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.

Russian troops storm school

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About an hour and a half ago from the look of it.

The assault did not appear to be planned, but rather began with scattered fire that quickly erupted to a crescendo, punctuated by more blasts. Dozens of hostages — many barely dressed, their faces strained with fear and exhaustion – survived the assault, but others emerged bloodied and in shock. The fate of the majority inside — now believed to be as many as 1,000 — was not immediately known.

NY Times

Update: What Interfax is reporting is not a pretty picture. Unplanned raid, over 200 wounded, surviving terrorists hiding out in an adjacent building.

Daniel Pipes on Tariq Ramadan: Why French literacy still matters

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Readers of my previous comment on Tariq Ramadan will no doubt have come away with the impression that I don’t much like Daniel Pipes. This is not an entirely accurate assessment of my opinon of him. I think Pipes is an unreconstructed bigot and xenophobic fanatic whose academic work fails to meet even the lowest standards of scholarship, whose career has been built on politically driven attacks, and who has set up with his “Campus Watch” as a terrorist front designed to intimidate academics and ensure that there is as little debate, discussion or rational thought on Israel, US foreign policy or Islam as possible. His reseach and scholarship are not intended to better inform action but to support specific agendas, usually revolving around hating some foreign force or people. Instead of fostering debate, his work is intended to intimidate. Pipes advocates religiously targetted surveillance, he supports making federal university funding conditional on ideology, and he has helped to terrorise professors who are named on his website. In short, I think Pipes is swine.

He is a second generation right-wing tool, the son of one of the men most responsible for America’s “Team B”, which grossly overblew the Soviet menace in the 70s and 80s – causing massive US defense spending and resulting deficits – and complained that anyone with a better sense of reality was soft on communism. Normally, Pipes’ parentage would constitute poor grounds for condeming him as having a pathological relationship to facts. But keep this in mind, since it constitutes one of his arguments against Ramadan.

All you need is Google to find out why I think these things about Daniel Pipes. It’s not a lot of work. His own website provides ample examples.

But, today, I will be targeting something a little more specific. Pipes has put up on his website his comment on Tariq Ramadan’s visa denial, originally published in the New York Post on Friday. In it, he makes specific points against Tariq Ramadan, linking, in some cases, to articles on the web in support. These articles are primarily in French. As a service to our non-francophone readers, we will be translating the relevant sections, since they lead one to the conclusion that Pipes assumes his readers will just take his word on their contents.

We report, you decide.
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Redefining “ostenibles” – the headscarf in Réunion

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Despite the recent hostage taking of French journalists in Iraq and the demand that the ban on the hijab be lifted as the price of their return, the French government is unsurprisingly still planning on implementing the law when school reopens this week. Killing French journalists in order to attack a French law – even a bad one – only makes it harder to repeal. By attacking it in this fashion, this silly law will become even more entrenched.

This story is currently the lead article in all the major French dailies. The government is trying to negociate the release of these two journalists – Christian Chesnot of Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot of the daily Le Figaro. It is presumably also considering more direct action to free them. The French Foreign Minister has personally gone to Baghdad today. He is – I presume – talking to American and Iraqi authorities.

I should note that this hostage-taking has been roundly condemned, not only by Islamic authorities in France but by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, an organisation that has clearly taken a stand against banning the hijab, by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, by the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Paris and by Tariq Ramadan.

La rentrée – the beginning of the French school year – starts a little earlier in some parts of France than it does in the Metropole. It started two weeks ago in Réunion – an area with a disproportionately larger and better entrenched Muslim population than France. National Assembly deputies from Réunion demanded – but did not get – a special provision in the law recognising their unusual circumstances. And, how has the new code forbidding conspicuous religous symbols fared there? There were no serious incidents reported. Of course, school authorities in Réunion redefined the kind of headscarf most commonly worn in Réunion to be something other than “conspicuous.”
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Swiss Muslim scholar unwelcome in US

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According to Abu Aardvark, Tariq Ramadan – a francophone Swiss Muslim who is usually cited as a particularly modernist and moderate European Muslim scholar – has been denied a visa to enter the US to take up a teaching posiiton at Notre Dame University. As I understand it, the visa had earlier been issued, but has now been revoked under the portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that were modified by the PATRIOT Act two years ago.

Further Associated Press coverage at the Boston Globe – and probably other newspapers – as well as at Swissinfo.
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Micha?l Tronchon, alias Phineas

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I’m not sure how much the international press is covering the recent racist violence in Lyon. A Google News search shows only the New York Times offering coverage in English.

The salient facts: Late Saturday night, a 24 year old man surrendered to police in Paris, claiming responsability for the cemetery desacration in Lyon and the murder of an north African Arab man a few days earlier. His name is Micha?l Tronchon. Police consider his confession legitimate and believe that the perpetrator is now in custody.
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Phineas and French racial violence

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Yesterday’s Le Monde has a distrubing piece on the profanation of a Jewish cemetery in Lyon, blogged here a few days ago. According to the Lyon police, evidence at the scene links this crime to the murder of a young North African man last week.

Le lien entre la profanation du cimeti?re juif de Lyon et une agression raciste ?tabli

La justice a ?tabli vendredi 13 ao?t avec certitude la corr?lation entre la profanation, le 9 ao?t, du cimeti?re juif de Lyon et l’agression ? la hachette, quatre jours plus t?t, d’un homme d’origine maghr?bine, permettant aux enqu?teurs de resserrer l’?tau sur l’auteur de la profanation.

Le procureur de la R?publique de Lyon, Xavier Richaud, a indiqu? qu’”on a retrouv? l’ADN de la victime de l’agression de Villeurbanne sur la hachette laiss?e lundi soir sur une des tombes profan?es”. [...]

