From the bin...
international |
anti-capitalism |
feature
Sunday September 04, 2005 17:32
by Gary Mac Lennan - QUT
g.maclennan at qut dot edu dot au
Creative Industries Precinct, QUT Brisbane, Qld Australia
07 3864 8198
On being young and being old
Some international reaction to New Orleans flooding
My meeting with Howard Guille did however highlight how much the last 30 years have consisted on an attack on the common good. If proof of this are needed one has only to look at the disaster of Katrina and New Orleans. The media got into town three days before the hurricane struck. Yet after four days of disaster, help had still not arrived to the beleaguered victims who have been forced to hunker down amid dead bodies and their own excrement by the Bush government.
Never since the Irish Famine of 1846-8 has the logic of the market been so starkly revealed. Millions died in Ireland, not because of the lack of food but because the British government wanted the land of the Irish peasantry to rear their sheep and cattle on. See an an account of how the likes of Nassau Senior, economic adviser to the British Govt, thought that a million deaths from the famine "would scarcely be enough to do much good". In the end he got his million and many more.
The crime of the Irish peasantry was to be poor and in the way of Capital’s plans. Similarly the crime of Afro-Americans is to be poor and in the way of Capital’s plans. In New Orleans the poor who are mainly blacks were abandoned in the city. They did not have the cars to take them to safety. The authorities provided no means to get them out of the city. They were herded to the Superdome and left to rot without medications, clothing, water or food. The mayor it seems was worried they might graffiti the dome, but he didn’t worry about them starving.
Indymedia Ireland also supplies Pay check heads, semantics , survival hints and other analysis. Elsewhere the city of Lestat the vampire and the baton rouge has got its IMC together
A mediatation on what the young are like to day. Has capitalism won them over totally Plus a meditation on the significance of the New Orleans disaster.
The Bin September 2005-09-03
1. Of the young and the old…
I remember well standing some years ago in the underground in London and opposite me was an advertisement for Irish whiskey. The ad compared the beginning of Robert Burns poem To A Mouse: On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November 1785.
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.
with the opening lines from Yeats’ The Wild Swans at Coole
"The trees are in their autumn beauty
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
Poetry on an advertising hoarding might sound strange, but nothing is sacred to capital, when they wish to appeal to an audience that likes to have their sense of their own cultural capital acknowledged. The point being made was that Irish whiskey like Yeats’ poem was much smoother than the rough Scotch. Though partial to a drop or two, I am not really enough of a connoisseur to pass judgment on the relative merits of Irish and Scotch whiskey. Moreover it is a moot point of course which of Yeats and Burns is the greater poet. Burns gets my vote, but I confess that I read him much less than Yeats.
For I have loved Yeats’ poetry since first studying him nearly 50 years ago with Brother McGee at the Christian Brothers Grammar School in Omagh. McGee was a charismatic teacher, but also a man with the most terrible of politics. He was violently anti-modern and totally committed to Catholic dictatorships as the ideal form of government. He and the late pope would have gotten on famously.
Still he made an enormous impression on me and everyone he taught.
I can see McGee now in my mind’s eye clearly, standing at the lectern declaiming the poem in that deliberately cadenced non-prosaic style that Yeats himself favoured, because he hated poetry to be read like prose.
Here is the rest of the poem
"The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Several things have brought the poem to mind today. Recently I bumped into my old friend Howard Guille down in the city. Howard is the secretary of the NTEU and has spent a life time fighting for a society which is based on a sense of collective decency and care and one which is also committed to building up the common good. He seemed weary and hard pressed. The current burst of class war from above, namely the pushing of Australian Workplace Agreements by the Federal Govt was I thought taking its toll on him. He lamented to me the fact that young Australians would never have known a society, which was not dominated by the dog-eat-dog values of the market. He worried that might have made them total strangers to the necessity of looking out for others.
The other experience that made me think of Yeats’ poem was a couple of guest lectures I gave recently to aspiring journalism students. I spoke to them of the current crisis faced by journalists. The almost absolute control of the media exercised by the corporate barons, has meant that the public in their desperation to learn the truth of such things as the Iraq war, had turned to independent documentary film makers such as Michael Moore.
