In the wake of every catastrophe comes grief… mourning… human solidarity and the arrival of efforts to help… and a search for understanding and answers. In many cases, this last process can have huge political ripple effects.
Billmon put up a great post yesterday about the search for understanding the background to the current Louisiana-Mississippi disaster. He and Matt over at Today in Iraq have both explored some of the effects that pursuit of the war in Iraq and other Bush administration priorities had on the readiness of the southern U.S. states to deal with Hurricane Katrina.
I want to focus more on the possible political fallout of the Baghdad bridge stampede on politics inside Iraq.
I realize that the government of Iraq has announced a three-day period of national mourning. (It would be interesting to know the extent to which it is observed in all the different parts of the country?) However, even while observing this mourning period, I believe it’s possible to start looking at the possible political fallout from the disaster– which has already started to happen.
For example, Iraqi Health Minister Abdul Mutalib Mohammed Ali already, on Wedesneday, demanded the resignation of the ministers of interior and defense, holding them responsible for the stampede:
Hat-tip to Matt at TII for that link. Hat-tip to Juan Cole for noting that the health minister is a Moqtada Sadr supporter and the two he accuses are SCIRI people.
Abdel-Hussein Ghazal and Zaner Mazloom Abbas of the Iraqi daily Az-Zaman had a piece on the paper’s website yesterday with the headline:
- One thousand martyrs in an Iraqi catastrophe on the al-Aema bridge; Ja’fari announces three days of mourning; the Health Minister calls on the ministers of the Interior and Defense to resign; Washington is confident the crisis can be overcome; the people of al-Aazhamiyeh rush to the aid of the wounded from the incident; and Iraqis acuse the government of a lack of readiness regarding security and services.
Well, as I said that’s just the headline. If any of our readers would like to contribute English language translations of some or all of the text of that piece– or of any other strong pieces of reporting from Baghdad; or of links to good English-language translations published elsewhere– then I would really appreciate that.
(No length limits for such contributions, which will be put up on JWN with as much or as little attribution to you as you would like. If you’re sending in anything more than a few sentences, maybe send it to me in an email or as an email attachment, rather than trying to cram it into a Comments box.)
Politically, I would note here that the Sadrists have been quite critical of the degree of decntralization enshrined in the currnetly proposed Iraqi constitution; and they have worked hard to keep good, nationalism-based links open with the country’s Sunni Arab community. I believe al-Aazhamiyeh is a majority Sunni neighborhood– hence the importance of that reference to it in the Zaman headline.
SCIRI, by contrast, not only strongly favors the decentralization proposal but has also pioneered the idea of creating an (effectively) all-Shiite super-region encompassing as many as nine of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
I think PM Ibrahim Ja’afari, also a Shiite, sits uncomfortably in the middle on this issue. Untill early this year, opinion polls in Iraq revealed that Ja’afari was generally quite popular there. But his popularity, and that of the Islamic Daawa Party that he heads, has most likely plummeted since he has shown himself to be an extremely inept and indecisive Prime Minister over the past five months.
For the Bushies (or “the Cheney administration” as Billmon calls it… ) yesterday’s catastrophe in Baghdad probably seriously upsets their plan of being able to stage a “successful” referendum on the constitution in October, and then the follow-on parliamentary election there in December. It is not just the broad lack of political clarity around the constitution issue that looks set to impede their plans; there is also a stunning lack in Iraq of even the most basic institutional capacity capable of holding these votes under any acceptable conditions of safety and fairness… The lack of institutional capacity in public security and other very basic civic infrastructure was, obviously, revealed once again during the bridge disaster. And the aftermath of the disaster looks as though it might well further weaken the political capacity of the pro-constitution parties.
By the way, there are some very well-connected people in the Republican Party here in the US– even if people who are not, right now, in the present administration– who are prepared to admit to the “Potemkin village” nature of the Iraqi constitution venture as it is currently conceived.
Recently I heard one such person musing on the constitution in the following terms:
- “The Iraqi constitution? Well, of course it’s a dog’s breakfast. But then it’s quite irrelevant anyway, isn’t it, since the country has no institutions capable of implementing it…”
My own thoughts exactly.
