Commentary on current events and other topics that you did not ask for.
Monday, August 05, 2013
A brief reference to the "assistant secretary of Commerce for Observation and Predictions" in the Washington Post this morning sounded almost too improbable to be serious except that it involves the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which is in the Department of Commerce. I could not find a link to that specific office on the NOAA website but did identify the position of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction in Kathryn Sullivan's biography.
Of course, the original brief reference was about Dr. Sullivan's appointment as NOAA head and Commerce undersecretary so none of this should be a surprise. What makes this little side trip especially pleasing is that I learned about a very talented woman who has chosen a career in public service. My hope meter went up a notch.
postscript
An earlier biography describes some of Dr. Sullivan's duties as assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation.
A few more bullets dodged. Another year gained. Some gain, some loss but always hope. I'll take that hope into 2013 and find wonder and joy wherever I can.
Thank you to all who come here to read. May you have a wondrous and joyous new year.
Last week I had the opportunity to witness hope. A young volunteer with Iraq Veterans Against the War stayed at our place while joining activists and IVAW members for Operation Recovery, IVAW's demand that the military allow soldiers to fully recover between deployments. My guest carpooled from Olympia to Coffee Strong where volunteers organized to contact soldiers at Joint Base Lewis McChord to tell them about resources available for soldiers who insist on seeking treatment for the devastating emotional impact of war. During our brief encounters when our schedules intersected, she told us about her experiences: the challenge of getting on-post, brush-offs from some soldiers but positive responses from trying to navigate the warren apartments and small houses that cluster around the third largest military base in America.
What gives me hope is that this young woman, member of a generation widely disparaged for self-absorption and dependence, cared enough about helping others to come at her own expense from home in Arkansas or school in Pennsylvania. She is not a veteran but does have organizing experience as she begins her senior year. (I sure didn't have organizing experience at that point in life.) And she's even from two states where I would not expect to easily encounter a progressive concern for social and economic justice.
All that's worth some hope, don't you think? It's likely more than I will see from this year's election.
Interesting article in today's Washington Post on the differences between and within the Democratic and Republican parties. The article reports on current and previous survey data to track the growth of partisanship over the past decade and a half. Not surprisingly, partisan divisions have sharpened considerably. The article also explores the divisions within each party, each party is seen as a mosaic of key groups. Again, not surprising to anyone who has studied politics and parties in this country.
What struck me most, though, were the areas of, if not agreement, then at least some common ground.
Almost half of Republicans and three-quarters of Democrats say they
favor a policy that would allow illegal immigrants to apply for legal
status. And six in 10 Republicans, along with almost nine in 10
Democrats, say the government should regulate the release of greenhouse
gases from power plants, cars and factories to reduce global warming.
There is also consensus on two international issues. Few in each party
say the United States should play the leading role in the world. More
say this country should play a major but not leading role, and around a
quarter in each party would prefer the United States to play a minor
role.
This tells me that a basis for building consensus is possible, even in this era of partisanship. What we lack are leaders who will help that consensus find its voice in a society that no longer knows how to listen.
If you've ever wondered why Haiti seems to be such as desperately poor nation, Laurent Dubois' history, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, will tell you why. Dubois is clearly a sympathetic chronicler of Haiti's long, tortured road from slavery to free republic. He fully recognizes the significance of black slaves overthrowing their French colonial masters even as he acknowledges the class divide between a small elite and the largely uneducated masses, divide that retarded progress for much of the nation's history. He explains how Haiti came to owe a crushing foreign debt France and the US that profited few Haitians and many international bankers.
Dubois is especially cognizant of the extent to which the former slaves, who were largely denigrated by elite, were able to create a sustainable economic system based on independent land ownership that strongly resisted any attempt to coerce them into any form of wage slavery. At least until the US Marines occupied Haiti from 1914 to 1934. The Americans managed to weaken and dismantle this system--something generations of Haitian leaders could never accomplish--and make Haiti, if not safe for foreign capital, certainly far more vulnerable than during its first hundred years of nationhood. By the 1950's Haiti was ripe for the cult of personality created by Francois Duvalier. And we all know how that turned out.
Dubois' keen understanding of Haitian culture is especially evident in his description of Americans' view of zombies:
...[M]aking zombies into generic horror-film monsters...obscured the fact that in Haitian folklore, the zonbi is a powerful symbol with a specific, haunting point of reference. It is a person devoid of all agency, under the complete control of a master: that is, a slave. Sometimes the term is used as an insult--to this day, independent farmers in Haiti might call wage workers zonbi, insisting that to sell your labor is to sell your freedom... [T]he American zombie cliches...have function[ed] as a kind of intellectual sorcery. They took a religion developed in order to survive and resist slavery--one that had served as a central pillar in the counter-plantation system--and transformed it into nothing more than a sign of barbarism, further proof that he country would never progress unless it was guided and controlled by foreign whites.
Roger Molander helped me become an activist. The mid-to-late 70's were a relatively quiet time after the Nixon's resignation in 1974 and the fall of Saigon in the following year. By 1981, though, Ronald Reagan was president and speaking glibly about nuclear war. In response many others began speaking far more responsibly about nuclear war. Roger Molander was one of them.
My participation in Ground Zero in 1982 started a chain of activism that has continued to this day. I had just moved to Phoenix, Arizona and was already very concerned about how blithely the Reagan Administration talked of nuclear war as "winnable". Ground Zero was just becoming active in Phoenix and I joined in. We helped present the very real downside of Reagan's nuclear war fighting talk. Meeting kindred spirits in conservative Phoenix was a bonus and initiated some lasting friendships.