How did I find the journalism students? Well as always with my students I did not find them besotted with market values. They hope of course to get jobs and to be able to have a good life. That is entirely praiseworthy. But their young hearts are also full of the hope and desire for a better world. They know things are not going well. Every night on the television they behold the slaughter bench of history groaning under the weight of its countless victims. Every day the corporate media preaches to them the doctrine of TINA -There is no Alternative. Yet the heart of the young is a lonely hunter, and the desire for a better world cannot be choked out by a thousand Murdochs or even a thousand years of neo-liberal economics.
So what then of Yeats and his swans? The poem is of course about growing old and the loss of the animal-like vigour and energy that Yeats as a Nietzschean valued so much. Passion and conquest are the two qualities of the young that most inspire envy in the ageing poet. It should be clear from my remarks above that I do not see the young in the same way. I do not doubt their energy and long may they enjoy it. That however is a trivial matter compared to the qualities of hope, courage and generosity of spirit that the young have in such abundance, and which makes teaching them such a joy.
Contrast that with their elders. Here I like to quote from Aristotle’s portrait of the elderly.
"The old have lived long, have often been deceived, have made many mistakes of their own; they see that more often than not the affairs of men turn out badly. And so they are positive about nothing; in all things they err by an extreme moderation…they think evil; that is they are disposed to put the worse construction on everything… they are slow to hope; partly from experience – since things generally go wrong, or at all events seldom turn out well; and partly, too, from cowardice."
So Yeats as an ageing male of 54, lamented the loss of his energy and envied the young. My friend Howard worries how the young have not been exposed to the ideal of a society which values the common good: an ideal which he has given his life to. Myself, the oldest of them all, am quietly confident that the world belongs to the young and the young will make a better world.
2. The meaning of the New Orleans disaster
My meeting with Howard Guille did however highlight how much the last 30 years have consisted on an attack on the common good. If proof of this are needed one has only to look at the disaster of Katrina and New Orleans. The media got into town three days before the hurricane struck. Yet after four days of disaster, help had still not arrived to the beleaguered victims who have been forced to hunker down amid dead bodies and their own excrement by the Bush government.
Never since the Irish Famine of 1846-8 has the logic of the market been so starkly revealed. Millions died in Ireland, not because of the lack of food but because the British government wanted the land of the Irish peasantry to rear their sheep and cattle on. Go to < http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/010.html> for an account of how the likes of Nassau Senior, economic adviser to the British Govt, thought that a million deaths from the famine "would scarcely be enough to do much good". In the end he got his million and many more.
The crime of the Irish peasantry was to be poor and in the way of Capital’s plans. Similarly the crime of Afro-Americans is to be poor and in the way of Capital’s plans.
In New Orleans the poor who are mainly blacks were abandoned in the city. They did not have the cars to take them to safety. The authorities provided no means to get them out of the city. They were herded to the Superdome and left to rot without medications, clothing, water or food. The mayor it seems was worried they might graffiti the dome, but he didn’t worry about them starving.
Meanwhile the President sat holidaying on his million dollar property, the Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, shopped for thousand dollar shoes, and the mayor declared a day of prayer even though the Governor had already urged people to “pray the cyclone down to a 2”.
The poor broke into shops to get food for themselves and their families. The government and the media raised the spectre of black looters and dispatched the army to shoot them. Rescue operations were suspended so that property could be protected. The true victims, the black poor of New Orleans, were thus effectively criminalised, while the true criminals have been able to escape scrutiny.
The absolute truth is that this disaster had been foreseen. There have been warnings after warnings about the vulnerability of New Orleans to a hurricane. Yet money to repair the levees had been spent on the slaughter that is the Iraq War. The Louisiana Guard, which should have been mobilised to help the poor, has been busy in Iraq killing and being killed. Wetlands too had been cleared and developed and that left the city even more vulnerable.
I will not mention global warming and the criminal refusal of George Bush to do anything to alleviate the problem.
All in all there is a lesson to be learned in New Orleans. George Bush’s government is a government for the rich and the powerful American ruling class. As he himself said the “haves and the haves mores” are his “base”. The same rich and the powerful are determined to have everything their own way. For them the poor are expendable and if they are black then they matter even less. Yet this is the government that we Australians are so devoted to. To placate this government we send our young into danger.