“there is also a stunning lack in (America) of even the most basic institutional capacity capable of ….” implementing emergency disaster plans? fixing levees? maintaining law and order?
“The lack of institutional capacity in public security and other very basic civic infrastructure was, obviously, revealed once again during the….” latest hurricane.
Amazing, isn’t it, that some people in DC think they can go around the world and “fix” other countries?
What if a hurricane hits Houston next? How on earth do they expect 23,000 very poor people to get along when they are all in one big room? The lack of foresight is stunning.
God help the people of Iraq and New Orleans. Only God can, I guess, because us humans are way too messed up…….. and way too stupid.
If the urge to “fix” the world overcomes these DC people, perhaps they need to be told that by walking a few blocks in most any direction they’ll reach a nearby ghetto where there’s no shortage of activities that could use some help…
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the looting an expression of freedom.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=241846&category=IRAQCOMMENTARY&BCCode=IRQC&newsdate=8/23/2005‎
What we see in New Orleans is this
Salah, you took the words out of my mouth with your reference to the Rumsfeld quote on the moral quality of looters.
David had this to say a couple of threads back:
“Still waiting to see the moslem country whinners that complained about the size of our aid to the 2004 Tsunami to send a single check to New Orleans. Please wake me up when that happens.”
Star Tribute said this regarding offers of aid to the victims of Katrina:
Offers have been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, NATO and the Organization of American States, the spokesman said.
David, time to wake up!! in more ways than one.
Ambassador Bremer is one of the world
Susan,
Apart form the UAE, I don’t see any Muslim countries. Seems to me your list supports David’s assertion, rather than refuting it.
BTW, weren’t the population of New Orleans given instructions to leave the city? Why didn’t they?
JES,
After 9/11 when one of the princes of Saudi Arabia offered a big cheque to the NYorkers, but it was refused by US authorities (I think it was the mayor of NY, but can’t remember for sure). This was quite an affront to a country with which the US has alsways had good relationships. Quite enough to prevent further donations.
That said, I’m all for helping poor developped countries, but when catastrophes strikes a country as extended as the US and as rich as the US, it should be able to deal with the problem herself. Or there is something wrong with your social and political system, with the way the wealth is distributed among the population and with the priorities set by the government.
Apart form the UAE, I don’t see any Muslim countries.
Who are they discussing Muslims contries, can stop this rubbish this not of your business.
Can you both tell us what Israel offers to US? The only state got the most of the US aids for years.
Just reminder Saudis gave GWB Father $US20Millions when GWB joiner run for election first time, Also Kuwaitis did same thing. And see how he returned to us
Almost three years now and no single ward from JWB bout the revue from Iraqi oil, Bush Spend it on both disaster in Old Jazz City and Iraq, what you waiting for?
Christiane,
I think you should go back and look at the context in which Giulianni refused the check and what he said at the time. I think it was quite an affront to him, and to many Americans, that a country that had had such close relations with the US would finance anti-American madrassas throughout the Muslim world and that, further, they would produce a bin-Laden who sent people to blow up US embassies and fly airplanes into US buildings and not take care of the problem themselves when they had the chance.
Of course, Salah probably has a different explanation for how 9/11 occurred, but from my point of view, he can stop his rubbish and stop discussing what Israel can or can’t offer the US. It’s none of your business, ibn ‘ami!
My original question still remains: Weren’t the residents of New Orleans given ample warning to evacuate? Why didn’t they?
Christiane –
JES raises a useful point about the context of Mayor Guliani’s refusal, though I think it would be more useful to confine it to say that Guliani was probably acting in the spirit of his constituents by refusing the check. New Yorkers may not have been following the thread of madrassa funding, but they did know that the majority of the hijackers were Saudi.
Whether that led to other states being reluctant to offer aid, I have my doubts. I don’t see a lot of states here in the ME taking their diplomatic leads from the Saudis.
That said, I agree with you that the US should take responsibility for helping those of its citizens even more severely affected by choices the administration made in advance of the disaster. And accountability for the failure to do so, for the gutting of FEMA, the resistance to funding projects that would have mitigated the damage, the dismantling of the Army Corps of Engineer’s efforts, etc. should also fall on the appropriate shoulders.
