Hou Hsiao-Hsien on Ozu

(video by warong)

In the movies of Ozu family is a backdrop, says Hou Hsiao-Hsien: it's a study of a society in evolution: a daughter gets eventually married; only, this is observed on slightly different historic periods, and the difference is of two or three years, the end of the forties, the beginning of the fifties, the middle of the fifties: the evolution of post-war Japanese society followed very slowly, with great patience and love for the detail.

(Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

Vyacheslav Tikhonov Passed Away

Vyacheslav Tikhonov passed away. The great Russian actor played Prince Andrei in War and Peace, the cinematic adaptation of Sergei Bondarchuk, and also Stirlitz, in the popular Soviet TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring.


(Filmofilia)

November Jams

(video by NBA)

for my friend Dan D.

(Blogosphere)

The Swiss and the Minarets

Peter Stamm
(photo: Gaby Gerster)

Switzerland is famous for its mountains; it became recently famous also for its minarets. There are 4 mosques with minarets there and a population of 350,000 nominal Muslims, mostly Europeans from Bosnia and Kosovo. 13% of these Muslims go regularly to prayer (I took these data from The Guardian). Recently the prime minister of Turkey declared that minarets are the bayonets of Islam; Swiss folks took it seriously and banned future minarets in their country. As I said, most Muslims from there came from Bosnia and Kosovo, which are geographically situated in former Yugoslavia, it means not in Turkey. Here's what Peter Stamm has to say in today's NY Times:

Three years ago I was invited to the Tehran International Book Fair; afterward I traveled around the country. The mosques I visited were so empty as to give the impression that Iran was as secular as Western Europe.

It wasn’t until I took a trip to a place of pilgrimage in the mountains that I saw large numbers of the faithful. The traffic started piling up even before my group reached the town of Imamzadeh Davood. A few of the pilgrims were making the trek on foot, together with the sheep they intended to sacrifice. The narrow streets were bustling just as at Christian places of pilgrimage: booths crammed with junk, groups of teenagers taking pictures of each other, every nook and cranny packed with candles lighted by believers in the hope their wishes would be fulfilled.

I was received by the mayor and invited to dinner — the first Swiss he had ever met. He showed me the mosque and led me to the tomb of the saint. I, the unbeliever, was allowed into places where even pilgrims were not permitted. During my three weeks in Iran, my faith, or rather the lack thereof, was never an issue. However bellicose the political face of Islam often appears, in everyday practice what I experienced was a religion of hospitality and tolerance.

Switzerland, on the other hand, appeared alarmingly intolerant last weekend, when 58 percent of our voters approved a ban on the building of new minarets. When the minaret referendum was proposed by the rightist Swiss People’s Party, no one really took it seriously.

Some consideration was given to having it declared invalid on the grounds that it was unconstitutional as well as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, but in the end the government agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, probably in the hope that it would be roundly defeated and thereby become a symbol of Swiss open-mindedness. So certain were the politicians of prevailing that hardly any publicity was fielded against the initiative. As a result, the streets were dominated by the proponents’ posters, which showed a veiled woman in front of a forest of minarets that looked like missiles.

Minarets have never been a problem in Switzerland. There are four in the entire country, some of which have been standing for decades. (One of them is in my city but I’ve never seen it.) And only two other minarets were being planned. Most mosques are in faceless industrial districts where no one notices them. But perhaps that is exactly the problem. Islamic immigrants don’t live with us but beside us, just as French, German, Italian and Romansch-speaking Swiss live alongside each other without a great deal of animosity — or interaction.

The average Swiss citizen has no real contact with Islam. Headscarves are seldom seen on the street, and chadors are practically nonexistent. Moreover, when young proponents of the ban talk about problems with Muslims, they almost exclusively mean young men from the Balkans, who come across as male chauvinists but are almost never active members of Muslim communities. Most people encounter Islam only through the news media, which don’t report on the Muslims in our country but focus on terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Iranian plans for an atomic bomb and Muammar el-Qaddafi’s absurd proposal to abolish Switzerland.

It’s hard to find one overarching explanation for why the Swiss voted as they did. Similar referendums have brought surprises: 35 percent of voters wanting to do away with the army, for instance, or 58 percent approving of same-sex partnerships. The prevailing Swiss attitude is both conservative and liberal: on the one hand everything should stay the way it is, on the other everyone should be able to do what he or she wants.

What’s most conspicuous in these referendums is that we are a nation of pragmatists, inclined to our dour obstinacy, and we owe our success not to grand ideas but to problem-solving. So focused are we on getting things done, it almost doesn’t matter if the problem isn’t a problem, or if the solution risks sullying the country’s reputation. We Swiss sacrificed our good standing as a multicultural and open-minded society to ban the construction of minarets that no one intends to build in order to defend ourselves against an Islam that has never existed in Switzerland.

