Levees Not War

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

—Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam,” Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967

While we’re enjoying good old-fashioned 4th of July cookouts, fireworks, and other traditional Independence Day pleasures, let’s also take some time to remember the soldiers far away in Iraq and Afghanistan who are not with their families, as well as those who are recovering (we hope) in military hospitals, and let’s begin mentally drafting letters and phone call messages to the White House and Congress to demand the nation’s independence from those unaffordable wars. Bring the troops home already. We can’t wait until July 2011, which Obama suggested as a potential beginning of a drawdown when he announced the 30,000-troop escalation at West Point last December when the Afghan war was already in its eighth year. (See our assessment of the president’s decision to escalate, “Deeper into Afghanistan: 360 Degrees of Damnation.”)

The explosive revelations in Michael Hastings’s Rolling Stone article “The Runaway General” were only superficially about Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s trash-talking Obama’s national security team. It may be that in the long term the most damaging consequences will be the revelations that the troops in Afghanistan do not support the vaunted counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy for which the additional 30,000+ troops have been “surged” into the hell-hole, and even McChrystal himself has doubts that the COIN strategy can work there (see “Afghanistan: More Insane Than a Quagmire” below). We expect no substantial changes under Gen. David Petraeus, whose 99–o approval by the Senate on June 30 can only be interpreted as a license to do as he will, for as long as he pleases, whatever it may cost.

Costs of War: Unaffordable, Unsustainable, Unconscionable

This past week, when Senate Republicans and Ben Nelson (D-NE) warmed up the nation for the 4th of July festivities by filibustering for a third straight time an extension of unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans—15 million are out of work, about the number who were unemployed when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933—the House approved $80 billion for Afghan war funding. Sounds just like the Bush years. The Center for American Progress reports that “as of July 3, an estimated 1.7 million workers will lose their benefits. If this drags on through July, a total of 3.2 million workers will lose their benefits.”

Think Progress reports that 17 senators from states with double-digit jobless rates have repeatedly voted to filibuster unemployment benefits. Click the chart to read all about it.

(more…)

This is a Carnival where you don’t have to say “Happy Mardi Gras” (tho’ we do, anyway)—it simply is a happy Mardi Gras, and everyone’s been in a crazy happy zone for weeks. People are changing their middle names to WhoDat. Maybe it’s ’cause “Breesus Saves,” and the rest of the Saints do, too. And “Hey Shockey Way.” And then too there’s a palpable relief that a popular new mayor has been elected to bring in energy and action where lethargy, passivity, absentia in officio, and lame excuses have held sway for lo these many years.

*

One of our writers penned a history of Mardi Gras for a Macmillan encyclopedia a few years ago while living in Mid-City and bouncing between the parades of the Krewe du Vieux, Isis, Endymion, Bacchus, Orpheus, and the Society of Saint Anne parade through Bywater into the Quarter on Mardi Gras day . . . Here are some excerpts from that article:

Mardi Gras . . . which many assume is a one-day event, has roots deep in pagan rites of ancient Greece, and is the “climax day” of a whole season of festivities—balls, parties, parades—that begins on Twelfth Night, or Epiphany (also known as January 6). Although the festival is most commonly associated with the Crescent City, the first American Mardi Gras was celebrated in Mobile, in present-day Alabama, in the 1830s (except it was really New Year’s Eve). . . .

(more…)

Postively Flamin’

Of all New Orleans’s wonderful (and some rather sedate) Carnival krewes, Krewe du Vieux is the sassiest, fiestiest, and wittiest, and it pains us to miss even one parade. Led by the great Dr. John as King, this year’s parade’s theme was “All Fired Up” (there was a fire last summer in the krewe’s Den of Muses, quenched by the NOFD).

The krewe’s full name is Krewe du Vieux Carré, and its subkrewes include Krewe de C.R.A.P.S. (shown here), Krewe of Space Age Love, Krewe du Mishigas, Seeds of Decline, Mystic Krewe of Spermes . . . you get the picture. So, to show you what you’re missing when you miss the Krewe du Vieux parade (always three Saturdays before Mardi Gras—Feb. 16 this year), we present some pix from our friend Maitri Erwin’s Flickr photostream (also see her smart, cool VatulBlog). The theme of her subkrewe, C.R.A.P.S., was “Walk on Burning Sphincters.”

