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From the U.K.: State of the Union: Barack Obama gets an F for world leadership

Grandpa — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:57:07 -0800

Nile Gardiner

Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.

State of the Union: Barack Obama gets an F for world leadership

As expected, Barack Obama’s 70 minute State of the Union address focused heavily on the economy and the domestic political agenda. This was hardly surprising in the aftermath of last week’s catastrophic defeat for his party in the Massachusetts special Senate election, where the Republicans scored an historic victory. American voters are turning strongly against the president’s health care reform package as well as his big government vision for the economy, which has contributed to spiraling public debt and mounting unemployment, now standing at over 10 percent.
But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.
Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.
The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.
Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100024086/state-of-the-un...

Human Rights Group Against the Cross - WWJS?

samantha999 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:53:41 -0800

Greek Church acts on crucifix ban

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8358027.stm

By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Athens

The Strasbourg ruling caused outrage in the Italian media

The Greek Orthodox Church is urging Christians across Europe to unite in an appeal against a ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled last week that the presence of crucifixes violated a child's right to freedom of religion.

Greece's Orthodox Church fears the Italian case will set a precedent.

It has called an emergency Holy Synod meeting for next week to devise an action plan.

Although the Greek Orthodox Church has been at odds with Roman Catholicism for 1,000 years, the judicial threat to Christian symbols has acted as a unifying force.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the compulsory display of crucifixes violated parents' rights to educate their children as they saw fit and restricted the right of children to believe or not to believe.

'Worthy symbols'

The head of the Greek Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, shares Catholic complaints that the court is ignoring the role of Christianity in forming Europe's identity.

It is not only minorities that have rights but majorities as well, said the archbishop.

One of his subordinates, Bishop Nicholas from central Greece, lamented that at this rate youngsters will not have any worthy symbols at all to inspire and protect them.

Football and pop idols are very poor substitutes, he said.

The Greek Church has ostensibly intervened in this case in response to an appeal by a Greek mother whose son is studying in Italy.

But without doubt it is concerned that its omnipotence in Greece is under threat.

A human rights group called Helsinki Monitor is seeking to use the Italian case as a precedent.

It has demanded that Greek courts remove icons of Jesus Christ from above the judge's bench and that the gospel no longer be used for swearing oaths in the witness box.

Helsinki Monitor is urging trade unions to challenge the presence of religious symbols in Greek schools.

The socialist government here is also considering imposing new taxes on the Church's vast fortune, but at the same time is urging it to do more to help immigrants and poor Greeks.

The mayor of one Italian town displayed a 2m high crucifix in protest

The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy.

Grandpa — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:27:08 -0700

Decline Is a Choice
The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy.
by Charles Krauthammer

The weathervanes of conventional wisdom are registering another round of angst about America in decline. New theories, old slogans: Imperial overstretch. The Asian awakening. The post-American world. Inexorable forces beyond our control bringing the inevitable humbling of the world hegemon.

On the other side of this debate are a few--notably Josef Joffe in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs--who resist the current fashion and insist that America remains the indispensable power. They note that declinist predictions are cyclical, that the rise of China (and perhaps India) are just the current version of the Japan panic of the late 1980s or of the earlier pessimism best captured by Jean-François Revel's How Democracies Perish.

The anti-declinists point out, for example, that the fear of China is overblown. It's based on the implausible assumption of indefinite, uninterrupted growth; ignores accumulating externalities like pollution (which can be ignored when growth starts from a very low baseline, but ends up making growth increasingly, chokingly difficult); and overlooks the unavoidable consequences of the one-child policy, which guarantees that China will get old before it gets rich.

And just as the rise of China is a straight-line projection of current economic trends, American decline is a straight-line projection of the fearful, pessimistic mood of a country war-weary and in the grip of a severe recession.

Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that
somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands.

Not that decline is always a choice. Britain's decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable.

The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.

Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.

The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. In Strasbourg, President Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is.

Indeed, as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional--exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any moral claim that America might have to world leadership, as well as the moral confidence that any nation needs to have in order to justify to itself and to others its position of leadership. According to the new dispensation, having forfeited the mandate of heaven--if it ever had one--a newly humbled America now seeks a more modest place among the nations, not above them.

But that leads to the question: How does this new world govern itself? How is the international system to
function?

Henry Kissinger once said that the only way to achieve peace is through hegemony or balance of power. Well, hegemony is out. As Obama said in his General Assembly address, "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." (The "can" in that declaration is priceless.) And if hegemony is out, so is balance of power: "No balance of power among nations will hold."

The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others--which takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world." What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?

This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from "the community of nations" as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is why when Obama said that those who doubt "the character and cause" of his own country should see what this new America--the America of the liberal ascendancy--had done in the last nine months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues, renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.

These gestures have not gone unnoticed abroad. The Nobel Committee effused about Obama's radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. Its citation awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize lauded him for having "created a new climate" in international relations in which "multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other institutions can play."

Of course, the idea of the "international community" acting through the U.N.--a fiction and a farce respectively--to enforce norms and maintain stability is absurd. So absurd that I suspect it's really just a metaphor for a world run by a kind of multipolar arrangement not of nation-states but of groups of states acting through multilateral bodies, whether institutional (like the International Atomic Energy Agency) or ad hoc (like the P5+1 Iran negotiators).

But whatever bizarre form of multilateral or universal structures is envisioned for keeping world order, certainly hegemony--and specifically American hegemony--is to be retired.

