Author Archives: Scott Martens

About Scott Martens

Scott is a US-raised Canadian living in Brussels with his American wife. His political background is well to the left of centre, even for Europe, and is very interested in immigration, cultural integration and language policy issues. He is presently working against a deadline on his doctorate in computational linguistics and is on hiatus. Wrote Pedantry, also on hiatus.

Adventures in Laïcité

Posted on by

Christmas time is traditionally a period of religious tension and social stress, and the first Christmas since the advent of “laïcité républicaine” has not spared France. Last month, students in Lagny-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne, e.g. outer Paris) had to give up their Christmas tree after a group of students (from what I’ve read, the principle won’t say what faith they professed if any) demanded the strict application of French law concerning secularism in the schools.

Students, parents, the French press and of course the usual suspects were shocked to discover that the idea of secularism might apply to their treasured fetishes. The tree was ultimately restored, from what I can garner from the press, following claims that Christmas trees are pagan and secular, not religious, in nature. In any other country, pagan and secular are mutually exclusive terms, and if a garment is religious, a holiday damn well can be too. I did not see an exception for Druidism in the “Loi sur la Laicité”. Besides, if we are to accept claims of secularism, where does it stop? I have to wonder if an Arab girl who claims to wear a headscarf not because its a religious symbol but because she’s having a bad hair day gets the same consideration.

Alas, the passage of the holidays has not made matters better. Today’s AP feed brings news that Muslim children may be expelled for failing to eat the meat offered in the school cafeteria. The letter making this threat was sent to twenty-odd Muslim parents. There was no mention of vegetarian students. Apparently “all children must eat all the dishes served, even if only a small portion” in order to have a “balanced diet.” Now, I went to university in Strasbourg and I saw the kind of meat on offer in university cafeterias. It was years before I could bring myself to eat rabbit after living in France. French cuisine may merit it’s reputation, but the national reputation for taste does not extend to school lunches. I have the strong suspicion that no vegetarian, Jewish, or simply fussy child will ever be the target of such a decision.

Promises that this law would apply equally to all religons are revealed to be the farce they always were. I stand by my prediction: this law is a fiasco. It will solve no problems, liberate no one, and create nothing but idiocy and new contradictions. It is already serving as an excuse for the institutionalisation of bigotry.

Sheffield a la mar

Posted on by

I have to confess to having had a fairly sucky 2004. Most of the causes are personal, and frankly not very interesting. But, as an example, my plan to spend the holiday season in Tunisia was abruptly cancelled because my wife got chicken pox. So, needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to 2005.

The wife got over her pox just a few days before Christmas, leaving us scrambling to find a vacation that both fit our respective work calendars, didn’t cost too much, and wasn’t booked solid. Consequently, I found myself at Zaventem airport at four in the morning on Christmas day fighting a miserable crowd so I could spend a week at Benidorm, Valencia, Spain.

I can’t claim I wasn’t warned. I did know that Benidorm – and the rest of the Costa Blanca – is something of a joke in the Dutch speaking part of Europe. After a week there, I still haven’t been in Spain. As far as I can tell, thanks to daily discount charter service between Sheffield and Alicante, the Costa Blanca is simply a warm, low-tax part of Yorkshire.
Continue reading →

The continuing partition of Berlin

Posted on by

Reparlez-moi des roses de Gottingen
qui m’accompagnent
dans l’autre Allemagne
? l’heure o? colombes et vautours s’?loignent.
De quel c?t? du mur, la fronti?re vous rassure…

Tell me again about the roses in Gottingen
that come with me
into the other Germany
when the doves and vultures part ways.
From whichever side of the wall, the border comforts you…

- Patricia Kaas, D’Allemagne

Today is the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and as Tobias notes, political unification has not created the single, new Germany its authors so fervently hoped for.

Fifteen years ago today, I watched the news from my dorm in Strasbourg, having, only the day before, decided to cancel my planned trip to Berlin that weekend. Otherwise, I would have had a valid train ticket to the street party of the century. By the time the wall came down, it was impossible to get train fare or a room anywhere in the city, and going was simply out of the question.

Damn.
Continue reading →

The Morning After in Europe

Posted on by

So it’s done. We have four more years of George W Bush to look forward to. A quick tour of the American blogs shows a few trying to pull some sort of moral victory from this election, but the truth is that they’ve lost everything. Not only has the president finally won the majority denied to him in 2000, but as a reward for his mismanagement and incompetence, Democrats have actually lost seats in both houses of Congress, including losing the Senate Minority Leader. For all that the vote is close, the outcome is a stunning defeat in terms of real access to power. There is no longer a meaningful opposition in the US able to moderate the power of a president who needs no longer worry about reelection.

At best, this means that in 2008 the Republicans will have to run on a deeper quagmire in Iraq, no meaningful victories in the so-called war on terrorism, another huge hike in the American public debt and all the new messes Bush can create. But, let’s be honest. That isn’t going to happen. No one will be called to account. The American electorate, for a number of reasons, simply will not hold this administration to account. They did not do so in 2002, they haven’t this time, and there is no reason to think they will in 2008.

