European Political News

I'll be doing some fairly major maintenance on the site this morning, so I apologis in advance for any inconvenience.

I'll try to keep you informed, but it may be unpredictable.

Matt

German Spectator is a regular survey of German mainstream media coverage of politics, religion and society, as well as of foreign policy, especially toward Europe and the United States.
 
Georgian Crisis Spurs German Identity Crisis
 
The Russian invasion of Georgia has opened yet another chapter in Germany’s decades-long self-identity crisis. German media are chock-full of armchair analyses that ponder whether Germany’s destiny lies with her “natural” partner, the Russian-led East, or with the “unnatural” American-led West…or perhaps somewhere safely in between. Myriad pseudo-introspective commentators are also advising readers on the role Germany could or should or may or may not have in resolving the conflict in Georgia.
 
Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been quick to condemn Russia, her efforts to play a meaningful part in resolving the crisis have been hamstrung by the junior partner in her coalition government, the left-wing Social Democrats, who believe that Russian imperialist aggression should be rewarded with brotherly love.
 
Merkel says Germany’s demand that Russia withdraw its troops from Georgia must be “credible.” But Merkel’s own credibility has been systematically undermined by her pro-Russian Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter (Superman) Steinmeier, who, by working single-handedly to save Planet Earth from a “new Cold War,” is also hoping to replace Merkel as chancellor in the general elections set to take place one year from now.
 
According to a new poll commissioned by Germany’s ARD public television, more than half of Germans are worried about a new Cold War between Russia and the West. Another poll, taken before the Russian invasion of Georgia, shows Steinmeier gradually closing the popularity gap with Merkel.
 
Meanwhile, the German military attaché in Moscow has this to say about the Russian bombing of Georgia: “The deployment of air power—despite the regrettable civilian casualties—can be seen as militarily appropriate.” Say what?
 
Some German media outlets have, not surprisingly, also taken sides with Russia. Deutsche Welle, for example, demands: “Stop the Russia Phobia.” Some German octogenarians are blaming democracy-obsessed Americans for provoking the authoritarian-nationalists running Russia.
 
The unspoken sentiment running through much of German commentary on Georgia is one of Schadenfreude that the Russians have finally taught the Americans a lesson about the futility of trying to spread democracy to states that Western European elites deem not to deserve freedom. The Financial Times Deutschland: “America Loses Control.” Die Zeit runs a piece titled: “America’s Weakness.” Der Spiegel says: “The sudden war in the Caucasus [has] dealt a blow to US prestige.”
 
Other German luminaries say (with a straight face) that this would be an ideal moment for Germany to carve out a morally neutral niche for itself as a permanent impartial intermediary between America and Russia. This, the postmodern logic goes, would enable a woefully energy-dependent Germany to finally break free from the inconvenient yoke of those pontificating Americans, who insist on holding Russia accountable for its actions.
 
Beyond the predictable charade of blaming the Americans and/or philosophizing about questions of world order, however, the overwhelming sentiment in Germany about Georgia is one of fatalism, based on the sober realization that Berlin actually has very little influence on what happens beyond its borders.
 
This, in turn, has led German media elites to seek false refuge in the (surprise, surprise) European Union. Many German newspapers are urging the chronically divided member states of the EU to join ranks around a common policy vis-à-vis Russia. In practice, this means that the authoritarians running the EU will be expected to issue demands against the authoritarians running Russia. The center-right Berliner Morgenpost warns: “Europe Must Give Russia A Clear Answer.” Has the EU’s superpower moment finally arrived?
 
And, sure enough, the EU has agreed on a united policy: There will be no EU sanctions against Russia. As the financial daily Handelsblatt reports: “Europe Barks, But Does Not Bite.” According to Der Spiegel: “Europe is Capitulating.” Deutsche Welle admits: “EU’s Options are Limited.”
 
But that has not deterred European federalists: Says the Financial Times Deutschland:
“Europe’s leaders have understood that they must act…but the complicated rules and regulations that govern the interplay of the 27 EU states are an invitation to distraction and quarrel. The war in Georgia shows that Europe urgently needs a president…and it lacks a common foreign minister who can forge a common foreign policy from among 27 national sensitivities. It is not impossible; the governments are ready…the Lisbon Treaty is written. The problem is not them up there, but us here below. We would have had our EU Treaty in January had the majority in Ireland not said ‘no’.” Democracy…it’s just so inconvenient.
 
Meanwhile, Der Spiegel argues that Germany’s number one priority is to keep the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from being drawn into the conflict. “As things now stand, the crisis has renewed debate on Georgia’s membership. At the NATO summit in April in Bucharest, Merkel and Steinmeier played a major role in preventing Ukraine and the Caucasus country from joining the alliance’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). Now that hostilities have erupted, the Germans are happy to keep as much distance as possible between them and Georgia.”
 
Spiegel continues: “Strong criticism [of the German position] has also emerged from the American election campaign. US presidential candidate John McCain has warned that withholding fast-track membership for Georgia might have been viewed ‘as a green light by Russia for attacks on Georgia.’ Somehow this makes Germany partly responsible for the war in the Caucasus, at least in McCain’s eyes, and that does not bode well for Germany should the Republican be elected president in November. Berlin actually had hoped that it only had to get through the last few months of the Bush administration, and then everything would get better. But, no matter who is president, Germany’s relationship with the US promises to be fraught with tension should America allow itself to be provoked by Russia.” As usual, it’s all America’s fault.
 
But as the crisis draws out, and the full implications of the Russian aggression set in, Merkel is, in fact, moving much closer to the American position. Indeed, she now seems more open to Georgia’s desire to join NATO. After meeting with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in Tbilisi, Merkel said: “I think that a clear political statement is once again very important in this situation: Georgia is a free and independent country, and every free and independent country can decide together with the members of NATO when and how it joins NATO. In December, there will be an initial assessment of the situation, and we are clearly on track for a NATO membership.”
 
Following Merkel’s comments, Financial Times Deutschland ran an essay titled: “Georgia Belongs in NATO.” Could this be the beginning of a European strategic rethink?
 
Star Wars in Poland
 
German media reaction to news of the agreement to base a US missile defense system in Poland has been strangely muted. The deal, which signifies a major augmentation in the ability of America to project power in Europe, may over time turn out to be far more significant to the future of European security than the crisis in Georgia. All the more puzzling, then, that German commentators have reacted to the news with a kind of fatalistic resignation.
 
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung says: “Moscow’s military leaders are not really afraid of the US missile defense system. Ten US interceptor missiles stand against thousands of Russian warheads, should it come to that…. As usual, the main point is the respect and recognition of a Russia which still has not come to terms with its loss of superpower status.”
 
Only a few months ago, the same newspaper said: “There are so many unanswered questions, especially as to the purpose of the [missile shield]. Since Iran is obviously not yet capable of atomic weaponry, and the world community wants to prevent them from obtaining such weapons, which missiles is the anti-missile shield going to intercept? What is the nature of the threat? How much will it cost the German taxpayer? Will there be further armament projects?”
 
The leftwing Der Spiegel, in a surprising moment of introspection, admits: “Concerns about possible threats emanating from Putin’s unpredictable empire were never far from the minds of Warsaw politicians. After all, have its EU partners in the West not criminally underestimated this danger and left the countries of Eastern Europe to fend for themselves against the Russian bear time and time again in the past? Brussels did nothing when Russia beat up on the Baltic States with arbitrary trade restrictions, when it launched a full-scale cyber war against Estonia and when it used specious arguments to ban Polish food imports. And that’s not even mentioning the weak support given to the young, wobbly Ukrainian democracy as Russia attempted to strong-arm it.”
 
Only a few months ago, the same magazine said European leaders were “sitting out” the rest of the Bush Administration: “Behind the delaying tactics is the hope that a new US administration under Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will push the expensive missile defense with less determination than the Republican Bush.”
 
The financial daily Handelsblatt says: “In Eastern Europe, a new discussion about Russia is developing that considers both the domestic and foreign policies being followed in the Kremlin. This mindset does not necessarily mean a new split of the NATO alliance into the ‘old’ US-critical Europeans and the ‘new’ pro-American Europeans. But it does show that the large European countries like Germany and France must show more deference to the Eastern European worldview.”
 
The Financial Times Deutschland says: “Prague and Warsaw are betting that their countries will be strategically more important for the United States—and thus they will enjoy greater protection in the future. All this is happening because of fear of ever-more aggressive Russia. In Western Europe, which did not experience a Soviet invasion and martial law, this fear is often mocked as being outdated. But the recent Russian invasion of Georgia shows that it is a very relevant issue.”
 
One year ago, the same newspaper said: “Myths Burden the Debate About US Missile Defense.” The article called for a “factual” explanation of the anti-missile system.
 
At least the center-left Die Zeit is being consistent. An essay titled “Questionable Security” argues: “That Poland—considering its past history with Russia—lacks the will to structure its priorities in another way (let’s say: European) is understandable. But that the Administration in Washington at this point is pushing a Cold War mood and is further splitting the Alliance partners, can mean only one thing: That the current authorities have not learned from the mistakes of the past.”
 
Or maybe it’s the Germans who have failed to learn from history that appeasement never works.
 
The World Has Earned a New America
 
European media elites love to find Americans who can “confirm” that the United States is indeed as crappy of a country as Europeans say it is. And the editors of Handelsblatt are no different. In what must rank as one of the shoddiest pieces of German journalism in recent times, Katahrina Slodczyk tries to convince her readers that the 120,000 US nationals living in Germany (aka America’s 51st state) are suddenly proud to be American again. And it’s all because of Barack Obama.
 
In a “news” story titled “The New Pride to be American”, Slodczyk interviews one Sue Bergermann, who after divorcing her German husband decides to leave Munich to return to live in her small hometown in Ohio. But she soon discovers that she cannot adapt. So she transfers the blame for her self-imposed self-identity crisis to the man who is to blame for all of the world’s problems: George W Bush.
 
In 2004, Bergermann decides to return to Germany, the last true paradise on earth. She says: “I could not stand America. This president [Bush] has turned my homeland into a developing country. Everything is ailing: Infrastructure, schools, political institutions.” Bergermann is back in Munich because “I was happy to find an alternative to life in America.”
 
Fast-forward to 2008: Bergermann is once again homesick for America, thanks to (surprise, surprise) Barack Obama! “If Barack Obama wins the presidential elections, then sooner or later I will return to the USA,” she asserts.
 
Confirming that Bergermann is not the only American expatriate who shares the correct (ie German) perspective on America, Slodczyk also interviews Jerry Gerber, a New Yorker who has lived in Germany for more than 30 years. He says: “Obama makes us proud of our homeland. We now, once again, have a r reason to love our country.”
 
Slodczyk then writes: “Americans have high expectations for the successor of George W Bush…The United States, the greatest world power of all times, has lost its authority. Bush stands for the war in Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib, for legal inflection in Guantanamo, for a reckless environmental policy…The new president will have to clean up, repair, rectify. He will have to give the country a new direction—and the rest of the world as well.” To which one might reply: Are there any prerequisite qualifications to being a journalist in Germany? Any why is opinion being peddled as news?
 
The Frankfurter Rundschau takes a similar but slightly different line by publishing a commentary titled “European Americans” which asserts that Republican voters are largely uneducated and therefore “American” and Democratic voters are educated and therefore more “European.” Marcia Pally, a “multicultural studies” professor at New York University says: “McCain’s supporters are older, white and uneducated men. By contrast, Obama’s quasi-European voters are female, but especially young and smart.” She then advises: “If Democrats want to win, they will have to rid themselves of their European appearance.” By which she evidently means they should abandon their snobbish cultural superiority complex. Just for good measure, Pally concludes: “Hillary Clinton is simply the better American.” Ouch!
 
Not to be outdone in the effort to profile “disaffected Americans,” the newsmagazine Focus offers an interview with Michael Franti, a Californian hip hop musician who refuses to wear shoes as a way of expressing his solidarity with poor people (by the way, he is also for peace in the Middle East and in the whole world). Focus asks Franti: “You must certainly be supporting Barack Obama.” Franti responds: “I support ideas….For the rest of the world, Barack embodies a new America—and the rest of the world, as well as the USA, have earned a new America.”
 
Germany Way Too Conservative…for Gay Marriage
 
Brigitte Zypries, Germany’s leftwing justice minister, writes an opinion essay in the San Francisco Chronicle in which she apologizes to California’s gay community for her failure to achieve rights for same-sex partners that are equal to those held by married couples.
 
But she insists she is making big progress. Says Zypries: “A visible sign that the important thing in these deliberations is love is the rainbow flag that flew over the Hamburg City Hall from July 31 to August 3 to commemorate the local gay pride celebration.” That “event” was the result of a political agreement between the parties that form the local government, which is led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
 
She continues: “The CDU is Germany’s leading conservative party, and its attitude toward creating a legal foundation for registered same-sex partnerships has ranged from reluctance to rejection…. I am committed to attaining complete equality between married couples and registered life partners. But in Germany, the time for this unfortunately has not yet arrived…. In Germany, many conservative people attach every bit as much importance to the remaining legal differences between heterosexual spouses and same-sex partners as conservatives in the United States attach to the exclusive use of the term ‘marriage’ to describe the bond between a man and a woman.” Long live many conservative people!
 
In the effort to score some brownie points with San Francisco’s gays, however, Zypries concedes that Germany is not any more “progressive” than is America. Another pillar of European leftwing dogma goes up in flames.
 
“Ugly German” Seeks “Negro”
 
More news of Germans gone wild while abroad: The German consul general in San Francisco, Rolf Schütte, says a group of German MPs visiting the United States was more concerned about sightseeing and shopping for shoes than about scheduled meetings with American counterparts. And who can blame them? After all, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in America.
 
But Schütte’s complaint does not end there. In a report he prepared for the Foreign Ministry, and which was later leaked to the German media, the parliamentary group was due to take a sightseeing trip around San Francisco, when one delegate, Annette Widmann-Mauz, broke her foot. When Schütte provided her with a wheelchair, the MP complained that it was “a chair for the sick with small wheels, the kind you see in old US movies.” Her colleague, Randolph Krüger, chimed in by saying: “We need a negro who can push the wheelchair.” Come again?
 
When asked by Der Spiegel about the incident, Krüger said: “I would not exclude having said that, but if they are going to provide us with such a splendid contraption, they can at least help us out with it.”
 
So much bunk for the idea that Germans are more civilized than Americans. It looks like the “ugly American” faces stiff competition from the “ugly European.”
 

Just a few days ago I wrote about the rules under which donations are made to political parties, and now the amounts that parties received in donations in the last quarter has been revealed. Between them they received £10.7m, split down as follows: Conservatives: £5.6m Labour: £3.8m Liberal Democrats: £945,192 This is up from £8.1m last quarter, with the Lib [...]

I probably missed this, but I can't find a reference.

Why does Nick Robinson's Newslog never have any comments in the first half of the month?

This applies to April, May, June and July this year.

Nick's posts in the second half of each month get hundreds of comments, but none at all in the first half of the month.

What is going on?

This is Simon Sarmiento’s fifth and final Guest Column on the Wardman Wire, while David Keen is on holiday from the blog. This week Simon examines a critical appreciation of the National Health Service.

This is my last guest column for the month of August. I want first to draw attention to a recent critique of the National Health Service, which a member of my family who works in the NHS pointed me to recently.

The author is a distinguished American health expert, Professor Donald M. Berwick of Harvard. He's a pediatrician but also Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. And he is also President and CEO of a not-for-profit organization called the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. It was in this capacity that he spoke in July to a big gathering of NHS staff at Wembley called NHS Live. You can watch his speech, as actually delivered. You can read what looks like the prepared text here, and an edited version was published in the British Medical Journal.

