Category: World at Large

Oarsmen of the Caribbean.

Back as of Monday from the Dominican Republic, where I enjoyed a crew reunion weekend in lovely Cabarete, a friendly backpacker-going-on-tourist town rife with European ex-pats and kitesurfing experts. With the local reputation in mind, we spent much of the weekend taking kitesurf lessons at Extreme Cabarete (kitesurfing, skate park…that’s extreme in the Harold & Kumar sense), enjoying sun, surf, food, drink, and the rather underwhelming De La Hoya-Mayerweather fight at the many restaurants and nightclubs along the beach, taking in more of the local flavor in neighboring Sosua, and staying up into the wee hours at our hotel, the (highly-recommended) Cabarete East, indulging in marathon sessions of competitive backgammon. (Yep, that’s how we roll.) All in all, a very fun trip…although unfortunately a sore throat I brought with me to the island on Thursday had metamorphosed into a full-blown virulent cold by Sunday, and I’ve been waylaid in bed the past few days trying to recuperate. I must say, it’s more fun to feel sick under the Caribbean sun.

New Leaders in the Old World.

“Within the next few weeks I won’t be the prime minister of this country. In all probability a Scot will become prime minister of this country and that’s someone who built one of the strongest economies in the world and who I’ve always said would make a great prime minister.” With recent tough defeats for Labor in Scotland punctuating his closing weeks, Tony Blair announces he will make an announcement tomorrow concerning his forthcoming resignation and likely replacement by Chancellor Gordon Brown. And, across the channel, France elects Nicolas Sarkozy as its new president, a conservative who’s seen as both US-friendly and Dubya-friendly. Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne wonders what recent events mean for European — and American — progressives. Update: Tony Blair announces his last day: June 27.

Re-U in the DR.

Yes, so it’s been quiet around here again — the usual reasons. And, what with the GOP debate this evening and
Spiderman 3 on Friday, there’s much to discuss in and around here in short order. But, sadly, GitM is likely off again until early next week, as in a few short hours I’ll be flying down to Puerto Plata, in the Dominican Republic, for a travel-reunion with old-friends. Y’see, it was ten years ago this weekend that my lightweight crew boat, though derided in the early standings, won the National Championship, and thus we’ve all decided to congregate and commemorate the occasion in grand style. (This also means my ten-year college reunion is in a month…my, time flies.) So, at any rate, I’m off to escape the dustbin of history for a bit and go enjoy the sights, sounds, and shores of the DR. Have a good weekend and a safe, happy, and memorable Cinco de Mayo. (And, while Tony Soprano may be correct in noting that “‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation,” I have to say, back then, we were pretty darned fast.)

Veto-Powered | Benchmarks the Benchmark.

“‘Setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure.'” As expected, Dubya vetoed the recent Iraq spending bill passed in Congress, only the second time he’s exercised his veto power (the first being stem cells.) And, with few options at their disposal and a veto-override failing in the House 222-203, the Dems have already dropped their troop-withdrawal timetable, and now look to fashion a compromise using the language of benchmarks. “‘I believe the president is open to a discussion on benchmarks,’ said Senate Democratic Whip Richard J. Durbin…White House officials are also looking to benchmarks as an area of compromise, but they want them to be tied to rewards for achievement, not penalties for failure.” Um, what achievements would those be, and how would we evaluate them? It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations all over again. Four years after “Mission Accomplished, I don’t see how we can feasibly expect this administration to offer anything other than the same rose-scented lies about the chaos in Baghdad. They have no other setting.

Congress Steps Up.

“‘How many more suicide bombs must kill American soldiers before this president offers a timeline for our troops to come home?’ asked Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.), a freshman Iraq war veteran who lost nine fellow paratroopers this week in one of the deadliest attacks of the war. ‘How many more military leaders must declare the war will not be won militarily before this president demands that the Iraqis stand up and fight for their country? How many more terrorists will President Bush’s foreign policy breed before he focuses a new strategy, a real strategy? This bill says enough is enough.’” By a vote of 218-208 in the House and 51-46 in the Senate, the Democratic Congress — living up to their promise in 2006 — calls for a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq. Dubya has said several times that he’ll veto the bill, and is expected to do so in short order.

