Thursday, September 29, 2005

"Uniquely Unique" - The 9/11 industry

I haven't been following the news of debates over what to do with Ground Zero very closely. But according to the New York Times, a "Freedom Centre" which was "envisioned as a living memorial in which the story of Sept. 11, 2001, would be told in the context of the worldwide struggle for freedom through the ages" was rejected after "Critics said the sacred precinct of the memorial was no place for a lesson in geopolitics or social history, particularly when the memorial museum was planned entirely underground, within the trade center foundations."
However, today, "state officials described a plan this morning to develop a half million square feet of retail space elsewhere on the World Trade Center site.

If consumerism and worship of "free" "markets" are an indication of serious social problems that get quite a lot of attention (on the left at least), respecting history gets less emphasis. But a failure (or refusal) to appreciate the meaning of history is in many ways just as clear a symptom of a society in a crisis as unrestrained capitalism. The risk of a "9/11 Industry" serving many of the same functions as "The Holocaust Industry" as Norman Finkelstein described it seems very real. Since 9/11 (like the Holocaust) is a "uniquely unique" event, and no one can comprehend the suffering of its victims by comparison, history becomes meaningless. Thus, in the wake of catastrophe, we shall not look to history to see what we can learn about freedom and justice; we shall go shopping.
This is not the pathology of neo-Reganite neo-Conservatism (or whatever you want to call the "ideology" of the Bush Administration). Domestically, the British government has responded to the terrorist attacks in London in a similar way, and we barely need reminding of Charles Clarke's comments about Medieval historians as education secretary.
History helps us to put the present in context, but more importantly, accurate history helps us see how people have struggled to win freedom from oppression through the ages - where they have succeeded and where they have failed, and why. If power-systems cannot rewrite history to ignore popular victories (and this has been pretty successful in "Western" societies), then history will be ignored altogether. And with no hope remaining of improving the world we live in, what reasons remain not to just forget about the rest of the world entirely, and go shopping?

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Ethnic cleansing in the United States?

Much of the commentary about the response to Hurricane Katrina has been somewhat hysterical, and rather unenlightening. Today I found a rare exception by the fascinating author Mike Davis, who writes about cities (mostly, American cities) in a manner that is always thoughtful and remarkably stimulating.
To see, in his article "The Struggle Over the Future of New Orleans," language usually associated with Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, is certainly shocking. But he is careful and thoughtful, and his suggestions appear (to me at least) to make good sense. He's also optimistic about the possibilities of social movements - a valuable trait, all too rare among lefties.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Iraq

The atrocities committed in Baghdad on Wednesday (followed up by more slaughter on Thursday and Friday) which follow the issuing of the final draft of Iraq's constitution, and the US-UK-"Iraqi" assault on Tal Afar last week, merit close attention - tragically, not only because of the deaths in the last few days (about 200 killed by suicide bombers; how many killed in the Tal Afar offensive? No one knows, as "we are not in the business of recording casualty rates" as "Stormin'" Norman Schwarzkopf insisted 14 years ago) but also because of the chaos and carnage recent events portend.
Increasingly, a federalisation of the country appears likely. A few weeks ago, Noam Chomsky described Kurdish and Shi'ite autonomy as "a nightmare for Washington" in an analysis that seemed pretty reasonable to me. One regional benefit (for Washington) might be that Kurdish independence will cause problems in Tehran (already beginning in fact – see Najmeh Bozorgmehr, “Armed Kurds fomenting unrest in Iran pose security threat to Tehran” Financial Times, 29th August). Aside from this, however, it is hard to see what benefits Washington can gain from federalisation.

However, while the British government keep silent on these developments, Bush has praised the draft constitution as another sign that he has succeeded in bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq. That the document will increase sectarian tensions was pretty widely reported in the media after the text was finalised. "Rather than an inclusive document, it is more a recipe for separation based on Shia and Kurdish privilege," the FT quoted Anthony Cordesman at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies as saying. (Roula Khalaf and Steve Negus, “Charter steers Iraqis down a path full of potential danger” FT, 30th August)

The assault on Tal Afar seems to have provided the occasion for those extremist Sunni groups intent on exacerbating sectarian violence (al-Zarqawi their public face) to launch their bloody assault, creating carnage in Baghdad on Wednesday, with more attacks on Thursday and Friday.

All of this seems to have been pretty well predicted by experts quoted widely in the mainstream media, and the course on which Iraq is headed looks pretty clear from the events of the last couple of weeks. Is Washington now so desperate to create the appearance of political progress and reduce troop-levels that it is happy to see Iraq slipping in to civil war, adopt a federal constitution that will cause huge problems for its Turkish and Saudi allies, and leave control over the crucial energy resources uncertain?


