http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/opinion/24krugman.html?th&emc=th
Osama, Saddam and the Ports By PAUL KRUGMAN NY Times Op-Ed: February 24, 2006 The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new - the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports. So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation. Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq. But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't. The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam - what's the difference? Now comes the ports deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy." The administration also tells us not to worry about having Arabs control port operations. "I want those who are questioning it," Mr. Bush said, "to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company." He was being evasive, of course. This isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's a company controlled by the monarchy in Dubai, which is part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan. But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs." Finally, the ports affair plays in a subliminal way into the public's awareness - vague but widespread - that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed deliverer of democracy to the Middle East, and his family have close personal and financial ties to Middle Eastern rulers. Mr. Bush was photographed holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (now King Abdullah), not the emir of Dubai. But an administration that has spent years ridiculing people who try to make such distinctions isn't going to have an easy time explaining the difference. Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination (which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be O.K. Instead, Mr. Bush should have lost his credibility long ago over his diversion of U.S. resources away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda and into an unnecessary war in Iraq, his bungling of that war, and his adoption of a wrongful imprisonment and torture policy that has blackened America's reputation. But there is, nonetheless, a kind of rough justice in Mr. Bush's current predicament. After 9/11, the American people granted him a degree of trust rarely, if ever, bestowed on our leaders. He abused that trust, and now he is facing a storm of skepticism about his actions - a storm that sweeps up everything, things related and not. *** Nothing Stops Mardi Gras By Jordan Flaherty In New Orleans' Central Business District, a prominent billboard advertising Southern Comfort liquor proclaims "Nothing Stops Mardi Gras. Nothing." The festive ad haunts me, seeming callous and cruel, "you've faced a huge loss, and now we want to use your city and cultural traditions to sell a lot of alcohol." Citywide, Mardi Gras is everywhere, but not without controversy. Many are angry at the idea of a huge party taking place while bodies are still being recovered in Ninth Ward houses, And in diaspora communities such as Atlanta, there is a lot of anger at the idea of a huge party going one while they are kept out. A past leader of the Zulu Mardi Gras Krewe even sued his organization (unsuccessfully) to stop them from parading this year. I have mixed feelings. I love Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Not the parades and Bourbon Street you see on TV, but the other Mardi Gras that the media doesn't show. There are Mardi Gras traditions for nearly every neighborhood and community, a series of cultural customs ranging from King Cake and the lewd displays of Krewe Du Vieux to the dogs parading in Barkus; the clown punks and shopping cart battles of Krewe Du Poux; the fabulous costumes of the St Ann Parade; and more than anything the cultural traditions of Black Mardi Gras, encompassing everything from Zulu, the one Black major parade, to neighborhood celebrations involving the masked Mardi Gras Indians, Skeletons, and Baby Dolls. I spent a recent Sunday evening participating in an annual tradition called Indian practice in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood. As preparation for the music, dancing, and rituals involved on Mardi Gras day, more than a hundred people from the community packed close and sweaty into a small bar, singing, drumming and dancing to songs that everyone knew every word to, the room all singing and chanting together the classic song of Black Mardi Gras, Indian Red: "Here comes the Big Chief / Big Chief of the Nation / the whole wild creation / He won't bow down / not on that ground / you know I love you hear you call, my Indian Red." In the midst of this crowd, I could forget for a moment all the devastation outside. However, when I asked Nick, who had spent his life here, living in this neighborhood that decades ago was filled with Black-owned jazz clubs and businesses, how many of his neighbors were back, he estimated less than 10 percent. While official estimates are higher, the fact remains that even in a Black neighborhood like Central City, which was not heavily damaged or flooded like the now-famous Ninth Ward, people have still not been able to return. A range of obstacles, including redlining by insurance companies, the mass layoffs of city workers, closed schools and hospitals, and continued fear and uncertainty about the safety of the levees surrounding the city, has kept people out. During a recent Sunday service at a church a few blocks away, the Reverend Jesse Jackson asked the 500 people in the room how many of them had evacuated. Every hand went up. He then asked how many still had family and loved ones who had not returned, and again every single hand in the room went up. Adding to the emptiness, Calliope