gavin's blog

has struck with over 30,000 dead this time. What strikes me the most with the TV coverage is the sense of ennui, of tiredness, of 'we've been here before'. Like terrorism in India, (which is the highest in the world), which has become a fact of life, natural disaster seems to have become a part of our lives now. The monstrous scale of it all exceeds our comprehension and multiple instances of it have simply broken our empathy.

On a personal note, my brother in law, Balaji (technically not, since he's my sister-in-law's brother but, like, whatever) who was studying in New Orleans and had evacuated to his sister's just before Katrina hit, has sent me some pics of the pad he shared with a couple of dudes, Before and After the devastation. With his permission I'm posting them here.

From the story, NYC Girl, 9, Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter, ‘A 9-year-old girl pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter Friday, admitting she fatally stabbed her 11-year-old playmate after a tug-of-war over a rubber ball went sour.’

 
It was Arthur Koestler who said in The Ghost in the Machine that the history of the 20^th century was the miniaturization of weapons simultaneous with their increasing power and increasing availability. The heightened terrorism of the last decade is a culmination of this process, a new phenomenon only because it was enabled by these trends, not because the human condition was any more depraved than it has always been.

 
But what does this have to do with Shanice, the 9 year old murderess? Brutal violence has now become so commonplace that even for such a young child, the move from thought to impulse to action has become uncontrollable, and all society is in a way responsible for this.

Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget

'Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton.....

 
said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction." '

&

........sharply criticised George W. Bush for the Iraq War and the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and voiced alarm at the swelling US budget deficit.'

Why Bush went to war against Iraq

Oil? WMDs? Revenge? Clash of Civilisations? All or some of these?

This has been such a topic for speculation these last few years, and there have been so many hypotheses, and Clinton's statement shows there really is no definitive answer, if a former US President can be so critical of the incumbent's actions - according more with global criticism than with domestic support.

My view is that the Iraq war was the outcome of a complex process that had its origins in the US's pre 9/11 commercial interests in mesopotamian oil, but which was ultimately fought for other reasons (as all wars are usually fought for varied and sometimes even conflicting objectives).

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Bin Laden became the target and America with characteristic hubris judged his capture in days or at most weeks. When weeks passed into months, hubris gave way (as it is wont to do) to embarrassment, and the true nature of the enemy began to appear - Al Qaeda was not an enemy locatable in space and time, it was an ideology. Catching Bin Laden was essential but it might never happen, or may take too long. The need of the hour was to retailate swiftly and certainly, for without such response, America's invincibility which had been perforated irrevocably that day would be buried forever by its impotence. Revenge was critical. But who to punish? The ideology.......not of terrorism.....but of hate against America......as professed by Islam...of which Bin Laden was the rallying leader across the world (remember the cheering crowds from Palestine to Pakistan to Pretoria that idolised Bin Laden?). But how could progressive, liberal America, 'leader of the free world', smorgasbord of religions, attack a religion?

Eureka! Remember that scenario we military honchos plotted where if we took out that arsehole Saddam, not only would we make a strike for democracy but also for capitalism (Oil)? Except that we couldn't risk compromising our image of decency. Then. But we can now! Voila. A war was born.

The Iraq war was fought not for WMDs, nor for Oil, not even for revenge (though all of these were ancillary benefits I believe were considered when the war was planned), but primarily to send a message - that America may not be invincible, but it was also not impotent. Even if the enemy were inaccessible and incomprehensible, there would still be massive reprisal, a price would be paid, if not by perpetrators who died perpetrating, then by the people that they represented, some random collective that would pay symbolically for sins committed, even if misguidedly, in their name.

In this sense the Iraq war was exactly like 9/11 - an act intended as a message. With 9/11 Osama Bin Laden & coterie wanted to show America and the world that it was not immune from the consequences of its excesses - even if innocents (that represented capitalism) had to pay that price. With the Iraq War Bush & coterie wanted to show Islam and the world that it was not immune from the consequences of its fanaticism - even if innocents (that represented blind faith) had to pay that price.

Here, a passage about the new novel Indecision from an NY Times article (long...really long): ‘His plight, after all, is - for people of his age and background - a familiar one: an alienation from his own experience brought about by too much knowledge, too many easy, inconsequential choices, too much self-consciousness. Bred in a culture consecrated to the entitled primacy of the individual, he discovers that he lacks a self, a coherent identity, maybe a soul. He feels that he could be anyone.’

This so strongly resonates with me!

If this is something that ails not just some individuals but a transnational community of those who fit the attributes mentioned above, then the problem it seems to me is not with us, but probably in the worldview that we have outgrown as a world and stuck within which we experience a disenchantment that we tell stories of like The Matrix.

....or what's in a city?
 

Just  saw on CNN, folk refusing to leave New Orleans being shepherded away by assorted law enforcement. Their reason for resistance? .....their love for their city.

What is a city after all? Is it a place? An idea? A cultural history? All of these and some more? Or just a place marked by arbitrary longitude and latitude (which are needles to say inventions)?

generally and on New Orleans particularly has taken me aback. The scale of the devastation seems difficult to comprehend at this point. I've been thinking that the tsunami and then the recent mumbai cloudburst indicated that the story told in the movie The Day After Tomorrow may not be so far-fetched after all. We're all aware that the earth has been abused by us in the last half of the last century on an unprecedented scale, but somehow what this would lead to has not registered on our collective sensibility. Now, rips in the fabric of our planetary home seem to be widening and the idea that millenial doomsday (not to be confused with the rants of the evangelical nuts) could be at hand doesn't seem woo-woo any more.

My mom (who along with my Dad is visiting in the US) commented yesterday that all these disasters seem to be water related. I hadn't seen that, but come to think of it they are. The fury of the recent rains over Mumbai did make me think something was wrong with Nature's equilibrium, and that we human beings were behind this imbalance.

The accumulation of stresses seem to have reached critical mass and we still don't seem to get it. Bush's styming the Kyoto protocol despite widespread popular domestic support is part of our lack of comprehension of our stupidity - and I fear that prevention of further damage may not be as important as sheer survival now.