Ground Zero is long past but the need to eliminate nuclear weapons and find cooperative ways for managing relations among nations remains.
Juan Cole is always good for understanding the Middle East, Arab and Islamic cultures. His observation on the outcome in Libya sounds about right to me.
Libya is nowhere near the mess that France was after its revolution in 1789, and there is nothing like a Vendee or a Terror. There hasn’t been a civil war, though there are still a few pockets of insecurity. Those hoping for bad news really haven’t had all that much considering that the country had been left with no functioning institutions after decades of personalistic Qaddafi totalitarianism.
Libyans are truly at ground zero, starting a journey filled with opportunity and all sorts of risks to that opportunity. After Qaddafi Libyans will, I hope, recognize those risks and build a society based on social and economic justice.
The details of the European fiscal crisis are complicated but a very simple explanation is that that Europe, like the US and other nations, has an economic system that does not provide the opportunities for many people to maintain the basic necessities for life. The solution requires international cooperation, so watching Britain refuse to join the rest of Europe out of concern for its "national interests", leaves me less hopeful that the world's nation states will reach consensus on far more challenging problems such as climate change. Add corporate control of finance, communications and government to the equation and real change looks very unlikely.
As a long-time critic of the nation-state, I am embarrassed that that the alternative turned out to be the global corporation. Global corporations, accountable only to shareholders for profit, easily compete with nation-states, pursuing corporate rather than national interests. If not wholly the equal of national governments, large corporations exercise considerable influence in promoting their maximum profit. Large corporations are in many respects a form of supra-national government with interests that transcend geographic boundaries.
The sheer dominance of hyper-militarized corporate thought and culture in America and less militarized, but no less strong, corporatism elsewhere in the world makes me feel like the embattled rebel. Outnumbered by a vastly more wealthy and powerful force. Everything of value at risk of extermination. No way out. It's a daunting and hopeless feeling. My life is not personally at risk in this scenario but other lives--the many in this world (and yes, America also) who lack basic necessities and live on the margin--are at risk. In the long run the entire planet is at risk of a consumption-based economy managed in the interest of short-term profit and narrow private and national intests.
That's why people around the world are speaking out and demanding change. The sheer mobilization of alternative voices, voices mostly ignored and dismissed by the corporate media, this past year is one of the great events of my lifetime. Americans finally began to loudly demand change, to resist a corporate culture that has demonized the idea of collective solution to public issues. This week Russians are protesting in large numbers. I can hope but can in no way assure that all of this direct democracy will create change for the better. It will create change and that change will create opportunity.
My antidote to the embattled rebel feeling is reminding myself that I am part of a chain. I may not actually see or experience the just and equitable society I seek--my "promised land"--but my efforts will be part of that society's heritage as it comes to fruition. This year's outpouring of humanity in demanding change has vividly reminded me of my place in the chain.
That seems like a good attitude to take into 2012.
There is a common misconception that sharing and helping is a cultural occurrence. But this is not a cultural event. It is part of our biological inheritance.”
I gather from this that humans and other species are actually hard wired for empathy and caring. History tells me that the human species has been re-wired to ill effect.
On this Fourth of July, it is altogether fitting and proper to recall that freedom is incomplete. America has done much to advance the idea of individual autonomy and liberty but much remains to be done.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute(*), has an article in Foreign Policy on the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. He attributes the complete and sudden disintegration of the Soviet state to a change in mindset: Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalization gave space for Russians and other Soviet peoples to think of themselves as citizens rather than subjects or serfs. That consciousness delegitimized Soviet and Communist authority as people began demanding to be treated with respect, as they said, "No More!"
Those who instilled this remarkable "break in consciousness" were no different from those who touched off the other classic revolutions of modern times: writers, journalists, artists. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, such men and women "help to create that general awareness of dissatisfaction, that solidified public opinion, which … creates effective demand for revolutionary change."
Aron goes on to predict that this same growing consciousness will further transform Russia and many other nations through out the world as people demand to be recognized as citizens and insist on respect. I can't argue with Aron's basic thesis. Aron clearly recognizes that this consciousness is only necessary, not sufficient to guarantee progress. But Roza Otunbayeva, president of Kyrgyzstan, reminds us that the seed exists in each human heart:
"It is the magic of people, young and old, men and women of different religions and political beliefs, who come together in city squares and announce that enough is enough."
Maybe, someday, Americans will do the same.
_________________ (*) Usually a suspect organization at this location but I'm willing to listen when they make sense or offer information worth considering.
However improbable as it might presently seem, strategies such as the flotilla, the BDS movement and other forms of militant non-violent resistance do have a chance for defeating the strategy of violence and large-scale imprisonment that has long defined Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories. Just as I write these lines, Haaretz newspaper is reporting that the IDF has admitted that it has "no way to stop mass non-violent protests in the West Bank". And mass here means merely several thousand protesters, nothing like the hundreds of thousands of people necessary to bring down Ben Ali and Mubarak.
According to one IDF official: "A non-violent protest of 4,000 people or more, even if they only march to a checkpoint or a settlement, and especially if the Palestinian police do not deter them, will be unstoppable." We could similarly imagine the impossibility of stopping the next flotilla if it grows to dozens of boats, or even hundreds.
When coupled with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's warning that if Palestinians give up the two-state idea and simply demand Israeli passports, Israel will have no choice but to choose between rank apartheid and becoming a true non-sectarian democracy, the way forward to achieving real peace, justice and democracy becomes clear. (empahsis added)
Israel may claim to be a civilized and democratic nation but its continued occupation and violence against Palestinians belies those claims.