He had some very positive things to say about our Health Service, and he also had some very sound advice for its improvement. We in Britain tend to complain a lot about NHS shortcomings; this should give us a better perspective on how fortunate we are.

Just imagine: You are Gordon Brown. You have spent £167 million on advertising, £29 million on PR and sponsorship and £12 million on “strategic consultancy”, totalling nearly £400m on spin in the past year. What would you expect to be getting for it? A positive personal rating? A poll boost? A donations rise? Instead you get terrible poll [...]

A weekly roundup of publications, reports, events & articles from the leading UK think tanks. Welcome to this week’s Think-tank Roundup. Perhaps still a little on the thin side this week as silly season draws to a close but you’ll still find worthwhile stuff on the Russia-Georgia conflict, Climate Change, Middle East negotiations from the negotiators [...]

I did a few pro-Mansfield buttons yesterday, and Tom Pegg from the Local Paper - the Chad - has demanded one of Richard Bacon, who is now a presenter on Radio 5.

Since I found a good Creative Commons photo of Richard Bacon on Flick-r (courtesy James Cridland), here you go, Tom:

The only fly in the ointment will be if he detests Mansfield. If so, we'll set Alan Meale MP on him.

George Handlery about the week that was. Elections are not about quotas. Violating agreements. Expand Nato? More “dialogue” instead of action or security by joining the gang? Real weapons to protect against real foes. EU centralization and its fans. Foreign policy hopes and practical reality.
 
1. Investors, beware! Russia’s rulers violate her financial and political agreements. For details contact BP, Georgia – more of the gullible to follow.
 
2. The consequences of the crushing of Georgia are still undergoing assessment. Clearly, the comfy luxury of no substantive reaction is one of the most consequential and risky one among the imaginable scenarios. Prior to the crisis, NATO decided not to act on the Ukraine’s and Georgia’s membership. The motive was to spare Russia the supposedly provocative impression that she is being encircled. Looking into the future, the reasons for membership have gained in weight. So did the argument of those who will again plead to reject Georgia’s candidacy – with implications for the Ukraine. The argument for keeping Tbilisi out is that Georgia’s dowry includes an existing quarrel with Russia while her sovereignty is, as things are, curtailed by her ex-overlord.
 
3. Pulling Georgia under NATO’s umbrella has also points in its favor. These are the product of Russia’s excesses in responding to Saakashvili’s original mistake. This error was that he was unprepared to grant Ossetia the independence from Georgia that he rightly demands from Russia for his own land. Georgia needs protection as her situation is difficult due to her location, size, past status and reduced sovereignty. Still, at the time of the 1949 funding of the Alliance only its North American members were relatively “safe.” The worse possible signal to Moscow would be to reject a country subjected to Russian pressure. In this case the sequel will be Kremlin action to have small exposed states (the Baltics?) be dropped by the alliance to pacify Russia in Munich-style. In addition, not accepting Georgia now amounts to an indirect acceptance of Russia’s right to a “cordon sanitaire” in regions that she used to dominate – or wished to control.
 
4. There is a need to respond to Russia’s domineering move in the Caucasus. The preferred answer could follow the fault line separating the alliance’s new eastern members from its original Western components. Among the premises of the positions expected, we will find complex interacting bundles of considerations. Direct experience with Soviet domination will be important to explain who will prefer what. The sense of feeling directly threatened is likely to play an important role in shaping attitudes. Add to this that  “old Europe” has lived and prospered undisturbed while under the protection of the westernmost member of the alliance. “New Europe” will be asking from these countries something they got used to not having to do even in their own behalf. It amounts to risk standing in the rain and to give up their shelter in order to protect Europe’s center and east.
 
5. The possible reactions to the example and lesson provided by the Kremlin for the world’s benefit in Georgia are three. 1. Stand around in torpor and hope that Russia “grows up.” 2. Avoid further confrontations and humiliation by preparing for it. 3. Prepare for worse case scenarios by seeking Russia’s protection by joining the gang. Expect a number of the pariahs of world politics that need affiliations to exploit this opportunity.
 
6. For one thing, Russia (the case also fits China) despises the sanctimoniousness of the West. At the same time Russia also covets the West’s recognition of her as an equal. However, this recognition, if extended, is an expression of the pharisaic inclination of the West. To say the least, this circumstance greatly reduces the value of the equality that might be formally granted. If forthcoming, Western acceptance will not be an expression of Russia‘s economic or democratic-political performance. Much rather it will be a concession in response to Russia‘s demonstration that she pursues her historic goals with the old and proven brutally if need be.
 
7. The Georgian calamity leaves us with several insights. 1. Events have confirmed the paramount importance of the declining, and by its chief beneficiaries abused and neglected, transatlantic alliance. 2. Protecting Russian minorities in the “near abroad” might be used as an excuse by Moscow to intervene in countries harboring populations that can be declared to be Russian. 3a. The small countries on Russia’s periphery can and must do more for their own defense. 3b. The tools of defense in this zone presupposes an inventory of classical weapons that are neglected by the emphasis on asymmetric warfare. These are rockets to fight armored divisions and missiles effective against advanced aircraft. Providing such weapons will expose their supplier to Moscow’s massive pressure. The Kremlin will declare the delivery of such equipment to amount to a hostile act.
 
8. It appears that, in certain quarters, a debate fed by set-aside-mindedness is taking place. The “allocators” of justice ply their trade on the basis of quota placement earned by born-with traits. Some uncertainty prevails among our “guides” whether now a “woman’s” or a “Black man’s” election has the “correct” priority. Here a really radical idea: the purpose of an election is to select the best person to fit the office.
 
9. Liberal and internationalist America hopes that Obama’s election will make it and the country well-liked. Caution is warranted. Indeed, many America-haters curse Bush because that is more PC than mentioning the country that elected him. Under Obama, the camouflage will fade. That will be as soon as the US does not adopt a policy of retreat and of “change-of-side” the country cannot afford and Obama is unlikely to support. Note that, with the choice of the Vice President, the candidate of change had intended to signal that continuity will play a role in his foreign policy.
 
10. A new era with more than a usual number of confrontations (Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, and global Jihad) is ahead of us. How crisis-proof an American candidate for the Presidency might be is, therefore, a matter to ponder. Obama might have the ability to prevent a spat from growing into a crisis by bending as needed. He also shows the promise of getting out of a disagreement by his willingness to “lose feathers for peace.” In some cases, depending on the adversary, either approach might serve the country and those sharing its way of life, adequately. There are, however, challenges that need to be met resolutely. In this case the firm “no” must believed because of previous performance and the personal record of the President. This is the situation in which Obama is likely to do badly. You cannot get yourself out of a quarrel in which the other side seeks your great capitulation by going through a series of little surrenders. (N.B. Regarding “losing feathers:” it is better to be the “plucker” than the “pluckee.”)
 
11. Theoretically, there might be instances in which dozes of calculated appeasements might convince extremists to modify their goals and to revise the use of their means. This is guaranteed not to work if the fanatics have an ideology that declares the enemy cowardly, weak and predestined to submit. If this is the case, patient moderation and the attempt to reason is interpreted as the proof of the correctness of what their world-view says about the enemy. The logical result is heightened extremism and confirmed contempt. (P. S. North Korea’s inerrupted disassembly of her decrepit reactor anticipates the outcome of the US’ elections. This makes it a concrete case that supports the generalization.)
 
12. Can one be a good person, a good European and an opponent the EU? The answer depends partly on how these terms are defined. Mainly, however, it depends on what the EU set out to be and what it is now and, furthermore, what its movers – not its citizens – wish it to become. As implied, the writer sees in the EU an organization created to protect the independence of the region’s small states and even more its multitude of peoples. From what? From the forces of centralization. These desire to impose their own order by obstructing those forms of existence that history has created.
 
13. The EU, as defined by “Brussels,” is the project of those who are frustrated because the dull masses are reluctant to follow them. An added attraction of the vision is that Brussels gives away jobs that pay well and confer bureaucratic power upon those who could not get it from their people.
 
14. One more thing! The show in Denver is over. One has to pull one’s hat to acknowledge the dazzling fireworks produced there. However, fireworks dim as quickly as they burst. It is the less glamorous search light that can cut through the night. Significantly, Denver has failed to leave us with a beacon.

Ooops, said virtually anyone.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

In the continuing post-Olympic Campaign to promote Mansfield as the Centre of the Universe, I thought we could have some blog buttons. These are for use by all pro-Mansfield websites.

The one you don't recognise is Tony Egginton, the Mayor.

I'd add Alan Meale MP, but not without permission - he may be allergic to the word "Militant", if I recall my political history correctly.

A 19th century electoral system for the 21st century. The damning statement of the Electoral Commission in their report (pdf). It also reveals that the “current fragmented arrangements for electoral administration” treats voters as an “afterthought”. The Electoral Commission has identiified massive loopholds in the electoral system that could allow for fraud. Such as the ability [...]

I hear from Phil Groom that the application to make the UK charity Society of Saint Stephen the Great bankrupt at the United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Texas in Houston has been Dismissed with Prejudice:

Thanks to Rigorist for this update, posted August 29, 2008 at 12:11 am:

I just checked the US court system’s PACER service this afternoon (it is still afternoon on this side of the Atlantic). The bankrupcty case was dismissed at today’s hearing on the trustee’s motion.

The actual docket entry is as follows:

“Courtroom Minutes. Time Hearing Held: 11:00 am. Appearances: Mark Brewer for debtor; Randy Williams for Trustee. (Related document(s): 24 Chapter 7 Trustee’s Motion to Dismiss Case). Ellen Hickman present. Mr. Williams addressed the Court regarding the motion to dismiss. Arguments were heard by opposing parties. The Court announced its findings and dismissed the case with prejudice. (rsmi) (Entered: 08/28/2008)”

A written order with more explanation may follow, but as of right now, the bankruptcy case is dismissed.

This means that the Society of Saint Stephen the Great, a UK Charity, has been recognised (at this stage, by this Court) as not being able to be liquidated under US Bankruptcy Laws.

The "With Prejudice" dismissal means that the case is dismissed for good reason and the plaintiff is barred from bringing an action on the same claim. I can't comment on what is possible in other courts, however.

It took a pin, a tiny pin, to prick the bluff and bluster...

(See next article)

A cartoon from Indexed.

This text is somewhat related to one of my older essays, about the history of cacao and chocolate. When I was younger, I was once told that regularly practiced cannibalism didn't exist in any society in modern times. This was a racist, colonialist lie invented by prejudiced Europeans. One example would be the former cannibal dubbed "Friday" and converted to Christianity in Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. As I grow older and wiser and investigate things for myself, I see how wrong this claim was.

Recently in New Zealand, Paul Moon in his book This Horrid Practice looked at the Maori tradition of eating each other in what was generally an extremely violent society. The title appears to be inspired by a quote by Captain James Cook: "Though stronger evidence of this horrid practice prevailing among the inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give." Cannibalism lasted for hundreds of years until the mid-nineteenth century, said Moon, a history professor at the Maori Development Unit at the Auckland University of Technology. It didn't disappear until the arrival of Europeans and Christian missionaries.

Infanticide was also widely practised because tribes wanted men to be warriors, and mothers often killed their daughters by smothering them or pushing a finger through the soft tissue of the skull. The widespread practice of cannibalism was part of a post-battle rage. "One of the arguments is really if you want to punish your enemy killing them is not enough. If you can chop them up and eat them and turn them into excrement that is the greatest humiliation you can impose on them," says Moon. "The amount of evidence is so overwhelming it would be unfair to pretend it didn't happen. It is too important to ignore."

The head of the Maori Studies Department at Auckland University, Professor Margaret Mutu, said cannibalism was widespread throughout New Zealand. "It was definitely there. It's recorded in all sorts of ways in our histories and traditions, a lot of place names refer to it." She said Maori cannibalism was not referred to by many historians because it was counter to English culture.

We are often told that people of European origins invent negative stereotypes about other peoples. Notice how in this case – and it is far from the only such example – Europeans actually downplayed very real and serious flaws in other cultures. And this was long before Political Correctness as we know it today was invented.

We know that cannibalism was practiced among a number of peoples in the Americas as well, most likely including the prehistoric Anasazi in what is today the southwestern United States. Here is what Jared Diamond says in his book Collapse:

"The signs of warfare-related cannibalism among the Anasazi are an interesting story in themselves. While everyone acknowledges that cannibalism may be practiced in emergencies by desperate people, such as the Donner Party trapped by snow at Donner Pass en route to California in the winter of 1846-47, or by starving Russians during the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the existence of non-emergency cannibalism is controversial. In fact, it was reported in hundreds of non-European societies at the times when they were first contacted by Europeans within recent centuries. The practice took two forms: eating either the bodies of enemies killed in war, or else eating one's own relatives who had died of natural causes. New Guineans with whom I have worked over the past 40 years have matter-of-factly described their cannibalistic practices, have expressed disgust at our own Western burial customs of burying relatives without doing them the honor of eating them, and one of my best New Guinean workers quit his job with me in 1965 in order to partake in the consumption of his recently deceased prospective son-in-law. There have also been many archaeological finds of ancient human bones in contexts suggestive of cannibalism."

I am sometimes critical of Mr. Diamond's writings, especially his overall conclusions, but that doesn't mean that I believe everything he states is wrong. He does correctly point out that violence and environmental destruction is far from limited to Western cultures, which is good. And he doesn't hesitate in pointing out that practices such as cannibalism were indeed carried out in many cultures. Here he is in his international bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel:

"…the virus causing laughing sickness (kuru) in the New Guinea highlands used to pass to a person from another person who was eaten. It was transmitted by cannibalism, when highland babies made the fatal mistake of licking their fingers after playing with raw brains that their mothers had just cut out of dead kuru victims awaiting cooking."

Jared Diamond writes explicitly in order to dispel "Eurocentrism":

"Far from glorifying peoples of western European origin, we shall see that the most basic elements of their civilization were developed by other peoples living elsewhere and were then imported to western Europe. Third, don't words such as 'civilization,' and phrases such as 'rise of civilization,' convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal hunter-gatherers are miserable, and history for the past 13,000 years has involved progress toward greater human happiness? In fact, I do not assume that industrialized states are 'better' than hunter-gatherer tribes, or that the abandonment of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for iron-based statehood represents 'progress,' or that it has lead to an increase in human happiness. My own impression, from having divided my life between United States cities and New Guinea villages, is that the so-called blessings of civilization are mixed. For example, compared with hunter-gatherers, citizens of modern industrialized states enjoy better medical care, lower risk of death by homicide, and a longer life span, but receive much less social support from friendships and extended families."

Diamond claims that "modern 'Stone Age' peoples are on the average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples." He suggests that New Guineans are more intelligent than the average European or American. He rejects the use of IQ tests because these supposedly measure cultural learning only. With all due respect to Mr. Diamond, I disagree. It is true that human intelligence is a complex thing consisting of several types of intelligence, not all of which are measured by IQ, but we do have indications that at least some important aspects of intelligence can indeed be indicated by IQ tests.

The one ethnic group in the world with the highest average IQ are Ashkenazi Jews, who have produced by far the highest number of Nobel Prize winners per capita of any ethnic group on earth. The one country with the highest average IQ is Japan, a fact which corresponds well with Japan's very high technological and economic level. Northeast Asians, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese people, all have high IQs. It is interesting to notice that the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions took place among the Europeans, not among the East Asians, despite the fact that the latter have at least as high IQs. This could indicate that IQ does not measure everything, but that it does measure something. In the Western university system, where people from all over the world compete, it is generally the Jews, the East Asians and the Europeans who perform the best, and they are all high-IQ groups.

Of all the arguments I have encountered against the use of IQ tests, the claim that it is "Eurocentric" is the least relevant. IQ tests were invented by Europeans, yes, but notice that supporters of IQ tests, also those of European origins, still use IQ tests even after it became apparent that East Asians have slightly higher average IQs than most Europeans, which proves that this is not about "white supremacism." Moreover, the fact that Europeans came up with the first method for measuring human intelligence should not surprise us since Europeans generally came up with the first methods for measuring most things, from electric charge to temperature.

I am not aware of any other culture on earth that has independently developed and widely adopted the use of thermometers or barometers. I am also not aware of any non-European culture that has developed a scientific-mathematical way of denoting different temperature levels. The temperature scales we use today, whether Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin, were all developed by Europeans. If Mr. Diamond wants to be consistent, he should reject the use of them as well since they represent a "Eurocentric bias." I wish him good luck in creating a non-Eurocentric weather forecast without using European temperature scales. He cannot use terms such as "low pressure area" or "high pressure area," either, since the very concept of atmospheric pressure as well as ways to measure it was only developed by Europeans.

Jared Diamond, being an evolutionary biologist and a believer that the process of evolution extends to human beings as well as to other creatures, does not reject the possibility that there could be unequal levels of intelligence among various ethnic groups developed over thousands of years, but insists that if there are, then surely Europeans have to be more stupid than others:

"[N]atural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent….there is also a second reason why New Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. Modern European and American children spend much of their time being passively entertained by television, radio, and movies. In the average American household, the TV set is on for seven hours per day. In contrast, traditional New Guinea children have virtually no such opportunities for passive entertainment and instead spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something, such as talking or playing with other children or adults. Almost all studies of child development emphasize the role of childhood stimulation and activity in promoting mental development, and stress the irreversible mental stunting associated with reduced childhood stimulation. This effect surely contributes a non-genetic component to the superior average mental function displayed by New Guineans. That is, in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners, and they surely are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized societies now grow up."

The interesting thing about this quote is that Mr. Diamond has just stated that many New Guineans have widely practised cannibalism. He says this matter-of-factly, but does not clearly indicate that he disapproves of this. In fact, from his writings, he appears to be more critical of television than he is of cannibalism. He is not alone in entertaining such apologist views.

In the bestseller 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, author Charles C. Mann repeatedly compares Aztec philosophical sophistication to that of ancient Greece, of Socrates and Aristotle. He does admit that the human sacrifice by the Aztecs/Mexica, or the Triple Alliance as the Aztec Empire was known, is a "charged subject," but claims it was not fundamentally different from public executions of criminals in Europe:

"Arithmetic suggests that if England had been the size of the Triple Alliance, it would have executed, on average, about 7,500 people per year, roughly twice the number Cortés estimated for the empire. France and Spain were still more bloodthirsty than England, according to Braudel. In their penchant for ceremonial public slaughter, the Alliance and Europe were more alike than either side grasped. In both places the public death was accompanied by the reading of ritual scripts. And in both the goal was to create a cathartic paroxysm of loyally to the government – in the Mexica case, by recalling the spiritual justification for the empire; in the European case, to reassert the sovereign's divine power after it had been injured by a criminal act. Most important, neither society should be judged – or in the event judged each other – entirely by its brutality. Who today would want to live in the Greece of Plato and Socrates, with its slavery, constant warfare, institutionalized pederasty, and relentless culling of surplus population? Yet Athens had a coruscating tradition of rhetoric, lyric drama, and philosophy. So did Tenochtitlan and the other cities in the Triple Alliance."

He concludes that: "Cut short by Cortés, Mexica philosophy did not have the chance to reach as far as Greek or Chinese philosophy. But surviving testimony intimates that it was well on its way."

So, the Aztecs were a sophisticated bunch of natural philosophers who were great lovers of food and had good health care. They were presumably at the brink of developing microwave popcorn, interplanetary travel and laser eye surgery when the Europeans showed up and invented racism and global warming.

It is undoubtedly true that there were brutal aspects of early modern European culture. It was a brutal age. However, whatever Europeans did at this time, they didn't eat other people's internal organs on a regular basis. I know of indications that human sacrifice was once practiced in Europe, China, Egypt and elsewhere, but that was in very ancient times. By the sixteenth century AD, human sacrifice was not an established feature among any of the major Old World civilizations, but it was quite common among New World peoples.

You can find traces of the concept of cannibalism in European culture, for instance in the story about Hansel and Gretel, one of the many traditional fairy tales such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella that were collected and popularized by the Germans Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early nineteenth century. However, in this fairy tale adapted by the Brothers Grimm, the idea of eating people was attributed to the villain of the story, the evil witch, and the practice was seen as self-evidently immoral and unacceptable.

Making apologies for undeniably barbarian aspects of non-European cultures while denigrating European culture has become quite widespread, even among people who are themselves of European origins. When I was reading about the history of chocolate, I found that the author of one of the most commonly cited books, Michael D. Coe, thought that the Aztecs were in some ways better than the Europeans. Yes, those Aztecs, who ripped out people's hearts, ate their organs with tomatoes and drank their blood mixed with chocolate. They had better health care, while European medicine was "pathetic."

American archaeologist Michael D. Coe (b. 1929), professor emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University, is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on Mesoamerican cultures. In his book Breaking the Maya Code, Coe describes how the quest for understanding the Mayan writing system finally succeeded in the second half of the twentieth century. The story begins with a researcher in St. Petersburg (or Leningrad, as it was called in Communist times) in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov (1922—1999), a Russian linguist and ethnographer at Leningrad's Institute of Ethnology, in 1952 published his first paper on the subject of Mayan glyphs. His line of reasoning proved fruitful and gradually gained a number of supporters among Western academics, one of whom was Michael D. Coe. Progress in deciphering Mayan glyphs was rapid from the 1970s and 1980s onwards, and what is often considered the only complete writing system among all pre-Columbian cultures is now more or less understood.

Michael D. Coe has written a number of other books, among them several editions of Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. He credits the Mexican and Mesoamerican cultures with having achieved a great level of complexity, given the fact that they lived in relative isolation from other centers of civilization and couldn't "borrow" technology from others, as the Eurasian civilizations often did. This isolation makes Mexico's achievements all the more impressive, Dr. Coe asserts.  

The book The True History of Chocolate, was written by Michael D. Coe together with his wife Sophie D. Coe. The book does mention human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. The Aztec religion was complex, involving dozens of gods and goddesses, but one of the most important deities was Huitzilopochtli:

"Finally, we should mention the state cult of Huitzilopochtli, the ancient tribal deity of the Aztecs; he had taken on the attributes of the Sun God worshipped by the earlier inhabitants of the Valley. As the supreme war god, and as the sun itself, his worship demanded the daily sacrifice of brave captives taken in war, so that the solar orb could blaze forth at dawn each day. If this failed to happen, the Fifth Sun would end in universal disaster. This was the raison d'être of the Aztec human sacrifice – not blood lust, nor a predilection for cruelty, nor an obsession with death, but a fear lest the world and the life on it should perish."

Here is how Coe and Coe describe the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan:

"The Great Temple at the center of the capital was actually divided into two halves: at the summit of one half was the temple of Tlaloc, god of rain and agriculture, while the other half was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, patron of warfare and of the sun, its steps splattered with the blood of sacrificial victims. The Aztecs were fond of contrasts of this sort. The warriors were the backbone of the Aztec state, and were graduates of the telpochcalli, the military academy. Armed with shield, darts to be hurled from spearthrowers, lance, and the macuauhuitl (the terrible, flat wooden war club set along the sides with razor-sharp obsidian blades), they were well-nigh invincible against their Mesoamerican enemies. When it was bent on conquest, which was the case through much of Aztec history, the state could field very large armies and keep them supplied for long periods of time. Armies travel on their stomachs, and the Aztec army was no exception; the staple ration on campaigns was toasted tortillas, produced in great quantities by their women at home. Prowess and valor on the field of battle, demonstrated by the taking of captives for sacrifice in the capital, was rewarded with both social and economic advancement."

