George Bush Publishes Memoirs November 9, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in United States.10 comments
I’m not sure though if this is a pop-up book or a colouring-in one.
On a serious note, and on the basis of the limited information available so far (looks like the Guardian will be updating that regularly overnight and by the time people read this there will probably be more info in the public domain), things in the White House under Bush were pretty much as bad as we feared. In the memoirs, Decision Points, Bush recounts how he ordered the US to plan strikes against operations against specific targets in Iran and Syria (so much more than the usual plans that are locked in a drawer to invade pretty much anywhere), shifts the blame for the response to Katrina elsewhere, defends his various wars, praises Tony Blair, and defends the use of torture. There’s an interesting absence from that list, the last of the so-called axis; it’ll be interesting to see if it’s included or ignored in the book itself.
Of Katrina, Bush writes
Five years later, I can barely write these words without feeling disgusted. I am deeply insulted by the suggestion that we allowed American citizens to suffer because they were black… The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. I was raised to believe that racism was one of the greatest evils in society.
That’s ok Mr President. Here at the CLR we understand you let those people rot because they were poor at least as much as if not more because they were poor than because they were black. We get it – you’re into class politics, not identity politics. We can sympathise – us too.
No discussion in the stories so far of the economy beginning to tank, though he does suggest he wasn’t totally Cheney’s puppet, refusing his demand for a pardon for Scooter Libby.
So enough so far to whet the appetite, and renew your disgust, and your relief that he’s out of the White House.
No-one throws Sarah under the bus. Except it seems maybe they do. October 12, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in United States.2 comments
From the CLR Vaults… Part 2 – It’s 2008, Sarah Palin is selected as John McCain’s running mate. August 18, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in United States, US Politics.2 comments
Continuing a series of posts linking to topics the Cedar Lounge Revolution dealt with in the dim and not so distant part…
…who would have thought that Sarah Palin would become an iconic figure on the US right? And even, if we throw in the Tea Party, the right of right? And it’s been barely two or so years.
Of the original post I think this paragraph is perhaps of most interest:
So how then does this play out? We’re about to see if African-American and staidish older white guy trumps staidish older white guy and woman or vice versa. The significations of all this are a sight to see, aren’t they? And here’s the thing, both tickets invert while simultaneously utilising identity politics. It just depends to a degree what flavour of identity politics you hold.
It seems to me that one could argue that during and after the election the PUMAs and more recently the Tea Party we see that identity politics manifested, albeit in odd configurations. And Palin has been part of the narrative both of those strands manufactured.
Even the current imbroglio over the mosque close to, near, not on, Ground Zero (and William Saletan has some refreshingly sane thoughts on that issue) demonstrates how she channels – or is it shapes – at least a part of the right discourse in the US. Where she goes next is something that, one suspects, will be of some importance. It’s difficult to see her succeeding at national level given her current positioning. Although that is to a considerable degree on both how she positions herself in the future and the sort of environment that is gifted to her after this administration.
But this first sighting, in the original post (which itself was one of a large series tracking the Presidential Election), was hardly indicative of the sort of presence she would later assume.
Slightly off the pointa recent NBC/WSJ poll has both Republicans and Democrats on near equally low figures, while Obama’s figures while far from stellar remain reasonably high for this time in the electoral cycle.
Postmodern Paddy’s Day March 18, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in United States.6 comments
Just when you think that the American obsession with Paddy’s Day can’t get any worse, this story comes along.
Cali-fornicated October 4, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in United States.23 comments
Fascinating, and depressing, article in today’s Observer about the economic disaster facing the state of California and its people.
Yet California is currently cutting healthcare, slashing the “Healthy Families” programme that helped an estimated one million of its poorest children. Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit’s. In order to pass its state budget, California’s government has had to agree to a deal that cuts billions of dollars from education and sacks 60,000 state employees. Some teachers have launched a hunger strike in protest. California’s education system has become so poor so quickly that it is now effectively failing its future workforce. The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California’s schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation. Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above “junk”.
Clear evidence has to how neo-liberalism has sharpened class contradictions in the US. Definitely an article worth reading.
Obama and the issue of American exceptionalism April 28, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in International Politics, United States.22 comments
John Dickerson mentioned this on the Slate Political Gabfest the week before last, but it’s worth another look. Dickerson pointed to…
Barack Obama’s answer when he was at the NATO conference last week to a question about American exceptionalism… the whole theory [of exceptionalism] is seen as offensive to much of the rest of the world. Obama gave what I thought was quite an impressive answer…
Here’s the piece on YouTube:
And here is the text, available at the very useful White House website:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Ed Luce, from the Financial Times. Where’s Ed — there he is.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the context of all the multilateral activity that’s been going on this week — the G20, here at NATO — and your evident enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks, to work through multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to elaborate on it?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.