Perhaps Muslims here are more Swiss than the rest of us might think. They too will solve the problem we’ve made for them: they are likely to swallow the results of this referendum, do without their minarets and continue to assemble for prayer, unnoticed and unperturbed.

(Zoon Politikon)

The Bookshelf of Yoko

(video by Yokomaririn)

の柴田洋子の本棚にあるものをご紹介。本日 は漫画家・吉田戦車さんの本をご紹介。代表作、「伝染るんです」 が実写化されたというニュースには驚かされました。古田新太さん がかわうそ君を演じてるそうです。私が吉田戦車さんの本にはまっ たきっかけとなった、永井均さんの本「マンガは哲学する」もオス スメです。

Okay, it sounds like Japanese, and I know that this is not your strongest point (mine neither, by the way). But Yoko is so nice, that I wanted to know what's all about.

First of all, Yokomaririn and HANAFUBUKI are the same person: Yoko. Her videos were so great art that she decided to start o second youTube channel, just to be more herself.

Here is about the books she loves. it's all manga, and, to be more specific, star wars manga. It's Yoshida, and Furuta, and Nagai. Well, Yoshida is much more, look here:


With Furuta we come back to earth (or more likely up, on the stars):


As for Nagai, here is an intriguing image: is it an extra-terrestrial Yoko?



Anyway, this is my English version of Yoko's text; hopefully I'm not too far :)

(The Thousand faces of HANAFUBUKI)

Surge in Afghanistan

(video by Big3News)

From now on, Afghanistan is absolutely Obama's war. His decision is criticized both by Republicans (why did he speak about a withdrawal timetable?) and Democrats (this would be Obama's Vietnam). Why should Obama refuse to think at an exit strategy? Taliban will still be there in ten years; does it mean US should still be there in ten years? Why should Obama downplay now the US military presence? Now Taliban has the initiative in the war; does anyone in US believe Obama should consider the war lost and start withdrawal?

Any decision is risky and regardless of anything Obama decided, any scenario for the outcome remains on the table.

I looked in US press for the opinions of some well-known political pundits. David Ignatius considers Obama's decision the only possible. David Brooks analyzes the differences between applying a COIN strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ultimately stands near the President. Bob Herbert considers the decision a tragic mistake. Thomas Friedman believes surge should be rather focused on development of new green technologies: the best way, he thinks, to defend US status. Michael Gerson is more concerned about present developments in Iran. Niall Ferguson is preoccupied more by the financial crisis: he sees here the greatest risk for US empire: banking crisis followed by fiscal crisis would lead to impossibility of maintaining the military might, then end is near.

It is probably impossible to bring all these opinions in this post. I would rather select David Ignatius and Niall Ferguson. You can read the others by clicking on their names: that will lead you to their columns.

David Ignatius in W. Post:

President Obama has been deliberating for months over his Afghanistan strategy. But when it came time to explain that decision Tuesday, he was cool and analytical -- and seemed almost serene about a policy that he knows will be attacked from both sides of the aisle.

I am painfully clear that this is politically unpopular, Obama told a small group of columnists. Not only is this not popular, but it's least popular in my own party. But that's not how I make decisions.

Obama spoke during a lunch in the White House library. Shelved on the walls around him were books recording the trials and triumphs of his predecessors, who waged wars with sometimes agonizing consequences. But this president doesn't do agony -- at least not in public.

His lunchtime presentation of the details of the new strategy was focused and precise. He didn't talk about victory, and he didn't raise his voice. He did not attempt to convey the blood and tears of the battlefield, or the punishing loneliness of command. Even in this most intense and consequential decision of his presidency, he remains no-drama Obama.

The president made his case on a grand stage Tuesday night at West Point, facing the Corps of Cadets. But it was less a call to battle than, as he put it in his speech, to "end this war successfully."

Obama has made the right decision: The only viable exit strategy from Afghanistan is one that starts with a bang -- by adding 30,000 more U.S. troops to secure the major population centers, so that control can be transferred to the Afghan army and police. This transfer process, starting in July 2011, is the heart of his strategy.

Military commanders appear comfortable with Obama's decision, although they wish it hadn't taken so long. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is said to be especially pleased that Obama decided to rush the additional troops to Afghanistan in just six months, sooner than Gen. Stanley McChrystal had requested. The speedy deployment gets McChrystal the most U.S. force in the fight as fast as possible and enough to help him gain the initiative, said one senior military officer.

But politically, it's an Afghanistan strategy with something to make everyone unhappy: Democrats will be angry that the president is escalating a costly war at a time when the struggling economy should be his top priority. Republicans will protest that by setting a short, 18-month deadline to begin withdrawing those forces, he's signaling to the Taliban that they can win if they just are patient.

Obama insisted Tuesday afternoon that "given the circumstances, this is the best option available to us."At another point, he conceded: "None of this is easy. I mean, we are choosing from a menu of options that are less than ideal.

There has been much talk about how this war is Obama's Vietnam, but the president rejected the analogy. The Vietnamese never killed 3,000 people in America, as al-Qaeda did; we aren't fighting a nationalist movement in Afghanistan; and he isn't making an open-ended commitment.