Coe and Coe admit that chocolate (which was virtually always taken in liquid form among American peoples; the chocolate bar is a modern European invention) was intimately linked to this culture of human sacrifice. Cacao was expensive as it was quite literally used as money. There are some indications that it was consumed by Maya commoners on very special occasions and in important rituals such as marriage ceremonies, but in general, the consumption of cacao was clearly reserved for the political, economic and military elites:

"In our more-or-less democratic society, chocolate is something that is taken in liquid or solid form by members of every social level (although the most expensive, finest-quality chocolates are necessarily consumed only by those with well-lined pockets). Not so among the Aztecs and other Mesoamericans: our sources unanimously declare that the drinking of chocolate was confined to the Aztec elite – to the royal house, to the lords and nobility, to the long-distance merchants, and to the warriors. The only commoners who had a chance to try this luxury seem to have been soldiers on the march."

Coe and Coe include some negative remarks about the level of European knowledge and medical science:

"…the medical knowledge brought by the Spaniards to the New World was largely ineffectual. In contrast, while the Aztec ticitl or doctor used a good deal of magic in his or her cures, and while Aztec disease etiology also had an overall theoretical scheme made up of contrary principles (such as 'hot' vs. 'cold'), native medical practices were light years ahead of the Spaniards'. This was due in large part to their incredible knowledge of the plant world included within the empire's frontiers."

In contrast, "Aztec disease etiology bore little resemblance to the Galenic nonsense of the Europeans: for instance, fevers were not necessarily 'hot,' and were often cured not by administering 'cold' medicines but by giving the patient 'hot' medicines to induce sweating – excellent medical practice, as we now know."

As Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe put it:

"We can afford (at times) to chuckle over the naiveté of this theory and practice, but consider the medical horrors that were faced by our Baroque Age Europeans. No one had any real idea of disease etiology – what caused infections, epidemics, and plagues, why women often died of childbed fever, and so forth. Knowledge of anatomy and physiology was just beginning, but had little effect so far on medical practice. Surgery was carried out without anesthesia or antiseptics, necessarily at great speed, and if patients failed to succumb to loss of blood or from shock, at least half of them later fell victim to septecemia and gangrene. As we have said, European knowledge of plants which might have been efficacious in some diseases was pathetic compared to that of the New World natives whom they had fairly well destroyed by this time. In these circumstances, it was only natural that sick persons and those treating them would grasp at straws, in this case the much-flawed system of Hippocrates and Galen – and pray to the saints. The introduction and spread of chocolate in Europe can only be understood in this context."

The True History of Chocolate thus laments the fact the Europeans used chocolate differently from how it was originally used in the Americas. Ironically, at the same time, another American scholar, Marcy Norton, claims that Europeans largely continued using chocolate and other substances in ways similar to how the pre-Columbian cultures did, and that European inventiveness is overrated. I haven't read Norton's book Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures, which was not yet published at the time of writing, but I have read her essay Tasting Empire.

Norton claims that chocolate as a hot non-alcoholic drink was introduced to Europe slightly before coffee and tea in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that "chocolate helped pave the way for coffee by creating a craving among consumers for dark, bitter, sweetened, hot stimulant drinks. Chocolate, like the caffeinated drinks that followed it, may have also increased demand for sugar, since it was an important vessel for sugar."

She notes that the first Europeans who tasted the drink didn't like it, and that "chocolate was not a regular trade item until the 1590s. The first work about chocolate to be published with a Spanish readership in mind was printed in 1624. By the 1620s, thousands of pounds of cacao and chocolate were imported into Spain annually. Venezuela exported more than 31,000 pounds between 1620 and 1650, and more than 7 million pounds between 1650 and 1700."

Norton makes some more controversial claims:

"The work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is both illustrative and influential. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Bourdieu actively disputed Platonic and Kantian traditions (whose heirs are biological determinists) that accept a natural and universal capacity to discern the inherently beautiful or excellent. Instead, he sought to show the contingent and contextual basis of aesthetic determinations. His thesis is that 'taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed.' Bourdieu argued that seemingly subjective pleasures accord with social hierarchies. The particular form that the human capacity to discriminate between sights, sounds, touch, and flavor (alias taste) takes at a given historical moment, he affirmed, serves the interests of those in power. Echoing the findings of sociologists from Thorstein Veblen to Bourdieu, cultural historians, by and large, have eschewed biological or economic determinism and instead theorize taste as socially constructed."

So, taste is "socially constructed," just as virtually everything is supposed to be "socially constructed" these days. The problem with this view is that Europeans spread many American plants to Europe, Asia, Africa and eventually to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region, but not all of them were equally successful or adopted everywhere.

For instance, chocolate never became widespread in the Middle East (just as Middle Easterners had not widely adopted tea from China, whereas the Europeans quickly did), but smoking tobacco was embraced with the same popular enthusiasm with which coffee had been adopted during the preceding two or three centuries. It took hold in the Ottoman Empire in the early seventeenth century. In 1633 the Sultan Murad IV ordered tobacco users (as well as those drinking alcoholic beverages and even coffee) executed as infidels. He kept his word and randomly executed a large number of people until his death in 1640, caused by his own addiction to alcohol. The tobacco ban was lifted in 1647, and tobacco, smoked in water pipes or in other ways, became a permanent feature of Ottoman life, alongside coffee and opium.

Marcy Norton claims that there was no conscious effort by Europeans to radically reinvent chocolate:

"The most famous modification was the addition of sugar. Contrary to the popular view that the Spanish invented the idea of sweetening cacao, native Mexicans and Mayans already sweetened many of their cacao beverages with honey. Since the Spanish recognized both sugar and honey as sweeteners, switching one for the other represented a slight modification but not a major divergence from the concoction as they had first tasted it."

According to her, "Spaniards experimented with substitutes for Old World spices. But when they did so, their aim was to approximate original flavors, not to introduce new palate sensations. The view that Spanish 'improved' on the chocolate of pre-Hispanic America is found in self-justifying Spanish texts by the eighteenth century. That chocolate had conformed to European taste was a myth that supported the Spanish ideology of conquest: it presupposed that the colonists brought their civilization to barbarians rather than the opposite. In fact, Europeans inadvertently internalized Mesoamerican aesthetics and did not modify chocolate to meet their existing tastes. Rather, they acquired new ones, a reality at odds with colonial ideology."

I could point out that although Europeans did not initially change the drink radically they did so later, in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries during the Industrial Revolution, when chocolate in solid form as we now know it was first created. This chocolate was available to the general masses for enjoyment outside of a ritual context, which is indeed radically different from how the Mesoamericans used it.

Along with other Mesoamerican societies, the Maya lacked metal tools. The dark volcanic glass known as obsidian was the preferred raw material for making into stone tools and was traded over vast areas, as obsidian once had been thousands of years earlier in the ancient Middle East, before the Old World civilizations developed practical metal tools. The Maya also lacked boats with sails, wheels, and domestic animals large enough to carry loads or pull a plow, but they did have very high population densities before the so-called Classic Maya collapse. Here is what Jared Diamond has to say about them:

"All preserved ancient Maya writing, constituting a total of about 15,000 inscriptions, is on stone and pottery and deals only with kings, nobles, and their conquests. There is not a single mention of commoners. When Spaniards arrived, the Maya were still using bark paper coated with plaster to write books, of which the sole four that escaped Bishop Landa's fires turned out to be treatises on astronomy and the calendar. The ancient Maya also had had such bark-paper books, often depicted on their pottery, but only decayed remains of them have survived in tombs."

Because of the breakthroughs in our understanding of Mayan glyphs in the late twentieth century, our understanding of Mayan culture is much greater in the early twenty-first century than it was a generation or two ago. Diamond again:
"Archaeologists for a long time believed the ancient Maya to be gentle and peaceful people. We now know that Maya warfare was intense, chronic, and unresolvable, because limitations of food supply and transportation made it impossible for any Maya principality to unite the whole region in an empire, in the way the Aztecs and Incas united Central Mexico and the Andes, respectively….Captives were tortured in unpleasant ways depicted clearly on the monuments and murals (such as yanking fingers out of sockets, pulling out teeth, cutting off the lower jaw, trimming off the lips and fingertips, pulling out the fingernails, and driving a pin through the lips), culminating (sometimes several years later) in the sacrifice of the captive in other equally unpleasant ways (such as tying the captive up into a ball by binding the arms and legs together, then rolling the balled-up captive down the steep stone staircase of a temple)."