Reaction in the French political scene is muted, but definitely not happy.
Continue reading →

The Economist endorses Kerry

Posted on by

The incompetent or the incoherent?

It’s hard not to giggle. The Economist is probably the most prestigious name in the business press in the US. The editors’ backhanded compliments to Bush don’t cover a contempt for his bungling, even as they support his efforts point by point.

[A]s Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America’s great tasks.

With Kerry, all they can seem to find to say about him that’s nice is that he’s a “fiscal conservative” and that he’s not in debt to the radical right. Fair enough, I suppose, but I recall them saying the same sorts of things about Bush in 2000.

Still, America has only had one CEO president: George W. Bush. To see the flagship of the business press toss him overboard is a real indictment, both of him and of the ideology he represents.

Update: Didn’t notice this til just now either:

Public Opinion Poll Indicates Iraqis Favor Kerry over Bush in U.S. Presidential Race (via Abu Aardvark)

It’s getting harder to suppress the giggling.

EU Constitution signing this morning

Posted on by

I didn’t know this until just now, but the signing ceremony for the EU constitution is going to start in a few minutes. Le Monde is reporting that the signing starts at 11:30 this morning Europe time – about ten minutes from now. The ceremony is in Rome – where the EU was founded with the Treaty of Rome – at the Campidoglio. It is to be televised.

Hobbits among us

Posted on by

It seems the big science news today is the discovery of a new species of homind in a dig on Flores Island in Indonesia. Homo floresiensis, who apparently was about a metre tall apparently lived as recently as 13,000 years ago – much more recently than any known homnid other than humans, and there is already speculation that they survived much more recently. It seems that some people on Flores still tell stories of little people who lived in caves at the time of the arrival of the Dutch 400 years ago. This leads one to speculate that the less well expored areas of Flores, and perhaps other islands in eastern Indonesia, may still hold pockets of little people.

BBC is already calling them “hobbits”.
Continue reading →

CERN reaches 50

Posted on by

We ought not let an anniversary like the 50th birthday of the Centre Europ?en pour la Recherche Nucl?aire go unmentionned. Like many non-EU European institutions, involvement often extends beyond the frontiers of the continent. Besides its 20 European members (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), it has a number of “Observer” delegations that are able to attend meetings and receive documents (the European Commission, India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, Turkey, UNESCO and the USA) and a long list of other non-members, many non-European, who nonetheless participate substantially in its projects (Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and the Ukraine). Funding comes from both members and non-members.

Of course, CERN is also remembered for a minor spin-off of its early investment in computer networking: the Web.

Buffy as a metaphor for Bush

Posted on by

Readers of AFOE may know that I am a fan of the now defunct American TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which is why I couldn’t possibly resist linking to this:

In other words, Season 7 of Buffy always struck me as a fairly explicit critique of Bush’s foreign policy (even if dullards on the right missed it), and a foreshadowing of a superior Kerryist alternative. Even Willow’s tentative embrace of her own power and overcoming of her own fears about how she might use her power for evil echoes the European (and especially German) struggle with the past; as in Season Four (Adam) and Season Five (Glory), Buffy can only defeat evil when working closely with a self-confident and allied Willow.

From Abu Aardvark.

Suspicion and divided loyalties

Posted on by

Perhaps the most damaging effect of 9/11 and all that has followed will be its role in making divided loyalties one of the most dangerous things a person can have. From the beginning, while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning, any effort to hold non-trivial positions about terrorism and Islam were attacked. People opposed to the war in Iraq were branded as terrorist supporters, people unimpressed by a programme of reform in the Middle East imposed at the end of a gun were castigated, people who asked questions about whether there was more to things than “they hate us for our freedom” were branded as traitors.

Tariq Ramadan wrote a piece in Wednesday’s New York Times which must be read in this light. The key paragraph – the statement of where he stands – appears at the end:

I believe Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. To do this, we must become full, independent Western citizens, working with others to address social, economic and political problems. However, we can succeed only if Westerners do not cast doubt on our loyalty every time we criticize Western governments. Not only do our independent voices enrich Western societies, they are the only way for Western Muslims to be credible in Arab and Islamic countries so that we can help bring about freedom and democracy. That is the message I advocate. I do not understand how it can be judged as a threat to America.

But it is not that hard to see the threat in it. To encourage western Muslims to at once see themselves as having a place in the West and a role in the Islamic world is tantamount to asking them to divide their loyalties. To all too many people right now, divided loyalties are a synonym for treason. The charge of divided loyalties is an old one, and a very damaging one. It was once the most mainstream charge that people made against Jews. To see it revived today – against Muslims in Europe, against Mexicans in the US by the likes of Samuel Huntington, and yes, against Jews in many countries – is very, very troubling.
Continue reading →