The Christian Science Montinor carried a piece yesterday that's worth reading: Suzanne Nossel's State of the Union advice for Bush. Her argument is that Bush should be more attuned to the diplomatic failures of past SOTU's (putting North Korean in the "axis of evil" being a critical one). She rightly notes that the administration and its defenders seem to believe, erroneously, that giving signals that it cares about something called "world opinion" would be a sign of weakness.

According to the Tagesspiegel, Green parliamentarian Özcan Mutlu must appear in court to defend himself against charges that inappropriately addressed a policeman with the word, "you." German has a formal second person pronoun ("Sie," pronounced, roughly, ZEE), and an informal pronoun ("Du," pronounced, roughly, DOO). Mutlu used the wrong one. The context for his remarks isn't given.

The problem is that according to anecdotal evidence, members of the Berliner police force seem prone to addressing folks who look foreign with the term, "Du." It can be a blatant form of disrespect. But everything depends on context, as the article notes: if you don't speak German very well, or if you're trying to defuse a situation, the use of "Du" can be perfectly understandable.

Apparently, no official statistics are available on the number of "insulting address" cases like Mutlu's, and the prosecutor's office is not particularly aggressive about pursuing crimes of insult. I suppose that's a good thing. But the fact that the crime exists qua crime does give some cross-cultural insight into the tenacity of status regulations in German law.

My friend John Gould notes that I missed a crucial point in my blog about MoveOn's anti-war ad: the hypothetical nuclear bomb is probably supposed to go off here. That's probably the reason they use the image of the little American girl in the ad.

I wanted to blog on this story yesterday, but Oswego's server had indigestion all afternoon. And then, as it turns out, the story became old news by this morning (as the WP reports here), as Thacker withdrew his name from consideration because of the controversy. But did it?

If the objection to Thacker is that he believed that homosexuality was a sin that could be cured by conversion to Christianity after personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as one's Savior, then objections should also be raised about former Representative Tom Coburn, who is also on the panel, according to the People for the American Way. Coburn's on the Board of Directors for the Family Research Council: not exactly pro-gay, those folks. In a recent publication, FRC castigates the Washington newspaper the Blade for refusing to run an ad that promotes conversion to Christianity as a possible "cure" for homosexuality: according to FRC, the ad was "a message that would have brought hope and deliverance to thousands of readers." You can find lots more of that kind of stuff among FRC literature. The FRC is, however, slightly more subtle that Thacker: for the most part, its message is simply anti-homosexual without playing up the protestant fundamentalist angle.

If Thacker's focus on abstinence education was the reason for the public reaction, then folks should also be upset about two other members of the panel -- in addition to Clark -- who, according the PFAW, support abstinence education as a response to HIV/AIDS.

Perhaps it's easier to prevent an appointment than to force the resignation of people already entrenched. Plus, perhaps Thacker's views were more readily discernible than the views of those on the panel already, and his website redactions cast him in an even more unappealing light.

Thacker was a huge target. I'm glad that people took their shots. But I also think that Bush has been given a pass, although for understandable reasons. Bush already seems willing to enact the social policy views of his conservative base in the areas of abortion and family planning. The Thacker nomination rightly raised fears that the anti-gay policies of the religious right might now be gaining a hearing in the administration, contrary to what seems to have been the trend. On same-sex partner benefits, Bush has earned some points from gay rights groups. See, for example, the HRC press release here. The religious discrimination against gays question with respect to the Faith Based Initiatives program seems to be moving in favor of gay rights, although, as the HRC notes, the jury is still out. And in 2000 Bush probably benefitted from his sometimes oblique attempts to court gay voters.

Let's call Bush's approach to gay rights issues "semi-benign semi-neglect." Maybe that's not so bad from a Republican administration that relies on Christian fundamentalists during election time. Clearly, there's a tension in the Bush coalition that neither mainstream gay rights groups nor Christian fundamentalists have been willing to push strongly.

If you haven't seen MoveOn's anti-war ad, take a look at their homepage, here. Apparently the ad has gotten a good bit of air time on the networks. Frankly, I think that the ad does not select the best case from the arsenal of anti-war arguments; rather, it seeks to raise fears about possible consequences of war, including a nuclear detonation somewhere. Where the hypothetical bomb is supposed to go off is not clear. The lack of specificity is regrettable, I think, but it is a consequence of MoveOn's strategy in the ad: fearmonger first, answer questions later.

The scenario the ad seems to envision is the following: war in Iraq provokes extremist, anti-American reactions in Pakistan or Iran. These extremists take over the government and distribute nuclear weapons to terrorists to use -- or, perhaps, the extremist coup leaders use them on their own account against the U.S. or Israel.

The problem with the ad's approach is that it relies on the same logic the Bush administration has been proffering as a reason for its own threats to use force, if necessary, to eliminate the risk that Saddam Hussein will obtain nuclear weapons (or, on a smaller scale, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons). Proliferation is bad, especially in the context of international terrorist groups. Now those threats are seen as being more dangerous than the proliferation threat itself, because, in the end, of the threat of proliferation? My head is spinning.

Note that I'm not saying that Bush has proven, definitively, links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda. I don't think this is really necessary to make Bush's case: what's critical, from the standpoint of the argument, is the threat of proliferation. And I'm also not saying that there aren't other motives for the administration's military buildup in the region. All I'm saying is that MoveOn takes Bush's argument and attempts, oddly, to turn it into an anti-war message.

The ad is high-profile, but still regrettable because of its strange message. More effective, probably, was the electronic, pro-inspection petition that the group circulated and sent to Congress. The petition garnered 300,000 signatures, which seems pretty impressive to me.

The Globe and Mail's headline: Canadians Increasingly Want New Hips and Knees. Hmmm.

I'm glad that people have picked up on Rumsfeld's slam on draftees. Read the Washington Post article here. The remarks seemed harsh to me when I heard them the first time, but in the context of Rumsfeld's overall glibness they didn't seem particularly out of the ordinary.

An editorial in Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin) helps shed some light on the German government's continued, loud opposition to Bush's push to war in Iraq: elections. The article: "Hanover -- far away from Bagdad." The argument: the regional elections on Feb. 3rd in Lower Saxony and Hessen are, from the perspective of the SPD, a critical proving ground for the government. The lousy economic conditions in Germany have been a major cause in turning public opinion away from the ruling SPD, which now seems on the brink of losing big regionally. Will Schroeder and the SPD follow the same strategy that helped them win in the fall (oppose Bush, loudly)? Will the citizens of Lower Saxony and Hessen respond to the SPD's nationalization of the elections? Der Tagesspiegel hopes that they vote on regional issues rather than on the war, partly so that the elections will serve their primary function: holding state leaders responsible for their performance.

One added reason why Schroeder wants the SPD to win: he's from Hanover, and was once governor of the state. A defeat there would be quite a repudiation of his current policies. This one should be a nail-biter. . .

The pressures of travel, weather, and the new semester have cast a long shadow over this blog. . .but now I'm back in action and ready to rumble.