This renunciation of primacy is not entirely new. Liberal internationalism as practiced by the center-left Clinton administrations of the 1990s--the beginning of the unipolar era--was somewhat ambivalent about American hegemony, although it did allow America to be characterized as "the indispensable nation," to use Madeleine Albright's phrase. Clintonian center-left liberal internationalism did seek to restrain American power by tying Gulliver down with a myriad of treaties and agreements and international conventions. That conscious constraining of America within international bureaucratic and normative structures was rooted in the notion that power corrupts and that external restraints would curb arrogance and overreaching and break a willful America to the role of good international citizen.

But the liberal internationalism of today is different. It is not center-left, but left-liberal. And the new left-liberal internationalism goes far beyond its earlier Clintonian incarnation in its distrust of and distaste for American dominance. For what might be called the New Liberalism, the renunciation of power is rooted not in the fear that we are essentially good but subject to the corruptions of power--the old Clintonian view--but rooted in the conviction that America is so intrinsically flawed, so inherently and congenitally sinful that it cannot be trusted with, and does not merit, the possession of overarching world power.

For the New Liberalism, it is not just that power corrupts. It is that America itself is corrupt--in the sense of being deeply flawed, and with the history to prove it. An imperfect union, the theme of Obama's famous Philadelphia race speech, has been carried to and amplified in his every major foreign-policy address, particularly those delivered on foreign soil. (Not surprisingly, since it earns greater applause over there.)

And because we remain so imperfect a nation, we are in no position to dictate our professed values to others around the world. Demonstrators are shot in the streets of Tehran seeking nothing but freedom, but our president holds his tongue because, he says openly, of our own alleged transgressions towards Iran (presumably involvement in the 1953 coup). Our shortcomings are so grave, and our offenses both domestic and international so serious, that we lack the moral ground on which to justify hegemony.

These fundamental tenets of the New Liberalism are not just theory. They have strategic consequences. If we have been illegitimately playing the role of world hegemon, then for us to regain a legitimate place in the international system we must regain our moral authority. And recovering moral space means renouncing ill-gotten or ill-conceived strategic space.

Operationally, this manifests itself in various kinds of strategic retreat, most particularly in reversing policies stained by even the hint of American unilateralism or exceptionalism. Thus, for example, there is no more "Global War on Terror." It's not just that the term has been abolished or that the secretary of homeland security refers to terrorism as "man-caused disasters." It is that the very idea of our nation and civilization being engaged in a global mortal struggle with jihadism has been retired as well.

The operational consequences of that new view are already manifest. In our reversion to pre-9/11 normalcy--the pretense of pre-9/11 normalcy--antiterrorism has reverted from war fighting to law enforcement. High-level al Qaeda prisoners, for example, will henceforth be interrogated not by the CIA but by the FBI, just as our response to the attack on the USS Cole pre-9/11--an act of war--was to send FBI agents to Yemen.

The operational consequences of voluntary contraction are already evident:

* Unilateral abrogation of our missile-defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic--a retreat being felt all through Eastern Europe to Ukraine and Georgia as a signal of U.S. concession of strategic space to Russia in its old sphere of influence.

* Indecision on Afghanistan--a widely expressed ambivalence about the mission and a serious contemplation of minimalist strategies that our commanders on the ground have reported to the president have no chance of success. In short, a serious contemplation of strategic retreat in Afghanistan (only two months ago it was declared by the president to be a "war of necessity") with possibly catastrophic consequences for Pakistan.

* In Iraq, a determination to end the war according to rigid timetables, with almost no interest in garnering the fruits of a very costly and very bloody success--namely, using our Strategic Framework Agreement to turn the new Iraq into a strategic partner and anchor for U.S. influence in the most volatile area of the world. Iraq is a prize--we can debate endlessly whether it was worth the cost--of great strategic significance that the administration seems to have no intention of exploiting in its determination to execute a full and final exit.

* In Honduras, where again because of our allegedly sinful imperial history, we back a Chávista caudillo seeking illegal extension of his presidency who was removed from power by the legitimate organs of state--from the supreme court to the national congress--for grave constitutional violations.

The New Liberalism will protest that despite its rhetoric, it is not engaging in moral reparations, but seeking real strategic advantage for the United States on the assumption that the reason we have not gotten cooperation from, say, the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, or even our European allies on various urgent agendas is American arrogance, unilateralism, and dismissiveness. And therefore, if we constrict and rebrand and diminish ourselves deliberately--try to make ourselves equal partners with obviously unequal powers abroad--we will gain the moral high ground and rally the world to our causes.

Well, being a strategic argument, the hypothesis is testable. Let's tally up the empirical evidence of what nine months of self-abasement has brought.

With all the bowing and scraping and apologizing and renouncing, we couldn't even sway the International Olympic Committee. Given the humiliation incurred there in pursuit of a trinket, it is no surprise how little our new international posture has yielded in the coin of real strategic goods. Unilateral American concessions and offers of unconditional engagement have moved neither Iran nor Russia nor North Korea to accommodate us. Nor have the Arab states--or even the powerless Palestinian Authority--offered so much as a gesture of accommodation in response to heavy and gratuitous American pressure on Israel. Nor have even our European allies responded: They have anted up essentially nothing in response to our pleas for more assistance in Afghanistan.

The very expectation that these concessions would yield results is puzzling. Thus, for example, the president is proposing radical reductions in nuclear weapons and presided over a Security Council meeting passing a resolution whose goal is universal nuclear disarmament, on the theory that unless the existing nuclear powers reduce their weaponry, they can never have the moral standing to demand that other states not go nuclear.

