Archives for 2011

Disaster, Enrichment And Incompetence In A Corporatist World

2011/03/16 By Dr Leo Strauss 3 Comments

This note is prompted by Tbilisi’s comment regarding the quality of world media on the Japanese crisis, wherein he ranks American corporate media at the bottom. We agree with that grade. The exercise prompted thinking about how we got to where we are and the role of American media in that journey.

Future sociologists studying the American twilight will have a trove of crises to illustrate how America embraced corporate enrichment and governmental incompetence. The result is unaccountable wealth and anger slinking into cynicism. Four immediate examples are: (a) the Japanese catastrophes of March 2011; (b) the BP Gulf spill; (c) the Financial Collapse 2008-2009; and (d) Katrina. All show how America developed passivity to disaster and corporatism.

A City Lost But For A Photogenic Blonde

Katrina happened here. Not some far off tourist spot. And in the clutch, Americans turned their backs on their own for partisan reasons or profit.

Squalor, death and privation – some continuing today – are shrugged off. A major disaster became fodder for meme warfare, much of it covertly racist. No one doubts that a city filled with blonde Republicans would have received different aid. Bush arguably paid a price for his incompetence in the 2006 elections. Significantly, Americans didn’t seem to care enough to re-focus attention on the actual disaster area.

FEMA, toxic mobile homes, contractor abuses — all down the memory hole. Iraq fostered some cynicism. Katrina was JP-5 fuel. Public acceptance and expectation of governmental incompetence took root.

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Nuclear Crisis In Japan – Slo Mo Crisis Of Tangible Things

2011/03/15 By Dr Leo Strauss 24 Comments

Perhaps it’s the linguistic barriers; parachuting anchors into Japan probably don’t even have Japanese tourist phrasebooks. But it’s amazing how absent Japanese people, officials or volunteers are from newscasts. A speech from the Japanese Prime Minister announcing the Fukushima reactors are at a crisis point didn’t merit coverage. By contrast, earlier ramblings of a tribal dictator fighting over empty sand? Wall to wall saturation.

Perhaps we’re overly critical of American news media (primarily broadcast). Yet our impression is of Americans talking primarily to Americans standing in debris fields without Japanese faces, voices or perspectives. American broadcasters in Egypt found translators and interviewed protestors, covered Mubarak addresses, etc. Yet the greatest natural disaster in modern times happens to be in a Japan without many Japanese on camera. So far.

There are vague references to homeless. And people without food, water, medicine, heat. Little coverage on what’s actually being done, what needs to be done. The difference with coverage in Haiti is stark. Perhaps because the Japanese social contract removes ‘good tv’ images of conflict, riots, or looting.

Instead, American networks latch onto more easily covered tangible things such as exploding nuclear reactors. Broadcast producers appear to book anyone with ‘nuclear’ in their job title, from disarmament types to nuclear power (pro or con) lobbyists. It’s a two-fer if the commentator is a physicist. Unsurprisingly the commentary about the Dai Ichi plants presents more chyron alarm than clarity – exchanges of ignorance.

A corollary to the American fixation on tangible Japanese buildings is obsession on what it means for us. Should California prepare for nuclear fallout? Could California plants at Diablo Canyon survive a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami? How will Californians buy a Prius going forward? What happens to Americans’ 401ks? And perhaps most salient to Americans, how will the crisis affect their plans to buy an iPad 2?

We don’t dismiss a nuclear crisis verging close to a true meltdown. That desperate situation, however, will unfold over considerable time. Should matters continue to deteriorate the damage and clean up will be a challenge for years. Meanwhile tsunami survivors, homeless, without shelter, food, water or medicine either get needed help or succumb. Which prompts the question, ‘If catastrophe victims get help and American tv doesn’t cover them, were they ever in danger?’

Japan’s Waking Nuclear Nightmare At Fukushima

2011/03/13 By Dr Leo Strauss 9 Comments

Like you, we are following the nuclear emergency situation in Japan intently. The human tragedy in the earthquake’s aftermath heart wrenching enough. Schadenfreude and mixed feelings in Shanghai may seem particularly cold but not ahistorical.

Who can the Japanese turn to? There have been 6 prime ministers in 5 years. As of this writing, Prime Minister Kan has been in office 272 days. Kan’s foreign minister just resigned because of scandal. And Kan is battling the ‘Sith Lord’ of Japanese politics, former DPJ master mind Ichiro Ozawa, whom the DPJ expelled for corruption. Ozawa in the days before the quake was openly working to topple the DPJ and return to politics himself. Kan has called the disaster the greatest threat since WW II but his options are constrained. Japan already has the largest public debt in the world.

American Air Power This Day In History

2011/03/09 By Dr Leo Strauss Leave a Comment

March 9, 1945 marked the beginning of the new American incendiary bombing of civilian targets in Japan. Low-flying U.S. warplanes carrying 65% more bombs over the next 2 says created the largest firestorm in recorded history, killing 80-130,000 civilians and destroying 16 square miles. Curtis Le May told the bombing crews they would be “delivering the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen.” By July 1945 such low-level incendiary raids proved so devastating that LeMay declared no worthwhile targets existed in Japan.

These raids killed more people and caused greater damage than the subsequent atomic bombings. The stench from the burning bodies sucked into the firestorm and the blood, turned into mist and wafting on the wind, was so intense Americans in the B-29s turned on their oxygen masks to keep from vomiting.

The raids, however, failed to achieve their goal. As with the British and American air attacks on Germany earlier, the Japanese overcame their initial shock and their morale bounced back. Only the threat of existential atomic obliteration changed matters.

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Useful to keep in mind listening to air power advocates today. Air power lost some prestige after last decade’s Air Force failed fantasies of compelling war terminating outcomes with Rapid Decisive Operations. Just a few years before the Balkans demonstrated the same truths. Air power failed to achieve a meaningful result. NATO turned to a threatened ground assault to bring that operation to close. The 1991 Gulf War? Same.

America seemingly chooses to forget. Airpower tempts with an illusory clean solution, fixed without need to get dirty on the ground. La plus ca change.