do what they had done. In every case, the story was understandable, all too understandable; human, all too human. I wrote a book about the whole experience, calling it The File.

It was therefore with particular interest that I recently sat down to watch The Lives of Others, this already celebrated film about the Stasi, made by a West German director who was just sixteen when the Berlin Wall came down. Set in the Orwellian year of 1984, it shows a dedicated Stasi captain, Gerd Wiesler, conducting a full-scale surveillance operation on a playwright in good standing with the regime, Georg Dreyman, and his beautiful, highly strung actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland. As the case progresses, we see the Stasi captain becoming disillusioned with his task. He realizes that the whole operation has been set up simply to allow the culture minister, who is exploiting his position to extract sexual favors from the lovely Christa, to get his playwright rival out of his way. "Was it for this we joined up?" Wiesler asks his cynical superior, Colonel Anton Grubitz.

At the same time, he becomes curiously enchanted with what he hears through his headphones, connected to the bugs concealed behind the wallpaper of the playwright's apartment: that rich world of literature, music, friendship, and tender sex, so different from his own desiccated, solitary life in a dreary tower-block, punctuated only by brief, mechanical relief between the outsize mutton thighs of a Stasi-commissioned prostitute. In his snooper's hideaway in the attic of the apartment building, Wiesler sits transfixed by Dreyman's rendition of a piano piece called "The Sonata of the Good Man"—a birthday present to the playwright from a dissident theater director who, banned by the culture minister from pursuing his vocation, subsequently commits suicide. Violating all the rules that he himself teaches at the Stasi's own university, the secret watcher slips into the apartment and steals a volume of poems by Bertolt Brecht. Then we see him lying on a sofa, entranced by one of Brecht's more elegiac verses.

In the role-reversing culmination of an intricate and gripping plot, the playwright's girlfriend betrays him to the Stasi but the Stasi captain saves him from exposure and arrest—at the cost of his own subsequent career. He is reduced to steaming open letters in a Stasi cellar alongside a junior officer whom we see earlier telling a political joke in the ministry canteen and, in a chilling exchange, being asked for his name and rank by Colonel Grubitz.

After the Wall comes down, the playwright reads his Stasi file, works out from internal evidence how Wiesler—identified in the file as HGW XX/7—must have protected him, and writes a novel entitled, like the piece of music, The Sonata of the Good Man. The film ends with a cinematic haiku. The former Stasi man opens the newly published novel in the Karl Marx Bookshop in East Berlin—we are now in 1993—and discovers that it is dedicated to "HGW XX/7, in gratitude." "Do you want it gift-wrapped?" asks the shop assistant. "No," says Wiesler, "es ist für mich"— "it's for me." Punch line. End of story. Cut to credits.

Watching the film for the first time, I was powerfully affected. Yet I was also moved to object, from my own experience: "No! It was not really like that. This is all too highly colored, romantic, even melodramatic; in reality, it was all much grayer, more tawdry and banal." The playwright, for example, in his smart brown corduroy suit and open-necked shirt, dresses, walks, and talks like a West German intellectual from Schwabing, a chic quarter of Munich, not an East German. Several details are also wrong. On everyday duty, Stasi officers would not have worn those smart dress uniforms, with polished knee-length leather boots, leather belts, and cavalry-style trousers. By contrast, the cadets in the Stasi university are shown in ordinary, student-type civilian clothes; they would have been in uniform. A Stasi surveillance team would have been most unlikely to install itself in the attic of the same building—a sure give-away to the residents, not all of whom could have been reliably silenced by the kind of chilling warning that Wiesler delivers to the playwright's immediate neighbor across the stairwell: "One word to anyone and your Masha immediately loses her place to study medicine at university. Understood?"

Some of the language is also too high-flown, old-fashioned, and simply Western. A playwright who knew on which side his bread was buttered would never have used the West German word for blacklisting, Berufsverbot, in conversation with the culture minister. I never heard anyone in East Germany call a woman gnädige Frau, an old-fashioned term somewhere between "madam" and "my lady," and a Stasi colonel would not have addressed Christa during an interrogation as gnädigste. I would bet my last Deutschmark that in 1984 a correspondent of the West German newsmagazine Der Spiegel would not have talked of Gesamtdeutschland.[2] This strikes me as more the vocabulary of the uprooted German aristocracy among whom the director and writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck grew up —both of his parents fled from the eastern parts of the Reich at the end of the Second World War—than that of the real East Germany in 1984.

But these objections are in an important sense beside the point. The point is that this is a movie. It uses the syntax and conventions of Hollywood to convey to the widest possible audience some part of the truth about life under the Stasi, and the larger truths that experience revealed about human nature. It mixes historical fact (several of the Stasi locations are real and most of the terminology and tradecraft is accurate) with the ingredients of a fast-paced thriller and love story.

hen I met von Donnersmarck in Oxford, where he studied politics, philosophy, and economics in the mid-1990s, I discussed my reservations with him. While fiercely defending the basic historical accuracy of the film, he immediately agreed that some details were deliberately altered for dramatic effect. Thus, he explained, if he had shown the Stasi cadets in uniform, no ordinary cinemagoer would have identified with them. But because he shows them (inaccurately) in student-type civilian dress and has one of them (implausibly) ask a naive question to the effect of "isn't bullying people in interrogations wrong?," the viewer can identify with them and is drawn into the story. He argued that in a movie the reality has always to be verdichtet, a word which means thickened, concentrated, intensified, but carries a verbal association with Dichtung, meaning poetry or, more broadly, fiction. Hence the elevated language ("I beg you, I beseech you"—ich flehe dich an—says the playwright at one point, asking his girlfriend not to submit again to the minister's piggish lechery). Hence the luxuriant palette of rich greens, browns, and subtle grays in which the whole movie is shot, and the frankly operatic staging of Christa's death.