These questions - posed (in a different form) with no attempt to provide answers, by Robert Fisk in Thursday's Independent - I have put to Mr. Chomsky. When I recieve a reply, my loyal readers shall be informed. Until then, we can only wonder - although not without hope - what the future may hold...


Apparently also newsworthy: In a speech on Thursday night, President Bush emphasised that New Orleans' "poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

Afghanistan - still run by warlords.

Charles Clarke not so sure about 3 months detention without trial. (aka "What you get when you never get round to drafting a constitution")

NHS - going bankrupt; creeping privatisation coming along nicely. (This might have something to do with their willingness to hire temp staff at £8.50/hr - yes I'm resentful, why wouldn't I be?)

Finally, a minor glimpse in to the modern political economy of human rights. This stuff is astoundingly difficult to put together these days. No doubt, the intention is to produce a series of isolated "scandals" rather than a consistent identifiable pattern. Nevertheless, it might be worth investigating how much the "Political Economy of Human Rights" has changed since Messrs Chomsky and Herman so competently dissected it a quarter of a centuy ago...

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Palast, back on track

It's a source of great disappointment to me that Greg Palast seems to have abandoned investigative journalism in favour of writing comment pieces (not really his forte, it must be said). But today's commentary on George Galloway and the responses of the Left to the situation in Iraq is a real return to form. The US anti-war movement has its own particular characteristics - in some ways more encouraging, in some ways less, than the movements in Europe. It's well organised, for one thing, and unlike the British movement, has not disintegrated after more than 2 years of occupation - in fact, it seems to have gained much strength in the last few months.
But it has its weaknesses too. Much of the US movement seems to have been entranced by "Gorgeous" George Galloway since his May appearance before the Senate. His new book (called "Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington" - yes, really) is being promoted on a nationwide US tour. On Znet (usually pretty radical and pretty sensible), regular contributor Dave Zirin (rarely very radical or sensible) gave the book a gushing review.
Galloway's a dangerous creature - most dangerous because he is so rarely wrong in what he says, though so frequently wrong in what he does. Palast is quick to point this out - probably an advantage of having spent a few years in Britain. He also refuses to be drawn by arguments that the Left should support the Iraqi insurgency. This has been advocated even in journals usually regarded as serious and sophisticated. New Left Review editor Susan Watkins, for example, called Iraq "Vichy on the Tigris" a year ago.
Again, Palast will have none of it, and rightly so. Supporting suicide bombers is not a progressive move. Many on the Left reject pacifism, which in itself is fair enough, but apart from anything else, as the Palestinians have showed in a gruesome manner, it's tactical idiocy. Furthermore, even for non-pacifists, targeting innocent civilians seems to me to be morally indefensible, whatever the justifications (this standard is certainly applied by war-critics to the invading and occupying armies; universality dicatates we must also apply it to ourselves).
Palast has identified much of what's wrong with much of the anti-war movement at the moment - not least in pointing out that being "anti-Bush" is pretty weak, pretty meaningless, and pretty directionless to say the very least. "If they're against Bush, we're with them" should be taken to be on the same level as Bush's own "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" doctrine.
Good on 'im.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Preventative wars in the nuclear age

On Sunday, the Washington Post had a front-page story reporting that the Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nucelar weapons by the US army, "requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons."
Although this is described as a policy of pre-emption, it in fact allows for preventative strikes using nuclear weapons. "The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations."
Just as the invasion of Iraq was preventative - not pre-emptive - so the doctrine invoked to justify it is being extended to the use of nuclear weapons. The distinction is important: pre-emption means that if the enemy launch nuclear weapons, and they are already travelling towards their targets in the US, the US can respond with nuclear weapons, before the enemy's weapons have hit. Prevention allows for the US to judge that an enemy is "intending to use" WMD - and this is very much open to interpretation and speculation. The US government was (it claimed) of the opinion that Iraq were intending to use WMD before the 2003 invasion was launched. Evidence that such weapons exist, it seems, is not necessary.
Well, what does all of this mean? Are the 'rules of engagement' really changing? I don't believe so. These revisions are not so much to alter the way in which the military may act, but to prepare the public for such a change. If the doctrine is asserted in advance, and accepted on a theoretical level, it's easier to sell it should it ever have to be invoked to justify actual strikes.
Should we be worried? In a sense, we should - the Bush administration, by making doctrines such as "illegal but legitimate" (not their invention, incidentally - NATO's attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq) and "preventative" nuclear strikes normal, sets dangerous precedents, considering the damage nuclear weapons can do. Those interested in avoiding ultimate doom ought to oppose these doctrines vigorously, therefore.
Nevertheless, these doctrines do not in themselves make war more likely - starting a war is contingent on many other factors, the most important being domestic opinion. Iraq is a catastrophe, but those who oppose war and favour justice may be able to make significant progress in the wake of the domestic political crises it has produced (sadly, this seems least true of the UK, where terrorist attacks have put a stop to everything, including an incredible movement for global trade justice).
Surely this is a dubious doctrine for the times, but rebuilding disarmament movements and opposing militarism and war can only start in one place. We the people....