To pretend that somehow this is a distant country that has nothing to do with us is just factually incorrect, he told the columnists. I agree with him -- Afghanistan is vital to U.S. security interests. But I don't think he will convince many House Democrats.

The most important question about Obama's strategy isn't political but pragmatic: Will it succeed? He has defined success downward, by focusing on the ability to transfer control to the Afghans. He shows little interest in the big ideas of counterinsurgency and insists he will avoid a nation-building commitment in Afghanistan. That will make it easier to declare a good enough outcome in July 2011, if not victory.

When I asked Obama if the Taliban wouldn't simply wait us out, he was dismissive: This is an argument that I don't give a lot of credence to, because if you follow the logic of this argument, then you would never leave. Right? Essentially you'd be signing on to have Afghanistan as a protectorate of the United States indefinitely.

Obama thinks that setting deadlines will force the Afghans to get their act together at last. That strikes me as the most dubious premise of his strategy. He is telling his adversary that he will start leaving on a certain date, and telling his ally to be ready to take over then, or else. That's the weak link in an otherwise admirable decision -- the idea that we strengthen our hand by announcing in advance that we plan to fold it.

(Please send your comments at davidignatius@washpost.com)

Niall Ferguson in Newsweek:

Call it the fractal geometry of fiscal crisis. If you fly across the Atlantic on a clear day, you can look down and see the same phenomenon but on four entirely different scales. At one extreme there is tiny Iceland. Then there is little Ireland, followed by medium-size Britain. They're all a good deal smaller than the mighty United States. But in each case the economic crisis has taken the same form: a massive banking crisis, followed by an equally massive fiscal crisis as the government stepped in to bail out the private financial system.

Size matters, of course. For the smaller countries, the financial losses arising from this crisis are a great deal larger in relation to their gross domestic product than they are for the United States. Yet the stakes are higher in the American case. In the great scheme of things—let's be frank—it does not matter much if Iceland teeters on the brink of fiscal collapse, or Ireland, for that matter. The locals suffer, but the world goes on much as usual.

But if the United States succumbs to a fiscal crisis, as an increasing number of economic experts fear it may, then the entire balance of global economic power could shift. Military experts talk as if the president's decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country's long-term national security. Call the United States what you like—superpower, hegemon, or empire—but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power. Here's why.

The disciples of John Maynard Keynes argue that increasing the federal debt by roughly a third was necessary to avoid Depression 2.0. Well, maybe, though some would say the benefits of fiscal stimulus have been oversold and that the magic multiplier (which is supposed to transform $1 of government spending into a lot more than $1 of aggregate demand) is trivially small.

Credit where it's due. The positive number for third-quarter growth in the United States would have been a lot lower without government spending. Between half and two thirds of the real increase in gross domestic product was attributable to government programs, especially the Cash for Clunkers scheme and the subsidy to first-time home buyers. But we are still a very long way from a self--sustaining recovery. The third-quarter growth number has just been revised downward from 3.5 percent to 2.8 percent. And that's not wholly surprising. Remember, what makes a stimulus actually work is the change in borrowing by the whole public sector. Since the federal government was already running deficits, and since the states are actually raising taxes and cutting spending, the actual size of the stimulus is closer to 4 percent of GDP spread over the years 2007 to 2010—a lot less than that headline 11.2 percent deficit.

Meanwhile, let's consider the cost of this muted stimulus. The deficit for the fiscal year 2009 came in at more than $1.4 trillion—about 11.2 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That's a bigger deficit than any seen in the past 60 years—only slightly larger in relative terms than the deficit in 1942. We are, it seems, having the fiscal policy of a world war, without the war. Yes, I know, the United States is at war in Afghanistan and still has a significant contingent of troops in Iraq. But these are trivial conflicts compared with the world wars, and their contribution to the gathering fiscal storm has in fact been quite modest (little more than 1.8 percent of GDP, even if you accept the estimated cumulative cost of $3.2 trillion published by Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz in February 2008).

And that $1.4 trillion is just for starters. According to the CBO's most recent projections, the federal deficit will decline from 11.2 percent of GDP this year to 9.6 percent in 2010, 6.1 percent in 2011, and 3.7 percent in 2012. After that it will stay above 3 percent for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, in dollar terms, the total debt held by the public (excluding government agencies, but including foreigners) rises from $5.8 trillion in 2008 to $14.3 trillion in 2019—from 41 percent of GDP to 68 percent.

In other words, there is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline projections. Nothing to worry about, retort -deficit-loving economists like Paul Krugman. In 1945, the figure was 113 percent.

Well, let's leave aside the likely huge differences between the United States in 1945 and in 2039. Consider the simple fact that under the CBO's alternative (i.e., more pessimistic) fiscal scenario, the debt could hit 215 percent by 2039. That's right: more than double the annual output of the entire U.S. economy.