JES,
Interesting article here about the evacuation plan.
I’m not sure if the implication is that those who didn’t evacuate when ordered are responsible for whatever they got, but as a matter of principle, planners wouldn’t (i.e. shouldn’t) assume a 100% evac rate after the order was given. People in hospitals, elderly and infirm, shut-ins, people who didn’t receive the order, people without the resources to relocate, etc. all have to be reflected in the plan.
JES:
“My original question still remains: Weren’t the residents of New Orleans given ample warning to evacuate? Why didn’t they?”
A couple of days. And most did. But there were some people who were too sick or infirm to leave. Or who didn’t have cars. Or who had no insurance and were afraid that their houses would be looted. This happens in any disaster, and it is the government’s responsibility to have evacuation plans.
It’s also worth noting that when these people go to other cities, they are finding that there is no place to house or feed them either.
Total incompetance from top to bottom.
Salah:
Israel has offered assistance, though Bush has been saying that international aid is not necessary. This seems a bit arrogant. But I don’t think the problem here is money right now, but, as noted above, this administration’s complete lack of foresight and total incompetance.
JES,
Interesting article here about the evacuation plan.
I’m not sure if the implication is that those who didn’t evacuate when ordered are responsible for whatever they got, but as a matter of principle, planners wouldn’t (i.e. shouldn’t) assume a 100% evac rate after the order was given. People in hospitals, elderly and infirm, shut-ins, people who didn’t receive the order, people without the resources to relocate, etc. all have to be reflected in the plan.
JES, you question Weren’t the residents of New Orleans given ample warning to evacuate? Why didn’t they? is way too simplistic and reveals a deep misunderstanding of what happened.
Basically, yes, people were instructed to evacuate and the local authorities altered traffic flows etc to ensure that all those with vehicles could do so.
What did not happen on any significant scale was to provide the needed logistics so that those without access to their own motor vehicles could get out. The people you see left in the city throughout the past few days are overwhelming low-income people who literally had no way to get out.
This is just a part of the way in which many years of visceral anti-“government” and exaggeratedly “individualistic” feeling among the ruling circles in Washington and many other parts of the country have compounded the human misery caused by Katrina.
I think the way you ask your question comes very close to blaming the victims of this gross governmental incompetency.
Joshua: Total incompetance from top to bottom.
We are in complete agreement. (Even if neither of us can actually spell the word right first time: incompetence.)
Helena,
I find a couple of things interesting. First YOU calling MY questioning simplistic.
The second is more to the point of the question. Now, Hugo Chavez, great intellect that he is, was careful to praise the Cubans for evacuating Havana while criticizing the US (and primarily Bush) for not evacuating New Orleans. Of course, it’s easier to give an order in Cuba and ensure that it’s carried out than it is in the US. And that is a big part of the problem.
I’m sure that there is a great deal of truth in what you say that “the people you see left in the city throughout the past few days are overwhelming low-income people who literally had no way to get out.” Or at least partially true. I really don’t think that a large percentage of the population of any major city in the US today literally don’t have a way to get out if they have to.
As we are seeing, anarchy has taken over. Some of those “low-income” people apparently did have the means to acquire fire arms, and there are reports of rapes and murders, in addition to looting.
Let me suggest something else here. Some portion of those who left simply decided not to. Some were simply giving a big finger to the authorities who where “just bullshitting them again”. Others, I’m sure, stayed because of some of the reasons stated above (the elderly, sick and infirm), but I bet you that most of those were taken care of. (I understand that Fats Dominon stayed behind, bless his soul.)
I’m also willing to bet you the there were two other groups of people who stayed behind, because that’s what they decided on their own. First, I don’t think that all that looting was just spontaneous. I’d wager that a good portion of the people who didn’t leave wanted to be in New Orleans after the storm passed over so they could loot (and loot they did). Another group of people probably decided to stay behind because they were pretty sure that those other people were going to loot their homes and businesses.