Here are some good readers’ photos posted at NOLA.com.

Oh, and did we mention the Saints are in the Super Bowl? Who Dat? Who Dat? Feelin’ “Glory Bound,” y’all.

(more…)

A very merry Christmas / And a happy new year / Let’s hope it’s a good one / Without any fear —John Lennon, Yoko Ono, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”

Positive Wishes, Sincere Resolutions

We’ll see if we still feel so new and happy and resolved when the champagne wears off, but while the new year buzz is on we want to wish all our readers (past, present, and future) good health and a little more security and prosperity, and a little less stress. But, because security, prosperity, and freedom from stress are not the hallmarks of our time, we wish you at least the strength to endure the hard parts and greater enjoyment and appreciation of the good times. We knew 2009 was not going to be easy (see our prognostications here) but did not anticipate quite how nasty it could get. It may get worse yet. In that case, we’ll need good cheer, confidence, and plenty of activism to keep us warm and in the frame of mind that can handle adversity.

As for our resolutions: We resolve to work harder and smarter to keep our readers informed about matters of infrastructure and environment—especially concerning New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast—and about war and peace. We’ll keep the pressure on elected officials in Louisiana and in Washington to take better care of the people and the land, to spend less on war and private contractors and more on flood protection, infrastructure, health care, education, jobs programs, and environmental protection.

(more…)

And Hoping for a More Prosperous New Year for All

“The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there. . . . Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreathes of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. . . . there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn. . . . Its dark brown curls were long and free: free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.” —Charles Dickens, “The Second of the Three Spirits,” A Christmas Carol (1843)

*

Dickens is a hard act to follow, so we’ll be brief. For the holiday season and in the new year to come we wish you and your families and friends good cheer, good health, and prosperity. We wish for the “living green” that animates the spirit of Christmas Present, and for the peace symbolized by his rusted, empty scabbard. Not war, not greed, but abundance, fertility, and kindness to all, including the earth that gives us life.

We also send a special prayer for the security and safe return of U.S. military personnel stationed far from home, and for the many homeless and jobless here and abroad: May the new year treat you better, and may you have strength and good (better) fortune in equal measure.

Previous years’ Christmas and New Year’s wishes can be found here and here—these wishes we still pray for, and continue to work for.

*

A word about our previous post, “Winter of Our Discontent.” We certainly didn’t want to bring anyone down—especially at a time of year when everyone seeks (and deserves) “comfort and joy,” solace and good cheer—but it’s our view that happiness is best attained by identifying what is making us sad. Then the remedy begins. And so, comfort, good cheer, and joy to all.

*

The Festivities and Pageants arranged for his Majesty’s reception will surpass in joyousness and splendor the most brilliant attainments of his glorious past. It is ordained that good weather shall prevail, and the City of Flowers in its Festive array promises abundant pleasure to all within her gates.

—Proclamation by the King of the Carnival, 1934

From Henri Schindler’s Mardi Gras: New Orleans. Illustration by S. von Ehrens.

To everyone in New Orleans—and wherever Carnival is celebrated—we send warm greetings and best wishes for abundant fun and pleasures on Fat Tuesday, for joyful forgetting and release from heavy cares, and hopes that you may come back to your daily life refreshed and reinvigorated, with not too grinding a hangover.

For the people of Louisiana who are jobless and need unemployment insurance relief, we hope your ambitious governor will come (or be brought) to his senses and accept the financial assistance that Washington has made available for the public good.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Today is both Mardi Gras and Super Tuesday. Sounds auspicious to us. May the best candidates win, and may the public have some good news to celebrate. Drink up. Tomorrow it’s all ashes.

From The Isle of Orleans:

The Krewe Perdu and the Skeleton Krewe were scheduled to roll in a combined parade soon after sundown. Everyone in town would be there—parents and children, the shopkeepers and gardeners, carriage drivers, vendors from the French Market, the priest and the cremator, the morbids and junk-eating vagabonds from the ragged edges of town, and all but a bare-bones staff from the restaurants and bars.

(more…)