Forecasting anything that far ahead is not about predicting the future. Everything hinges on the assumptions you make about demographics, Medicare costs, and a bunch of other variables. For example, the CBO assumes an average annual real GDP growth rate of 2.3 percent over the next 30 years. The point is to show the implications of the current chronic imbalance between federal spending and federal revenue. And the implication is clear. Under no plausible scenario does the debt burden decline. Under one of two plausible scenarios it explodes by a factor of nearly five in relation to economic output.

Another way of doing this kind of exercise is to calculate the net present value of the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems. One recent estimate puts them at about $104 trillion, 10 times the stated federal debt.

No sweat, reply the Keynesians. We can easily finance $1 trillion a year of new government debt. Just look at the way Japan's households and financial institutions funded the explosion of Japanese public debt (up to 200 percent of GDP) during the two "lost decades" of near-zero growth that began in 1990.

Unfortunately for this argument, the evidence to support it is lacking. American households were, in fact, net sellers of Treasuries in the second quarter of 2009, and on a massive scale. Purchases by mutual funds were modest ($142 billion), while purchases by pension funds and insurance companies were trivial ($12 billion and $10 billion, respectively). The key, therefore, becomes the banks. Currently, according to the Bridgewater hedge fund, U.S. banks' asset allocation to government bonds is about 13 percent, which is relatively low by historical standards. If they raised that proportion back to where it was in the early 1990s, it's conceivable they could absorb about $250 billion a year of government bond purchases.But that's a big if. Data for October showed commercial banks selling Treasuries.

That just leaves two potential buyers: the Federal Reserve, which bought the bulk of Treasuries issued in the second quarter; and foreigners, who bought $380 billion. Morgan Stanley's analysts have crunched the numbers and concluded that, in the year ending June 2010, there could be a shortfall in demand on the order of $598 billion—about a third of projected new issuance.

Of course, our friends in Beijing could ride to the rescue by increasing their already vast holdings of U.S. government debt. For the past five years or so, they have been amassing dollar--denominated international reserves in a wholly unprecedented way, mainly as a result of their interventions to prevent the Chinese currency from appreciating against the dollar.

Right now, the People's Republic of China holds about 13 percent of U.S. government bonds and notes in public hands. At the peak of this process of reserve accumulation, back in 2007, it was absorbing as much as 75 percent of monthly Treasury issuance.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch in the realm of international finance. According to Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, if this trend were to continue, the U.S. -current-account deficit could rise to 15 percent of GDP by 2030, and its net debt to the rest of the world could hit 140 percent of GDP. In such a scenario, the U.S. would have to pay as much as 7 percent of GDP every year to foreigners to service its external borrowings.

Could that happen? I doubt it. For one thing, the Chinese keep grumbling that they have far too many Treasuries already. For another, a significant dollar depreciation seems more probable, since the United States is in the lucky position of being able to borrow in its own currency, which it reserves the right to print in any quantity the Federal Reserve chooses.

Now, who said the following? "My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar."

Seems pretty reasonable to me. The surprising thing is that this was none other than Paul Krugman, the high priest of Keynesianism, writing back in March 2003. A year and a half later he was comparing the U.S. deficit with Argentina's (at a time when it was 4.5 percent of GDP). Has the economic situation really changed so drastically that now the same Krugman believes it was deficits that saved us, and wants to see an even larger deficit next year? Perhaps. But it might just be that the party in power has changed.

History strongly supports the proposition that major financial crises are followed by major fiscal crises. On average, write Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their new book, This Time Is Different, government debt rises by 86 percent during the three years following a banking crisis. In the wake of these debt explosions, one of two things can happen: either a default, usually when the debt is in a foreign currency, or a bout of high inflation that catches the creditors out. The history of all the great European empires is replete with such episodes. Indeed, serial default and high inflation have tended to be the surest symptoms of imperial decline.

As the U.S. is unlikely to default on its debt, since it's all in dollars, the key question, therefore, is whether we are going to see the Fed printing money—buying newly minted Treasuries in exchange for even more newly minted greenbacks—followed by the familiar story of rising prices and declining real-debt burdens. It's a scenario many investors around the world fear. That is why they are selling dollars. That is why they are buying gold.

Yet from where I am sitting, inflation is a pretty remote prospect. With U.S. unemployment above 10 percent, labor unions relatively weak, and huge quantities of unused capacity in global manufacturing, there are none of the pressures that made for stagflation (low growth plus high prices) in the 1970s. Public expectations of inflation are also very stable, as far as can be judged from poll data and the difference between the yields on regular and inflation-protected bonds.

So here's another scenario—which in many ways is worse than the inflation scenario. What happens is that we get a rise in the real interest rate, which is the actual interest rate minus inflation. According to a substantial amount of empirical research by economists, including Peter Orszag (now at the Office of Management and Budget), significant increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio tend to increase the real interest rate. One recent study concluded that "a 20 percentage point increase in the U.S. government-debt-to-GDP ratio should lead to a 20–120 basis points [0.2–1.2 percent] increase in real interest rates." This can happen in one of three ways: the nominal interest rate rises and inflation stays the same; the nominal rate stays the same and inflation falls; or—the nightmare case—the nominal interest rate rises and inflation falls.

