Short News and Commentary

BELGIUM WAFFLES

An old adage says that democracies do not wage war against each other. Democratic nations, nonetheless, are finding a new way to express their disdain for their allies’ foreign policies: They take the heads of government to court.

 

Since 1993, Belgium, through its “anti-atrocity law,” has claimed universal jurisdiction for crimes “so serious that they amount to an offense against the whole of humanity.” Belgium claims the right to prosecute such crimes regardless of the nationalities and whereabouts of the claimants or the defendants. As a result, the Belgian court system has become a forum for aggrieved activists to have their political views recognized on the world stage. Suits have been filed against true tyrants like Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein, as well as democratic leaders like Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

 

Claimants include Belgium’s state prosecutor, atrocity victims, and bystanders. In a recent suit against U.S. General Tommy Franks, four doctors with Medicine for the Third World, a Belgian relief organization, alleged that the U.S. military showed disregard for civilian life in Baghdad.

 

Universal jurisdiction suits can also become quite vindictive. In 2001, three lawyers filed a suit against Ariel Sharon and other top Israeli officials on behalf of 28 survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. Denying the charges, Israeli officials have threatened to prosecute Belgian officials for their admitted role in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo.

 

Early this summer, the United States put pressure on Belgium to make its law friendlier to the leaders of allied nations. On June 12, Donald Rumsfeld, who has also had charges filed against him, warned Belgium that its law is likely to dissuade world leaders from visiting the country. The same day, he froze funding for the construction of a new NATO headquarters in Brussels.

 

On June 22, Belgium announced plans to roll back its claim of universal jurisdiction. Under the new rules, only cases directly involving Belgians may be heard. Belgian officials denied that U.S. pressure is responsible for the change in the law, insisting that they independently decided that the law was often applied unjustly.

 

Yet even as Belgium revises its law, questions about universal jurisdiction remain. In that vein, the United States should probably take a fresh look at its 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, which has been used in recent years to prosecute multinational corporations for their alleged connections to human rights abuses in foreign countries. The law, originally intended to prosecute pirates, now helps anti-globalization activists attack multinational corporations they dislike.

 

Universal jurisdiction not only fosters hostilities between government leaders, it also has the potential to aggravate both economic and foreign policy interests. Nations should return to a legal system that mandates a territorial link in order for prosecution to take place, so that one day an adage might read: “Democratic nations do not take each other to court.”

--Courtney Richard is a TAE intern.

 

AMERICAN IRON LADY

Phyllis Schlafly’s critics have accused her of hypocrisy for celebrating traditional women’s roles while pursuing an activist career. But she recently told the Washington Times that there is no contradiction.

 

“Feminism is not about female achievement,” Mrs. Schlafly says. “If it was, you would hear them praising Margaret Thatcher. Feminism is about developing the notion of victimology. They want to paint women as oppressed victims, kept down by men and this oppressive patriarchal society. I think that’s why they underestimated me, because they really don’t believe traditional women can accomplish what I accomplished.”

 

What Schlafly accomplished is a lot. She spent World War II working night shifts in the biggest ammunition plant in the world. “I went through college working as a gunner, firing machine guns,” Mrs. Schlafly explains. “I did all the tests of the ammunition before it could be accepted by the government.” After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University in St. Louis, she added a master’s degree in political science from Harvard. Then she earned a law degree.

 

While raising her six children, Schlafly started a grassroots political movement and penned a book (A Choice Not an Echo) which helped kick off America’s conservative revival. She also wrote or edited 20 other books. Her ten-year battle to prevent the enshrinement of unisex logic in the U.S. Constitution ended with her nearly single-handed defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982.

 

Not bad for “just a housewife.”

 

CANCER SCARE? DON’T SWEAT IT

If your wife or sweetheart is more a sweat-hard, or if her underarms begin to look more like those of a gorilla than the clean-shaven armpits you remember, all is not lost: She has undoubtedly been taken in by one of the most cruel cancer myths making the rounds on the Internet and in sloppy scare pieces in the press.

 

Dire warnings that underarm antiperspirants can cause breast cancer abound. The fright reports have suggested that the products we all use to avoid B.O. contain dangerous substances, which can be absorbed into a woman’s body through tiny razor nicks caused by underarm shaving.

 

But scientists at the National Cancer Institute smelled a rat in these reports. The NCI says it is not aware of a shred of evidence or research to support any link between the use of underarm antiperspirants and breast cancer. The Food and Drug Administration ,which regulates food and cosmetics, also has no data to support the cancer claim. The conclusions of a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which looked for any relationship between breast cancer and underarm antiperspirants showed no increased risk for breast cancer in women who reported shaving with a razor and using underarm products.