But whatever the merits of unilateral or even bilateral U.S.-Russian disarmament, the notion that it will lead to reciprocal gestures from the likes of Iran and North Korea is simply childish. They are seeking the bomb for reasons of power, prestige, intimidation, blackmail, and regime preservation. They don't give a whit about the level of nuclear arms among the great powers. Indeed, both Iran and North Korea launched their nuclear weapons ambitions in the 1980s and the 1990s--precisely when the United States and Russia were radically reducing their arsenals.

This deliberate choice of strategic retreats to engender good feeling is based on the naïve hope of exchanges of reciprocal goodwill with rogue states. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the theory--as policy--has demonstrably produced no strategic advances. But that will not deter the New Liberalism because the ultimate purpose of its foreign policy is to make America less hegemonic, less arrogant, less dominant.

In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline--to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complementary.

Domestic policy, of course, is not designed to curb our power abroad. But what it lacks in intent, it makes up in effect. Decline will be an unintended, but powerful, side effect of the New Liberalism's ambition of moving America from its traditional dynamic individualism to the more equitable but static model of European social democracy.

This is not the place to debate the intrinsic merits of the social democratic versus the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism. There's much to be said for the decency and relative equity of social democracy. But it comes at a cost: diminished social mobility, higher unemployment, less innovation, less dynamism and creative destruction, less overall economic growth.

This affects the ability to project power. Growth provides the sinews of dominance--the ability to maintain a large military establishment capable of projecting power to all corners of the earth. The Europeans, rich and developed, have almost no such capacity. They made the choice long ago to devote their resources to a vast welfare state. Their expenditures on defense are minimal, as are their consequent military capacities. They rely on the U.S. Navy for open seas and on the U.S. Air Force for airlift. It's the U.S. Marines who go ashore, not just in battle, but for such global social services as tsunami relief. The United States can do all of this because we spend infinitely more on defense--more than the next nine countries combined.

Those are the conditions today. But they are not static or permanent. They require constant renewal. The express agenda of the New Liberalism is a vast expansion of social services--massive intervention and expenditures in energy, health care, and education--that will necessarily, as in Europe, take away from defense spending.

This shift in resources is not hypothetical. It has already begun. At a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are being lavished on stimulus and other appropriations in an endless array of domestic programs, the defense budget is practically frozen. Almost every other department is expanding, and the Defense Department is singled out for making "hard choices"--forced to look everywhere for cuts, to abandon highly advanced weapons systems, to choose between readiness and research, between today's urgencies and tomorrow's looming threats.

Take, for example, missile defense, in which the United States has a great technological edge and one perfectly designed to maintain American preeminence in a century that will be dominated by the ballistic missile. Missile defense is actually being cut. The number of interceptors in Alaska to defend against a North Korean attack has been reduced, and the airborne laser program (the most promising technology for a boost-phase antiballistic missile) has been cut back--at the same time that the federal education budget has been increased 100 percent in one year.

This preference for social goods over security needs is not just evident in budgetary allocations and priorities. It is seen, for example, in the liberal preference for environmental goods. By prohibiting the drilling of offshore and Arctic deposits, the United States is voluntarily denying itself access to vast amounts of oil that would relieve dependency on--and help curb the wealth and power of--various petro-dollar challengers, from Iran to Venezuela to Russia. Again, we can argue whether the environment versus security trade-off is warranted. But there is no denying that there is a trade-off.

Nor are these the only trade-offs. Primacy in space--a galvanizing symbol of American greatness, so deeply understood and openly championed by John Kennedy--is gradually being relinquished. In the current reconsideration of all things Bush, the idea of returning to the moon in the next decade is being jettisoned. After next September, the space shuttle will never fly again, and its replacement is being reconsidered and delayed. That will leave the United States totally incapable of returning even to near-Earth orbit, let alone to the moon. Instead, for years to come, we shall be entirely dependent on the Russians, or perhaps eventually even the Chinese.

Of symbolic but also more concrete importance is the status of the dollar. The social democratic vision necessarily involves huge increases in domestic expenditures, most immediately for expanded health care. The plans currently under consideration will cost in the range of $1 trillion. And once the budget gimmicks are discounted (such as promises of $500 billion cuts in Medicare which will never eventuate), that means hundreds of billions of dollars added to the monstrous budgetary deficits that the Congressional Budget Office projects conservatively at $7 trillion over the next decade.

The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the World Bank.

There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but they have their price--a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.

But, of course, if one's foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend.

And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.

So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

The temptation to abdicate has always been strong in America. Our interventionist tradition is recent. Our isolationist tradition goes far deeper. Nor is it restricted to the American left. Historically, of course, it was championed by the American right until the Vandenberg conversion. And it remains a bipartisan instinct.

When the era of maximum dominance began 20 years ago--when to general surprise a unipolar world emerged rather than a post-Cold War multipolar one--there was hesitation about accepting the mantle. And it wasn't just among liberals. In the fall of 1990, Jeane Kirkpatrick, -heroine in the struggle to defeat the Soviet Union, argued that, after a half-century of exertion fighting fascism, Nazism, and communism, "it is time to give up the dubious benefits of superpower status," time to give up the "unusual burdens" of the past and "return to 'normal' times." No more balancing power in Europe or in Asia. We should aspire instead to be "a normal country in a normal time."

That call to retreat was rejected by most of American conservatism (as Pat Buchanan has amply demonstrated by his very marginality). But it did find some resonance in mainstream liberalism. At first, however, only some resonance. As noted earlier, the liberal internationalism of the 1990s, the center-left Clintonian version, was reluctant to fully embrace American hegemony and did try to rein it in by creating external restraints. Nonetheless, in practice, it did boldly intervene in the Balkan wars (without the sanction of the Security Council, mind you) and openly accepted a kind of intermediate status as "the indispensable nation."

