IF YOU LOVE ME ENGLAND, YOU'LL DO IT

How could you forget about her, Mr. Duplicity?

Re: Reuters: "Lynndie England Blames Lover for Abuse Photos"


Oh, I feel your pain, Private England.

Why, just the other day, my lover and I were at Blockbuster trying to decide what DVD to rent. She wanted to watch "Lords of Dogtown," while I preferred "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Unrated Director's Cut)."

She then struck a deal with me: "I'll tell you what, snookums ... We'll go with your movie choice if you go violate countless human rights treaties and torture prisoners obtained in violation of international law in a despicably inhumane manner guaranteed to offend the entire world and ignite further attacks upon the country that you've sworn to protect."

Before I had a chance to reply, she added, "If you really love me, you'll also strip the prisoners nude, point mockingly at their genitals, drag them with a leash unbecoming of a mutt, and photograph your metaphorical defecation upon the Geneva Conventions using a digital camera that will make it easier to plaster the front page of every newspaper and eventually symbolize America's disrespect for human life in the Arab world."

Did you or I have any choice?

It's so unfair, isn't it?

--Junichi

T.D.H.B.I. PARTY!

Today is the first day I have ever voluntarily joined a conga line.

For anyone who hasn't noticed, I'm currently on a blog sabbatical, which I predict will end by mid-October.

But I'd like to make a brief cameo appearance since everyone in the office just got a one hour break today to celebrate something we've long awaited: the T.D.H.B.I. (Tom Delay Has Been Indicted) Party. After all, the Hammer got tagged with felony charges and has stepped down as House leader. I'm proud to be an American!

Although the Texas grand jury process is highly unpredictable, here is an illustration of one outcome that I would find highly favorable.

There are only two bad things about this:

1. I thought "DELAY" was a good word to describe the Republican response to Hurrican Katrina.

2. They've replaced Rep. DeLay with his right-hand man, Rep. Roy Blunt, who is just as reliable as a homophobe, although with the twist that he's a closeted gay homophobe. If the new House leader does come out of the closet, it will be interesting, as well as a lame pun, to see how fast the GOP smokes Blunt.

I promise to write again during the inevitable B.F.H.A.B.I. (Bill Frist Has Also Been Indicted) rager. I also promise to document all my keg stands and body shots if I ever get to host a G.W.B.H.B.I (George W. Bush Has Been Impeached) party.

These days, it's sad the things that make me smile and celebrate.

--Junichi

RAP NOSTALGIA AKA VH1 HIP-HOP HONORS

putting the big in big daddy kane
Though the production values for this awards show (now in its second year) are painfully underwhelming, I simply cannot be that mad at the concept and spirit of the show in celebrating the icons of hip-hop and giving aging rapfanatics like myself some geeked-out reason to enjoy seeing the music of our youth warmed up again, sometimes with positive results, sometimes...not so much.

THE GOOD

• When I heard Nelly was going to do his homage to LL Cool J by rhyming "I'm Bad," I cringed but much to my surprise...he was actually pretty good. I mean, Mr. Band-Aid had the entire look and swagger down. It was rather mind-blowing. Ciara coming out to "Jingling Baby," was sick too (shout to Marley) and while "Doin' It Well" isn't exactly my favorite LL song, she and Nelly did a decent cover.
  
  As for LL himself, my wife leaned over and remarked, "damn, he's finer than when he first started," while I'm just struck at nearly 30 years after he first started, LL is still a relevant (humor me) figure in the pop culture world even if he hasn't had a notable album in a minute. I'm just glad to see that he and Queen Latifah, for example, are still thriving as artists.
  
  
• Ice T was never, to me, that great a rapper but I'm glad to see he can still convincingly knock out his own songs with some fierceness and fury. Snoop was passable in joining him on-stage though I think Xzibit might have been more appropriate.
  
  
• The Grandmaster Flash + Jazzy Jeff + Kid Capri collabo was a nice dedication to hip-hop's DJ heritage, especially after last year's Jam Master Jay tribute put together by Mixmaster Mike. The carousel was kind of hot, even if the point might have been lost on some folks.
  
  As for the Furious Five - hey, Fat Joe performed last year, did they really need him to sit in for the late Cowboy? No one was available? Also, Melle Mel needs to go easy on the weight-lifting. Dude makes Barry look skinny by comparison. The rest of the 5 needed some better outfits. Even some Village People-type outfits would have had more spark.
  
  
• While the performances were uneven during Big Daddy Kane's set, the dancing was off the chain. Seriously, f--- the "Lean Back." They need to bring back hyperactive, hip-house body pyrotechnics. That bit at the end with Kane joined with Scoob (where's Scrap at?) was arguably the best moment of the entire evening. (And big up to the Roots for playing back-up band to full effect. Ahmir Thompson has not a bad life. Oh no.)
  
  

THE OK

• Did anyone really need En Vogue to come back to pay homage to Salt N' Pepa? Was Destiny's Child not around? Salt still sounded good, Pepa is even more Amazonian than I remember and damn, was Spinderella always that fine?
  
  
• The Boyz N' The Hood tribute was ok though as others have already noted, this film isn't as good as anyone wants to remember it is and Singleton's career has been even less laudable since. Hell, if they really wanted to be real about it, they should have paid tribute to Scarface considering how many rappers have crafted entire personas around that film.
  
  
• Black Thought did fine during the Kane tribute set with "Can't Hold It Back," but I can't say the same about either T.I. (doing "Smooth Operator") or Common trying to rip "Raw." T.I. simply doesn't have the, um, smoothness to invoke Kane while Com can't fast rap (sorry dude. Liked the windmills though). Where's Percee P when you need him? Or even Edan.
  