--Tait Trussell and his wife are longtime users of antiperspirants.

They are both healthy and smell nice.

 

ELECTRIC DREAMS COME TRUE

Toyota motors recently unveiled an unassuming mid-sized sedan. The 2004 Prius, a streamlined jellybean-like car, stacks up nicely against cars like the Ford Taurus, Honda Accord, or Chevrolet Malibu when it comes to features and amenities. From the standpoint of most passers-by, an oversized hatchback is its most daring feature.

 

Look beneath the hood, however, and things get more complex. Thanks to a hybrid electric drive system that uses batteries when the car is moving slowly, and a gasoline engine on the highways, it never needs to be plugged in, promises fuel mileage over 55 miles per gallon (similar conventional cars get about 30), and greatly reduced pollution. It also features a brand-new electronic steering system. The 2004 Prius will sell for only a few thousand dollars more than similar models that lack the same high-tech wizardry and guzzle a lot more gas.

 

While Toyota has marketed a Prius model since 1999, that one is best classified as an experiment: It loses money for Toyota and is a lot smaller than the top selling midsize sedans (see TAE, September 2001, “The Car of the Future?”). The new Prius, which goes on sale this fall, could well turn a profit for the company. And, like every innovation that the Japanese auto industry creates, it’s a private-sector effort: Even the insanely bureaucratic Japanese government stayed out of Toyota’s hair when it came to developing the Prius.

 

The United States government, on the other hand, tried to persuade auto companies to build something like the Prius. So far, taxpayers and car buyers are still waiting for a payoff. Indeed, the new Prius is almost exactly what former Vice President Al Gore and a coalition of auto-industry executives envisioned when they announced the U.S. Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles in February 1993.

 

The Partnership, an attempt at a less intense version of central planning called industrial policy, aimed to produce a “supercar”: a mid-sized family sedan that got over 60 miles per gallon. Gore said that such cars would go on sale after 2004. Despite over a billion dollars in government spending and research, the first U.S. automaker’s hybrid sedan won’t be available until at least 2005. Even environmentalists rebelled when the project came out in support of high-pollution diesel engines.

 

The Bush administration has revised the effort and cut its budget slightly but it still forges ahead: It now focuses on minivans, pickups, and SUVs. While American automakers rolled out prototype hybrid minivans and SUVs at a White House event this past February, they still won’t hit the market until this fall. And even then, these new models promise little more than a 15 percent fuel economy boost and marginally reduced pollution in return for a price tag of up to $5,000 more than comparable models with conventional engines.

 

But Americans who want one can now buy one of Al Gore’s supercars immediately--provided they’re willing to shop at a Japanese dealership.

 

JUST SIXTEEN WORDS

 

“It is 16 words, and has become an enormously overblown issue,” said national security advisor Condoleeza Rice, dismissing the faulty statement about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in President Bush’s last State of the Union Address. Maybe it would be a good idea if, before the next Address, we were informed in advance which words of the speech don’t count.

 

REAL SEX-ED POLLS

A recent poll suggests that parents aren’t as gung-ho about comprehensive sex education (as opposed to abstinence-based education) as is commonly believed.

 

The libertine Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), likes to state that 81 percent of parents support curricula that teach children about “safe sex.” But according to the new poll, commissioned by the Coalition for Adolescent Sexual Health and conducted by Zogby International, 61.1 percent of parents surveyed “disapprove or strongly disapprove” of this type of curriculum. By contrast, 73.5 percent of the parents “approve or strongly approve of abstinence-centered sex education.”

 

The difference seems to lie in the way the poll questions are phrased. While previous surveys tended to pose general questions, the Zogby poll asked parents about specific aspects of various sex-ed programs. Zogby cited parts of the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education ,which include masturbation instructions for five- to eight-year-olds, put together by SIECUS, and asked whether parents approved or disapproved of them.

 

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2000 asked parents whether “how to use condoms” should be discussed in high school classrooms (right after asking them if students should be taught how to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases); not surprisingly 84 percent said yes. But when Zogby’s pollsters took an actual lesson from an “abstinence plus condoms” curriculum and asked if 12- to 15-year-olds should be encouraged to “use condoms as a method of foreplay” and “think up a sexual fantasy using condoms,” 80 percent of parents strongly disapproved.

 

The Zogby poll also showed that even parents who generally approve of “safe sex” instructions for students experience a change of heart when their own children are involved. According to a report from Baptist Press, “Only 46 percent of parents opposed high school students being taught they can obtain contraceptives without parental approval, but the opposition increased to 70 percent when the question was personalized to their children.”

--Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint Online.

 

NOBEL PEACE POSTURING

In 2000, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to then-South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung. He was honored with the prize largely because of a celebrated June 2000 meeting with North Korean president Kim Jong-Il, in which the two leaders vowed that their countries would put their long years of bitter division behind them and start down the tough road to reunification. As the Nobel folks themselves put it, Kim Dae-Jung won the Nobel prize for many things, but for “peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular.”

 

All this seemed good and peaceful and reconciliatory until now, roughly three years later, when the official word came out that Kim Dae-Jung actually bought his historic meeting with Kim Jong-Il. According to a South Korean independent counsel who investigated the matter for 50 days, the South Korean government secretly funneled $100 million to North Korea shortly before the celebrated summit, essentially purchasing the high profile meeting, perhaps to enhance the outgoing South Korean president’s image.

 

The moral of the story? Do not let your vigilance wane and start putting any stock in the Nobel Peace Prize, for it remains as empty and worthless an award as ever.

 

Kim Dae-Jung may be the first Nobel Peace Prize recipient to actually have shelled out cold hard cash for the honor, but as far as being an undeserving winner whose main contribution to peace has been aggressive self-aggrandizement rather than actual achievement, Mr.Kim fits right in with his recent fellow Nobel winners.

 

Jimmy Carter. He was awarded the Nobel for, among other things, “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.” Which international conflicts did Carter actually solve? Well, the conflict with North Korea, for one--except for the part where the North Koreans kept working on a nuclear bomb while in talks with Carter. The North Koreans now fully admit to quickly ditching the no-nukes framework they signed with the U.S. under Carter’s guidance.

 

One could say that Carter has been equally successful in bridging the gap between the U.S. and Cuba. First he endeared Cuba to all Americans by playing the Good Samaritan and relieving Castro of thousands of Cuban criminals (to whom Carter granted refugee status in the States). Then he went there last year and called vehemently for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba--the embargo that remains in full effect today.

 

And did Carter ever work wonders with that Iranian hostage crisis during his Presidency. He did…well, nothing, actually; and the 52 Americans being held hostage in Tehran were not released until Ronald Reagan was President.

 

But at least Carter had good intentions. An even more deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, of course, was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat won the 1994 award “for his efforts to create peace in the Middle East.” Arafat has since been condemned as an active supporter of terrorism, criticized by even the likes of Hillary Clinton for not putting terrorists behind bars, and has been exiled from the ongoing U.S.-backed peace process because, as President Bush put it last year, “Peace requires a new and different [Palestinian] leadership…leaders not compromised by terror.” The San Francisco Chronicle recently broke the story that Arafat is raising $2.5 million to fund continued terror attacks on Israel and disrupt new prime minister Mahmoud Abbas’ attempts at peace. The money is said to have come from that other prince of peace, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who is no doubt waiting for his own turn as a Nobel winner.

 

Yes, one might be tempted to accuse Kim Dae-Jung of cheapening the Nobel by buying it with paid PR tricks. But such an indictment would be unfair. The Nobel Peace Prize’s currency is already as low as it could possibly go.

--Marni Soupcoff’s column appears Mondays on TAEmag.com.

 

A HISTORY OF FRENCH-HATING

Mark Twain made this observation in his notebook in 1879: “The French are the connecting link between man and the monkey.”

 

A century later, some would say Twain was too generous. Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review, places them lower on the evolutionary scale: He popularized “The Simpsons” phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” long before the recent standoff over Iraq.

 

Such anti-French sentiments are nothing new. There is something about the country that provokes more complaints than any other nation. The International Herald Tribune recently rediscovered a U.S. government pamphlet issued to troops in the aftermath of World War II. It was titled “112 Gripes About the French.” Troops stationed in East Asia got a leaner “29 Gripes About the Filipinos.”

 

Today, experts on France, naturally sympathetic to the place, are trying to trace the roots of what many of them call American “francophobia.”

 

“There is a kind of a rivalry between France and the United States,” says Jean- Philippe Mathy, professor of French at the University of Illinois. In the wake of the French and American revolutions, the two countries have presented competing models of democracy to the world.

 

The French model “is more radical, centralized, and gives birth to socialism,” Mathy says. It places its hopes on ideal notions of humanity--the French “want to completely reform humankind on the basis of abstract reasoning.” It is also strictly secular.