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Poverty begins at home; Iraq.

Today's Independent made much of the fact that sections of the UN Human Development Report for 2005 (released yesterday) said parts of the US are as poor as the Third World, also pointing out gross inequalities (infant mortality - increasing overall - is twice as high for black children as for white children). So far at least, the US nationals don't seem to have taken much notice. But the Indie seems to think this report marks the start of a huge battle between the UN and the Bush administration.
Looking in the mirror is a little harder, but the Guardian has a report on what the HDC had to say about the sorry state of affairs here. It points out that inequality continues to increase - a stable trend since 1980 after Thatcher came in to office. It also mentions real-income stagnation for the poorest decile (saying incomes rose 0.4% between 1979 and 1990), but this appears to me to be a gross underestimation. When I looked in to this matter a few years ago, I found declining real incomes for the lowest 30% of earners since 1979 - declining more slowly since 1997, but declining nevertheless. It seems "New" Labour's commitment to halving child poverty by 2010 will not be met without seriously addressing these inequalities, the UN predicts.

In Iraq, the finalised draft of the constitution which will be voted on on the 15th of October will grant the proposed Kurdish and Shia regional governments "a degree of autonomy close to independence" writes Patrick Cockburn in today's Indie. Even though Sunni opposition may prevent it from being adopted, but it certainly looks as though some kind of regionalisation, and the independence the Kurds have sought for years is going to be the final outcome. This is quite a surprise for me. Before the war began, I expected one of the outcomes to be great efforts towards independence by Iraq's Kurds, which one would expect to inspire those Kurds in Turkey and Iran to push for more independence, and efforts to create an entity called "Kurdistan" which at the moment is little more than an aspiration. This, I expected, would be likely to cause serious problems for Washington's clients in Ankara, and might well lead to brutal repression by the Turkish and Iranian governments. If such problems were to be avoided, I anticipated serious violence would be necessary to quell the voices of the Iraqi Kurds seeking more autonomy (and they already had a considerable amount under Hussein, after 1991). What all this says of what's become of the US/UK plans for Iraq, and how these problems will be resolved remains unclear. We can only hope the politics of EU accession prevent Ankara from launching another bloodbath in Turkey's Kurdish region. Iranian leaders have fewer restraints, although pressure from the US might also serve to deter a violent response. But the problem will remain, and will have to remain somehow. I cannot believe the US/UK vision of the Middle East includes an independent Kurdistan. The desperate state of the mission to "rebuild" Iraq is becoming ever more obvious. The long term consequences are difficult to predict, but Iraqis are unlikely to come out on top.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Time to lay the blame?

Yesterday, I was discussing with Stellito how reasonable it is to blame President Bush for mis-handling the crisis brought on by Hurricane Katrina. "President Bush has been imperiled politically by what was widely perceived to be a slow federal response," the New York Times reports. Bush is trying "to erase the hardening impression that his administration had failed to act with sufficient urgency to address the suffering of tens of thousands of people."
Typically, Paul Krugman lays out the important questions in a pretty sober and sensible manner (his style illustrates why - unlike most people - I quite like economists). At this point, it seems reasonable to write of "a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response." Krugman identifies the root causes in budget cuts resulting directly from the costs of the Iraq war, and the Bush admin's destruction of the effectiveness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures."
Maureen Dowd, also writing in the New York Times, relates the level of catastrophe directly to Bush admin policies, in a manner that looks a little like clutching at straws to me. She's right about race and class being a pretty strong determinant in how affected people are by this kind of thing, though.
I think it's a little far-fetched to blame all of this on the Bush administration though, and a lot of the commentary is nothing but political opportunism that takes little account of the fact that Democrat governments have been only a little better in terms of slashing budgets for federal agencies in the last few years. There seems to me to be little purpose (apart from petty political point-scoring) in blaming Dubya for the hurricane. A calm look at the problems and their roots (the direction in which Krugman is heading) is a much more constructive way to proceed. Those who think politics is about powerful individuals will never achieve anything. Only when one is able to appreciate the complexities of the problems can one go about finding solutions.


On a much lighter note, here is a picture of a feline junkie that I found quite amusing.