It is interesting to notice that, once again, Western observers actually show non-Western cultures too much good faith, rather than being "Eurocentric."

The book Chocolate in Mesoamerica, edited by Cameron L. McNeil, incorporates some of the latest findings about Mesoamerican history. As scholar Dorie Reents-Budet says:

"The ancient Maya developed a complex society renowned for its monumental architecture, colossal sculptures, and portable carvings that adorned their towns and the bodies of the elite; for scientific and intellectual achievements in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy; and for the only true writing system (that is, the graphic representation of spoken language) in the ancient Americas. During the Classical period apogee (A.D. 250-900) of the Maya culture, artisans created copious objects in a variety of media that were essential components of the sociopolitical and economic systems of the ruling elite (M. D. Coe and J. Kerr 1998). Among these artefacts were decorated pottery vessels for serving food, especially vessels for kakaw (chocolate) beverages (Reents-Budet 1994a). Unlike their ceramic predecessors of earlier centuries (1200 B.C.-A.D. 150), which were characterized by elegantly simple forms and monochrome or occasionally bichrome slip-painted surfaces, Classical period elite service wares were elaborately embellished with painted, incised, or modeled imagery or various combinations of these. Skilled painters adorned the service wares with renderings of elite life and portraits of powerful rulers. They also portrayed the supernatural beings and religious myths that explained the universe and the place of the Mayas therein."

Cacao beans long played a central part of life in Mesoamerica. Reents-Budet again:

"During Late Postclassical times and continuing into the Colonial period, kakaw beans functioned as an abstract representation of value; that is, as money. For example, in the markets of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, the beans could be exchanged for any number of commodities. They also served as payment for work service and to buy one's way out of forced labor (slavery) (S. D. Coe and M. D. Coe 1996: 98-99). Kakaw beans were the preferred payment for tax or service obligations because they were a readily convertible capital medium in most of the prevailing economic systems of the myriad cultures of Mesoamerica and also of those to the south in Central America."

According to David Stuart, "The importance of cacao in Classic Maya society was not widely appreciated until the decipherment of glyphic texts on ceramics in the 1980s, when it became clear that seemingly countless ceramic vessels were inscribed with a dedicatory formula identifying them as drinking vessels for chocolate (D. Stuart 1986, 1988, 1989). Now scholars readily see chocolate as a key element of courtly life, having a profound role in political economics and display, feasting events, and ritual. Chocolate even permeates many examples of Maya religious iconography."

The practice of human sacrifice was common not just in Mesoamerica but in South America and elsewhere. The motivation was to repay the debt to the gods. Among the Aztecs, after it had been cut out by an obsidian blade, the still beating heart would be held out in front of the victim and towards the sky. Eating pieces of the victim's body afterwards was not uncommon.

In addition to human sacrifice, there was also the practice of autosacrifice, or drawing blood from oneself, especially among the elites. According to Cameron L. McNeil, "Cacao was also associated with blood and sacrifice in the pre-Columbian period. For Mesoamerican peoples, blood was an important offering to the gods. Not only were animals sacrificed, but people – particularly elites and rulers – offered their own blood and that of human captives."

Cacao and maize constituted an important ritual pair in Mesoamerican cosmology. Both were combined in ritual beverages with sacred water to feed the gods and ancestors so that they would work to provide agricultural fertility. Cacao may have been associated with darkness, death and the underworld because is grows in shaded areas. Cacao beverages were sometimes colored red with achiote (also called annatto), and several European colonial chroniclers noted the similarity between red-dyed cacao drink and blood. This was not always coincidental. As Cameron L. McNeil says:

"The people of Cholula, Mexico, made a cacao beverage from water in which knives used in human sacrifice had been washed (Acosta 2002 [1590]:325). In the Florentine Codex, Sahagún (1950-82, Book 6, 1969:256) records that 'heart' and 'blood' were metaphors for 'cacao…because it was precious.' J. Eric S. Thompson (1956:100) proposed that hearts and cacao pods share associations, because both are 'the repositories of precious liquids – blood and cacao.' Rosemary Joyce has suggested that the frequent exchange of cacao in marriage ceremonies may signify the mixing of bloodlines (Meskell and Joyce 2003:139-140). A range of images supports the association of cacao with sacrifice and blood. A stela from the archaeological site of Santa Lucia Cotzumalhuapa on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala depicts a human figure sacrificing a cacao pod as though it were a human heart: the cacao pod spouts a liquid substance. In Mixtec codices, bleeding cacao pods are depicted both on the tops and insides of temples, which were places of sacrifice (Mary E. Smith 1973:236). In the sixteenth century, Diego García de Palacio wrote that in pre-Columbian times the Pipil people in Nicaragua marked war captives for sacrifice with strands of cacao seeds, feathers and green stones."

This connection between cacao and human blood was clearly evident among the Aztecs. McNeil again:

"The Spaniards encountering Motecuhzoma's court for the first time were impressed by the lavish feasts and the strange beverage, cacao, which was consumed in large amounts. Curiously, they overlooked that cacao was sometimes mixed with blood and offered in rituals, while amaranth grain, which was also offered in a mixture with human blood, was outlawed (Balick and Cox 1996). It is likely that cacao escaped amaranth's fate because of its economic value, both as a currency within the region and as a prized comestible. As M. J. MacLeod (1973:70) noted, the Mexica had a developed cacao tribute system in place when the Spanish arrived, and the conquerors were able initially to take over this profitable system, at least until disease killed many of the growers. The Mesoamerican people were forced to convert to Christianity by the Spanish conquerors, but they frequently retained many practices of their native religion."

We thus have ample evidence that cacao in Mesoamerica was intimately related to cultural practices associated with widespread human sacrifice. Yet in The True History of Chocolate, Sophie and Michael D. Coe write the following about cacao/chocolate:

"We have learned that the Spaniards had stripped it of the spiritual meaning which it had for the Mesoamericans, and imbued it with qualities altogether absent among the Aztecs and Maya: for the invaders, it was a drug, a medicine, in the humoral system to which they all adhered. It is hardly surprising to find that it was under this guise that chocolate traveled in Europe, from one court to another, from noble house to noble house, from monastery to monastery. But it soon became a medicine that was appreciated for its taste, its filling nature, and its stimulation. Are we shocked to learn that a medicine or drug with supposedly curative powers was converted to recreational use? We should not be, since the same transformation has taken place a number of times in modern Europe and America. The most famous case is that of Coca-Cola, which began life as a patent medicine in the American southland – a sweet, carbonated drink with a hearty dose of caffeine from the cacao-related kola nut, and a measure of cocaine (gone from today's drink, but the seed pod of the coca shrub is memorialized in the traditional shape of the bottle)."

The fact that certain substances which are used for medicinal purposes can also be used socially is not at all uncommon, nor is it in any way limited to Western culture. In China, tea had been used as a medicine long before it became a social drink, and the two uses could co-exist. Even among Native Americans in North America (and elsewhere), tobacco was used as a recreational drug as well as for ritual purposes by shamans and yes, as a medicine, for instance as a painkiller. It was still used as both a medicine and a recreational drug when it first arrived in the Old World. I fail to see why this should be considered a bad thing.

The most revealing quote here is that "the Spaniards had stripped it of the spiritual meaning which it had for the Mesoamericans, and imbued it with qualities altogether absent among the Aztecs and Maya." As we have proven above, the "spiritual meaning" associated with cacao in Mesoamerican cultures was closely linked to the practice of human sacrifice. In other words, according to Mr. Coe, human sacrifice is "spiritual." The desire to not be "Eurocentric" and the impulse to bash European culture has now become so strong that Europeans are blamed for separating chocolate from its association with human blood and turning it into a source of enjoyment for people around the world. One would believe that this was a good thing, but to some, that is apparently not the case.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

Heave-Ho Harry's Place

Here we go again; another random party using our atrocious Libel Laws to close down criticism and debate. In this case it appears to be Sheffield Academic Jenna Delich, or her supporters, making legal noises to intimidate the iSP hosting the blog Harry's Place.