During a subsequent question-and-answer session in an Oxford cinema the director mentioned, in separate answers, two films that he admired: Claude Lanzmann's harrowing Holocaust documentary, Shoah, and Anthony Minghella's version of The Talented Mr. Ripley—a thriller involving murder and stolen identity—which he singled out because "it doesn't bore me, and for that I'm very grateful." In The Lives of Others, Shoah meets The Talented Mr. Ripley. Von Donnersmarck does care about the historical facts, but he's even more concerned not to bore us. And for that we are grateful. It is just because he is not an East German survivor but a fresh, cosmopolitan child of the Americanized West, a privileged Wessi down to the carefully unbuttoned tips of his pink button-down shirt, fluent in American-accented English and the universal language of Hollywood, that he is able to translate the East German experience into an idiom that catches the imagination of the world.

One of the finest film critics writing today, Anthony Lane, concludes his admiring review in The New Yorker by adapting Wiesler's punch line: Es ist für mich. You might think that the film is aimed solely at modern Germans, Lane writes, but it's not: Es ist für uns —it's for us. He may be more right than he knows. The Lives of Others is a film very much intended for others. Like so much else made in Germany, it is designed to be exportable. Among its ideal foreign consumers are, precisely, Lane's "us"—the readers of The New Yorker. Or, indeed, those of The New York Review.

Does anything essential get lost in this translation? The small inaccuracies and implausibilities are, on balance, justifiable artistic license, allowing a deeper truth to be conveyed. It does, however, lose something important: the sense of what Hannah Arendt famously called the banality of evil— and nowhere was evil more banal than in the net-curtained, plastic-wood cabins and caravans of the German Democratic Republic. Yet that is extraordinarily difficult to recreate, certainly for a wider audience, precisely because it was so banal, so unremittingly, mind-numbingly boring. (Or could a great screenwriter and director create a nonboring film about boredom? I lay down the challenge here.)

One of the movie's central claims remains troubling. This is the idea, clearly implied in the ending, that the Stasi captain is the "good man" of the sonata. Now I have heard of Stasi informers who ended up protecting those they were informing on. I know of full-time Stasi operatives who became disillusioned, especially during the 1980s. And in many hours of talking to former Stasi officers, I never met a single one who I felt to be, simply and plainly, an evil man. Weak, blinkered, opportunistic, self-deceiving, yes; men who did evil things, most certainly; but always I glimpsed in them the remnants of what might have been, the good that could have grown in other circumstances.

Wiesler's own conversion, as shown to us in the film, seems implausibly rapid and not fully convincing—despite a wonderfully enigmatic performance by the East German actor Ulrich Mühe. It would take more than the odd sonata and Brecht poem to thaw the driven puritan we are shown at the beginning. I find it interesting that in a contribution to the accompanying book (which also contains the original screenplay), the film's historical adviser, Manfred Wilke, gives historical corroboration for many aspects of the film, but does not offer a single documented instance of a Stasi officer behaving in this way—and getting away with it. Instead he cites two cases of disaffected officers, a major in 1979 and a captain in 1981, both of whom were condemned to death and executed. Yet I'm prepared to accept that such a conversion and cover-up was just about within the realms of possibility. (If Colonel Grubitz had exposed Wiesler, he would have compromised himself.)

So Wiesler did one good thing, to set against the countless bad ones he had done before. But to leap from this to the notion that he was "a good man" is an artistic exaggeration—a Verdichtung—too far. In negotiating the treacherous moral maze of evaluating how people behave under dictatorships, there are two characteristic mistakes. One is the simplistic, black-and-white, Manichaean division into good guys and bad guys: X was an informer, so he must have been all bad, Y was a dissident, so she must have been all good. Anyone who has ever lived in such circumstances knows how much more complicated things are. The other, equal but opposite mistake is a moral relativism that ends up blurring the distinction between perpetrator and victim. This kind of moral relativism is frequently to be encountered among liberal-minded Westerners— and, not accidentally, often those who at the time viewed East Germany through rose-tinted spectacles. It is usually accompanied by the argument that the Stasi files cannot be trusted at all: die Akten lügen, the files lie. Von Donnersmarck himself is very far from this relativism, but his film steers uncomfortably close to it. Its "good man" is a Stasi captain who falsifies his reports to protect an artist.

This is a fault, but not a fatal one. The net effect of The Lives of Others will not, after all, be to unleash a wave of worldwide sympathy for former Stasi officers. It will be to bring home the horrors of that system, in a stylized fashion, to viewers who would have known little or nothing about them before. And this in a memorable, well-made movie. So it deserved the Oscar.

According to a report in Der Spiegel, when an emotional Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck finally arrived at a late-night German celebration following the award ceremony, he exclaimed, brandishing his Oscar statuette in the air, Wir sind Weltmeister! The phrase implies not masters of the world but world champions (as in soccer) or world masters (as in golf), with subsidiary connotations of artistic mastery, as in Meistersinger or Meisterwerk. But in what, exactly, are the Germans world masters? In soccer, almost. Their fine performance in last year's World Cup produced scenes— unusual for postwar West Germany— of frankly patriotic celebration, and this was probably what von Donnersmarck had in mind. In the export business, certainly, whether it be BMWs to Britain, machine tools to Iran, assembly lines to China, or, just occasionally, films. The Lives of Others has already netted over $23 million worldwide—a nice little export earner for the German economy.

