[lbo-talk] anxious

[Cseniornyc at aol.com]

D. Hen wood wrote:"Latin America is in a state of political  effervescence, 
but only Have has mounted a serious challenge to the US. Contrast  that with 
the early 1970's when 
the US had just been kicked out of Vietnam  and there were serious 
challenges to bourgeois rule worldwide - and even at  home"
Comment:It is not just Venezuela, as John Mage well pointed out, but also  
Ecuador where a native insurgence against the pillage of oil by US corps  
prompted he cancellation of a $100 million WB loan,which was Woolf first action  as 
its new president. Similarly Bolivia's peasant revolt led by Eva Morale's  
canceled sweet deals in natural gas and prompted the set up a new US military  
bases in Paraguay.And lets not forget that president Bircher turned Argentina  
into the first country to stand up to he IMF and the  investors it  represents 
by repudiating its debt obligations. In addition, Central  America from Mexico 
to Nicaragua is back in a stage of political  agitation.
Also lets not forget that since Vietnam,  wars are fought not just  
militarily but symbolically and that the US hasn't recovered from the symbolic  defeat 
that 9/11 entailed .Perhaps it will never recover from it and will remain  a 
perennial loser in the eyes of the rest of the world. And as the US forces get  
more and more stalled  and humiliated by the resistance in Iraq, another  
humiliating symbolic defeat is looming up.The ruling classes educated  by 
overrated Ivy League schools seem astonishingly incompetent to deal  with these 
symbolic losses.
Finally Dough states; "Manhattan as opposed to where? New Jersey?  Kansas?"
Why rate the provincialism of NYC in relation to other regions? Why not  
evaluate Manhattan on its own merits?. I think most of its "sophistication"  
consist in some people being able to distinguish Radar from Gucci or Blanc de  
Blanc from Pinot Gringo or paying for $ 800 hair cuts at Okapi's. I've been  
living in Manhattan for over 20 years and I can tell that even culturally it has  
gone down. Last year I invited a "sophisticated " writer from  an  
"elite"magazine, one of those Ivy League graduates, to watch a performance by  Pima Bausch 
at BAM and I quickly realized the only Pima she knew of was Pima  Colada.
Actually, I think the only true cosmopolitan place left in NYC is Queens by  
Roosevelt Ave. where about 4 different languages can be heard spoken on the  
sidewalks and where you have the assurance people can tell the difference  
between Caracas and Karachi.
Cristobal  Senior

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