Not today. The ascendant New Liberalism goes much further, actively seeking to subsume America within the international community--inter pares, not even primus--and to enact a domestic social agenda to suit.

So why not? Why not choose ease and bask in the adulation of the world as we serially renounce, withdraw, and concede?

Because, while globalization has produced in some the illusion that human nature has changed, it has not. The international arena remains a Hobbesian state of nature in which countries naturally strive for power. If we voluntarily renounce much of ours, others will not follow suit. They will fill the vacuum. Inevitably, an inversion of power relations will occur.

Do we really want to live under unknown, untested, shifting multipolarity? Or even worse, under the gauzy internationalism of the New Liberalism with its magically self-enforcing norms? This is sometimes passed off as "realism." In fact, it is the worst of utopianisms, a fiction that can lead only to chaos. Indeed, in an age on the threshold of hyper-proliferation, it is a prescription for catastrophe.

Heavy are the burdens of the hegemon. After the blood and treasure expended in the post-9/11 wars, America is quite ready to ease its burden with a gentle descent into abdication and decline.

Decline is a choice. More than a choice, a temptation. How to resist it?

First, accept our role as hegemon. And reject those who deny its essential benignity. There is a reason that we are the only hegemon in modern history to have not immediately catalyzed the creation of a massive counter-hegemonic alliance--as occurred, for example, against Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. There is a reason so many countries of the Pacific Rim and the Middle East and Eastern Europe and Latin America welcome our presence as balancer of power and guarantor of their freedom.

And that reason is simple: We are as benign a hegemon as the world has ever seen.

So, resistance to decline begins with moral self-confidence and will. But maintaining dominance is a matter not just of will but of wallet. We are not inherently in economic decline. We have the most dynamic, innovative, technologically advanced economy in the world. We enjoy the highest productivity. It is true that in the natural and often painful global division of labor wrought by globalization, less skilled endeavors like factory work migrate abroad, but America more than compensates by pioneering the newer technologies and industries of the information age.

There are, of course, major threats to the American economy. But there is nothing inevitable and inexorable about them. Take, for example, the threat to the dollar (as the world's reserve currency) that comes from our massive trade deficits. Here again, the China threat is vastly exaggerated. In fact, fully two-thirds of our trade imbalance comes from imported oil. This is not a fixed fact of life. We have a choice. We have it in our power, for example, to reverse the absurd de facto 30-year ban on new nuclear power plants. We have it in our power to release huge domestic petroleum reserves by dropping the ban on offshore and Arctic drilling. We have it in our power to institute a serious gasoline tax (refunded immediately through a payroll tax reduction) to curb consumption and induce conservation.

Nothing is written. Nothing is predetermined. We can reverse the slide, we can undo dependence if we will it.

The other looming threat to our economy--and to the dollar--comes from our fiscal deficits. They are not out of our control. There is no reason we should be structurally perpetuating the massive deficits incurred as temporary crisis measures during the financial panic of 2008. A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit when it is taken by the New Liberalism as a mandate for massive expansion of the state and of national debt--threatening the dollar, the entire economy, and consequently our superpower status abroad.

There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens. His reply? "I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000%5C017%5C...

AP Newsbreak: Nobel jury defends Obama decision

starangel82 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:49:24 -0700

OSLO – Members of the Norwegian committee that gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are strongly defending their choice against a storm of criticism that the award was premature and a potential liability for the U.S. president.

Asked to comment on the uproar following Friday's announcement, four members of the five-seat panel told The Associated Press that they had expected the decision to generate both surprise and criticism.

Three of them rejected the notion that Obama hadn't accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question. A fifth member didn't answer calls seeking comment.

"We simply disagree that he has done nothing," committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. "He got the prize for what he has done."

Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to - I wouldn't say a safer world - but a world with less tension," Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

He said most world leaders were positive about the award and that most of the criticism was coming from the media and from Obama's political rivals.

"I take note of it. My response is only the judgment of the committee, which was unanimous," he said, adding that the award to Obama followed the guidelines set forth by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, who established the Nobel Prizes in his 1895 will.

"Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year," Jagland said. "Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?"

Aagot Valle, a left-wing Norwegian politician who joined the Nobel panel this year, also dismissed suggestions that the decision to award Obama was without merit.

"Don't you think that comments like that patronize Obama? Where do these people come from?" Valle said by phone from the western coastal city of Bergen. "Well, of course, all arguments have to be considered seriously. I'm not afraid of a debate on the peace prize decision. That's fine."

In Friday's announcement, the committee said giving Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.

The left-leaning committee whose members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.

However, the decision stunned even the most seasoned Nobel watchers. They hadn't expected Obama, who took office barely two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline, to be seriously considered until at least next year.

The award drew heated derision from Obama's political opponents in the Republican party, and was even questioned by some members of Obama's own Democratic party, who wondered what the president had done to merit the $1.4 million honor.

Michael S. Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said naming Obama showed "how meaningless a once honorable and respected award has become."

In a fundraising letter, Steele wrote that "the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control. And truly patriotic Americans like you and our Republican Party are the only thing standing in their way."

Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that Obama "has not done anything yet on the scale that would normally merit such an award."

Even in Europe, where Obama is hugely popular, many editorials and pundits questioned what he had done to deserve the award.

"Scrap the Nobel Peace Prize," foreign affairs commentator Bronwen Maddox wrote in The Times of London. "It's an embarrassment and even an impediment to peace. President Obama, in letting the committee award it to him, has made himself look vain, a fool and dangerously lost in his own mystique."

Yet Obama was humble in acknowledging the prize.

"Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations," Obama said Friday in the White House Rose Garden. "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize."