Some might be tempted to say, especially after watching this film, that Germany is also a world master in the production of cruel dictatorships. Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland— Death is a master from Germany— wrote Paul Celan in his incomparable post-Holocaust "Death Fugue." In respect of fascism, Hitler's Germany was undoubtedly the world champion—all too literally a world-beater. But can the same be said of Honecker's Germany? Yes, this small country with just 17 million people was a kind of miniature masterpiece of psychological intimidation. As Orwell saw, the perfect totalitarian system is the one that does not need to kill or physically torture anyone. I am the last person to minimize the evils of the East German regime; but when set against the millions of deaths in Stalin's gulag, Mao's enforced famines, and Pol Pot's genocide, it is hard to maintain that this was the worst that communism produced.

In that larger scheme of things, East Germany, unlike Nazi Germany, was but a sideshow. The Stasi was modeled on the KGB and not, as many people vaguely imagine, on the Gestapo. As the archives of other Soviet bloc states are opened, we find that their secret police worked in very similar ways. Perhaps the Stasi was that little bit better because it was, well, German; but there are so many larger horrors in the files of the KGB. And we should not forget that the subtle psychological terror of the Stasi state depended, from the first day to the last, on the presence of the Red Army and the willingness of the Soviet Union to use force. When that went, the Stasi state went too.

So why is it that the word "Stasi"—not "KGB," "Red Guards," or "Khmer Rouge"—is rapidly becoming a global synonym for communist terror? Because the enterprise in which the Germans truly are Weltmeister is the cultural reproduction of their country's versions of terror. No nation has been more brilliant, more persistent, and more innovative in the investigation, communication, and representation—the re-presentation, and re-re-presentation—of its own past evils.

This cultural reproduction has to do with the character of both the perpetrators and the victims. In Hitler's holocaust, the people of Gutenberg set out to exterminate the people of the book. One of Europe's most talented, profound, creative nations tried to destroy another, with which it had lived in an intense, fecund cultural symbiosis for many years. ("The Germans are a bad love of the Jews," a Polish peasant woodcarver once observed to a friend of mine.) Afterward, both nations memorialized the horror with a meticulousness and an artistry never before seen. In Celan's "Death Fugue," a German poem that whispers with echoes of Hasidic mysticism, that memorialization was itself a new triumph—a living forward out of death —of the German-Jewish symbiosis. Celan himself spoke of how the German language that he loved had survived "the thousand darknesses of death-bringing speech" (die tausend Finsternisse todbringender Rede). Now that language lived again through him, who had himself just eluded the master from Germany.

In the case of communism, the Germans did it to themselves—though not in a sovereign state. The people of Gutenberg oppressed the people of Luther. As soon as it was over, the people of Ranke took up the story. A generation of West German contemporary historians, trained in the study of Nazism, turned their skilled attentions to the GDR, and especially to the dissection of the Stasi. Only the existence and character of West Germany, with its fiercely moral and professional approach to dealing with a difficult past, explains the unique cultural transmission of the Stasi phenomenon. (Imagine that the former Soviet Union had been taken over by a democratic West Russia, equipped and motivated to expose all the evils of the KGB.) And now we have the movie version, produced by a thoroughly Americanized young West German.

Each stage of this process builds on the last. Cognitive scientists tell us that the repetition of words and images strengthens the synapses connecting the neurons in the neural circuits that compute, in our heads, the meaning of those words and images. With time, these mental associations become electrochemically hard-wired. Whether intentionally or not, The Lives of Others plugs straight into these preexisting connections in our minds. Take that apparently trivial detail of the Stasi officers' dress uniforms. Why does it matter? Because the sight of Germans in Prussian gray, with long, shining leather boots, shrieks to our synapses: Nazis.

One is then not at all surprised to discover that the actor who portrays Wiesler's sinister superior, Colonel Grubitz, made his reputation back in 1984—the year the film is set—playing, on a West German stage, the role of an SS man. The real everyday Stasi uniforms, dreary numbers made of bargain-basement terylene, completed by cheap mailman's boots, would not have the same effect. In the theatrical way they are shot, the scenes of the playwright Dreyman dancing around the culture minister reminded me strongly of Mephisto, István Szabó's brilliant film about the actor-director Gustaf Gründgens, and his Faustian pact with Hermann Goering. Another circuit of Nazi-Stasi associations is involuntarily fired.

Then there is the pivotal moment when Dreyman plays the classical "Sonata of the Good Man" on the piano, while Wiesler listens on his headphones. After he finishes, Dreyman turns to Christa and exclaims, "Can anyone who has heard this music, I mean really heard it, still be a bad person?" Von Donnersmarck says he was inspired by a passage in which Maxim Gorky records Lenin saying that he can't listen to Beethoven's Appassionata because it makes him want to say sweet, silly things and pat the heads of little people, whereas in fact those little heads must be beaten, beaten mercilessly, to make the revolution. As a first-year film student, von Donnersmarck wondered "what if one could force a Lenin to hear the Appassionata," and that was the original germ of his movie. (Dreyman actually refers to Lenin's remark.)

So the inspiration for this scene was Russian. But what are the connections that we—especially we of Lane's "us" —instantly make as we watch? Surely we think of Roman Polanski's The Pianist, with the German officer deeply affected by the Polish Jewish pianist's playing of Chopin, and therefore sparing his life—as Wiesler now spares Dreyman. Surely we think, too, of the educated Nazi killers who in the evening listened to the music of Mendelssohn, then went out the next morning to murder more Mendelssohns. Did they not really hear the music? Does high culture humanize? We are back with the deepest twentieth-century German conundrum, conveyed most movingly in music and poetry. Such are the synaptic connections that make The Lives of Others resonate so powerfully in our heads.