Small Comfort, greater shame.

“‘As expected, after it opened it was elbow to elbow,’ the history says. ‘The comfort women…had some resistance to selling themselves to men who just yesterday were the enemy, and because of differences in language and race, there were a great deal of apprehensions at first. But they were paid highly, and they gradually came to accept their work peacefully.‘” The continuing furor in Asia over Japan’s ignominious use of “comfort women” (re: forced prostitution) during WWII reaches America, as it comes to light that occupation Japan created a similar “comfort system” for American GI’s in the year after the war (until MacArthur shut it down in the spring of 1946.) “An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war…Although there are suspicions, there is not clear evidence non-Japanese comfort women were imported to Japan as part of the program.”

Gamecock-fighting.

“‘We tried to explain to the folks in Boston early on that it’s a little different here,’ says Terry Sullivan, a veteran political operative who is running former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in the Palmetto State. ‘It’s kind of a knife fight.'” Meanwhile, right down the road in my home state, the Republicans already seem to be fighting in the gutter, as Salon‘s Michael Scherer reports. “‘The person who wins the South Carolina primary generally becomes the nominee,’ explained South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham…’It’s a test of a red state. It will be a real test of strength among conservatives in general. So you have to have your best game on.’“

In a World of Hurt.

“Writing is a way to have a dialogue with yourself. You can never compete with something in the past, in memory. Like some people said, we love what we can’t have. In this world, the end becomes the beginning. It’s very unfair for anyone around him [Tony] in the present, because they can never compete with his imagination or his memory. We love what we can’t have, and we can’t have what we love.”

Since I spent Friday evening watching In the Mood for Love — a tale of a romance-that-almost-was, told in furtive hallway glances — and 2046 — a broader and more diffuse disquisition on love and heartache — back-to-back, here’s an intriguing 2004 interview with director Wong Kar-Wai on how they fit together: “Mood is a chapter in 2046. It’s like 2046 is a big symphony, and Mood is one of its movements.” Maybe so, but I’m glad I saw them as I did. At first Tony Leung’s Chow in 2046, a dissolute, world-weary rake, seemed eons apart from the quiet, somewhat nervous journalist of ITMFL. But the films are clearly meant to be taken as a piece. From its first images (hole, train) to its last (taxi, hole), 2046 dwells on the corrosive consequences for Chow of ITMFL: The memory of Su (Maggie Cheung), bottled up in the tree, is eating Chow alive…hence, the whole otherwise-non sequitur sci-fi subplot (ITMFL told again, by Chow to himself) involving the indecisive android. (Um, the last few sentences make more sense if you’ve seen the films, but only slightly.)

Now I really kinda wished I’d watched Days of Being Wild, the first part of Wong’s trilogy, before these two. But then again, however sumptuously filmed (these movies are absolutely gorgeous to look at), and however tempered by the presence of several stunningly beautiful actresses (Cheung, Zhang Zi Yi, Gong Li, Faye Wong), there’s only so much exquisite melancholy I can take in a given evening. By the end of this extended tale of romance and loss, I had half a mind to just curl up in a ball and drift amid a sea of despond for the rest of the night, lost in the phantom reverie that was both the allure and prison of “2046” in 2046. Even stronger was the urge to light a cigarette and watch the tendrils of smoke slowly writhe and curl through a shaft of light, preferably to the strands of some vintage Nat King Cole. If nothing else, these very worthwhile films suggest, if you’re going to ruminate on old heartaches, you might as well look really good doing it.

Taxation With Representation?

By a vote of 241 to 177, the House votes to give DC a full (voting) seat in Congress. But, Eleanor Holmes Norton shouldn’t practice her ayes and nays just yet — the bill still has to make it through a recalcitrant Senate, where a Republican filibuster is likely, as well as past a White House inclined to veto the bill. Nevertheless, said DC mayor Adrian Fenty, “This was a statement about our country’s principles, values and morals. That we would no longer be the only democratic-represented country in the world where the citizens of the nation’s capital did not have a vote in the national legislature.”