Nobel Committee member Inger-Marie Ytterhorn noted that the president didn't greet the news with joy.

"I looked at his face when he was on TV and confirmed that he would receive the prize and would come to Norway, and he didn't look particularly happy," she told AP.

Some of the most celebrated peace prize laureates include Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. The award has occasionally honored more controversial figures, like the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sometimes it raises the profile of peace workers or activists, such as Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala in 1992 or Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai in 2004.

"Whenever we award the peace prize, there is normally a big debate about it," said Ytterhorn, a nine-year veteran of the award committee.

Asked whether there was a risk that the prize could backfire on Obama by raising expectations even higher and give ammunition to his critics, Ytterhorn said "it might hamper him," because it could distract from domestic issues such as health care reform.

Jagland said he didn't think the Nobel Peace Prize would hurt Obama domestically but added the committee did not take U.S. politics into consideration when making their decision.

"I'm not so familiar with American politics, and I don't want to interfere with it, because this is a totally independent committee," he said. "We should not look at internal politics."

Kaci Kullman Five, a former Conservative Party parliamentarian and longtime Nobel committee member, said "we all expected that there would be a discussion" about awarding Obama. She declined further comment, deferring to the Nobel Peace Prize tradition of only having the committee chairman discuss prize selections publicly.

Valle, who left her seat in Parliament last week because of her Nobel panel appointment, said the criticism shouldn't overshadow important issues raised by the prize.

"Of course I expected disagreement and debate on the prize, on giving him the prize," she said. "But what I want now is that we seriously raise a discussion regarding nuclear disarmament."

Source: Yahoo! News

Barack Obama fails to win Nato troops he wants for Afghanistan

Grandpa — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:35:44 -0700

Barack Obama fails to win Nato troops he wants for Afghanistan

Michael Evans and David Charter in Strasbourg (Times on line, UK edition)

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.
But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.
Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.
Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.
The derisory response threatened to tarnish Mr Obama’s European tour, which yesterday included a spellbinding performance in Strasbourg in which he offered the world a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons.
Mr Obama – who has pledged 21,000 more troops to combat the growing insurgency and is under pressure from generals to supply up to 10,000 more – used the eve of Nato’s 60th anniversary summit to declare bluntly that it was time for allies to do their share. “Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone,” he said. “This is a joint problem it requires a joint effort.”
He said that failing to support the US surge would leave Europe open to a fresh terrorist offensive. “It is probably more likely that al-Qaeda would be able to launch a serious terrorist attack on Europe than on the United States because of proximity,” he said.
The presidential charm offensive failed to move fellow Nato countries. President Sarkozy told Mr Obama that France would not be sending reinforcements to bolster its existing force northeast of Kabul.
Germany, Italy, Poland, Canada and Denmark said that they were considering their positions. After a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, Mr Obama tried to apply further moral pressure. “I am sure that Germany, as one of the most important leaders in Europe, will be stepping up to the plate and helping us to get the job done.”
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, warned that new laws proposed by President Karzai in Afghanistan sanctioning child marriage and marital rape had made it harder to raise more soldiers.
“We are there to defend universal values and when I see, at the moment, a law threatening to come into effect which fundamentally violates women’s rights and human rights, that worries me,” he said.
“I have a problem to explain to a critical public audience in Europe, be it the UK or elsewhere, why I’m sending the guys to the Hindu Kush.”
The temporary British deployment falls short of the 2,000 soldiers that the Army had planned to deploy long-term to Afghanistan and appeared to catch defence chiefs by surprise.
Mr Brown announced the commitment as he flew into Strasbourg for the two-day summit, but hopes that it would spur other allies to follow suit were soon dashed. British officials said that the extra troops, expected to number between 500 and 700 – increasing Britain’s military strength there to about 9,000 – would be dispatched to southern Afghanistan for a four-month period leading up to and beyond the election, due to take place on August 20.
The plan is to withdraw them once the election is over. Mr Brown said that the extra troops were only supposed to provide a “temporary uplift”.
Military contingency plans remain on the table to send up to 2,000 more troops long-term, taking the total to 10,000, but that will depend on the political will to approve the deployment.
Although the Prime Minister discussed Afghanistan with President Obama when they held bilateral talks before the G20 summit in London, it is understood that no formal offer of extra troops was made.

Obama call the US 'arrogant and dismissive'

samantha999 — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:25:38 -0700

President Barack Obama: America has been 'arrogant and dismissive' towards Europe

President Barack Obama has declared that America has "failed to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world" and has "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" towards its allies.

By Toby Harnden in Strasbourg
Last Updated: 7:09PM BST 03 Apr 2009

His speech in Strasbourg went further than any United States president in history in criticising his own country's action while standing on foreign soil. But he sought to use the comments, which amount to a mea culpa for recent American foreign policy, as leverage to alter European views of America and secure more troops for the war in Afghanistan

He declared that there had to be a fundamental shift on both sides of the Atlantic. "America is changing but it cannot be America alone that changes."

Barack Obama must preserve the special relationship
Addressing a crowd of some 2,000 mainly students from France and Germany, Mr Obama said: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

He then balanced this striking admission with a tough message to Europeans that blaming America and using its actions as an excuse to avoid tackling the global Islamist threat was unacceptable.

"But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognising the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad."

In a speech which his aides billed as a commitment to rebuild transatlantic relations by offering an olive branch directly to young Europeans, he offered himself as the figure who could bridge the gap that had grown over the eight years of President George W. Bush's administration.

"On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common," he said. "They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated.

"They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America."

During questions, Mr Obama, who was applauded frequently and had to choose between scores of young students clamouring to catch his eye, asked Americans to let French and Germans address him. "Do me a favour Americans," he said. "Wait till we get back home and I'll do a town hall there."