The Germany in which this film was produced, in the early years of the twenty-first century, is one of the most free and civilized countries on earth. In this Germany, human rights and civil liberties are today more jealously and effectively protected than (it pains me to say) in traditional homelands of liberty such as Britain and the United States. In this good land, the professionalism of its historians, the investigative skills of its journalists, the seriousness of its parliamentarians, the generosity of its funders, the idealism of its priests and moralists, the creative genius of its writers, and, yes, the brilliance of its filmmakers have all combined to cement in the world's imagination the most indelible association of Germany with evil. Yet without these efforts, Germany would never have become such a good land. In all the annals of human culture, has there ever been a more paradoxical achievement?

Notes

[1] "Und willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein..." Die DDR heute (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981). Parts appeared in English in The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (Random House, 1989).

[2] A postwar term for Germany as a whole, sometimes intended to include not just East Germany but also the former German eastern territories, such as Silesia, given to Poland after 1945.

Sarkozy dan Haluan Baru Perancis

Nicolas Sarkozy, tokoh konservatif Perancis berjaya memenangi pilihan raya presiden Perancis dengan memperolehi 53 peratus undi berbanding 47 peratus diperolehi pesaingnya Segolene Royal.

Kemenangan Sarkozy, yang menambah satu lagi sekutu Amerika Syarikat di Eropah selepas Canselor Angela Merkel dari Jerman, disebut-sebut sebagai bakal membawa perubahan dalam dasar sosial dan sikap Paris di peringkat antarabangsa, walaupun agenda sebenarnya masih belum jelas.

Sarkozy berjanji untuk membawa Perancis ke masa hadapan dan meninggalkan masa silam. Dalam dasar luar, beliau mahukan Kesatuan Eropah (EU) yang lebih kukuh dan hubungan lebih baik dengan Washington.

Mandat jelas yang diterimanya, berikutan jumlah keluar mengundi yang tertinggi dalam tempoh hampir 40 tahun, membenarkannya membawa agenda baru untuk Perancis dengan lebih yakin.

Hubungan trans-Atlantik

Sarkozy memilih haluan berbeza daripada Chirac yang masih berpegang pada sentimen tradisional Perancis yang kritikal terhadap Washington. Lawatan Sarkozy ke Washington pada penghujung tahun lalu memberikan tanda jelas hubungan baik yang mahu dibina itu.

Bagaimanapun, jelas Sarkozy sejurus selepas memenangi pemilihan presiden, AS harus membenarkan Perancis bebas, sepertimana ia dibenarkan bebas untuk memilih bersahabat dengan AS.

"Saya mahukan Perancis yang bebas, saya mahukan Eropah yang bebas. Oleh itu saya meminta sahabat Amerika kita membiarkan kita bebas, bebas menjadi sahabat mereka," kata Sarkozy.

Sarkozy berpendirian hubungan dengan AS perlu dipulihkan dan dirapatkan, tetapi beliau telah menegaskan tidak akan bertindak seperti Tony Blair yang mengorbankan kepentingan negara sendiri.

Berhubung politik Timur Tengah, Sarkozy memegang beberapa pandangan yang bertentangan dengan Washington. Beliau pernah mengkritik dasar AS di Iraq dan menentang penggunaan kekerasan untuk menyelesaikan krisis dengan Iran.

Beliau menyarankan proses diplomatik termasuk sekatan. Beliau juga menyebut sokongan dua kuasa besar yang memegang veto dalam Majlis Keselamatan PBB, Rusia dan Beijing, diperlukan untuk mengambil tindakan sekatan terhadap Iran itu.

Dan tidak seperti pesaingnya, Royal, Sarkozy dengan jelas menegaskan sokongan kepada Israel. Sokongan ini menegaskan lagi hubungan baik dengan Washington, negara yang mempunyai hubungan paling baik dengan Israel. Satu kepentingan Perancis di Timur Tengah ialah ia mahu mengukuhkan pengaruh di Lubnan.

Akibatnya, Sarkozy kini telah dikaitkan dengan imej penyokong AS, sesuatu yang perlu dihadapinya dengan bijak ketika mengemudikan dasar luar Perancis nanti.

Kesatuan Eropah

Sikap anti-Turki Sarkozy bertepatan sekali dengan politik haluan kanannya. Beliau menentang kemasukan Turki sebagai ahli EU, salah satu sikapnya yang bertentangan dengan pendirian Washington.

Sikap Sarkozy berhubung Turki dan EU merupakan salah satu pendirian dasar luar presiden yang baru dipilih ini yang jelas. Sentimen konservatif di seluruh Eropah menolak keanggotaan Turki yang dianggap tidak berkongsi budaya yang sama dengan Eropah.

Malah Sarkozy juga dilihat menentang perluasan keanggotaan EU melebihi 27 negara ketika ini.

Kemenangan Sarkozy juga membawa seorang lagi pemimpin Eropah yang dilihat berkaliber. Sarkozy menyokong usaha mewujudkan perlembagaan Eropah yang dimudahkan, tanpa proses mendapat persetujuan yang sukar seperti hari ini.

Pandangan ini bertentangan dengan pendirian Merkel, pemimpin Jerman, negara yang sedang memegang jawatan presiden EU.

Perancis ialah satu daripada dua negara yang mengundi menolak draf perlembagaan EU. Sebuah lagi negara yang menolak ialah Belanda.

Bagaimanapun, tidak banyak yang dijelaskan Sarkozy berhubung dasar luar Perancis era beliau ketika berkempen, melainkan beberapa pandangan yang kurang jelas, kemungkinan untuk mengelak daripada memasuki debat dasar luar dengan lebih mendalam lagi.

