Brooks: "We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures."
Mort Zuckerman
Durlan...@yale.edu, Aa...@columbia.edu, gary_w...@nymc.edu,
scientifi...@ostp.gov, pkru...@princeton.edu,
Stanle...@fiu.edu, emcsw...@niaid.nih.gov, afa...@niaid.nih.gov,
Spin...@yahoogroups.com, kshe...@calea.org, fit...@gmail.com,
patrick.f...@usdoj.gov, model...@sbcglobal.net,
jdr...@nejm.org, let...@courant.com, Jgerb...@cdc.gov,
michae...@po.state.ct.us, con...@po.state.ct.us, executive-
edi...@nytimes.com, managin...@nytimes.com, news-
ti...@nytimes.com, biz...@nytimes.com, for...@nytimes.com,
nati...@nytimes.com, dv...@cdc.gov, brigidc...@optonline.net,
tr...@hotmail.com, illino...@aol.com, jle...@courant.com,
tinaj...@yahoo.com, jhorn...@fff.org, thomas...@usdoj.gov,
thoma...@po.state.ct.us, kur...@washpost.com,
georg...@washpost.com, p...@allegorypress.com,
commissi...@po.state.ct.us, brans...@comcast.net,
vts...@comcast.net, o...@po.state.ct.us, freet...@charter.net,
scott....@po.state.ct.us, govern...@po.state.ct.us,
attorney...@po.state.ct.us, randall...@usdoj.gov,
Robert....@yale.edu, edi...@greenwich-post.com,
harol...@yale.edu, sedm...@nswbc.org, rrmcg...@aol.com,
fr...@nytimes.com, dpr...@stmartin.edu
Cc: fra...@ucia.gov, dr-ahma...@president.ir,
eugener...@washpost.com, afa...@niaid.nih.gov,
bmi...@newstimes.com, tr...@hotmail.com, rast...@aol.com,
billc...@gmail.com, amcg...@rms-law.com, rjmu...@aol.com,
paulcrai...@yahoo.com, sidney_b...@yahoo.com,
criminal...@usdoj.gov, karla.d...@usdoj.gov,
christophe...@usdoj.gov, richar...@yale.edu,
harol...@yale.edu, james.p...@yale.edu, inq...@aldf.com,
ly...@idsociety.org, meganm...@theatlantic.com
Subject: Brooks: "We're all supposed to politely respect each other's
cultures."
Date: Jan 16, 2010 10:27 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
=========================
Yeah. That would be why Israel
likes to kill Palestinians. Palestinian
culture, um, happens to go with their,
um, homeland. You know, the one the
UN told Israel to get the hell out
of via Resolution 242?
It's complicated, I know.
We're all wishing punditland could
produce a smart person to figger
out the world for us and make it
as simple as "Do Unto Others..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2859431.stm
"Israeli breaches
"Only a couple of weeks ago, Hans Blix told the Security Council that
the key remaining disarmament tasks could be completed within months.
"I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in
which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted.
"Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to
withdraw from the occupied territories.
"We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of
Israel to comply.
And um, paternalism?
Does Brooks mean, like, Wall Street
kinda paternalism? And the inability of
either the USDOJ or the DHHS to figger out
what their job is?
Yo. Haiti is dealing with several
fault lines, but far be it from me
to interject the SCIENTIFIC FACTS
into the equation.
Besides, this fiasco being a measure
of our potentially ingenuous response
to the human misery (so far, so good),
simultaneously allows the evil ones among
us to identify themselves by such comments.
And more specifically, what is the nature
of this culture?:
"Moreover, the status system doesn’t really revolve around money. It
consists of trying to prove you are savvier than everybody else, that
above all you are nobody’s patsy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opinion/17brooks.html/
Here, to our south, 100,000+ innocent
people are dead due to a geophysical shift.
In the Middle East far more than a million
are dead because they were the property
owners of the oil... and we keep whacking
away at them, instead of trying to discover
who deployed the thermate and why it was
blamed on Arabs,... when the Arabs say
it was because of how Israel treats the
Palestinians.
KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
======================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/16-1
Published on Saturday, January 16, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
David Brooks Blames the Victim in Haiti
by Yifat Susskind
Is David Brooks competing with Pat Robertson to make the most callous
commentary on Haiti's earthquake?
As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal
Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from
a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the
influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life
is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social
mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing
practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh
retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But
some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible
tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
Yes, poverty is the underlying reason that Port-au-Prince now lies in
ruins. But his claim that Haiti's poverty is rooted in its "progress-
resistant" culture is otherwise known as blaming the victim. Like all
poor people, Haitians are used to being blamed for their own poverty,
but David Brooks picked a hell of a time to point his finger.
[I]t's time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country,
we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we
did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did
abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive
paternalism.
Ironically, Brooks' prescription of "intrusive paternalism" to "fix
the culture," aptly sums up US policy towards Haiti for the past 100
years: a brutal military occupation from 1915 to 1934; support for
dictatorship from 1957 to 1986; and more recently, the imposition of
trade policies that have further impoverished people. What the outside
world needs to "fix" is not Haitian culture, but its own self-serving
policies that have left thousands of Haitians literally buried alive.
Yifat Susskind is Communications Director for MADRE.
To support MADRE's relief efforts in Haiti, click here.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci