From Gulf to Gulf

[Mustafa Hussain]

Thanks for alerting Celso!
I really dont know how to react to the indifference and an astonishingly
delayed reponse exhibited by both the civil society and the federal
governement of the USA to one of the most disastrous catastrophes unleasehed
by the hurricane. I can only guess that the whole machinary of the state
would have taken a bit different course of action, had the victims of the
catastrophe been not the most poor and the marginalised sections of that
great country.
Perhaps it is the time for the pirvileged and the intellectual section of
the society to rethink that a governement that is so helpless to help its
owns citizens, and in time, is hard-bent to pursuade the rest of the world
that its foreign policy and actions in Iraq or elsewhere are based on a
noble cause to help citizenry of the other states and nations.
Cynically enough, as we watch on some TVs, people are suffering from the
heat, hunger and thurst amidst the shock of loosing their homes and the
loved ones, the first most
urgently dispatched help was the National Gaurd with licens to kill the
looters in need, not to help the helpless people in hospitals and on the
street.
One may hope that the real experience from the New Orlean will help open
eyes for many in the USA and acrosss the world, how much sincere intentions
are behind the rhetroric of the present US government in fighting terrorism
for the common good of humanity and for safeguarding "the Values" - perhaps
the most misused term in the dominant political discourses of our time.
Sorry for the inconvenience in advance, if any.
Mustafa Hussain
Copenhagen.

----- Original Message -----
From: "GABRIELLA MODAN" <modan.1 at OSU.EDU>
To: <CRITICS-L at NIC.SURFNET.NL>
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: From Gulf to Gulf


Thanks, Celso, for informing us of the material conditions in our own
country. I'm sure we all (and, as you say, "particularly the US scholars")
now feel very englightened.

Galey Modan

----- Original Message -----
From: Celso Alvarez Cáccamo <lxalvarz at UDC.ES>
Date: Friday, September 2, 2005 11:46 am
Subject: From Gulf to Gulf

> (I apologize for cross-posting)
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have just listened in CNN International to four full, forceful
> speeches
> on the hurricane Katrina crisis by four USA Afro-American
> representatives
> talking to the Black Caucus. In my opinion, all the speakers
> indirectly
> brought to fore the deepest political crisis that the USA regime
> and the
> USA as a country have experienced in recent years, a much greater
> crisis
> than 9/11, which "united" the country in tragedy. In powerful and
> transparent ways, class and race (poverty, slavery, and the empire
> of the
> market) in the USA have been linked, and sometimes nuanced with
> elements of
> a religious ideology (a representative quoting the Bible to his
> "fellow
> Christian" president Bush) that clearly parallel the convergence
> of state,
> politics and religion in so-called fundamentalist Muslim countries
> that the
> USA army is supposed to be fighting.
>
> In such a terrible situation as the one that thousands of people
> are
> experiencing now in the USA, I believe it is not time for refined
> exercises
> of discourse analysis (at least, I would be unable to do them)
> that, for
> the sake of academic "rigor" and self-complacency (which too often
> are one
> and the same issue) would obscure the fundamental issues at stake
> in this
> crisis. The simple issue is that the bodies and minds of poor
> people always
> DIE in greater quantities and SUFFER more than other economic
> classes under
> critical circumstances. If you have an opportunity, do search for
> and
> listen to these speeches, for example. I doubt that CNN will make
> them
> available on line.
>
> And to the international academic community (particularly the US
> scholars)
> I can only suggest, with all due respect and humbleness, to
> consider anew
> or review the role that the material bases of society, and
> particularly
> objects such as "class", "class relations", "poverty", or the
> like, play in
> the models (?) that inform (?) their respective forms of discourse
> analyses.
> Please understand me: I am not trying to raise an unfruitful
> "academic"
> controversy in which I myself would not be able to defend my own,
> unelaborated position, if I indeed have one. Simply put, realizing
> that one
> is alive to be able to continue to do academic work just because
> one had
> the MATERIAL means, for example, to flee from an upcoming disaster
> (or to
> survive an earthquake, or to escape bombings) is not a matter of
> academic
> controversies, but of ethics.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
> lxalvarz at udc.es
>