Dan berhubung hubungan EU dengan Rusia, jiran yang sekaligus merupakan pembekal tenaga penting yang semakin kukuh pengaruhnya, Sarkozy telah menjelaskannya dengan usahanya membina hubungan baik dengan AS.

Pendirian ekonominya yang propasaran bebas juga menjelaskan lagi pertentangannya dengan Moscow. Sarkozy dijangka akan bersuara dalam hal penyebaran demokrasi di negara-negara bekas Soviet seperti Ukraine.

Berakhirnya negara kebajikan?

Kemangan Sarkozy juga menimbulkan kebimbangan berhubung perlindungan sistem kebajikan Perancis, negara yang dikenali dengan subsidi yang bukan sahaja dibayar oleh kerajaan tetapi juga EU.

Sarkozy menandakan haluan baru dalam dasar ekonomi Perancis. Selari dengan politik sosialisnya, Royal menjanjikan perlindungan sistem kebajikan sosial Perancis. Royal berjanji untuk meneruskan perbelanjaan besar untuk pelbagai program serta memperluaskan lagi sistem kebajikan.

Bagaimanapun, janji Royal itu gagal mendapatkan sokongan yang cukup kepadanya untuk memenangi pilihan raya. Selari dengan kemerosotan kebolehlaksanaan negara kebajikan di seluruh dunia dari Jerman ke Jepun, rakyat Perancis memilih reformasi sosio-ekonomi yang dibawa Sarkozy.

Tokoh berhaluan kanan sederhana ini berjanji untuk meningkatkan ekonomi Perancis, yang sekaligus akan meningkatkan peluang pekerjaan. Untuk mencapainya, Sarkozy berjanji untuk mengurangkan cukai, melaksanakan reformasi ke arah ekonomi pasaran, mengurangkan saiz jentera kerajaan, mengurangkan defisit dan mengurangkan kuasa kesatuan buruh.

Kemenangan Sarkozy ini membawa makna yang besar bagi masyarakat Perancis yang sering dikritik sebagai terlalu bergantung kepada subsidi kerajaan dan kurang bekerja. Dasar pasaran bebas yang dibawanya berupaya mengejutkan Perancis yang selama ini menjalani kehidupan selesa yang dibiayai kerajaan.

Sarkozy, yang ingin rakyat Perancis lebih banyak bekerja, jelas ingin membawa Perancis ke haluan baru, yang dari banyak segi menyamai budaya kerja Amerika yang mengambil masa yang lebih panjang dan jauh lebih kurang cuti.

Salah satu isu yang AS dan Eropah, terutama Perancis, tidak sehaluan ialah dasar buruh dan kebajikan. AS melihat dasar buruh Perancis sebagai memerlukan kos yang terlalu tinggi untuk ditanggung manakala Perancis melihat budaya kerja AS sebagai berlebihan, malah menunjukkan sifat tamak.

Dalam hal ini, tidak keterlaluan sekiranya kemenangan Sarkozy dibaca sebagai memberi tanda-tanda awal berakhirnya negara kebajikan di Eropah, dan kemenangan semangat bekerja keras seperti pekerja Amerika, dan kemungkinan juga kemenangan kapitalis.

Sarkozy yang dikecam banyak pihak berhubung sikapnya terhadap imigran dan Muslim didakwa akan mewujudkan suasana yang lebih sukar bagi imigran negara itu.

Tetapi, Sarkozy membuat satu ikrar yang melucukan ketika ucapan kemenangannya apabila berjanji untuk menghulurkan bantuan kepada negara-negara Afrika, sedangkan pada masa sama, bantuan dalam negara mahu dikurangkan.

Kemenangan Sarkozy, pemimpin berketurunan Greek-Yahudi dari Hungary ini dijangka akan membawa perubahan untuk Perancis, ke arah yang lebih konservatif. Haluan ini akan dijelaskan lagi melalui keputusan pilihan raya parlimen dalam tempoh enam minggu dari sekarang. - 7 Mei, 2007

Pembetulan: Terdapat kesalahan dalam ayat terakhir artikel ini. Pilihan raya parlimen Perancis diadakan enam minggu selepas pilihan raya presiden, bukan enam bulan seperti yang dinyatakan sebelum ini. Kesilapan sangat dikesali.

On Kissing

From The New York Times, May 6, 2007

When a Kiss Is More Than a Kiss
By PAUL VITELLO

Richard Gere, while not the first person you’d think most likely to invoke the wrath of a conservative religious mob by kissing somebody in public, was at least a passably recognizable symbolic target for Hindu demonstrators last week, when they burned his figure in effigy in cities across India.

If not a wavy-haired, pretty-faced, prostitute-patronizer-portraying American actor, then who are religious firebrands supposed to burn in effigy when a man violates a cultural taboo by kissing a woman in public, as Mr. Gere did? (He planted several lingering kisses on the neck of an Indian actress, Shilpa Shetty, at a televised charity event in Mumbai.)

Surely not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But think again. When Mr. Ahmadinejad, the ultraconservative president of Iran, kissed the gloved hand last week of an elderly woman who had once been his school teacher, at a ceremony for a national teachers’ day, he, too, received sharp rebukes from clerics.

Islamic religious leaders accused him of “indecency.” Islamic newspapers noted that under Shariah law contact with a woman with whom one is not related is a crime sometimes punishable by death.

Mr. Gere apologized to those he had offended.

Mr. Ahmadinejad did not. (And left town instead for a scheduled visit with the pope.)