Our Prime Minister has told us we must not criticise America or “Western Values” for that will lead to terrorism. Look at New Orleans and see those same “Western Values” in operation. The Bush government has found a way to slaughter thousands anywhere in the world in a matter of moments. Yet it will not bring aid and comfort to the sick and the starving poor of their own country. For the sick and the poor do not have the money to become customers and so the disciples of the market think of them as worth nothing. It matters not to the rich and the powerful that the blacks of New Orleans have given the world a unique artistic culture in the form of its jazz. What do the rich and the powerful care about working class culture? In cultural terms they are only interested in how big a fool you are prepared to make of yourself on Reality Television.
That is the true meaning of “Western Values”.
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Comments (12 of 12)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12The president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, Aaron Broussard, just issued an emotional appeal on NBC’s Meet the Press. By the end, he was completely broken down, sobbing uncontrollably.
RUSSERT: You just heard the director of homeland security’s explanation of what has happened this last week. What is your reaction?
BROUSSARD: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. … Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.
Broussard then discussed the difficulties local authorities had with FEMA, including one case where they actually posted armed guards to keep FEMA from cutting their communications lines: Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…
Finally, Broussard told the tragic personal story of a colleague, and broke down:
I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us
From the very strange actions of the Federal emergency agency detailed above, as well as the rapid deployment of frontline combat troops to the city (marines, infantry) rather than medics, engineering corps etc we can deduce a bit about the emergency planning of the federal government.
From their point of view, the worst case scenario in the aftermath of a natural disaster was an insurrection of New Orleans underclass (which has been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time). Indeed, with the state in disarray, it appears that armed elements of the underclass took control of the streets. The army and other security services have been deployed primarily to ensure that this does not happen. Saving people's lives who had not been gathered into the concentration centres is a second or third level objective.
From this analysis, the behaviour of the federal agencies starts to make sense. They turned away all volunteers, people with transport to pick up refugees and people carrying supplies. They turned people back who were trying to walk out of the city. They left vast numbers of prepared rescue workers idle. They have essentially 'locked down' the area, in order for the military to control it. The consequence was that masses of people have died sitting waiting for the rescuers. The authorities have repeatedly refered to the military operation as similar to somalia and that does seem to be an apt comparison including the huge amount of 'collateral damage'.
The poor people of New Orleans have been willfully killed in huge numbers by a combination of free-market fundamentalism (only those with resources could escape) and an authoritarian militaristic state (secure control is your first priority, people might be dying 10 feet away, but you must guard that wal-mart full of worthless rotting produce).
This episode is truly sickening.
Last night he told a reporter for the Associated Press: "If the CIA slips me something and next week you don't see me, you'll all know what happened."
Today he told interviewers for CNN on a live broadcast he feared the "CIA might take me out."
And they call the place 'free' and 'civilised'.
Breaking news Louissianna police have just shot and killed 5 army engineer contracters on their way to do repairs.
Sky now retracting story
I couldn't help thinking about something today that we should all
remind, ourselves of. But first, an introduction of sorts.
I came to the U.S. in 1973, to New York City. I wasn't outwardly
political although I was moving in that direction. One thing I was
involved in was music. I loved the blues. Like a whole section of
English kids we were raised listening to the blues and its offspring,
Rock and Roll.
Howling Wolf, Big Bill Broonzy (one of the first names I remember),
Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton and of
course, Chuck Berry, who, influenced Rock and Roll so much. There was
also Nina Simone, one of the greatest. These were the people that
made such beautiful rhythm. It was music that working class folks
could relate to. These older black folks influenced the likes of
Lonnie Donegan and later on for me, the great blues bands of the
sixties.
Rod Price who went on to greater fame in Foghat was in a band called
Black Cat Bones. They made one album, Barbed Wire Sandwich; I still
have it. I loved it. On that album was a song Nina Simone sang,
Four women. It's a song about women of different shades of skin
color in the states, black, brown, yellow. Here were four white
rockers singing this song. When one wants to understand the
difference between racism in Britain and in the U.S. one only has to
imagine four white rock and rollers singing this song in the U.S.; I
don't think it happened. Bob Dylan made some great political music
but a band of this nature, I can't imagine it but I'm not a music
historian and could be wrong. It also shows how the civil rights
movement influenced Britain and the world and that it was brought to
some of us through music.
The contribution of Black America to world culture is beyond
description in its greatness. The old blues guys sung about love and
poverty and drinking and fighting and racism. The blues is not
unlike its cousin, country music in that sense, and all working class
music which expresses our life. Naturally, the Blues included racism
in a way that country music couldn't have, or should I say did, but
from a prejudiced perspective, reflecting the ideology of the racist
white bosses expressed through white working class music.