Today's Keynesians deny that this can happen. But the historical evidence is against them. There are a number of past cases (e.g., France in the 1930s) when nominal rates have risen even at a time of deflation. What's more, it seems to be happening in Japan right now. Just last week Hirohisa Fujii, Japan's new finance minister, admitted that he was highly concerned about the recent rise in Japanese government bond yields. In the very same week, the government admitted that Japan was back in deflation after three years of modest price increases.

It's not inconceivable that something similar could happen to the United States. Foreign investors might ask for a higher nominal return on U.S. Treasuries to compensate them for the weakening dollar. And inflation might continue to surprise us on the downside. After all, consumer price inflation is in negative territory right now.

Why should we fear rising real interest rates ahead of inflation? The answer is that for a heavily indebted government and an even more heavily indebted public, they mean an increasingly heavy debt-service burden. The relatively short duration (maturity) of most of these debts means that a large share has to be rolled over each year. That means any rise in rates would feed through the system scarily fast.

Already, the federal government's interest payments are forecast by the CBO to rise from 8 percent of revenues in 2009 to 17 percent by 2019, even if rates stay low and growth resumes. If rates rise even slightly and the economy flatlines, we'll get to 20 percent much sooner. And history suggests that once you are spending as much as a fifth of your revenues on debt service, you have a problem. It's all too easy to find yourself in a vicious circle of diminishing credibility. The investors don't believe you can afford your debts, so they charge higher interest, which makes your position even worse.

This matters more for a superpower than for a small Atlantic island for one very simple reason. As interest payments eat into the budget, something has to give—and that something is nearly always defense expenditure. According to the CBO, a significant decline in the relative share of national security in the federal budget is already baked into the cake. On the Pentagon's present plan, defense spending is set to fall from above 4 percent now to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and to 2.6 percent of GDP by 2028.

Over the longer run, to my own estimated departure date of 2039, spending on health care rises from 16 percent to 33 percent of GDP (some of the money presumably is going to keep me from expiring even sooner). But spending on everything other than health, Social Security, and interest payments drops from 12 percent to 8.4 percent.

This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America's debt crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say that cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term should be the administration's most important task—significantly more than the 24 percent who see health-care reform as the No. 1 priority. But cutting the deficit in half is simply not enough. If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.

The precedents are certainly there. Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don't forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat.

Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.

(Please send your comments at nfergus@fas.harvard.edu)

(Zoon Politikon)

Dan Romascanu - Hiroshima, My Love / 4 - Muzeul Pacii

Ground Zero After the Bomb

Hiroshima are o asezare pitoreasca, fiind situata intr-o delta, cu insule despartite de canale si legate intre ele de poduri. Muzeul Memorial al Pacii cum ii este numele complet a fost deschis in 1955, la zece ani dupa ce bomba atomica a explodat la Hiroshima si este situat pe una din aceste insule. La capatul ei un pod in forma de T leaga insula de doua dintre peninsulele deltei. Acest pod a fost Ground Zero al exploziei atomice care a distrus orasul la 6 august 1945. Primul Ground Zero al erei atomice.

Pentru cineva care a vizitat Yad Vashem - muzeul Holocaustului din Ierusalim punctele de similaritate sunt evidente, dar si diferentele. Ca si Yad Vashem motto-ul este never again - asemenea oroare nu trebuie sa se repete. Contextul istoric este prezentat in mod atent, dar materialele cele mai emotionante sunt ramasitele vietilor distruse, mai putine prin natura evenimentului, dar cu atat mai singulare si mai expresive. Ca si la Yad Vashem tinerii japonezi sunt adusi cu scolile pentru a recepta direct impactul acestei traume nationale. Hiroshima pare sa faca parte din mitul national japonez la fel cum Holocaustul face parte din cel israelian.

Dar sunt si deosebiri. Cladirea conceputa de Kenzo Tange este cu mult mai putin inspirata decat complexul proiectat in Ierusalim de Moshe Safdie. Organizarea spatiului interior este si ea mult mai putin inspirata, mai apropriata de un muzeu traditional desi puterea documentara si emotionala a exponatelor vorbeste in multe cazuri de la sine.

Peace Bell

La intrarea in muzeu vizitatorul este intampinat de clopotul pacii, care la fiecare 6 august marcheaza inceputul si sfarsitul ceremoniei memoriale care are loc in Parcul Pacii. Langa el un ceas digital marcheaza timpul si punctele de reper ale erei atomice - numarul de zile scurse de la prima explozie atomica la 6 august 1945, si numarul de zile de la cea mai recenta explozie atomica (ceasul indica vreo suta si ceva de zile trecute cred de la o explozie efectuata de Coreea de Nord).

Atomic Era Clock

Prima sectie care il intampina pe vizitator este cea istorica. Cateva zeci de panouri descriu istoria Japoniei si a Hiroshimei de la inceputul secolului 20, instaurarea regimului militarist, intrarea in razboi, pregatirile americane si criteriile dupa care Hiroshima a fost aleasa ca poarta de intrare in infernul atomic. Aici se afla si cel mai discutabil aspect al acestui muzeu. Istoria evenimentelor care au precedat bomba atomica incearca sa se prezinte ca obiectiva, dar este clar ca lipseste acea analiza lucida si fara menajamente pe care am vazut-o la muzeul de istorie al Germaniei de la Berlin. Este mentionat critic regimul militarist, si faptul ca Hiroshima era un obiectiv militar de prima importanta, un fel de San Diego al Japoniei. Alte amanunte ale istoriei sunt insa mentionate intr-un limbaj sa-i zicem precaut. Desigur am putut citi doar versiunea engleza a textelor. Masacrul si atrocitatile de la Nanking comise de japonezi in 1937 sunt descrise doar ca incidente de razboi, si este disputat numarul victimelor (80 de mii dupa versiunea japoneza, 300 de mii dupa cea chineza). Nu am retinut nimic despre ororile lagarelor de prizonieri sau despre sclavia la care au fost supusi coreenii si mai ales coreencele deportati din tara lor. Pregatirile si procesul de decizie al americanilor sunt prezentate tehnic, fara a mentiona ca scopul declarat a fost scurtarea razboiului in conditiile in care Japonia refuzase capitularea neconditionata. Acest dezechilibru in prezentare este regretabil, scazand valoarea morala a argumentului si a mesajului pacifist care este scopul existentei acestui muzeu.

Peace Museum - History Room

Prezentarea istorica se opreste la momentul exploziei. Sunt descrise in mod detaliat pregatirile americane, numiti savantii care au participat la proiectarea bombei, si justificarea alegerii Hiroshimei. Din 13 orase care fusesera desemnate initial ca tinte potentiale lista a fost scurtata la patru, criteriile fiind geografice deoarece americanii doreau sa studieze efectele bombei intr-un centru urban locuit de populatie civila. Hiroshima a fost aleasa in cele din urma pentru ca din cele patru orase era singurul in care nu exista nicio inchisoare cu prizonieri americani.

Doua machete reprezinta orasul inainte si dupa bombardament. Nu a ramas nimic in picioare pe o raza de cativa kilometri de Ground Zero, cu exceptia catorva structuri extrem de solide de beton. Fotografiile din ziua exploziei care sa rememoreze dezastrul sunt extrem de putine - cinci la numar - si au fost facute de un fotograf care la momentul exploziei se afla la cativa kilometri, care s-a suit in masina, a ajuns in centru, a apucat sa faca cinci fotografii, dupa care a abandonat aparatul de fotografiat si a inceput sa-i ajute pe raniti.

Cel mai emotionant exponat din muzeu este insa cred un ceas de mana incremenit in eternitate la opt si un sfert, ora exploziei.

Watch

'Domul atomic' este una dintre putinele structuri care a rezistat desi era foarte aproape de Ground Zero. Era o structura ultrasolida din beton, care apartinea camerei de comert a orasului si adapostea expozitiile industriale. Voi scrie despre el in episodul viitor. Muzeul adaposteste un model care este placat cu scrisori de protest trimise de primarul Hiroshimei fiecarui sef de stat din tarile care fac experiente atomice. Hiroshima doreste sa faca din tragedia orasului un exemplu si sa lanseze un avertisment si un apel omenirii sa renunte la inarmarea atomica. Pana acum nu imi pare ca o face cu prea mult succes.

Atomic Dome - Model

Sectiile ulterioare ale muzeului sunt dedicate urmarilor exploziei atomice - efectul termic imediat, unda de soc, radiatiile. Majoritatea celor aflati pe o raza de cativa kilometri de locul exploziei au murit imediat sau dupa cateva zile, Din unii nu a ramas decat umbra, imprimata in piatra la lumina si caldura de infern a exploziei. Altii au fost raniti si au suferit de arsuri cumplite, li s-au tipit hainele de trupuri si modelurile kimonourilor li s-au imprimat in piele. Multi au suferit ani de zile si au murit datorita efectului radiatiilor, numarul cazurilor de cancer intre supravietuitori fiind de cateva ori mai mare decat media statistica.

Shade of a Man

Kimono

Spre sfarsitul vizitei paralela cu Yad Vashem revine. Un panou include fotografii cu supravietuitori cautandu-si familiile si prietenii pe liste afisate cu numele celor morti sau poate a celor vii, imagini similare exista si la Yad Vashem, reprezentandu-i pe supravietuitorii lagarelor mortii cautand dupa razboi pe membrii familiilor spulberate in Holocaust. Suferinta, durerea, speranta sunt sentimente umane comune.

Survivors

Vizita in muzeu se incheie ca si la muzeul istoric de la Yad Vashem cu o deschidere spre lumea de afara. La Ierusalim este peisajul colinelor pe care este situat orasul, aici se poate vedea parcul pacii, cu aleea larga parcursa da vizitatorii care se indreapta spre flacara eterna, spre monumentul copiilor si spre domul atomic. Despre acestea voi relata in episodul urmator.

Searching for Relatives and Friends

Dan Romascanu

(Hiroshima, My Love)

About a Suicide Pact

From what Mr. Ignatius has to say, Democrats do not have an easy task for mid-term elections. Do you think GOP has the answer? No, says Kathleen Parker, they are too focused on their social-conservative agenda. Here is her opinion in W.Post:

Some people can't stand prosperity, my father used to say. Today, he might be talking about Republicans, who, in the midst of declining support for President Obama's hope-and-change agenda, are considering a purity pledge to weed out undesirables from their ever-shrinking party.

Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent.

Just when a near-perfect storm of unpopular Democratic ideas -- from massive health-care reform to terrorist show trials, not to mention global-warming hype -- is coagulating over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Just when the GOP was gaining traction after gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey . . . Republicans perform a rain dance at their own garden party.

Things were just going too well.

Thus, some conservative members of the party have come up with a list of principles they want future candidates to agree to or forfeit backing by the Republican National Committee.

The so-called purity test is a 10-point checklist -- a suicide pact, really -- of alleged Republican positions. Anyone hoping to play on Team GOP would have to sign off on eight of the 10 -- through their voting records, public statements or a questionnaire. The test will be put up for consideration before the Republican National Committee when it meets early next year in Hawaii.

The list apparently evolved in response to the Republican loss in the recent congressional race in Upstate New York, when liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race under pressure from conservatives and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens, who won. Republicans had held that seat for more than a century.

James Bopp Jr., chief sponsor of the resolution and a committee member from Indiana, has said that the problem is that many conservatives have lost trust in the conservative credentials of the Republican Party.

Actually, no, the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think. The resolutions aren't so much statements of principle as dogmatic responses to complex issues that may, occasionally, require more than a Sharpie check in a little square.

It's too bad that elite and nuance have become bad words in the Republican lexicon. Elites are viewed in Republican circles as those people who are out of touch with real Americans. And nuance, the definition of which suggests a sophisticated approach to understanding (as opposed to Because I said so, case closed) has come to be viewed as a Frenchified word Republicans successfully hung on presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. His flip-floppery on issues became associated with nuance, a.k.a. lack of decisiveness. Ergo, a lack of leadership skills.

It was superb message manipulation, if you go for that sort of thing. But it was also pandering to America's inner simpleton. Not to defend Kerry, specifically, but heaven forbid anyone should ever consider shades of meaning or new developments and change his mind. As Kerry said during a 2008 Associated Press interview, Decisiveness wrongly applied can create a lot of pain. This nation was, after all, for slavery before it was against it.

Most of us know that decisiveness isn't always a virtue, yet those pushing the purity test seem to view nuance as an enemy of conservatism. The old elite corps of the conservative movement, men such as William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk, undoubtedly would find this attitude both dangerous and bizarre. When did thinking go out of style?

In fact, the 10-point checklist proffered by Bopp and others is the antithesis of conservatism. As Kirk wrote in his own Ten Conservative Principles, conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata . . . conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

Each of Bopp's bullets is so overly broad and general that no thoughtful person could endorse it in good conscience. Some are so simplistic as to be meaningless. As just one example: We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges. What does that mean? Do we support all troop surges no matter what other considerations might be taken into account? Do we take nothing else into account? Does disagreement mean one doesn't support victory?

Whatever the intent of the authors, the message is clear: Thinking people need not apply. The formerly elite party of nuanced conservatism might do well to revisit its nonideological roots.

Otherwise, might we bother Mr. Kirk to beam us up?

(Please send your comments to kathleenparker@washpost.com)

(Zoon Politikon)

Ignatius: The Jobless Scary Movie

David Ignatius in W. Post:

For a political horror show, fast-forward to the summer of 2010: The unemployment rate is stubbornly high, hovering between 9.3 and 9.7 percent. Companies are wary about hiring more workers because the economy remains soft. Small businesses, which normally power a recovery, are caught in a credit squeeze.

In this scenario, the jobs outlook will remain bleak for another year. The unemployment rate will remain well above 8 percent in 2011. And the economy won't bounce back completely for five years after that.

The Democrats, in our scary 2010 movie, will be heading toward the midterm elections hoping to preserve their 81-seat margin in the House. Vulnerable incumbents will be clamoring for more economic stimulus, but the Obama administration will be constrained by the huge budget deficits needed to bail out the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.

I wish that this economic forecast were just a bad dream after too much Thanksgiving turkey. But it's drawn from the minutes of the Federal Reserve's Nov. 3-4 meeting, released last week. It's a genuinely troubling document, as much for its political implications as for its number-crunching. It draws a picture of a nation of unfair and unequal sacrifices, where Wall Street is recovering even as Main Street continues to pay the bills.

If the Fed's projections are right, the public is going to be very angry next year -- at big business and at the elected officials who have spent trillions of dollars without putting the country fully back to work. Lou Dobbs, the voice of populist anger, may become the nation's hottest politician. President Obama, who has struggled to find a centrist consensus for economic policies, may be tossed like a cork on a stormy sea.

The Fed struggled to answer the basic question that is haunting administration policymakers: Why has unemployment remained so high, even as the economy has started to grow again and the stock market has been on a tear? The Fed's answer is that businesses, having been burned by the recession, are wary about adding more workers or making new investments. Like consumers who have just discovered the virtues of saving, their prudence -- however sensible on an individual basis -- is a collective drag on the economy.

Business contacts reported that they would be cautious in their hiring, the Fed minutes note. Indeed, participants expected that businesses would be able to meet any increases in demand in the near term by raising their employees' hours and boosting productivity, thus delaying the need to add to their payrolls.

If hiring hasn't bounced back, neither has lending. Bank loans continued to contract sharply in all categories, the Fed reports. Big businesses may be able to get money, but smaller firms "faced substantial constraints in their access to credit."This credit squeeze, in turn, will "restrain hiring at small businesses, which are normally a source of employment growth in recoveries.

Putting the numbers together, the Fed predicts that despite a growing economy, unemployment will be 8.2 to 8.6 percent during 2011, down only about a percentage point from 2010. And here's the scariest line of all in the Fed minutes: Most participants anticipated that about five or six years would be needed for the economy to converge fully to a longer-run path and a normal job market.

Looking toward next year's congressional elections, strategists will have to calibrate the politics of high unemployment. The four states with the highest jobless rates as of October are all Democratic strongholds: Michigan, at 15.1 percent; Nevada, at 13 percent; Rhode Island, at 12.9 percent; and California, at 12.5 percent. And if you look at the states where Democrats gained their 21 House seats last year, the list includes eight states where unemployment in October was above the national average of 10.2 percent.

The politics of rage aren't pretty. But in this case, it's hard to argue that the anger isn't justified. The Fed's analysis shows what we see in the daily stock market summaries. People on the top are recovering their losses; people on the bottom are out of work and out of luck.

I admire Obama's effort to make responsible economic choices in this environment and his refusal to demagogue issues such as financial reform. But he will need all the political genius he showed during the 2008 campaign -- and which he has displayed too little lately -- to handle what's coming at him next year.

(Please send your comments at davidignatius@washpost.com)

(Zoon Politikon)

Kiarostami: Taste of Cherry (1997)

Ta'm e guilass: Trailer
(video by kianism)

Ta'm e guilass (Taste of Cherry), made by Abbas Kiarostami in 1997.

It happened that I had already seen Ten, made by Kiarostami in 2002, and I was struck by the resemblance of approach in the two movies. As I was now watching Taste of Cherry, dialogues from Ten were coming to my mind. In both movies a driver is running the car through the streets of Tehran (or on shabby routes around Tehran) and approaches various people. The reactions of those people are similar in both movies. It is like the driver is the only character played by a professional, all others are just common people who seem totally unaware that they are filmed.

There is a subject here in Taste of Cherry (I would rather not deconspire it, to not frustrate you of the pleasure of discovery), only I believe the subject is more like a pretext, for studying the reactions of those common people.

I believe that Kiarostami is actually interested in the reaction of common people confronted with the convention of the movie. There is a subject, yes: it is a convention proposed by the creator of the movie, like any filmic subject. It is not the reality, it is a convention, that presents itself as reality. However, it is a convention, not reality. How are common people reacting to this convention? Are they considering it as normal, as belonging to their universe?

Or, can these common people become part of the artistic universe? They belong to our, real, world. The main character (the driver) provokes them. They can enter the illusory world of the movie; they can refuse the illusion.

Anyway, either they accept the convention, or they refuse, it is a moment of contact between two worlds: the real world, the illusory world of the movie (pretending to be the real world itself). What is the relation between the two worlds? What is the relation between object and image? A question that has tortured so many artists in the twentieth century, and I believe this is also the question that Kiarostami is trying to find the answer.

The ending of the movie can be read in various ways. I believe that the sense of it is, hey, guys, a movie is just a movie, it is convention claiming to be reality, but it remains convention.

I know, of course, that I could be wrong :) I also believe that Ten developed Taste of Cherry in a more radical way.

Ta'm e guilass: Part 1/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 2/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 3/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 4/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 5/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 6/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 7/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 8/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 9/10
(video by 90fredo90)

Ta'm e guilass: Part 10/10
(video by 90fredo90)

(I'm in the Mood for Kiarostami)