But anthropologists and philematologists (people who study kissing) say the harsh reactions to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s and Mr. Gere’s kisses underline a certain cultural and political mystery about the seemingly simple act of kissing.

Kissing in public (private kissing exists in a different universe of discourse, and for the most part will remain there for the duration of this discussion) is quite often a public statement, they say: Witness the use of the public kiss in the lore of organized crime (to mean soon dead). Or in the political world, the moment in the 2000 campaign when Al Gore passionately kissed his wife, Tipper, (to signify his Alpha-Maleness). Or the mostly forgotten but once infamous kiss Hillary Rodham Clinton planted on the cheek of Yasir Arafat’s wife (signifying many things, not least of which that she would spend a good deal of time repairing relations with Jewish voters).

Vaughn M. Bryant Jr., an anthropologist at Texas A&M University, said that contrary to the lyrics of “As Time Goes By,” a kiss is almost never just a kiss. It is a language with a grammar all is own, which is as strict as the syntax of international diplomacy, he said.

“When people kiss, there are all kinds of hidden rules in play,” he said. “Where they are; who they are to each other; what the relationship between the sexes is in a country; all that gets considered.”

Robert Albro, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the role that culture plays in international relations, said Mr. Gere’s faux pas was an example of a cultural “border clash” that is increasingly common in the era of globalization.

To plant a kiss on the face of an Indian woman in public, he said, would be seen by conservative Indians as a trespass on “the cultural space” of their country.

“Women, in particular conspicuous women such as the actress, bear the burden of cultural identity in many parts of the world,” he said. “They are like the social skin of society itself.”

Kissing is more or less universal. People in all but a few, tiny cultures do it. And wherever people kiss, they practice the same categories of kissing that the Romans first identified: the “basium,” for the standard romantic kiss; the “osculum,” for the friendship kiss; and the “savium,” the most passionate kind, sometimes referred to as a French kiss. (Mr. Ahmadinejad’s was a classic osculum. Mr. Gere’s was probably an osculum playfully masquerading as a basium that, unfortunately for Mr. Gere, may have looked a little too much like a savium on TV.)

Monkeys do not kiss. Apes do, but usually only on the arm or the chest, to show respect. “Except among the bonobos, there is nothing like sexual kissing among the apes,” said Frans B. M. de Waal, a professor of primate behavior at Emory University. “Apes do not practice foreplay.”

The earliest written record of humans’ kissing appears in Vedic Sanskrit texts — in India — from around 1500 B.C., where certain passages refer to lovers “setting mouth to mouth,” according to Mr. Bryant.

There is debate among scientists over whether the kiss is an innately human practice, or one that we fortuitously acquired along the way. Some trace it to the mother who made the first mouth-to-mouth transfer of pre-chewed food to her child; others to prettier biological Eureka-moments. But in general it is agreed that people kiss in private mainly because it is nice.

So what does it mean when people, especially public people like the president of Iran or the world’s second most famous Buddhist, commit kisses in public places?

In the case of Mr. Ahmadinejad, according to press reports, his respectful kissing of his teacher’s hand was a gesture of conciliation with Iranian school teachers, who as a group have recently complained of low wages.

In Mr. Gere’s case, no one seems to know much more than the obvious. They were on national TV, promoting AIDS awareness together. She was pretty. He was Richard Gere. The results are on YouTube.

Robin Hicks, a cultural anthropologist at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., said that when the kissing involves people of different ethnicities — especially a Western man and a local woman, as in the case of Mr. Gere’s kiss in India — the cultural sensitivity of conservative-minded people is often greatly heightened.

“Frankly, I was shocked at his behavior,” Ms. Hicks said. ”He’s been to India so many times. He should have known better.” Mr. Gere, a practicing Buddhist and supporter of the Tibetan cause, visits India frequently to meet with the Dalai Lama.

“On the other and,” she added, “I guess this is one way for cultural anthropologists to get jobs.”

Keruntuhan Komunisme dan Legasi Yeltsin

"Rusia mesti memasuki milenium baru dengan politikus baru, wajah baru, dengan rakyat yang bijak, gagah dan bertenaga."

"Banyak yang kita harapkan tidak terlaksana. Apa yang kita fikir mudah, sebenarnya amat sukar dan menyakitkan."

- Boris Yeltsin

Menjelang tahun baru 2000, seluruh warga Rusia dikejutkan dengan pengumuman Presiden Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin bahawa beliau mengundur diri, dan menamakan Vladimir Putin sebagai penggantinya. Rusia yang masih merasai transisi menyakitkan yang berlaku dengan tiba-tiba daripada komunisme ke kapitalisme dikejutkan dengan pengumuman itu, walaupun Yeltsin ketika itu telah pun dilihat sebagai pemimpin yang perlu melepaskan kuasanya. Yeltsin sejak beberapa tahun sebelum itu diganggu masalah kesihatan dan menjadi liabiliti kepada kerajaan.

Dengan pengumuman itu, Yeltsin menyerahkan Rusia baru yang dibinanya - bersama sekelompok kecil penasihat muda - kepada Putin, sekaligus menamatkan pembinaan Rusia baru seperti yang dilihatnya, Rusia yang lebih demokratik dan Rusia yang akan menyertai dunia kapitalisme Barat. Dengan ini, tugas Yeltsin membawa Rusia ke era baru selesai, dan Putin diharapkan untuk meneruskan legasinya itu.

Dan dengan sebuah dacha (rumah agam di kawasan pedalaman) serta jaminan perlindungan daripada tindakan undang-undang, Putin meneruskan agenda membina semula Rusia, dan Yeltsin terus ditenggelamkan daripada politik Rusia.