But these old Blues men and women brought the racism of American life
to the world. Nina Simone was particularly vicious in her
condemnation of American society. Less overtly political perhaps Big
Bill Broonzy with his Black White and Brown gave us a glimpse of life
for Blacks in the U.S.
All the British names escape me now. I remember Alexis Korner and
Long John Baldry who just died. I used to go to concerts to listen
to Joanne Kelly, the British Bessie Smith and her brother Dave Kelly
who was with Tony T.S. Mcphee in the Groundhogs.
So when I came to the U.S. in 1973 I went to work in this factory in
Manhattan, Spring Street was the location. I have heard that is has
become all yuppiefied now. It was gruelling work as anyone that works
or has worked in a factory knows. You're timed by that damn belt.
Nothing ever ends. Nothing is really completed in a way. At least
when I dug holes and worked in ditches putting something or another
in the ground, I got a sense of completion when the water ran
through that pipe, or the sewage. With the assembly line, packing
boxes, it never ended, was there in just the same way the next
morning. Adding to this was the fact that the day I quit it was 113
degrees in the place; they had salt tablets by the fountain.
But at first I was so excited. The place was full of black guys. I
was the only white guy in the place that I recall except for the boss
and two boss's kids working there during their summer vacation. The
excitement had another source; so many of them played music, wrote
music, performed music. Boy, was I lucky. Here I was in the midst
of the people who transformed British music, who
freed us from the dismal constraints of whatever there was before, I
can't remember too well. I know my mum liked Bing Crosby and Slim
Whitman, but country music just didn't rouse me like the Blues.
But I got a surprise. Most of these folks were younger guys, they
weren't in to the blues. In fact, when I mentioned Big Bill Broonzy,
no one had ever heard of him. They were in to soul and R&B and Jazz.
In the worst case scenario one young guy seemed to think the blues
was sort of uncle tomish. It was an interesting lesson for me. And I
have learned much more in the last 30 in America.
So, back to my opening sentence. The scenes in new Orleans of black
folks, poor working class folks, my comrades, sisters and brothers
being treated like dogs by this corrupt, rotten system. It's not
surprising or new. All workers lives are expendable white black or
otherwise but as I looked at the faces of the older black folks in
particular I couldn't help thinking about the civil rights movement.
This is the south. It was one of the most vicious regimes that ever
existed. It was sheer terror for a whole section of its population.
It was state terror too; let's not forget that. There weren't roving
bands of marauders that would be brought to justice by the state for
their crimes. They were the local businessmen and sheriffs and local
politicians who who were all in on it; it was hell.
As I was sharing this with my wife who is Chinese American I couldn't
help thinking that many of these older folks being pissed on in New
Orleans by the government and slandered by the racist capitalist
media, must have participated in the civil rights movement. I say
this not to undermine the struggle of white workers or any other
specially oppressed minorities or women but the fact that my wife
went to college as did other Asian Americans of that period. The
fact some of my Latino friends had the same opportunity. The
inclusion of the ethnic studies departments in the universities, the
creation of jobs in the public sector like where I worked, the
advances white women have made as a minority group; we owe this to
the heroic struggle of working class black youth who faced dogs and
guns and water cannons and the state in the struggle to end the
vicious apartheid system that existed in one fifth or so of the
United States. They led that movement which benefited us all and many
of them are floating in the squalid cess pools of New Orleans you can
bet on that. They are being portrayed as looters and helpless by the
rich man's media yet they are some of the brothers an sisters who
challenged the mighty U.S. capitalist class and forced them to
retreat. This lesson is also forgotten by the black middle class
who, like any middle class convinces themselves that they have
advanced through their own individual efforts alone.
The images that the racist media brings to us subtly and not so
subtly are no different to any other tactic the capitalist class use
to divide and weaken the working class. They are filth, these people.
The news media, the tennis stars I saw yesterday with their Nike
symbols all over them are nothing but the paid and sold out whores of
capitalism. The bosses might have gone a little too far here. I
don't know much about him but that rapper who accused Bush and the
U.S. of not caring about black people and the poor in general is a
good start.