Although a central message was that he represented a clean break from his predecessor, Mr Obama – in a rare use of his Muslim middle name - emphasised that some of the problems Mr Bush had faced would not miraculously disappear.

"I think it is important for Europe to understand that even though I am president and George Bush is not president, al-Qaeda is still a threat and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything's going to be OK," he said.

"It is going to be a very difficult challenge. Al Qaeda is still bent on carrying out terrorist activity. It is - you know, don't fool yourselves because some people say, 'Well, you know, if we changed our policies with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or if we were more respectful to the Muslim world, suddenly these organisations would stop threatening us.' That's just not the case."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5...

Europe Bans Seal Trade

MartiniLush — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:57:31 -0700

In a blunt challenge to Canada and thousands of Canadian seal hunters, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to ban the import or sale of furs or other products from commercially harvested seals. The ban would mainly affect Canada, where the government has allowed several hundred thousand young harp seals to be killed each year by commercial and traditional hunters on sea ice cloaking eastern waters.

Canadian officials immediately criticized the ban, which could take effect within several weeks, for not exempting countries like Canada that have guidelines requiring humane, sustainable hunts.

Stockwell Day, the Canadian minister of international trade, said that if the European Union did not exempt Canada, it would challenge the ban at the World Trade Organization.

The vote, in Strasbourg, France, applies to all 27 countries in the European Union. It came as Canadian and European leaders prepared to meet in Prague in a summit focused on free trade. The vote, 550 to 49 with 41 abstentions, was welcomed by animal welfare groups that have fought the seal hunts for decades.

Animal welfare campaigners said that while Canada banned the clubbing of the youngest pups, with pure white pelts, in the late 1980s, the majority of seals killed are still no more than a month or two old. The move by Europe follows a Russian decision in March to ban harvests of seals under one year old in the White Sea. Animal welfare groups said that move would essentially end the commercial fur trade there.

Lesley O’Donnell, the director of the European branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, described the European vote as the “final nail in the coffin” of the Canadian sealing industry’s market in Europe.

The main value is in the seals’ spotted coats but there is also a market for dietary supplements such as omega-3 fatty acids that can be derived from the seals. Most other international markets have been eliminated as a growing list of countries, including the United States and Mexico, have banned most imports of seal pelts.

Several million dollars in furs and other goods have flowed to Europe annually, primarily through Denmark and Italy, according to the European Parliament Web site. The European ban would not cover products from seals killed in subsistence hunts by Inuit and other indigenous northern communities.

Story from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/science/earth/06seal.html?hp

Portrait Magazine article about Rob

serasvictoria — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:25:49 -0700

Robert Pattinson: More then just Edward
By Marie (Age 19, USA)

Robert Thomas Pattinson was born in London, England on May 13, 1986. He has two older sisters, Victoria and Izzy. His father’s name is Richard and his mother’s name is Clare. This 22-year-old is quickly burning up in the entertainment business and is making teens, not just around the country, but around the world, swoon. He has recently received much recognition on his acting and his good looks and with the upcoming and highly anticipated release of the Twilight adaption around the corner, in which he plays one of modern teen literatures most beloved heroes, fans fervor is only bound to grow.

Robert at the VMAs with his Twilight costars.

Pattinson has many nicknames that have accumulated amongst his family and friends, as well as his fans. There’s the name RPattz that fans around the world dubbed him as and of course, the ever so popular, Spunk Ransom, that Robert Pattinson gave himself in an MTV Twilight Tuesday interview. While those two nicknames stand out of the crowd from any other, he also goes by the nicknames, Rob and Patty, a name he was given by his surname.

This actor, who also has musical talents, didn’t start getting into acting until the age of fifteen where he joined the Barnes Theatre Club. But it

Robert with fellow Brit; "Gossip Girl's" Ed Westwick.

wasn’t his passion for acting that brought him to this school. Pattinson says, “My dad wanted me to be an actor,” and of course, the social aspect definitely factored in. "Drama school was a social thing. I literally went there one-hundred per cent to meet these girls sitting at the next table," He admits of his costars. Pattinson is most known for his roles in films as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and his role as Edward Cullen, in the up and coming, as well as definitely buzzed out about, Twilight. Although, his first big part in a film was actually a scene in Vanity Fair, it ended up being a deleted scene and put into the DVD as a special feature for the alternate ending. After, Pattinson took the role as Giselher in a TV film called, Ring of the Nibelungs. Then the role that put him on the map was soon after.

Robert as Cedric

Playing Cedric Diggory in the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, Pattinson dug deep into his character to portray him just the right way. He went so far as to look online and see the comments of the readers of the book and has said, "I read a lot, as the shoot went on, and I read [Goblet of Fire] loads and loads of times. I sort of gradually found out about all these Harry Potter websites, and the comments they put in the forums I thought were really, really helpful, because they remind you of little things that you’ve never even noticed in the book, which are really helpful. There are lots of cool things, like even his main description, which was like ‘the strong silent type’ or something. I completely overlooked that in the book. And I read some fans saying that, so I’ll play it strong and silent." And all the hard work that he did was what made him fill in the shoes of the ever so popular, Cedric Diggory. Despite the pressures he felt in looking like perfection, as Cedric was supposed to, Pattinson nailed the role bringing the character to the big screen.