Le 5 ao?t au matin, un homme d’origine maghr?bine ?tait agress? ? la hachette dans une rue de Villeurbanne. Cette agression avait ?t? revendiqu?e par t?l?phone ? la police par un individu se pr?sentant comme “Phineas”.

L’inscription “Phineas” avait ?t? retrouv?e quatre jours plus tard, le 9 ao?t, trac?e ? la peinture noire sur plusieurs des quelque 60 tombes profan?es dans le cimeti?re juif de la Mouche, ? Lyon. [...]

L’outil avait ?t? laiss?, accroch? sur une tombe, pos? en ?vidence pour qu’on le voie.

Link established between the profanation of the Lyon Jewish cemetery and a racist attack

On Friday, 13 August, Investigators established with certainty the connection between the profanation of the Lyon Jewish cemetery and the attack with an axe against a man of Maghrebi origin four days earlier, allowing detectives to tighten the vice on the perpetrators.

The Lyon Procurer of the Republic [more or less the District Attorney or Crown Prosecutor, for Anglophone readers], Xavier Richaud, said that “we have found the DNA of the victim of the Villeurbanne attack on the axe left on one of the vandalised graves Monday night.” [...]

On 5 August, a man of Maghrebi origin was attacked with an axe on a street in Villeurbanne. An individual calling himself “Phineas” telephoned police to claim responsibility.

The name “Phineas” was also found several days later, on 9 August, written in black paint on several of the 60 vandalised graves in the Mouche Jewish cemetary at Lyon. [...]

The instrument was left hung up on a gravestone, placed so that someone would see it.

The name “Phineas” has a special meaning in Christianity, and particularly to right-wing racist Protestant churches like the Christian Identity movement in the US. The article goes on to point out that a number of attacks in recent years in the US have been labelled as “Phineas Acts.” France has its own traditions of racism and racist mythologies. It seems a little strange to see them borrowing American ones.
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Scooping the Times

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I note that today’s New York Times has an article on the recent upsurge in Neonazi attacks in France, focusing on Alsace-Lorraine and the simultaneously anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant character of these movements. This was covered a couple days ago here on AFOE.

Does someone at the Times read us? Probably not. I suspect they got it from Libé. But I do take back my disgust at seeing the last attack on a Jewish cemetery in France linked exclusively to Muslim immigrants in the anglophone press. Cudos to the Times for being something other than the New Pravda for once.

Sprach und Sommertheater – German spelling reform and linguistic ignorance

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August is traditionally a dead month for news. Government is on vacation. Lots of businesses slow down. And it’s too hot for political violence. Only heathen insurgents from warm countries actually stir in August. As the major journals turn increasingly to junior reporters and stringers while the A-team hits the beaches, the news grows ever more frivolous, and this summer’s big story in Germany is certainly silly enough.

Germany, as I have learned via Taccuino di traduzione, is implementing a spelling reform and it seems this reform is facing resistance.
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Never again

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Yesterday’s profanation of a Jewish cemetery in Lyon has, once again, put French race relations into the news in bad light. There’s a good reason for that. French race relations aren’t much to brag about. I notice, however, that for all the bloggers – not to mention Ariel Sharon – who think France is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, there hasn’t been much comment over recent profanations of Muslim cemeteries and mosques.

Le Monde, conveniently enough, offers a page for each. Les principales profanations de tombes juives en France and Chronologie des actes contre des cimeti?res et des lieux de culte musulmans.
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Writer’s block and the Amish Paradise

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As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain
I take a look at my wife and realize she’s very plain
But that’s just perfect for an Amish like me
You know, I shun fancy things like electricity
At 4:30 in the morning I’m milkin’ cows
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows… fool
And I’ve been milkin’ and plowin’ so long that
Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone
I’m a man of the land, I’m into discipline
Got a Bible in my hand and a beard on my chin
But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine
Then tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1699

We been spending most our lives
Living in an Amish paradise
We’re all crazy Mennonites
Living in an Amish paradise
There’s no cops or traffic lights
Living in an Amish paradise
But you’d probably think it bites
Living in an Amish paradise

– Amish Paradise, “Weird Al” Yankovic

Belgium is hell in July.

The Belgians, of course, know this instinctively. I don’t quite understand how a nation can continue to function when the entire population is on vacation at the same time for a whole month. The trams get cut back to the point where they’re useless out in the eastern suburbs of Brussels and the weather isn’t much to write home about either. I still have to wear a jacket in the morning in late July.

Of course, I have this extra problem: allergies. Something in Belgium sprays its pollen in July. Something that just about kills me every time. And every summer, I tell myself, next year. Next year, don’t forget to take your goddamn vacation in July like every one else, and get as far from Belgium as you can! And every year – this is my third year here – I have to be in Belgium in July for some reason.

This year, it’s the final report for my research in translation automation. The work is done. The results are excellent, spectacular even. In another year, under other circumstances, I would feel tempted to find some venture capital and see if I can revolutionise the language industry. Instead, I’ve spent the last week wheezing in bed, taking hits off my Duovent bong, popping Tylenol and Claratin, and snorting this foul-smellng shit my doctor gave me for hay fever.

I’m suffering from the most profound writer’s block I think I’ve ever had. I can’t remember ever having felt so unable to organise or express my thoughts. I have tons to blog, and vast quantities of material on how to profit from the statistical properties of the lexicon, but I can barely bring myself to read my e-mail. Writing this paper is like having acute constipation. I push and I push and it hurts like hell, and all that comes out is a little bit of crap.

But, I’m back at work today and that brings me to my e-mail, specifically a letter pointing me to an article in Saturday’s Guardian about Manitoba Mennonite novelist Miriam Toews:
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