I am grateful to those who helped educate me and save me from what
could have been the narrow confines of working class life, the black
folks of the U.S. played a very prominent role in that for me before
I ever met them. Seeing the black working class of new Orleans
suffer in this way has jolted my memory. It's made me think again of
the past. Not in a sad, sorrowful guilt ridden way like the white
liberals do, but with feelings of solidarity, at what is being done
to my people in new Orleans.
Much healthier than guilt is the increased anger I feel toward the
system and wanting to rid us of it. Some say that often good things
come from tragedy. This is true, sometimes it takes bosses the whip
to wake people up.
I always remind my co-workers or friends whenever we are talking
about the need to defend what we have that someone fought for me to
have what I have and it wasn't Ted kennedy. Many of them probably
couldn't read too well, weren't well spoken, and many of them died.
But by understanding this I have an obligation to play the same role
for the future, to not take what they gave me and then deny it to our
children by not fighting to keep and expand upon it. And, in the last
analysis to transform society, for me, as a socialist, this means to
take the ownership of the means of production, exchange and
distribution of the necessities of life that we create out of private
hands and in to the collective hands of the masses.
It is the same with the slaughter in New Orleans. There is no doubt
in my mind that it is an attack on a huge section of our brothers and
sisters who were in the forefront of the struggle for a better life
for us all even if there's improved only minimally.
We have solidarity with it, we are angry at it, and we will get our revenge.
Richard
--
"Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it but to those who need it"
Richard Mellor
Retired member, AFSCME Local 444
Oakland CA
Check out our website: http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com
New Orleans catastrophe: the product of a bankrupt system
Hurricane Katrina, that pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast this week caused unprecedented catastrophe. It is undoubtedly the most powerful storm in U.S. history, a category four hurricane. The human tragedy will be impossible to determine for weeks or months to come. Initial death counts have gone from a few hundred to thousands as floating bodies have simply been "brushed aside" as rescue efforts take precedence.
The corporate press has made much fuss about looting, the racist bias in the reporting epitomized by the description of a black man wading through water up to his waist with a box of diapers for his children as a looter, while a young white couple wading through water of equal depth, we were told, were, "finding food".
Visit: http://www.beowt.com/images/looting.gif
People too poor to leave the city, folks that were stranded in it in other words, were described in the corporate press as "people who chose not to leave". Those who could afford to leave did so. Those with means left and those without were stuck. New Orleans is a working class city. Sixty seven percent of the population is black and 50% of that 67% lives below the poverty line. One of the major reasons for this is that the main industry has been tourism so most of the jobs are service sector jobs that are often non-union and very low paid. It is this poverty that caused so many residents to stay in the city during this crisis, they did not "choose to stay" as the racist capitalist media says. The U.S. minimum wage is a poverty level wage and unfortunately, the heads of organized labor, in order to pacify business, have refused to mobilize their membership to increase it any significant amount. The U.S. minimum wage should be at least $15 per hour. The heads of organized labor bear some responsibility for the poverty conditions in cities like New Orleans.
The rich live on higher land and have better access to transport, and a way out. It is the same in every natural disaster whether here in the U.S. Indonesia or Iran, the poor are the majority of the victims. As the losses mount, those with money, and better insurance, will re-coup the most.
This morning, September 1st, three of the worst looters appeared on CNN. President Bush himself along with two former presidents, Bush the father and Bill Clinton. The current Bush brought the two former one's in as fundraisers. What hypocrites these characters are.
After hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992. The cost of the clean up was $22 billion. The insurance corporations screamed about their profits and threatened to pull out of the state. So Bush senior, who was President at the time and, following him, Bill Clinton, collaborated with their buddies in the insurance companies to rewrite the insurance laws and restructure the industry throughout the 1990's. They both did their jobs and rewrote the laws to increase the profits of the insurance companies through a combination of increasing the involvement of the state government in hurricane costs, reducing the exposure of the private insurance underwriters, and increasing the liability of homeowners. The insurance companies themselves also introduced a 2% deductible.
In addition, insurance companies that are based nationwide were allowed to set up "Florida only" based companies which they could put into bankruptcy if they were losing money in that state leaving the rest of their company untouched. All kinds of state supported back up funds that is underwritten by taxpayers were set up to bail out the insurance corporations. These hypocrites believe in the market only as long as they are making money. But when the effects of their rotten system hit their pocket book they turn to the working class like they did in the savings and loan scandal, the shifting of companies pension obligations or the cost of the murderous assault on Iraq.
