Tuesday, 6th September, 2005

MAUREEN DOWD: United States of Shame

By MAUREEN DOWD,
NYT September 3, 2005

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?


MAUREEN DOWD: United States of Shame
logged by alf at 17:53, Tuesday, 6th September, 2005


Beyond the Beyond: S

By Bruce Sterling for WIRED News Blog.

Friday, 2 September 2005

Many local people in Singapore seemed to feel the need to half-apologize to me about the Singapore government. And every last one of these lamenters was, in some sense or another, affiliated with the Singapore government.

Now that I'm out of Singapore, I reckon it's safe to allege that Singapore has tidy, authoritarian, city-state machine politics. Presumably, I won't get sued for libel for saying this. I mean, it's the truth.

Singapore is a very foreign place. Being a Texan, I try not to judge people's political behavior by any abstract standards. For me, it's all about the neighbors -- and Singapore's neighbors are Kuala Lumpur and Djakarta.

I don't see a lot of oppressed Singaporean dissidents rushing off to the relative freedom of Kuala Lumpur and Djakarta. On the contrary, people in Malaysia and Indonesia are amazed by any polity that doesn't run on bribes.

For me, the unsettling aspect of Singapore isn't their repression, which is subtle and always nicely-dressed in legalisms. No, the weird part is the public exhortations, the regime's Taoist PR campaign. They've got some kind of genuine Techno-Confucian Mandate of Heaven thing going on. It's being carried out by really bright, eager, workaholic city apparatchiks who are keenly rehearsed.

Once you've got the population ship-shape through relentless moral pressure and the efficient delivery of social goods, they really don't require a lot of caning and drug executions; on the contrary, even though they're not all spontaneous and touchy-feely, they're proud of themselves. They're not real thrilled at waving party flags and national banners -- they'd obviously rather go shopping -- but, well, they put up with the official triumphalism. They seem to take some comfort in knowing that some exquisitely educated Lion City mandarin is firmly in charge of coining slogans.

You know what? If Singapore had just been hit by a giant typhoon, the regime wouldn't be snivelling and making excuses about the hunger and looting. Eco-catastrophe and martial law would surely put the Singapore power-elite really on top of their game. They wouldn't spin their "clean-up effort". They would assign resources, put trained people on the job and actually clean up. Because they are not just a spin machine. They possess competence.

Competence doesn't seem like a big deal until you are forced to realize that your own government has none.


S' in the archives">Beyond the Beyond: S
logged by alf at 02:45, Tuesday, 6th September, 2005