Now I don’t think you can blame George Bush and the Republicans for all of this, any more than you can really blame them for the hurricane (although that I see elsewhere that there are some loonies who are doing precisely that). You need to look at a lot of other players to account for the lack of preparedness, and I suggest that you start looking first at local government. They are responsible, irrespective of what the Feds do.
At the same time, I don’t think that you can absolve those who remained behind from any responsibility. Sure, the elderly, sick and infirm can’t really be blamed. But those who had options and decided to stay should have realized that the call to evacuate was not some kind of joke. And certainly there appear to be a lot of armed criminals who should bear full responsibility for what happens to them (and I understand from the Governor’s instructions to the police and National Guard, that these people will begin to pay dearly).
Just a point about the offering of assistance – by Israel, Muslim countries or anyone.
Obviously, the US is a wealthy country and can probably afford to foot the bill itself. That isn’t the point. Not all assistance is monetary (although I heard this morning that the EU was going to give the US petroleum). More to the point, its the OFFERING part that I think is important.
I believe it was someone, actually, at the UN who criticized the US for not initially offering enough aid to tsunami victims. I’d like to see the UN ‘offering’ some aid now to the US.
JES,
You are offering a scathing example of the foul logic of the Bushies :
1) The Bushies and the Rep aren’t responsible of anything, but
2) The poorest people who stayed can only blame themselves
3) The UN and the Muslims countries are to blame, because they failed to help.
Only totalitarian regimes are able to constantly turn things upside down like you are, aren’t you ashamed to show so much bad faith ? Only totalitarian regimes blame it all on the others, especially on the lower classes.
Christiane,
I beg to differ. Further, I challenge you to show where I said any of the things that you claim I said!
This is precisely what I mean by “simplistic questioning” (or lack of questioning). Everything is good vs. bad, “Bushies” vs. caring people.
Now here is what I actually said (and I think it’s pretty clear if you go back and look:
1)You can’t lay ALL of the blame of George Bush, the Republicans or the Federal Government (even if that’s what you’d like to do). In the US local government – municipal, parish (in LA I believe) and state bear a lot of primary responsibility, because over the years they have demanded it. This in no way says that anyone at the Federal level has NO responsibility, as you intimate.
2)There is no evidence that only the poorest people stayed. Undoubtedly there were some people who stayed who had no choice, and they should have been taken care of and cannot, of course, be held accountable. But it appears that there are a hell of a lot of people who simply did not heed the warnings of their local government and they bear a hell of a lot of responsibility for their own actions (just like the guy who doesn’t buckle up when he gets on the highway). Further, it is quite apparent that there are quite a few pure criminals and animals who stayed, and they bear full responsibility for their own lives as well as for the looting, rape and murder that they are committing.
3) I did not say anywhere that either the UN or the Muslims are to blame, whether or not they chose to offer assistance. That is total bull, and I don’t think that it deserves any more of a response.
Now, Christiane, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
JES, what is happening in my country is a tragedy. I could refute nearly every argumentative point you make but I’m too tired to do so. I urge you to try to understand US society a little better before you issue your sweeping and very argumentative analyses.
On one small point you made: I’d like to see the UN ‘offering’ some aid now to the US.… maybe look at the bottom of this good BBC roundup of the situation. Actually, just reading that one article might have given you much information that you don’t seem to have at present.
Helena,
Sorry you’re so tired. I guess if you didn’t get exercised about Dominic’s complaints of my “condescention”, you won’t be upset about my critique of you.
I spent the first 23 years of my life in the US. I spent an additional 9 years in the States doing graduate work and working. I was trained as an anthropologist, specializing in economic anthropology and the Middle East.
I have spent almost half of my life, or a total of about 25 years, in Israel.
So, please spare me the condescention of telling me I should “understand US society a little better”, before commenting, as there’s a good chance I understand it every bit as well as you do!
I will also remember your condescention the next time you make one of your uninformed “sweeping and very argumentative analyses” of Israeli society!
I just came across this:
“The regional Corps head so often quoted by the media himself said in 2003 that a project to protect the city from a category 4 or 5 storm would take 30 years to complete, with the feasibility study alone costing $8 million and taking six years to complete. At the time he opined, ‘Hopefully we won’t have a major storm before then.'”
http://www.techcentralstation.com/090205F.html
Some people should probably read this piece in its entirety before they start throwing blame around!
there are quite a few pure criminals and animals who stayed, and they bear full responsibility for their own lives as well as for the looting, rape and murder that they are committing.