His next film which came out in 2007 was the role of Toby Jugg in The Haunted Airman. The film was about a World War II flight lieutenant who was injured and had to use a wheelchair from then on after. The character he had to portray was very traumatized and shattered from experiences, which was a far cry from the awkward and truly interesting character he played in his next film, The Bad Mother’s Handbook where he played Daniel Gale. His role as Gale is a favorite of many because of complexity of emotions that Pattinson showed he could do and the acting that he was capable of. Just as all his films do, it showed his commitment and ability to really get inside the character and that bringing the character’s physical aspect is just as important, as Pattinson showed by going as far as playing his character Daniel, with slumped shoulders.

Robert in How to Be

The following projects that Pattinson worked on are currently unreleased, one of them being a short film called The Summerhouse where he played a character that leaves his girlfriend for another woman but ends up going back to her. The next two films that Rob worked on, although independent movies are getting quite the hype with audiences and fans. The first indie movie, How to Be, is about a character, Art, who is trying to find his way in life, and is frustrated while stuck in a life crisis. The character slowly realizes that life isn’t simple and that growing up, as well as finding your purpose in life are very real questions. In the movie, Pattinson shows the audience and his antsy fans some of his musical chops. He is a musician in the movie which mirrors Rob’s real life a little. Rob has said that music is his backup plan if acting doesn’t work out and with the reviews that Pattinson has been getting from fans and critics, he wouldn’t have trouble with using either one of these talents to work for him. He did so well with the character of Art that he won ‘Best Actor in a Feature’ Award at the Strasbourg Film Festival. The next indie film that Rob worked on was Little Ashes where Rob portrays the character of Salvador Dali. The film has been shown in a few film festivals like the Raindance film festival in London and is already receiving high praised reviews for Rob’s performance. The film, which fans are dying to see for many reasons, is considered to be daring and possibly controversial, which of course is one of the reasons why fans would love to see this actor tackle yet another intriguing and complex role.

Robert as the 'tortured' Edward Cullen

Then of course, the movie that has plastered Pattinson on the map of movie history, Twilight, and not to mention the movie hasn’t even come out yet. The movie buzz is taking over the internet, television and bookstores all around the world. It’s almost guaranteed that anywhere you go, in just a few feet, Twilight merchandise, a book from the best selling series or a magazine with a Twilight mention will be there. And our very own Rpattz plays the role of the swoon-worthy, well-loved, Edward Cullen. Not only does he get high praise from his fans about his acting and good looks but the director of Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke, has only nice things to say about him as well. She gives him accolades for his performance as Edward saying he embodies what it is to be Edward Cullen- that he is Edward Cullen. She has said in an interview, “He’s a beautiful musician, a very creative soul, very similar to Edward. He just totally reads the most interesting stuff, and sees the most interesting movies, and is very introspective and diving into his existential self.”

Robert and Twilight costar Kristen Stewart in a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly.

With the pressure to be ‘perfection’ yet again, Pattinson dug deep into research for the role trying to get into the brooding mind of the vampire stuck in the body of seventeen-year-old. He read the book, Twilight, as well as draft of Midnight Sun given to him by author of the Twilight series, Stephenie Meyer. So how did Pattinson decide to play perfect Edward? Tortured. He realized that in the book, it can only be seen from Bella’s point of view, a girl who is head over heels. Knowing this, Robert went deep to see that Edward is a character, which can be seen as perfect from a love struck female but is actually a character that beats himself up for feeling too selfish. Rob joked, saying, “He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything." But his perception of Edward is what made Pattinson nail the role. A role that millions of fans are counting days to see brought to life.

Robert at the Teen Vogue Young Hollywood Party

So what else can we expect from Robert other than films on the horizon, including a vampire movie expected to make millions? His music. Pattinson explains how his interest in music began and has grown, "I have been playing the piano for my entire life - since I was three or four. And the guitar - I used to play classical guitar from when I was about five to 12 years of age. Then I didn’t play guitar for like years. About four or five years ago, I got out the guitar again and just started playing blues and stuff. I am not very good at the guitar, but I am all right. I am in a band in London as well." In anticipation, fans are anxiously awaiting to hear Pattinson on the Twilight soundtrack, where he was asked to record for the film as well.

With an array of different roles and complex characters, Robert Pattinson can only grow in the movies he will partake in the future. Whether it is in his acting or in his music, fans are definitely asking for more of him out there. With his quirkiness, talent, good looks and hard work, we can only wish this actor the best and keep a look out for more.

Congrats Rob!

serasvictoria — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:40:50 -0700

Rob won Best Actor at the Strasbourg International Film Festival for his role in "How To Be".I personally cannot wait to see this movie but in the town I live independents rarely shoe up here.Dang!

View Slideshow ›

Fun With Stained Glass

Beachwalker — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:46:43 -0700

I took a road trip at the end of June this year. I happened upon a place in Jarvis, Ontario, Canada, called C'est La Vie on MAIN. The focus of this shop is Shabby Chic Antiques and Interiors. With the permision of the owner Maryann Martin, I took some pictures of some of her displays.

One of the things that interested me was this piece of stained glass. I have been playing around with it in the edit mode of my computer and thought I would share some of the resulting pictures with you.

This is a picture of the piece put into an illistration form. This added a bit of texture to the already beautiful piece.

Here it is cropped to highlight the flower effect.

Here it is cropped some more and put into a shadowed browned tone.....

Richer, deeper colors.......

And here it reminded me of a beautiful stained glass fish!

Here is some information on Stained Glass:

Introductory History of Stained Glass

Ancient Origins

Based on remains found at Pompeii and Heraculaneum, stained glass was first used by wealthy Romans in their villas and palaces in the first century A.D. At this time stained glass was considered a domestic luxury rather than an artistic medium. It began to be regarded as an art form when Constantine first permitted Christians to worship openly in 313 A.D., as they began to build churches based on Byzantine models. The earliest surviving example of pictorial stained glass is a Head of Christ from the tenth century excavated from Lorsch Abbey in Germany.