Yeltsin telah menunjukkan kecenderungan menentang pemerintahan kuku besi Soviet sejak awal penglibatan dalam Parti Komunis. Bapanya juga seorang penentang yang pernah dihantar ke kem buruh paksa Gulag kerana mencetuskan penentangan terhadap Soviet. Bagaimanapun, penentangan sebenar Yeltsin tidak berlaku dengan tiba-tiba. Beliau menyertai Parti Komunis, memegang jawatan kepimpinan dan menjalani kareer politik seperti biasa.

Pada 1991, Yeltsin menjadi satu petanda perubahan ke arah demokrasi apabila dipilih sebagai presiden republik Rusia. Kemudian, beliau muncul sebagai pembela demokrasi apabila mempertahankan kerajaan pimpinan Mikhail Gorbachev daripada rampasan kuasa kumpulan berhaluan kanan.

Beliau kemudian mengharamkan parti komunis, tindakan yang menyalahi prinsip demokrasi. Tetapi, ketika itu komunisme semakin tidak popular, dan Yeltsin juga mendapat sokongan Barat yang memusuhi komunisme. Nama Yeltsin melonjak dengan tiba-tiba. Melalui "revolusi baru Rusia" itu, negara bekas empayar itu dengan tiba-tiba memasuki satu era baru yang terlalu jauh berbeza dengan era sebelumnya, walaupun Yeltsin beberapa kali memperlihatkan sikap autoritarian untuk mengukuhkan kuasa seperti yang berleluasa ketika era komunis.

Pada 1992, Yeltsin dengan pantas membawa Rusia memasuki "ekonomi pasaran," istilah yang dipilih dan digunakan untuk mengelakkan perkataan "kapitalisme." Yeltsin bagaimanapun tidak menggunakan perkataan "kapitalisme," kerana ia akan dengan jelas menunjukkan kekalahan Rusia kepada Barat, dan akhirnya Rusia terpaksa menerima kapitalisme.

Yeltsin, yang dinasihati tokoh muda Yegor Gaidar dan juga Anatoly Chubais serta satu pasukan pakar ekonimi digelar reformis muda yang lain, menamatkan dasar kawalan harga ke atas sebahagian besar barangan, peninggalan dasar ekonomi era komunis. Seluruh warga Rusia dikejutkan dengan kesannya yang amat menakutkan. Sejurus itu, harga barangan meningkat hingga 245 peratus. Ramai rakyat Rusia ditimpa kesusahan hidup yang tidak pernah mereka lalui.

Walaupun cuba dinafikan Yeltsin, hakikatnya Rusia telah menerima kapitalisme dan tewas kepada Barat. Ini dijelaskan lagi apabila pada 1998, Rusia terpaksa tunduk kepada Barat apabila terpaksa meminjam AS$22 bilion daripada Dana Kewangan Antarabangsa, IMF, satu simbol penting ekonomi Barat. Sebelum itu, sejak 1992, IMF telah meminjamkan AS$18 bilion kepada Rusia.

Dengan nasihat kelompok penasihat itu juga, Yeltsin meneruskan dasar penswastaan, iaitu menjual aset negara dengan harga yang sangat murah, dan dengan segera. Menjelang 1995, sekitar 65 peratus aset negara telah bertukar tangan daripada milik negara kepada individu. Ini akhirnya menjadi satu legasi utama Yeltsin, iaitu melahirkan satu kelompok kapitalis baru, bilionair yang mendapat kekayaan ketika seluruh warga Rusia menderita.

Pinjaman IMF juga tidak mendatangkan hasil seperti yang diharapkan. Sebahagian wang yang dipinjam diselewengkan dan menjadi milik individu, yang membawa wang tersebut ke luar negara. Keghairahan Yeltsin membawa Rusia menyertai ekonomi pasaran mendatangkan bencana ekonomi dan sosial yang besar kepada Rusia. Isu ini terus menjadi satu topik sensitif di Rusia.

Melalui penswastaan itulah, nama-nama seperti Roman Abramovich (kenalan rapat anaknya Tatyana Dyachenko, salah seorang lagi penasihat presiden yang ditamatkan perkhidmatan selepas Putin mengambil alih jawatan presiden), Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky dan ramai lagi membina kekayaan. Mereka membeli aset-aset milik negara bernilai berbilion dolar dengan harga yang sangat rendah.

Abramovich, dengan sekutunya Berezovsky, membeli syarikat minyak Siberia, Sibneft dengan hanya AS$100 juta. Ketika syarikat monopoli gas Rusia, Gazprom membeli lebih 70 peratus saham Rosneft (dan kemudian menukar namanya kepada Gazprom Neft), harganya melebihi AS$13 bilion.

Kemunculan kelompok yang digelar oligarki oleh warga Rusia ini menjadi satu legasi Yeltsin yang tidak disenangi warga Rusia. Ironisnya, legasi Yeltsin itu kini sedang diperangi satu lagi legasinya, Presiden Putin. Beberapa orang oligarki ini kini berada di luar negara selepas melarikan diri. Khodorkovsky, bekas pemilik syarikat minyak Yukos (yang juga telah dibeli Gazprom dan Rosneft, hasil tindakan Putin) kini dipenjarakan.

Oligarki yang dibina Yeltsin mempunyai hubungan rapat dengan Barat, terutama Amerika Syarikat. Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky dan Abramovich kesemuanya mengekalkan hubungan baik dengan komuniti bisnes dan ahli politik Barat, satu punca mereka dimusuhi Putin, walaupun hubungan Putin dengan Abramovich pulih selepas beliau melepaskan pegangan ke atas syarikat minyaknya.