And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we’re not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.
And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone.
It’s certainly an elegant and thoughtful response and one which is a world away from right wing characterisations of Obama as being a man who is merely trekking around the world apologising for past wrongs of the US.
Indeed for a contrast it would be difficult to find a starker one than on the most recent Left, Right & Centre podcast where resident conservative pundit, and often times also a thoughtful individual,Tony Blankley was waxing lyrical about such matters and was sharply brought up by chair Lawrence O’Donnell. Blankley opined that:
I’ll tell you why I can’t embrace [Obama], because he renounced American leadership and dominance in the world, saying it’s no longer FDR and Churchill ruling the world over a glass of brandy… but he conceded on things… the Russian and Chinese negotiations…
To which O’Donnell made the very reasonable interjection,
Well… Tony, can I pause you there for one second? Are you in that reference seriously suggesting that there could be a meeting between the head of state of the United States and the head of state of the United Kingdom [sic] that could address a global issue that there could seriously be a meeting between those two people that could have any import for the world?
Blankley continued:
I do believe that the US does not need to renounce its capacity to lead the world on policy towards freedom. We’ve been doing it since the 1940s, shall we say. We produce the same amount of goods and services today 25% which is why we consume 25% of the worlds energy… that we did at the beginning of WWII… we’re still the leading economy, we’re still the leading military power, we’re still the leading culture in the world… led by an able President…we’re able to provide that kind of leadership…
If you renounce it you’re always going to get cheers from our fractious European cousins who are delighted to share a little bit of the purple.
O’Donnell interjected again..
Just to make sure I’m hearing through this rhetoric. You’re using this ‘renouncing American leadership’ terminology simply because he said this can no longer work in the style of an FDR/Churchill meeting.
Blankley:
But he did renounce it… but also by the actions he took with the Russians and Chinese…
Hmmm… the actual quote from his London press conference is as follows:
Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign you often spoke of a diminished power and authority of the United States over the last decade. This is your first time in an international summit like this, and I’m wondering what evidence you saw of what you spoke of during the campaign. And specifically, is the declaration of the end of the Washington consensus evidence of the diminished authority that you feared was out there?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, during the campaign I did not say that some of that loss of authority was inevitable. I said it was traced to very specific decisions that the previous administration had made that I believed had lowered our standing in the world. And that wasn’t simply my opinion; that was, it turns out, the opinion of many people around the world.
I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world. And although, as you know, I always mistrust polls, international polls seem to indicate that you’re seeing people more hopeful about America’s leadership.
Now, we remain the largest economy in the world by a pretty significant margin. We remain the most powerful military on Earth. Our production of culture, our politics, our media still have — I didn’t mean to say that with such scorn, guys — (laughter) — you know I’m teasing — still has enormous influence. And so I do not buy into the notion that America can’t lead in the world. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think that we had important things to contribute.
I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions. Just a — just to try to crystallize the example, there’s been a lot of comparison here about Bretton Woods. “Oh, well, last time you saw the entire international architecture being remade.” Well, if there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s a — that’s an easier negotiation. (Laughter.) But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.
And so that’s not a loss for America; it’s an appreciation that Europe is now rebuilt and a powerhouse. Japan is rebuilt, is a powerhouse. China, India — these are all countries on the move. And that’s good. That means there are millions of people — billions of people — who are working their way out of poverty. And over time, that potentially makes this a much more peaceful world.
And that’s the kind of leadership we need to show — one that helps guide that process of orderly integration without taking our eyes off the fact that it’s only as good as the benefits of individual families, individual children: Is it giving them more opportunity; is it giving them a better life? If we judge ourselves by those standards, then I think America can continue to show leadership for a very long time.
I guess when rhetoric is more important than substance one might find fault in the above. But what, too, of the transcript of Obama’s speech in Strasbourg earlier this month which also seems to say otherwise:
In recent years we’ve allowed our Alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there’s something more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there’s 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.
But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.
On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. 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.
There’s a blend there. And in a polity with such a pronounced sense of a national identity and self-worth that at times can overwhelm rational debate for a US President to be attempting to walk between a self-evident pride in his nation (as anyone would) while at the same time acknowledging that the world is not as it was in the 1940s is a difficult task that Obama has set himself. It’s a task that requires nuance and tact… and yeah, just a smidgen of diplomacy. And it’s an entirely necessary task after the chaos of the past eight years. But most importantly in word and deed it is an approach that seems a fair distance away from Blankley’s charge.
