July 2008 archive

What’s a rational American foreign policy?

Aijaz Ahmad: Start with the question, why does the US have to be the most powerful country on earth?

The United States economy is stagnant and faces the possibility of a real Depression. Its currency has lost a quarter of its value on global markets in three years. No country in the entire history of humankind has ever owed as much money to foreigners as the US does today, and this debt rises by about a billion dollars a day. Its military expenditures are higher than those of the next twenty countries combined. It’s time to question basic assumptions about US foreign policy.

For some time, I have wondered at the adulation towards Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” by people who I know and respect.  Finally, I’ve decided to brave it, and as I’m about halfway through, Jon Chait gives it a massive, ten page review.  He’s gentler on it than I am, but that doesn’t mean he’s nice to it.

Klein’s relentless materialism is not the only thing driving her to see conservatives merely as corporate puppets. … Her ignorance of the American right is on bright display in one breathtaking sentence:

“Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think-tanks with which [Milton] Friedman had long associations–Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute–called itself “neoconservative,” a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.”

Where to begin? First, neoconservative ideology dates not from the 1990s but from the 1960s, and the label came into widespread use in the 1970s. Second, while neoconservatism is highly congenial to corporate interests, it is distinctly less so than other forms of conservatism. The original neocons, unlike traditional conservatives, did not reject the New Deal. … And their foreign policy often collides head-on with corporate interests: neoconservatives favor saber-rattling in places such as China or the Middle East, where American corporations frown on political risk, and favor open relations and increased trade. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation has always had an uneasy relationship with neoconservatism. … And the Cato Institute is not neoconservative at all. It was virulently opposed to the Iraq war in particular, and it opposes interventionism in foreign policy in general.

It ought to be morbidly embarrassing for a writer to discover that the central character of her narrative [Friedman] turns out to oppose what she identifies as the apotheosis of his own movement. And Klein’s mistake exposes the deeper flaw of her thesis. Friedman opposed the war because he was a libertarian, and libertarian conservatism is not the same thing as neoconservatism.

Emphasis added.

Seriously, do people really believe her when she says that Israel scuttled the peace process to benefit its anti-terrorism industry?  How the hell is this narrative even slightly believable?

One of my odd skill sets is that I am a public speaker, a trainer of public speaking, and a judge of the same in 2 different formats.

One is the traditional 3 to 5 (minutes) either to inform, persuade, or move emotionally.  If you ever come before me I must admit what most impresses is continuity and performance, so your points better be logically laid out and have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

AND STOP MUMBLING!

After a while you can work on points for style, like the club tie and the firm handshake, a certain look in the eye and an easy smile.

The other format is called Debate.  2 Teams of 3.  Each Team consists of 2 Speakers both of whom must speak at least once, and a Captain who does not speak.  You have 90 seconds each to make a Primary argument and a Rebuttal argument, and a final 60 second Summation.  30 Seconds between each round for Judges to work and Team consultation.  You need not use your full time, but there are penalties for going over.  Argument goes Pro Primary, Con Primary, Pro Rebuttal, Con Rebuttal, Con Summary, Pro Summary.

The scoring is heavily weighted to encourage Teams to remember to promote their positive arguments in the Primary segment and refute their opponent’s argument in the Rebuttal segment, but you’d be amazed at how many Teams waste their time arguing against imaginary strawmen in the Primary and only advance their positive points in Rebuttal.  Teams often forget to summarize the points they’ve made that are un-refuted too and waste their time re-arguing settled issues.

It’s a really fun party game.  I mostly work with half in the bag conventioneers or hung over ones.

I have no right to speak about another culture.  I have done my studies, but I do not * know * and can only relate what I have encountered.  I am not Dineh.  I am not nadle (important link there–it would honor me if you followed it).  I have no right to speak of this.

In the best of times, I have little right to speak of anything.

According to Dineh legend, two nadle named Turquoise Boy and White Shell Girl once belonged to the Dineh people. They invented all arts and handcrafts between them – basketry, weaving, the carving of pipes. All these they gave freely to the Dineh, and they thrived.

At one point, however, there was a terrible war between the men and the women, and they separated to live on opposite sides of a riverbank. Turquoise Boy did the women’s work for the men, and White Shell Girl did the men’s work for the women. They would often meet at night on the riverbank, which was shunned by the rest of the tribe, and commiserate sadly on how difficult it was to satisfy half a tribe all by themselves. These nightly meetings enabled them to notice, however that the river was rising dangerously, and that if nothing was done the Dineh people would all drown.

Turquoise Boy and White Shell Girl made a last dramatic plea to their tribe – come together and cooperate, or die. Faced with death, the men and women grudgingly agreed to put aside their differences and save the tribe. The two nadle built a boat, which enabled the tribesfolk to sail to a new and higher world.

–Raven Kaldera, from Pallas the Genderbender

The last sentence of Raven’s story:  

The water is rising. We must, we must all band together soon, before it is too late.

Men about women

Hall and Oates:  Maneater