Dalam hal ini, legasi Yeltsin, melalui keputusannya menyerahkan hal ehwal ekonomi kepada Gaidar dan Chubais, meninggalkan kesan menyakitkan kepada Rusia. Dalam keghairahan untuk segera memasuki ekonomi pasaran dengan melaksanakan liberalisasi ekonomi, harta negara bernilai berbilion dolar jatuh ke tangan segelintir kapitalis. Permulaan perlaksanaan dasar ekonomi liberal oleh penasihat Yeltsin itu, yang dibuat tanpa melihat dengan lebih mendalam realiti Rusia, telah memberikan tanda hala tuju dan akibat dasar tersebut.

Ketika itu, penamatan kawalan kerajaan ke atas ekonomi dan aset-aset negara dilihat sebagai satu bentuk kejayaan menamatkan kawalan kerajaan era komunis. Dengan tamatnya kawalan harga oleh kerajaan, satu nilai liberal telah berjaya dicapai. Penswastaan pula, tanpa mengambil kira ke tangan siapa harta terbabit dipindahkan, menunjukkan kejayaan pemilikan swasta, elemen penting ekonomi kapitalis.

Korupsi berlaku dengan berleluasa akibat perlaksanaan tergesa-gesa dasar yang dikemukakan segelintir penasihat tersebut. Rusia jelas sekali tidak bersedia dengan perubahan mendadak itu. Akibat sentimen negatif terhadap oligarki yang muncul akibat dasar Yeltsin itu, Putin tidak mendapat tentangan kuat rakyat apabila beliau memangsakan individu daripada kelompok oligarki tersebut seperti Khodorkovsky.

Bagaimanapun, komuniti bisnes tersebut turut membawa beberapa elemen penting demokrasi melalui aktiviti politik mereka, seperti membiayai parti pembangkang, media yang tidak dikuasai kerajaan dan yayasan yang menyebarkan nilai-nilai liberal dan demokratik. Tetapi, kebebasan sebenar kumpulan-kumpulan itu, dan sama ada mereka bermatlamat memelihara kepentingan rakyat Rusia secara keseluruhan masih perlu dipersoalkan.

Dengan berakhirnya Kesatuan Soviet, perjanjian pertahanan Pakatan Warsaw turut berkubur. Hal ini menjelaskan tamatnya permusuhan Rusia dengan Barat. Pada masa sama, Yeltsin meneruskan dasar membina hubungan rapat dengan AS dan Eropah. Pertemuan dengan Presiden Bill Clinton disambut dengan gembira oleh Yeltsin.

Melalui persahabatan Yeltsin dengan Clinton, senjata nuklear di Rusia dan republik pasca-Soviet Ukraine dan Kazakhstan dihapuskan, berdasarkan perjanjian pengurangan senjata START I dan II yang dipersetujui sebelum itu. Rusia turut mengundurkan tenteranya dari Jerman dan negara-negara Baltik, menandakan dengan jelas berakhirnya Perang Dingin.

Bagaimanapun, perkembangan ini juga menunjukkan satu lagi tanda kehilangan pengaruh Rusia, dan bagaimana ia perlu tunduk kepada kehendak Barat. Selepas berakhirnya Pakatan Warsaw, Pertubuhan Perjanjian Atlantik Utara, NATO, dan Kesatuan Eropah meneruskan perluasan keanggotaan, memasuki ruang pengaruh Rusia di Eropah timur.

Kehilangan pengaruh Rusia jelas dirasai. Kejatuhan Soviet dan transisi demokratik di Rusia juga dilihat selari dengan dasar luar Presiden Clinton, iaitu "perluasan demokratik." Dasar ini dilaksanakan sehingga ke negara-negara bersempadan dengan Rusia.

Dan ketika kempen ketenteraan Chechnya pertama dimulakan pada 1994, Barat masih tidak bersikap kritikal terhadap tindakan Yeltsin itu. Kritikan Barat tiba agak lewat kepada Yeltsin.

Konflik di bekas negara Yugoslavia juga menunjukkan bagaimana kuasa Rusia terhakis dnegan runtuhnya Kesatuan Soviet. Lebih memalukan bagi Rusia, masalah ini ditangani negara-negara Eropah Barat dan AS melalui NATO.

Tidak lama dulu, Putin dalam ucapannya di persidangan keselamatan Munich di Jerman mengejutkan dunia Barat apabila mengkritik dengan lantang dasar luar AS di bawah Presiden George W Bush. Terbaru, sebagai respons kepada program pertahanan peluru berpandu diketuai AS di Poland dan Republik Czech, Putin mengumumkan moratorium terhadap perjanjian dengan NATO selepas berakhir Perang Dingin dahulu.

Walaupun pengumuman terbaru Putin itu hakikatnya tidak mendatangkan kesan yang besar, ia telah meningkatkan rasa saling tidak percaya Rusia dengan Barat. Persahabatan dengan Barat yang dibina era Yeltsin dahulu kini sedang dikurangkan oleh Putin.

Pada masa sama, Putin menekan kumpulan-kumpulan pembangkang dan masyarakat sivil yang wujud sebahagian besarnya kesan daripada perubahan ke arah demokrasi yang dicetuskan Yeltsin. Dan paling dimusuhi, kelompok oligarki, termasuk Berezovsky yang rapat dengan Yeltsin suatu ketika dulu.

Perubahan ke arah demokrasi, hubungan diplomatik yang baik dengan Barat dan ekonomi pasaran antara legasi Yeltsin yang masih diperjuangkan hingga ke hari ini, tetapi kini legasi itu menghadapi persaingan dengan satu lagi legasinya, Presiden Putin.