There’s no doubt there’s sport to be had in picking apart Obama and his programme, and those of us on the left will not be shy to do so. But the point is to pick it apart as it is, not as some would characterise it incorrectly. And here I think we see a drumbeat of opinion on the right which seeks to paint any decision not merely in the worst light but in an incorrect one. The risible sight of Cheney and Rove seeking government transparency last week, after eight years of their own actions moving the US administration in quite the opposite, should be a salutary lesson in just how opportunistic this environment is becoming.
Stop the Extradition of Seán Garland: National Committee Formed March 30, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Human Rights, Ireland, Justice, Seán Garland, United States, Workers' Party.1 comment so far
The Irish Times reports important developments in the capaign to Stop the Extradition of Seán Garland. A National Committee has been formed, with internationally respected trade unionist and peace camapigner Chris Hudson as Chair and former President of The Workers’ Party and ex-TD and former Lord Mayor of Dublin Tomás Mac Giolla as Secretary.
Chris Hudson is now a Presbyterian Minister in South Belfast, but before that he was an official with Communications Workers’ Union in Dublin. Hudson has a strong track record of opposing violence and promoting human rights. He played a key role in the peace process, helping persuade loyalists to abandon violence, and acting as a go-between the Irish government and loyalists, including at several dangerous points where the process may have failed. I don’t know this for sure, but it seems to me that his involvement is a recognition both of the work of Seán Garland and The Workers’ Party in standing up for Peace, Work, Democracy and Class Politics over several decades, the humanitarian issues raised by Seán Garland’s age and health, and concern at the ludicrous nature of the accusations, and the vindictive and underhanded way in which Garland has been pursued by the Bush regime discussed here.
The Committee has already been in discussions with a large number of people north and south, and has secured support from senior figures in the Óireachtas (as noted here) and public life on both sides of the border, and across the political spectrum. Its stated aim is to “stop the extradition of Seán Garland to the United States, on political, humanitarian, legal and moral grounds”. Over the next weeks and months, public meetings will be held, as part of a broader public campaign, added to the lobbying of public figures and institutions.
Internationally too, the campaign has been stepped up. On March 11th, Greek Communist MEP, Comrade Athanasios Pafilis, raised the issue in the European Parliament, asking
Does the Council condemn the inadmissable arrest and political persecution of Seán Garland as an infringement of democratic rights and freedoms?
Over 50 Communist and Workers Parties have signed a statement of solidarity. The statement includes the following
We condemn this blatant attack on a leading member of The Workers’ Party of Ireland who has pursued a struggle against imperialism for almost 60 years. We express our solidarity with The Workers’ Party of Ireland and with Comrade Seán Garland in the fight against extradition to the US.
We demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of these extradition proceedings on political, legal and humanitarian grounds and call on all communist and workers’ parties and progressive organisation to send messages of support to The Workers’ Party at wpi@indigo.ie and the Campaign to Defend Seán Garland at defendseangarland@gmail.com
My sentiments exactly. Although I would call on individuals reading here to give their support to the Campaign, to get involved, and remind people of the petition, which can be signed online, or printed off for distribution.
Torture and Television February 2, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Television Shows, Terrorism, United States.14 comments
Among the first things done by President Obama last month were to sign an order for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, and to put an end to certain extreme interrogation techniques; or, as they used to be called, forms of torture, used by various branches of the US government. Also last month, 24 returned to our screens on Sky One. The two issues are more linked than they may at first appear. Most readers will probably have heard that the US military asked the producers of the show to cut down on the torture that regularly appears as Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, seeks to extract information to prevent a nuclear bomb going off, or such like. The reason being that its soldiers were watching it, and coming to the conclusion that there was no reason not to do the same when question prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the morals of the US military were being perverted by the fantasy world of television.
Today’s Guardian has an interview with Kiefer Sutherland about these issues. Sutherland puts up a persuasive case that this is the US military trying to shift the blame for its own failings to train its troops properly, or control them once they got their hands on prisoners. While the pictures coming from Abu Ghrahib were not that big a surprise to anyone with any awareness of the attitudes of ordinary US soldiers to the population of foreign countries (a point made clear not only in the TV show Generation Kill currently on FX, but also in the interviews with the “elite” US Rangers involved in the battle of Moghadishu in the book Black Hawk Down), the interview with Sutherland reminds us that the officer corps is also rife with a belief in torture. For that reason, as well as the fact that 24 is a great show, the interview is worth reading.
Mr. Squishy, R.I.P. September 16, 2008
Posted by smiffy in Books, Culture, United States.10 comments
David Foster Wallace
It’s inevitable as the years drag on that those of us of a certain age will see more and more of the heroes of our youths pass away. The past year or so has seen the deaths of Arthur C. Clarke, George McDonald Fraser, Tony Wilson, George Carlin, Richard Wright of Pink Floyd just yesterday (Syd Barrett having gone a couple of years ago) Norman Mailer and, of course, Gary Gygax. Big names in their own fields, and those are just the ones which stick in my mind.