Few pure criminals=Bad Apples
From the media some came out of the disaster area and they are organized gang (Vdeuim ok) not jut looting killing and raped women= Terrorist “insurgency” barbaric” ok get fight them now
JES:
Remember last week? When you, I, and several others criticized Helena for her attitude toward the reburial of Jewish settlers in Gaza? Think of it that way. When people have lost their loved ones, or have lost their homes due to disaster, or are stranded in a pretty miserable situation, it is generally not good form to start questioning their character. So you are already starting from a pretty tough position.
Regarding why all those people were there. The evacuation order was only given a couple of days before the storm hit. This was in part because Katrina was originally classified as a cat 1 huricane and not considered that serious. But as it became stronger, it became clear that people had to get out.
So why did as many people remain in the city as did? You seem to think that the main problem was that there were a bunch of thugs waiting to loot and rape and pillage. That really is the least of it.
I’ve seen lots of traumas hit the U.S. This is not something talked about very often, but the U.S. is pretty regularly hit by huricanes, tornados, and the occasional earthquake. There was recently a very bad flood up in parts of New Jersey and New York. It’s not recognized as a national disaster, because our country is so big and these things affect only a small part of the country. But in fact the U.S. is in a pretty “rough neighborhood” when it comes to these things.
On balance, people have behaved well during these disasters. But there are variations. I’m from NYC. In the blackout of 1976(?), there were riots, looting, and disorder. In the blackout of 2003, there were no such problems. For the most part, you don’t see problems.
What happened here? I do remember reading a couple of weeks ago that New Orleans was one city where crime was on the rise, as it was dropping precipitously in other urban areas. The mayor of NO was saying today that the city has had some severe drug problems, and that part of this could be translated to addicts roaming for a fix or just going a bit crazy.
On the other hand, it is fair to point out that you really did not hear many reports of rioting, rape, looting, etc, on Sunday, on Monday, on Tuesday. You only began to hear trickles of reports on Wednesday, and significant reports yesterday. Part of this can be attributed to an incredibly chaotic, terrible situation. People were stranded at that point for DAYS. Unable to find any food and water, repeatedly given bad information by the government officials, and in an incredibly sticky and humid city surrounded by pools of sewage and dead bodies floating around. Without justifying ANY of the actions, I will say that there is going to be something of a breakdown in social order.
My feeling is that people do tend to band together and work well in times of adversity. But when people are exposed to jungle/animal like conditions, there will be plenty of people who lower themselves to the occassion.
Both sides in this debate can probably find enough to offend them. Some people will say that I’m blaming it on the victims and others will say I’m making up “society did it” excuses.
Finally, my comment is well beyond Helena’s guidelines at this point, so I will end with the following. The military finally has gotten supplies through, and I’m sure that they will do a good job. Put aside questions of the Bush administration’s position on global warming, levee repair, and priorities re: Iraq, etc. For me, at this point this looks mainly like just a really incompetent stumbling effort by an administration that doesn’t grasp the way things that affect people. Now that Bush was shamed a little bit, I’m sure the nation has the resources to help these people. New Orleans as a city will be one heck of a recover job though. I love the city and hope it can come back.
And with that, happy Labor Day. I know Dominic and some others may sneer at our watered down version of May Day. But it’s what we got, and I need the time off, badly.
Joshua,
You seem like an open-minded person, so I
“Few pure criminals=Bad Apples
From the media some came out of the disaster area and they are organized gang (Vdeuim ok) not jut looting killing and raped women= Terrorist “insurgency” barbaric” ok get fight them now”
Salah, it appears we agree on something!
Susan, “Apart form the UAE, I don’t see any Muslim countries. Seems to me your list supports David’s assertion, rather than refuting it.”
He claimed none of them would contribute.
“BTW, weren’t the population of New Orleans given instructions to leave the city? Why didn’t they?”
When was the last time you walked 100-150 in two days? With nowhere to go? And no money?