 

Harry's Place comments:

Though we have not yet seen the complaint submitted, we assume it runs along the lines that pointing out that Ms Delich linked to the website of a known neo-Nazi figure and former Ku Klux Klan leader is defamatory.

 

This is extraordinary since Ms Delich has not denied that she circulated links to David Dukes website. There would be no point since the evidence is in the public domain.

They committed the unforgiveable sin of "publishing a fact", which means that any Libel Case is down the toilet for a start - if my legal head is screwed-on correctly tonight. And any iSP should know that, but the law makes it easier to give in. If allegation is not correct (I think it looks fine), then they (and the rest of us) may be skewered.

Leftish imbroglios and nuances are not my strong suit - but closing down debate by running squealing to an iSP using Britain's nonsensical Libel Laws is the best way to make yourself look ridiculous.

The actors in this case: Jenna Delich is an activist with a bee in her bonnet for the campaign for an Academic Boycott of Israel, and the UCU is one of the main Unions for staff in Higher Education.

No, it has nothing to do with the dead rising from the grave and eating brains convening a parliament. Rather, I presume that it is supposed to be a damning indictment of Cameron and the Conservative Party: This zombie politics offers rich pickings to a clever opposition. While the party in power gets on with the [...]

It is a little over a month since Cease and Desist notices were sent to a series of bloggers.

I want to look back on what has been achieved - in both concrete terms and "soft" terms.

You can get up to speed by reading my "Introductory Guide", or the list of people posting in support, or even the Press Room:

Dave Walker is a cartoonist who runs a popular website, which includes the blogs We Blog Cartoons, Cartoon Church and The Cartoon Blog.

On the morning of July 22nd 2008 he received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action unless he removed 75 posts from his Cartoon Church blog by lunchtime - i.e., half a day’s notice.

These 75 posts had reported the developing situation over a 2 year period in a UK book chain called SPCK, which had been taken over by a company run by Mark Brewer. Dave Walker’s was the main published source reporting the situation, asking questions about the management of the chain, and highlighting the treatment of the employees.

So, what has happened?

Perhaps the most revealing remark made during the crisis over South Ossetia was that by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who attacked Russia in very strong terms for having reverted to “a 19th century approach to politics”.
 
Milliband’s hatred of Russia is built into his political DNA. His grandfather, Samuel Miliband, was a Warsaw-born Communist who famously fought in the Red Army but who then left the Soviet Union for Belgium when Stalin became top dog in Moscow. As a lifelong Trotskyite and supporter of world revolution, Miliband was disgusted by Stalin’s decision to create socialism in one country alone and by his de facto restoration of Great Russian nationalism.
 
Samuel’s son, Ralph, the Foreign Secretary’s father (born in Brussels), became a noted Marxist political scientist. His son David’s embrace now of the neo-conservative project of creating a unipolar world based on American power and the ideology of human rights is therefore a typical illustration of something of which I have written on many occasions in the past, namely the way in which true Marxists find their natural political home in the project of “global democratic revolution” proselytised by George W. Bush.
 
Indeed, the Foreign Secretary’s remark about Russia reveals more about the speaker than about the matter in hand. Of course the remark is notable for its hypocrisy. Miliband, after all, is a member of a government which has invaded two countries which have in the past been classic destinations for the British troops in the heyday of Empire, Afghanistan and Iraq, and which has also energetically pursued the extension of Western influence into another part of the world famous for being the focus of Great Power rivalry in the 19th century, the Balkans.
 
But the remark is mainly notable for the mindset it reveals. From Miliband’s point of view, Western policy over the last fifteen years has not been a matter of brute force. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombing attack on Yugoslavia have not been military invasions, but instead selfless acts inspired by a desire to promote democracy and human rights, and therefore not even political acts in the classic sense of that term. Instead, they are (he believes) acts carried out in the service of humanity, acts which no reasonable person could oppose. Anyone who does oppose them is probably an enemy of humanity itself.
 
By contrast, continues his reasoning, Russia’s decision to protect South Ossetia from the Georgian attack on the night of 8 August is a cynical exercise of brute force designed solely to extend Russian power into the Caucasus. Indeed, although Moscow actually did react to human rights abuses and war crimes committed by the Georgians when they attacked Tskinvali, the language coming out of the Russian capital has tended to focus more on the country’s national interests and security, and less on appeals to universal principles of human rights. This is what Miliband cannot stand. When George W. Bush gave the order to invade Iraq, by contrast, there was of course a certain amount of talk about America’s need to protect herself from external attack (a threat which was purely invented). But the centre of gravity of the American arguments in favour of that war lay in universalist and unpolitical claims about democratising the Middle East and advancing the global democratic revolution.
 
The great and controversial German jurist, Carl Schmitt, famous adopted Proudhon’s dictum that “Whoever speaks about humanity is trying to deceive.” It’s a good one-liner but the remark is incorrect. Precisely the danger of the Miliband-Bush vision of politics is that it is not based on a conscious desire to deceive others but instead on self-deception – on a genuine belief in the rightness of the universalist and almost Messianic mission which they embrace. Like the liberal imperialists of the, er, 19th century, these people do really believe that what they are doing is selfless and essentially non-political.
 
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union – an artificial political creation based on a negation of Russian history and reality, on bogus internationalism, and on an allegedly universalist political creed which was supposed to embrace the whole of humanity – Russian politicians have long since abandoned any pretence that their own country has any such universal vocation. When I met President Putin last September, he specifically said that Russia had suffered greatly from having adopted Lenin’s universalist creed of communism. (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin-Ulyanov said at one point: Russia matters nothing to me; what matters is to achieve world socialist revolution.”)
 
Not so the United States and Britain. The neo-conservative project of creating a unipolar world based on human rights and democracy (embraced energetically on both the Left and the Right of the American political spectrum, as the recent nomination of Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running-mate sadly emphasises) does require brute force to implement it. Developments like the “independence” of Kosovo grow only out of the barrel of a gun. But the project is supported in London and Washington by people who have utterly deluded themselves about its truly political nature.
 
It is because the West still deceives itself on this matter, and because post-Soviet Russia no longer does, that East-West relations are a dialogue of the deaf. Both sides are speaking a language the other does not want to hear. The Western vision, based on self-deceit, is extremely dangerous; the Russian vision of politics is far more realistic. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the reassertion of a Russian presence on the international stage will force the Milibands of this world, obviously against their will, to realise a basic fact about the human condition. It is that the world has been divided into different states ever since the collapse of the Tower of Babel, and that politics consists therefore not in fantastic projects to construct a new tower in its place, but instead in making the best job one can out of the bricks which remain.

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Victory for the Pommes! Congratulations to Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe. His opposite number in Australia, Kate Ellis will now have to wear an England jersey to a sporting event thanks to our athletes not only getting more gold medals that the ever winging Aussies, but actually getting more medals over all. We have become [...]

[Ed: Er … no comment] <tabloid blogging> I’m not making it up. </tabloid blogging>

A quote from Cardinal Cardinal Sean Brady, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, in The Irish Times, 25 August 2008

As the recent referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland suggests, at least some of those who were previously enthusiastic about the founding aims of the EU, both social and economic, are now expressing unease. […]

Successive decisions [of the EU institutions] have undermined the family based on marriage, the right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, the sacredness of the Sabbath, the right of Christian institutions to maintain and promote their ethos, including schools – these and other decisions have made it more difficult for committed Christians to maintain their instinctive commitment to the European project. […]

[It is] quite natural to expect the US presidential candidates to answer direct questions about their commitment to faith, their willingness to support faith-based organisations, their position on moral issues and how it would affect their appointment of public officials. [I look forward] to the day we have the same level of openn