Romanesque Period, 12th Century

By the ninth and tenth centuries, as the demand for churches increased so did the production of decorative stained glass windows. Early Romanesque style stained glass was influenced by the linear patterning, abstraction and severe frontality found in Byzantine Art. Most church windows depicted individual monumental figures with few tiers in lozenge shaped groupings. The relatively small windows of the period were designed to admit as much light as possible. Thus, images made with predominantly red and blue glass were then surrounded by white glass. King Hezekiah from Trinity Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral, England dated 1220 and Charlemange Enthroned, c.1220 from Strasbourg Cathedral, Austria reflects the classic monumentality and Byzantine derived infused bands of color and an emerging tendency to look at the Imperial past for inspiration.

Gothic Period, 13th - 14th Century

With the advent of Gothic architecture, stained glass flourished as the expansion of immense window spaces in Gothic cathedrals demanded a new approach to the medium. Red and blue remain the predominant color choice and the tendency to fuse white glass in the composition allowing for more light gives way to completely filling up of space with ornate designs consisting of darker glass. A wide variety of geometrical shapes emerge as narrative becomes more important and complex juxtaposition of events are recorded in compartmental sequences. Decorative borders and foliage become more formalized and intricate while experimentation with more naturalistic and volumetric forms appears in figurative work. The flashed glass technique is introduced, offering glaziers a means to achieve a variety of color gradations in a single piece of colored glass. The emergence of the Rose Window at St. Denis Cathedral and Chartres Cathedral, both in France, greatly influences the field throughout Europe as providing a means to depict more complex ideas as embellishments in Biblical narrative become prevalent.

Toward the end of the thirteenth century a desire for more illumination surfaced with an increase in non-figurative windows and concentric patterning that incorporated more transparent glass. One of the finest examples of this shift in taste is York Minster's Five Sisters Windows, a remarkable display of grisaille glazing. Grisaille glazing was first favored by the Cistercian Order under St. Bernard, who found that figurative windows distracted monks from religious responsibilities. This labor intensive technique consisting of complex formalized leaf-like forms relying on an intricate pattern of lead and a great deal of painted detail and crosshatching became widespread throughout England and France. As the palette became increasingly lighter, horizontal layers of colored glass and grisaille, or band windows, were incorporated in the figurative windows. As widespread adoption of elaborate stone window tracery occurred, figurative groupings fall out of favor and the individual figure resurfaces, but now framed by architectural canopies. Stained glass witnessed its greatest diversity in design, style, palette and sentiment during the Gothic period. This diversity in approach combined with the skilled artistry that developed with the formation of regulated guilds and a wide array of technological advances elevated the medium to a position of preeminence that would remain unsurpassed.

Late Gothic - Renaissance, 15th - 17th Century

Artists arose from obscurity and began to be patronized by a new wealthy mercantile class. Individual artists were sought out across regional boundaries for specific skills and traits. Glass work was no longer anonymous and begins to be attributed to specific artists and workshops. Additionally, the depiction of artists and glass guilds within windows reflects stained glass' increasingly elevated status. Taste for jewel-like color, open space no longer constrained by architectural divisions and an increase in secular usage reflects new riches. Architecture is emphasized less as it takes on a new organic quality, foliage becomes more loose and warmer colors are used while greater attention is given to textile rendering. Images depicting secular activities such as masonry and glazing were juxtaposed next to sacred imagery.

During the sixteenth century a rise in the production of glass panels for private contemplation and personal devotion ensued, thus the narrative stained glass window now served as moralizing images. Beginning in the sixteenth century with the Reformation, the creation of religious imagery had severe penalties and glass makers had to seek secular commissions like moralizing roundels or heraldic panels in order to make a living.

Decline and Destruction

Political upheavals and religious unrest jeopardized the survival of stained glass beginning in the sixteenth century, making decline and destruction eminent. Calvinist iconoclasm ended production in the North, while Reformation attacks on Catholic churches destroyed a tremendous amount of glass, particularly in England. In 1547 the Dissolution of the Monasteries ordered the destruction of all decorative glass in churches. In 1633, many of the glass factories in Lorraine, France were devastated by war. From 1642 through 1653 the Commonwealth of England destroyed thousands of stained glass windows.

Concurrent with the widespread destruction, Renaissance styles began to take precedence over Gothic style. Murals and frescoes were in higher demand and Italy was quickly becoming the cultural center of Europe. With the emergence of enamels in the sixteenth century, glaziers began to imitate Renaissance painters and applied thick coats of enamel to the surface, as if painting a canvas. Also, transparent glass gave way to heavily painted opaque glass. The more this was practiced, the more distant old stained glass techniques became. The artistry and skill, that had reached their zenith during the Gothic period, became a lost art. During the nineteenth century Sir Joshua Reynolds and other luminaries completely disregarded the medium and continued using enamel in this vein. For approximately two hundred years stained glass fell out of favor due to massive destruction, religious iconoclasm, preference for Renaissance styles, the rise in enamels usage, and a lack of knowledge of old techniques. Stained glass was not widely produced and did not again receive critical attention until its revival in the nineteenth century.

Shannon Fitzgerald

Works Cited

Brown, Sarah. An Illustrated History of Stained Glass. New York: Crescent Books, 1992.

______. Glass Painters. Toronto: Universtiy of Toronto Press, 1991.

Crewe, Sarah. Stained Glass in England, 1180-1540. London: H.M.S.O., 1987.

Freuh, Erne & Florence. Chicago Stained Glass. Chicago: Wild Onion Books, 1996.