And besides the very poor, of which there is a lot in New Orleans, there are the drug addicts and the mentally ill. And the sick, and the very young, and the elderly and infirm, and the really stupid, and the ones who think they are invincible. And then there are those who took a calculated risk – one guy did that and kept the power on at his business and reported all that happened – and some lost big time on that risk.
In Cuba, they send out buses to collect people up when a hurricane is coming. Why didn’t the USA do that?
Posted by JES
“…and the really stupid, and the ones who think they are invincible. And then there are those who took a calculated risk – one guy did that and kept the power on at his business and reported all that happened – and some lost big time on that risk.”
Thank you Susan. Again, you made my case very well.
In Cuba they’re likely to send a bus around to pick you up for an extended, all-expenses-paid holiday for a number of violations.
JES-
Let’s get my views out of the way so that they don’t obstruct my response to your point:
I don’t care one way or the other about your sensitivity. I don’t blame Bush for Katrina. I don’t blame Bush for long term weather cycles that now have us entering a period of several decades of increased hurricane activity. I don’t blame Bush for the global warming that will make those hurricanes more intense. I do blame Bush for policies that make the problem worse and prevent the necessary response to global warming, but that doesn’t put Katrina in his lap.
While the Bush administration is certainly culpable for gutting preparations that would have made Katrina less damaging; for starving the Coast 2050 project; for underfunding the ACE projects that were meant as stopgaps until longer term projects would provide greater protection; for gutting the ACE projects meant to buffer the levees which collapsed after Katrina, leading to the flooding; for politicizing environmental projects all along the Mississippi that have made the problem worse; for encouraging the development that drastically stepped up erosion of the natural buffers in the wetlands; and for gutting FEMA, let’s set these aside for now, since we aren’t talking about them. Plenty of time to debate those later on the scientific merits, assuming of course that one is still allowed to use science in public discourse in the US by that point.
Setting all this aside, your aim of assigning responsibility (or as you put it, havign them share responsibility) to those individuals caught in NOLA is still flawed. The basis of the social compact between the government and its people is that the government will protect them. Like war, natural disasters, especially on this scope, are issues where the federal government has the lead responsibility. Dispatching its obligations to protect its citizens means that they are responsible.
That responsibility means that the government has to deal with those who cannot be evacuated, whether that is because they are too poor, aged, addled, stubborn or stupid, whether they think they’ve been through hurricanes before and decided to sit through this one for whatever reason. Yes, state and local governments have important roles, which the federal government leads, and coordinates. But the responsibility lies where it lies.
At the practical level, that compact has organized the distribution of resources and the task organization of response. Local emergency managers and FEMA are supposed to operate according to a coordinated plan, with funding from state and federal sources. I’m reading all these reports: the locals did what they were supposed to, the federal government did not. Saying that local government shares the blame for the slow federal response is (to use the most heinously trivial analogy I can come up with on short notice) like saying the quarterback of your football team is responsible for not holding the defensive line. Except of course that when the team blows this game, everyone in the stands gets massacred.
The response has been a national disgrace. Even Bush’s ideological cohorts know this; Bill Frist has called for hearings into what went wrong, and even that bastion of utter insanity, the right wing blogosphere, is filled with criticism from people who heretofore would have set themselves on fire rather than admit that Dear Leader was anything other than directly guided by the hand of God.
wind – as usual, you hit the nail on the head with your reference to the social compact. That really is what this is all about. Starting in 1980, the Reagan and Bush administrations (with more help than hindrance from the Clinton interlude) have gone about methodically dismantling all the elements of the social compact between the people and their government that has kept this society together since the Great Depression. The most rabid proponents of this “starve the beast” strategy like Grover Norquist readily admit this. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that they don’t need anyone else; that their little insulated lives can continue without the support of the masses or the government, presumably because they are so virtuous and hard-working. To make this hypothesis seem like viable policy, they have to assume that most others will also benefit from being cut loose and rendered “self reliant.” I’m sure many people of this persuasion lived and worked in the City of New Orleans before the flood. I wonder if they are having second thoughts?