and Magnolia, two public housing developments in the neighborhood that were mostly undamaged, remain deliberately empty; most residents have not been permitted to return. In fact, this week our at-large city council representative, Oliver Thomas, declared publicly that many of the residents should not be allowed to return. Reinforcing the stereotype that people are poor because they don't want to work, Thomas stated, "There's just been a lot of pampering, and at some point you have to say, 'No, no, no, no, no," and added, "we don't need soap opera watchers right now." At the same meeting, Nadine Jarmon, the appointed chief of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) declared Thomas' position reflected their policy, adding if "they don't express a willingness to work, or they don't have a training background, or they weren't working before Katrina, then (we're) making a decision to pass over those people." These statements were made while, six months after the hurricane, thousands of undamaged units sit empty, thousands more homeless New Orleanians face eviction from FEMA hotels on March 1, and tens of thousands of renters that lived in damaged homes have no where to move to, and no governmental officials seem to care if they come back. In the midst of this crisis, Thomas, two other council members, and the chief of HANO blamed the victims. What about single parents and caretakers? What about the elderly, injured or disabled? Don't they deserve housing, even if they don't have training or an extensive job history? Why are only public housing tenants asked if they intend to work? At a recent demonstration organized by New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (NO-HEAT), former residents of the St Bernard Housing Development, many of them visiting for the day from their exile in Houston, expressed their desire to return to their homes. One resident proclaimed that he was going to move back into his home as a form of civil disobedience. While his action is inspiring, the idea that it requires civil disobedience to move back into your own undamaged home is profoundly disturbing. Is this what we've come to? At a recent presentation at Tulane University, Thomas Murphy of the Urban Land Institute spoke about the Institute's recommendations to the city, including their plan to develop the (wealthier, whiter) areas of the city on high ground first. He also recommended three books to the mostly student audience, including The Prince by Machiavelli and Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, saying, "our mission should be to stand up for those with no voice." When I asked him how he reconciled his passion for the voiceless with his recommendations to build up wealthy areas first, and why he wasn't standing up for renters or those in public housing, he evaded the question with comments about a "criminal sociology" that develops in public housing. The victims are being blamed. People of this city, who have contributed so much to the culture of this country, who have created a culture that is now being enjoyed by tourists and others, have always been left out of the profits, and are once again shut out, and put last in line. As Loyola Law Clinic Director Bill Quigley has said, "what if we turned the priorities upside down, instead of saying that we are going to start with building up the high ground, what if we prioritized restoring housing and justice for those who had the least to begin with?" Even for many of us who lived in areas with minimal flooding, like my relatively privileged block in the Seventh Ward just off the high ground of Esplanade Avenue, the coming months hold a mostly unspoken fear. We have little faith in the levees, little faith in the Army Corps of Engineers, little faith in our government. As one friend who lives a few blocks away from me said to me yesterday, "it's just a flip of the coin, and it'll be us next time." For many of us privileged enough to be here, its bittersweet to see another Mardi Gras. It's a time of year we used to look forward to, and while there is much to mourn, we also want to embrace our loved ones, embrace our city, and maybe even embrace the decadence. Meanwhile, the city rolls on - plans are made, funds are distributed, some neighborhoods are declared unviable, more people are evicted, and that Southern Comfort billboard taunts us, "Nothing stops Mardi Gras. Nothing." ------------------------ Jordan Flaherty is a resident of New Orleans, an organizer with New Orleans Network and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. His previous articles from New Orleans are at http://www.leftturn.org/articles/SpecialCollections/katrina.aspx ===================================== GRASSROOTS, PEOPLE OF COLOR-LED GULF COAST ORGANIZATIONS TO DONATE TO: http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=689&type=W ===================================== Other Resources for information and action: Reconstruction Watch - http://www.reconstructionwatch.org New Orleans Network - http://www.neworleansnetwork.org Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children - http://www.fflic.org Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund - http://www.communitylaborunited.net Justice for New Orleans - http://www.justiceforneworleans.org/ Common Ground - http://www.commongroundrelief.org Four Directions Solidarity Network - http://www.eswn.org/ Color Of Change - http://www.colorofchange.org Black Commentator - http://www.blackcommentator.com Comprehensive website for information and action related to prisoners in New Orleans: http://www.criticalresistance.org/katrina/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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