President Bush himself opposed funding that would have strengthened the network of levies that protected New Orleans and whose failure added to the catastrophe. The Times Picayune newspaper is just one of the many sources that warned repeatedly of such a catastrophe that occurred this week. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Daddy Bush tells the media today that his son has "deep concern over this disaster". The corporate media naturally covers for them. Partisanship is not productive now. Politics is out. They must stick together. Bush, this buffoon and representative of the oil corporations that loot the American people and the people of the world is, "deeply concerned." The workers and poor of New Orleans are not convinced. The hatred of the gang in Washington is rising to the surface with a vengeance as the crisis deepens.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," one resident of the convention center exclaims, "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here." Thirty thousand people in the Superdome were without food and water for days. One resident of the convention center told the AP that when they tried to break in to the convention center kitchen to get food, the National Guard drove them away. The vast majority of people entering Rite Aid or Wal-Mart are taking what they need to survive, but for Bush and his cronies, corporate property is what is sacrosanct and must be protected at all costs, even if is about to fall victim to Katrina's flood.
Adults and babies have died in the New Orleans Convention Center unable to get help and waiting days for buses that might get them out of there. People have complained that they've seen nothing of the National Guard or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government agency created to deal with such disasters. But Bush placed FEMA under the umbrella of homeland security and many critics have complained that the agency is being isolated and marginalized in order for Bush to pursue his war on terror. The Wall Street Journal reports that even congress is concerned that FEMA's effectiveness has been "diluted" by the Bush administration's efforts to make it primarily a relief agency, but "traditionally", writes the WSJ, "FEMA has also been actively involved in planning for catastrophes."
The economic effects of the hurricane will be devastating. The storm shut down 8 major refineries in the Gulf Coast amounting to about 10% of U.S. capacity; half of the jet fuel in the U.S. is refined there. As of this writing 80% of New Orleans is under water and 75% of the state of Mississippi is without electricity. By some accounts, 40,000 workers in Mississippi have lost their jobs. Massive oil platforms were ripped from their moorings and went adrift. The sheer physical power of Katrina can be summed up in one sentence: the storm surge that it created temporarily reversed the direction of the mighty Mississippi river, a waterway that drains 41% of the U.S. land mass from the Appalachians to the Continental Divide.
Immediate estimates of the cost of the damage hover around $75 billion. One thing is for certain, not only the physical burden but also the financial burden of this catastrophe will be borne by the working class and poor, the insurance companies and their stooges in Washington have made sure of that.
As costs mount, the corporate politicians will respond to their master's demands for shifting the costs of the catastrophe on to the backs of U.S. workers and the middle class. But this crisis was avoidable. The imbecile in the White House refuses to accept that global warming exists. The policy of "full spectrum dominance" has meant a global assault on the environment, on workers' rights, on the public sector and social spending that would have mitigated much of the effects of katrina's wrath. Iraq is nothing more than privatization by the bomb. These profit addicted thugs who worship the market, Democrat and Republican alike, have no right to rule, are a threat to humanity.
The insurance companies, and the oil companies must be taken out of private hands. The billions of dollars in stolen wealth that they have accumulated can be used to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Exxon alone made $25 billion in profit last year. This can also be done with the banks. A huge finance sector controlled by democratically elected working class and middle class people can be created. This can be used for developing society in all ways, including the rebuilding necessary following natural disasters. This finance sector would not be determined by the profit motive but by the needs of the people. The Democrats and Republicans will not do this; these parties represent the corporations and their corrupt capitalist system.
The immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina offers an opportunity to begin this process at the local level. The oil workers are unionized; the chemical workers are organized. These Union locals have the ability to make an appeal to all organized workers in the area as well as nationally and internationally to organize the relief effort and get resources in to the area, independent of the cronies in Washington? Given the outpouring of sympathy for the victims in New Orleans, an appeal of this nature would receive enthusiastic support from workers all over the world.
Is it possible that in areas still occupied that local elected committees could be formed to oversee the day-to-day operations of distribution of supplies in each area rather than having individuals risk being shot for taking a bottle of water from a drug store? That supplies in the stores in each area can be requisitioned and distributed through these committees rather than go to waste. These committees can then link up with the union locals so that the working class as a whole becomes the dominant force in the relief effort. The resources and millions of dollars the union movement spends electing Democrats to office, politicians who are responsible for the present catastrophe, should be used now to assist the working class to act on our own behalf.