John C.,
Great summary of the radical-conservative program, and the motivations of its key architects. I think all this deserves much closer scrutiny and a lot more thought, and I hope that Helena will post more about this so that we can continue the discussion in future threads.
Yeah, I wonder too whether this will finally be a wake-up call for those who have supported this government while it has pulled the net out from under them. There is on the one hand a great consistency between the conservative ideology and the ghastly implementation of it that we are seeing, and on the other hand a great chasm between them. I think this goes unnoticed on all sides because the high level messages get all the attention [in production as well as consumption] while the substance goes wanting. The opening this presents is an opportunity for the cynics and the self-interested to hijack the government in broad daylight.
The bizarre, up-is-down, postmodern (sorry, Dominic) polspeak of the administration is a symptom of so very much illness. I wonder what it will take, if not this, finally, before people start to decode the resonant language of contemporary conservatism and see how empty it is of anything they themselves value.
wind
Don’t apologise, Wind, you are absolutely right in my opinion. Post-modernism is the naturally-fitting ideology of capitalist Imperialism. Which means, strange as it may seem, that there is a direct connection between G W Bush, Rumsfeld, Bolton, and all the rest of the pseudo-tough-guys of the USA, and Althusser, Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida and the other French po-mo intellectuals with their sticking-plaster confection of irrationality.
This is a comment from another blog made by menno, which I think is a good analogy for people who reason like JES: “Those who drowned on the Titanic because there was no space left for them in the lifeboats share in the responsibility of their own deaths because they were warned to evacuate ship when it was still floating.”
Dominic,
One of the ‘review of pomo’ books I read in grad school was “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” by David Harvey, whose title says it all, eh? Notable that many writing in the second tier of the genre (Anglo/American mostly, there) were Marxists taking that tack on it. Some very good, and overlooked, scholarship. Calling the mostly-French variety a ‘confection’ is right on.
While I am not a fan of his, I would rule Derrida out of that list, though the secondary scholarship makes it hard to extract him. Having made the effort to absorb his writing, I found in the end that he was a champion of the Enlightenment. Applying the method of examining the marginal and highly questionable assumptions that prop up any school of thought (what he meant by ‘deconstruction’) left you with an Enlightenment that passed the test, in his view, even with such assumptions exposed and given an acid-bath.
Personally, while I wasn’t persuaded by the pomos, I did appreciate the intellectual workout offered by the best of them (including Derrida). Exercise like that makes it much easier to spot specifically what is wrong with the rhetoric of the Bushies(and the continuity with capitalism, as you point out), instead of just having a nagging feeling (and sinking dread) about what you’re hearing. Obviously, not everyone needed the kind of mental conditioning I did …
There’s a good article in two parts at http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/vedic_science_Mira.htm by Meera Nanda.
Then there’s an article by Kenan Malik in spiked! of April 28, 2002, which goes in part:
“CLR James, like most anti-imperialists in the past, recognised that all progressive politics were rooted in the ‘Western tradition’, and in particular in the ideas of reason, progress, humanism and universalism that emerged out of the Enlightenment. The scientific method, democratic politics, the concept of universal values – these are palpably better concepts than those that existed previously, or those that exist now in other political and cultural traditions. Not because Europeans are a superior people, but because out of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution flowed superior ideas.
“The Western tradition is not Western in any essential sense, but only through an accident of geography and history. Indeed, Islamic learning provided an important resource for both the Renaissance and the development of science. The ideas we call ‘Western’ are in fact universal, laying the basis for greater human flourishing. That is why for much of the past century radicals, especially third world radicals, recognised that the problem of imperialism was not that it was a Western ideology, but that it was an obstacle to the pursuit of the progressive ideals that arose out of the Enlightenment.
“As Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born Algerian nationalist, put it: ‘All the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought. But Europeans have not carried out in practice the mission that fell to them.’ (5) For thinkers like Fanon and James, the aim of anti-imperialism was not to reject Western ideas but to reclaim them for all of humanity.”
Then there is James Heartfield’s book, ‘The “Death of the Subject” Explained’. Then there is a broad rational-humanist anti-po-mo web site called “Butterflies and Wheels”.
We can’t have too much of this stuff.
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