 

The American version, in contrast, gives a role to religion, stresses pragmatism, and emphasizes decentralization. It is suspicious of human engineering.

 

“In the mirror of France, many Americans see what they are grateful for not having become,” writes Mathy.

 

The anti-French mood is not confined to the U.S. In Belgium, the Flemings have long complained that the francophone Walloons are lazy and linguistic chauvinists. The problems in Canada are well known. And in last year’s UPS Europe Business Monitor survey, French companies topped the list of those with whom E.U. businessmen find it hard to work.

 

Most experts contacted by TAE, however, believe that the anti-French feelings in the U.S. are different. “What’s important about the American attitude is the emotional dimension of it,” says Verdaguer. “For instance, you hear about betrayal” and ingratitude. “It’s a way to vent anger.” In contrast, the European “francophobia” tends to be more ideological and intellectualized--and less forthright.

 

And in the U.S. there is no backlash against “French-bashing.” “This is probably explained by the absence of any large French-American community in the U.S.,” Vaisse wrote recently. At present, American critics of France are basking in the rare suspension of PC censorship. Through their animal metaphors and jibes, they are exercising a definitive American freedom--free speech.

--Alex Fak is a TAE intern.

 

THE LEFT WING

Lawrence O’Donnell, a former aide to Senator Pat Moynihan and occasional TV pundit, was tapped by TV writer/producer Aaron Sorkin to serve as a consultant on NBC’s “The West Wing.” That led to O’Donnell’s getting his own show this year, “Mr. Sterling.” Here he is being interviewed on Howard Kurtz’s CNN media show, “Reliable Sources” [on May 25]:

 

KURTZ: “One thing these programs have in common: Conservatives are practically invisible. President Bartlett in “The West Wing” is a Democrat. Martin Sheen [who plays Bartlet], in fact, made anti-war ads before the invasion of Iraq. “Mr. Sterling” is a California liberal based loosely on Jerry Brown. Why aren’t there any Republicans?”

 

O’DONNELL: “You will never get that TV show. You’ll never, ever get the Republican TV show. The Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum, 99 percent leftist liberal, and, like me, socialist. And we don’t know how to write it. We don’t.” Well, at least he’s honest.--from the newsletter of the

Conservative Book Club

 

LIVING LIES

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new book, Living History, weaves a tale that only the most gullible will be able to swallow whole. Unfortunately for Clinton, many will find little value in reading a book that so thoroughly strains credulity.

 

The book reveals nothing new about the junior senator from New York. Clinton presents herself as a harmless schoolgirl, skipping through life innocently and prayerfully, even as scandals and fraud seem to erupt around her constantly. She claims not to understand why accusations of corruption and dishonesty are thrown her way. She is startled, bewildered, and hurt that people would distrust her and her husband. Before they came to Washington, she mourns, they used to think of themselves as good people. That nasty right-wing conspiracy changed everything.

 

The naive-girl picture is simply not convincing. It is impossible to believe that a woman of the senator’s intelligence could be as oblivious to her surroundings as Clinton claims to have been. And her book betrays the true nature of Clinton’s character--she is a woman who serves her political ambitions at any cost.

 

Perhaps the best case in point is how Senator Clinton sacrifices her allegedly much-loved husband to her Presidential aspirations. Clinton seems to have no concern about any embarrassment to her spouse from her descriptions of certain Monica-related episodes. While she gushes about her husband in early chapters of the book (she keeps “falling in love with him all over again” and “lighting up” when he enters the room), the discussions about Monica are harsh. Of course Mr. Clinton deserves it, but would a woman who truly supports her husband berate him as Clinton does in Living History? This public Monica discussion does not fit the picture of a woman trying to save her marriage. It does fit the picture of a woman who would like to run for President freed of her husband’s scandals.

 

As Clinton relates the story of her life in the White House, it is clear that she has always valued her own political agenda above that of her husband’s. This is not a post-Monica, get-back-at philandering- hubby phenomenon. Phrases such as “my White House agenda” and “my domestic policy agenda” permeate the book. On trips overseas, she discusses certain policies with world leaders, not because she had been asked to do so on behalf of the administration, but because “I favored” the policies. She acknowledges that she told the President on multiple occasions that if he signed a certain bill or supported a certain policy, she would “publicly oppose” him.

 

Hillary Clinton is a woman who still bears a grudge over being told in high school that a girl couldn’t become president of the student government. She cheerfully relates stories of people who thought “the wrong Clinton” had been elected President. Clinton never says so explicitly, but her book leaves little doubt about how badly she wants the job in the Oval Office.

--Tara Ross is an attorney in Texas.