The horrific situation that exists in New Orleans confirms the need for the transformation of society. It confirms the bankruptcy of the capitalist class and their system; in the wealthiest and most powerful country that has ever existed, a major city has been destroyed and rotting corpses, bodies of workers and the poor, are floating around the once busy streets.
http://www.wired.com/news/hurricane/0,2904,68725,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
From this months wire
Over the years the FEMA has been transformed from a federal emergency and relief organisation into one that is non accountable to government and has been granted a wide range of power that are very sinister.
To some extent this explains the strange behaviour of the FEMA in New Orleans reported above, where they were actually cutting emergency phone lines, preventing volunteers from getting through and so on.
The FEMA is being used to further attack the people in New Oreleans, by preventing any sort of relief. There is something very sinister going on with them.
In one of the recent hurricanes (I think last year) in Florida, there were eye witness reports that FEMA officials had locked down working class areas, such as trailer parks where many poor people live, and it was reported 100s were killed in the hurricane. It was reported that they cleared out the bodies and kept the press and everyone else well clear of the area. These deaths never appeared in the official counts. It appears they were working to hide the fact that so many were killed. Probably part of the scheme to deny global warming is having any effect.
The FEMA was also implicated in the war game simulations, simulating an attack using airplanes that was being carried out on the morning of 9/11. Dick Cheney assumed much of the powers during this time.
For more about the FEMA, see
http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tword12t.htm
For example......referring to a National Security Decision Directive issued by Reagan .....
These Executive Orders permit a takeover by FEMA of local, state, and national governments and the suspension of constitutional guarantees. FEMA will have the authority to exert any sort of control that it deems necessary upon the American public. A trained National Police Force, formally referred to by the name of Multi Jurisdictional Task Force (MJTF), wearing black uniforms and composed of: 1. specially selected US military personnel 2. foreign military units carrying United Nations ID cards, and 3. specially trained existing police groups from larger metropolitan American cities. These members of the MJTF will implement and enforce martial law under the direction and control of FEMA. The President and Congress are out of the loop.
FEMA is the Trojan Horse by which the New World Order will implement overt, police-state control over the American populace.
Halliburton gets Katrina contract, hires former FEMA director
'In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR. Joe Allbaugh was director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration.
Today, FEMA is widely criticized for its slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.'
editor note: copy and paste removed. Please do not post entire contents of copied material
It's time to impeach Bush for spending the dam money on Iraq.
Marie Antoinette Bush says
Let them eat cake
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary,
is they all want to stay in Texas.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were
underprivileged anyway,
so this is working very well for them."
This is the understanding the American ruling class has of the citizens.
They have never heard of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
Impeach Bush for spending the dam money on Iraq.
Marie Antoinette Bush
Here is W's latest address to the nation and the world:
My Fellow Americans,
Once again our nation is under attack. New Orleans and the surrounding
Gulf Coast have been devastated by a terrorist strike, the likes of
which the world has never seen.
Responsibility for this atrocity has been claimed by a previously
unknown terrorist cell, calling itself "Mother Nature." Little is known
at this stage about Mother Nature. However, it seems likely that Mother
Nature has been living among us for many years, deviously avoiding
detection by our intelligence services, biding its time and waiting for
an opportunity to strike.
From what we do know, it is clear that Mother Nature possesses weapons
of mass destruction, capable of targeting American cities. The
sophistication of its weaponry and the detail that has gone into its
planning, suggests possible links between Mother Nature and Al Quaida.
Furthermore, it is clear that a terrorist operation of this magnitude
could not be carried out without considerable funding, most likely from
Iran or North Korea.
My fellow Americans, you may be asking yourselves "why do they hate us
so much?" The answer is that Mother Nature envies our freedom. Mother
Nature wishes to prevent the spread of our capitalist system to all the
nations and peoples of the world. Mother Nature wishes to destroy our
cities and our industries. It is no coincidence that Mother Nature
targeted this attack at the very heart of America's oil production and
refining industry.
I have a very clear message to send to Mother Nature on behalf of the
American people. Mother Nature, you can run but you cannot hide!
Wherever you go, we will hunt you down. To the civilized democracies of
the world, I say, if you are not with us you are with the terrorists!
If you value your freedom, if we are to protect our shared values, you
must join us in this crusade. Together, we must destroy Mother Nature!