O Contraire

So now we know that 13 American scholars have been refused entry to China—no official reason given by the Chinese, of course, but the dark suspicion is their PNG status results from a book these professors wrote about Xinjiang, a large and tumultuous region of western China. This area evidently has a big Muslim population that occasionally turns resentful and violent toward the ruling regime. And we all know how happy the Chinese government is to share details of separatist movements with the rest of the world—or with other Chinese, for that matter.

My own personal favorite headline on the subject of the latest problem in Pakistan is this, published Monday in Pakistan’s Daily Times: “Police Clueless Who Kidnapped American.”

Yes, sad to say, Pakistani police have absolutely no idea what happened after Warren Weinstein, an American contractor, was abducted from his residence in Lahore. Or to quote a senior police official from Lahore: “We do not yet have any concrete information that there was a specific threat.”

Although in most instances you could argue a kidnapping constitutes a specific threat….

Of course one is tempted to concentrate just on this latest: China is, as ever, muzzling its media, on this occasion because a train crash that killed 40 in that nation resulted in millions of angry postings on its social network sites, most of them essentially blaming the government itself for the catastrophe.

I’ve always sort of wanted to know the definition of a third-world nation, and how such a nation compares to other countries in loftier categories. This is because for one truly terrible year I lived in a third-world country—at least the United States State Department bestowed that epithet on it—and during that entire time, although I was allowed to make (genteel, sympathetic, clucking) references to the “third world” in which I was stuck and its many problems, I was not permitted to describe the United States, not even once, as a “first-world nation.”

“Calling us first world makes you sound elitist,” I was informed by American embassy personnel on the rare occasions I was able to talk to them about this issue over the phone (that’s because the phones in that country basically never worked), or even in person (because public transportation was almost nil).

Now why would a highly profitable, popular British tabloid owned by a ruthless media czar risk an empire by bribing, blackmailing, and hacking everyone from cops to prime ministers, kidnap victims to royalty?

Two answers—the only answers thus far put forward by rival newspapers and TV commentators—would be: (1) to beat the competition and (2) because that’s how you attract devoted readers in any country. And all that’s true enough. As far as it goes…

It’s always been amazing to me that anyone would invest in Italy, a country where banks, markets, and just about anything having to do with money are shrouded in occult gray. Or that the Wall Street Journal (yes, the Wall Street Journal—but then its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, has a lot on his hands now, I hear) could begin a front-page article on the subject of that nation’s latest crisis with the preposterous: “Italy, long a bystander to the euro-zone’s debt woes …”

When I first learned that Charlene Wittstock, now known—very reluctantly on her part—as Princess Charlene of Monaco, had fled her impending nuptials to Monte Carlo’s plump prince three times, my first thought was, literally,You go, girl!

Well, she tried.

Charlene, according to the French newspaper Le Journal de Dimanche, first fled the principality in May, at which time she took “refuge” in Paris at the South African Embassy: she was in France, significantly, for a pre-wedding fitting of her white silk Armani gown studded with 40,000 (count ’em!) Swarovski crystals. Then, later that same month, she tried to flee again. This was during the Grand Prix, something she clearly didn’t think Prince Albert was.

I am not one of those either credulous or dumb enough to believe that all those on board the Turkish vessel launched 13 months ago with the aim of breaking Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza sailed in peace. In fact, as a pretty interesting YouTube clip demonstrates, a fair number of passengers came armed: with stun grenades, with firebombs, with large switchblades and metal poles. And they used them, too. You go sailing with creeps, you take your chances. Nine people on board were killed by Israeli commandos.

On the other hand, Israel lost too. That flotilla fight was not, shall we say, one of her best crafted displays of force. Around the world, she was perceived as the ogress of the story: a nation so obsessed with self-protection that she was willing to engage in a massacre of innocents.

Why didn’t I borrow $148 billion to improve my life while the lending was good and the lenders were idiots? I’m just kicking myself over last year’s failure to act, because back in those halcyon days there was nothing like an outstretched palm and an unsatisfactory pile up of debt to loosen the purse strings of rich creditors. By outstretched palm and rotten spending habits, I am of course talking about Greece, which got $148 billion when everyone knew there wasn’t the faintest hope of seeing much of that sum returned.

Let’s be honest. It didn’t take a psychic to predict that Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen until this past weekend, would eventually be unemployed. As far back as December, when WikiLeaks released details of his verbal indiscretions during a tête-à-tête with US General David Patraeus that Saleh assumed would forever remain private, you could sort of predict his future.

In that conversation, Saleh managed to step in it with both feet, admitting to the American general that (a) he “lied” to his own parliament by claiming that bombs dropped on Yemini soil were deployed “by the Republic of Yemen government” (they were, of course, American bombings, some of which missed their Islamic militant targets, thereby killing dozens of Yemeni civilians) and that (b) he harbored a deep fondness for alcohol “provided it’s good whiskey,” which, he pointed out, he was happy to welcome into his Muslim country.

Question: Which nation currently allows certain wealthy individuals and companies to apply to the courts for a press injunction preventing all reportage on various embarrassing activities—an injunction so severe that this nation’s media is prohibited even from mentioning that such a secret injunction exists?

Is it:

(a) Russia
(b) China
(c) Burkina Faso
(d) Afghanistan

The answer, as it happens: none of the above.

Last year, just around this time as it happens, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was, aside from Greece itself, the world’s most ardent proponent of Greek economic salvation. Translation: the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (then headed by Strauss-Kahan) arranged for a $147 billion bailout of the debt-riddled country that had never known a moment’s austerity.

In exchange for such largesse, the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, wearing a tie of dark purple (the color traditionally worn at Greek funerals), announced cuts in spending and tax increases amounting to 30 billion euros. There would be, Greeks were warned, and anxious donors promised, massive pay freezes, further cuts in workers’ benefits, and higher fuel taxes, among other sad alterations. Retirement age would be higher, pensions would be lower. Greek unions were, predictably, outraged. Greek politicians sanguine. Strauss-Kahn hailed, not for the first time, a savior.

So I was just about to write a huffy blog about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his absurd obsession with trivial attacks on him in the press. Word had it early last week that the powerful head of the International Monetary Fund was considering threatening some kind of lawsuit against various French newspapers who mocked his claims of being an ardent Socialist by detailing his luxurious lifestyle. “Gauche caviar,” screamed the headlines.

Prominent among the mockers: L’Express, which devotes an entire page of its website to the IMF chief’s fascinating personal expenditures and friends. Two vast apartments, one on the Place des Vosges. A 100,000-euro Porsche at DSK’s disposal, thanks to an old pal. Another luxury car, which appears to be his very own.

“Is It OK to Cheer Bin Laden’s Death?” asks the USA Today banner headline fluttering meekly over a tremulous article by a religious correspondent. Answer: NO. It is not okay because that’s not who Americans are. Or that’s not who true Christians are. Or that’s not what Jesus would have done: and it’s amazing how many people these days are quoted in the press as being intimately acquainted with the details of godlike thinking. So intimately acquainted that many of them now feel they are in a good position to postulate divine alternatives to cheering.

“What if we responded in reverent prayer and quiet introspection instead of patriotic frenzy?” wonders Christian ethicist Diana Butler Bass. “That would be truly American exceptionalism.”