While each death is sad, in its own way, and some might come as a surprise, none carried with it any real sense of shock. Will anyone raise an eyebrow when Philip Roth finally goes, given how much he’s been writing about it lately? All of which is my way of leading up to to mentioning the genuine shock I felt when, absent-mindedly browsing on Salon yesterday, I saw the headline “In Memory of David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008“.
David Foster Wallace (or DFW as his internet groupies tended to describe him) had nowhere near the kind of celebrity enjoyed by contemporaries of his such as Douglas Coupland, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen or Brett Easton Ellis. It’s hardly surprising – while far from a slouch, he wasn’t a particularly prolific writer (two novels, three collections of stories, two collections of non-fiction and a book about Maths over the course of a twenty year career). Neither was he, for the most part, what one might describe as ‘reader-friendly’ writer, by any standard. However, in terms of talent he stood head and shoulders above anyone else of his generation and he was arguably one of the most gifted writers working in the English language.
The various obituaries and tributes which you can now find dotted across the internet invariably refer to him has primarily the author of Infinite Jest, his 1996 1000+ monster of a novel. I think that’s a slight shame; while Infinite Jest is certainly a dazzling piece of work, it was a flawed masterpiece. Michiko Kakutani rightly notes that it was overlong (even by Wallace’s standards) and in need of strong editing. However, it did reveal him as a great artist, allowing him to escape from the influence of writers like Barthelme and Barth and, above all, Pynchon which hung so heavily over his earlier works The Broom of the System and Girl with Curious Hair.
It’s his later works – Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion, as well as his non-fiction – where his real talent is evident. Unlike a writer such as Pynchon, who has a tendency to throw a kitchen sink of allusions and references at the reader, Wallace’s genius wasn’t in his erudition but in his sheer intelligence. His techniques – self-referentiality, footnotes, narratives the twist and turn in on themselves like an Escher painting – now seem a little jaded as they’ve been taken up by a newer generation, most notably Jonathan Safran Foer and the McSweeneys group. However, while they weren’t original to Wallace he was using them far earlier than most others and to far greater effect. In comparison with the dead irony of someone like Douglas Coupland, where the flat, hyperreality of contemporary America is something to be neither celebrated nor denounced, with Wallace there was a thread of real despair beneath much of humour, the sense of someone constantly trying to approach a supreme transcendental truth (even, perhaps, Truth) while trapped within the medium they are using to express themselves. This is perhaps best exemplified in one of his finest stories (and one of my favourites) ‘Good Old Neon’ in Oblivion, which begins “My whole life I’ve been a fraud” and expands into a beautifully tragic dissection of the inauthenticity (or, perhaps, impossibility of authenticity) of contemporary life. To my mind, the artists he resembles most is probably Beckett, although where Wallace explores the limits of expression through an excess of language, Beckett does so through the manipulation of silences.
That said, even for those who found Wallace’s fiction to be too dense, difficult and ‘writerly’, there is much in his non-fiction that is wonderfully funny and alive. Where other writers might use journalistic assignments to cover, say, the Illinois State Fair or a Caribbean Cruise (both subjects of pieces in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) to either bemoan the lackof sophistication of the participants, or romanticise their authenticity against the cool, detachment of New York, Wallace avoids both these traps turning about very personal pieces dripping with neuroses which share the theme of his own inability to relate to others.
One of the great sadnesses of his death is that we’ll never see what a novel from the later, more mature and certainly darker David Foster Wallace would be like. Every few months – and most recently last week – I would Google his name and look up his Wikipedia entry to see if any new work was forthcoming. It’s still hard to believe that it never will be.
A greater sadness, perhaps, is what he might now become in death. I haven’t discussing the circumstances of his death, but from much of the commentary available it seems relatively simple to put the pieces together. It’s hard to avoid the thought, though, that some too-easy links will be made between the themes of his work and his death (the already dark piece ‘The Depressed Person’ in Brief Interviews makes for even grimmer reading in retrospect) and that he’ll become another icon on the wall of miserable, bookish young men – a Sylvia Plath for the Facebook generation. Early in his non-fiction book on the mathematics of infinity, Everything and more, Wallace rubbishes the hoary old image of the tortured genius driven mad and to destruction by his pursuit of the transcendant, but it seems inevitable that he may suffer the same fate. In what Martin Amis terms the ‘War against Cliché’, Wallace was a Patton (and Amis – at best – a Custer). Let’s hope that he doesn’t become that which we can speculate with some confidence he would have detested – a cliché himself.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 