  Also, what's up with relegating Biz to the turntables? No human beat box for his old Juice Crew pal? What gives?
  
  

THE BAD

• Russell Simmons and Rev Run's hosting was so stilted and awkward I thanked god for Tivo's ability to skip ahead by 30 second increments.
  
  
• Not like I hate Kanye or "Gold Digger," but c'mon, VH1 needed to get off dude's jock and make him perform someone else's song (oh wait, he did that with "Hypnotize" and I really wish he didn't. I can understand why VH1 wanted Kanye's participation but it seemed odd that he'd be the only one who got to perform a new song and his contribution to Biggie's catalog was nothing to write home about either.
  
  

THE UGLY

• The Biggie tribute didn't work on any level. Like with Kane, the guest MCs they had simply couldn't fit the bill (where was Jay?) and the whole thing felt more like a schmaltz-fest than actual entertainment. Maybe it wasn't as bad as Diddy's VMA homage but this comes close.
  
  

By the way, the folks at Nastack and Noz over at Cocaine Blunts have already dropped their .02 and I'd expect maybe Hashim, B.C. and others while chime in as well in their own (ir)reverent way.

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #25

Vote or die!

This Week's Question:

Given that Rob Reiner and Warren Beatty are rumoured to be pondering a run against Arnold Schwarzenegger for the 2006 California gubernatorial election, what actor or actress would you like to see run for governor in California?

--Junichi

MIC FACT CHECK, 1, 2

that's not my real photo either
(I'm not nearly as good looking)
Another reason why the internet is completely bizarre: I ended up reading on Bol's site about an interview I had given in August that I had not realized was even published yet. Yes, B.C. is more up on me than I am (I believe this is where a "nullus" would normally be inserted. Nullus on that last phrase too).

Anyways, upon reading the story, I was surprised at the direction the writer took, especially in taking a one minute snippet of the conversation and turning it into the lead. Here's the story, as it ran:
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

South China Morning Post
September 18, 2005

HEADLINE: Oliver Wang; Writers from China's diaspora
BYLINE: David Wilson

BODY:
As he cradles his baby daughter, Oliver Wang doesn't look like the kind of person to inspire a vendetta. But the 33-year-old rap music critic is in the crosshairs of fellow blogger and hip-hop analyst Byron Crawford.

Upset that Wang removed him from his link list, Crawford claimed Wang had sent insulting e-mails, one of which is posted on Crawford's site.

"Everything you see on Byron Crawford's site about me is libellous," Wang says.

It's not the first spat Wang has been involved in. "I come from a community that's still largely marginalised. This doesn't necessarily affect me day-to -day because in San Francisco, which is multicultural, you don't necessarily feel out of place.

"But, as someone who keeps up with politics and social issues, I'm aware that I can be seen as a little unusual within certain conversations about race. It's still largely a black and white context that people talk about here, so my Chinese side reminds me that I'm this third party.

"We don't fit that cleanly into either a black or a white frame of reference. Because we're not white, we're subject to certain forms of prejudice in common with African-Americans and others. It comes down to being seen as the perpetual outsider."

Even though Wang is second-generation and his wife is "four-and-a-half -generation" Japanese-American, some still see the couple as immigrants without a deep stake in the US, Wang says.

Los Angeles-raised, the cultural critic lives in a cluttered house in Sunset, a Bohemian suburb of San Francisco that adjoins Golden Gate Park.

His parents came from Sichuan province. His father worked in the US as an actuary for insurance companies before moving into upper management. His mother started as an English teacher, then taught deaf children before becoming a real estate agent.

"My parents always stressed my writing abilities as a teenager," Wang says. "They even had me work with a writing tutor to make sure I was developing right. As a freelance writer, though, they haven't always understood my motivation to write on music."

His mother is more supportive now that he makes a living as a music critic. The author of Classic Material: The Hiphop Album Guide (ECW Press), Wang writes a Microsoft music blog (spaces.msn.com/members/musicfilter/blog) and contributes to publications ranging from The Village Voice to LA Weekly.

He regards the US very much as his home country. Wang says he can almost see himself living in a city such as Shanghai, where his parents are now. Language aside, he says it increasingly resembles an American city. And he predicts that the differences between the US and China will shrink.

He says the current tensions between the two nations are understandable "The US has a long history of seeing China as an enemy in ways they wouldn't necessarily see a European nation - because of race. It's the Yellow Peril."

He says competition between the two will inevitably start to take on racial dynamics. "It's troubling. China wants to be No1. I'm not passing judgment, but that would make sense to me because any nation that has the capability to advance itself will."

Regardless of career conflicts, the doting father and vigorous critic is doubtless set to keep on keeping on, too.

So, a few things that need addressing and/or correcting.

1) I had no clue Wilson was going to make Byron his lead, and had I know, I would have suggested he avoid the issue entirely since it seemed rather irrelevant to most of our conversation. He asked me briefly about Bol's posts, I gave him a response that took all of a minute, we moved on. Most of our convo was about Chinese/U.S. relations actually and as I noted, he touched on this at the end.

2) Not everything Bol's ever posted about me is libelous - I think Wilson actually applied my quote out of context here but it wasn't done maliciously. Factually speaking, when Bol calls me a "chink," he's technically correct. I just don't really self-identify as such but whatever.

It is true however, some of what he's posted about me is libelous but at this point, I don't really trip off it...except when intelligent people I know write me to ask, "did you really call Byron a n-----?" I'm frankly blown away that people would even be confused enough to have to ask for clarification but in this regard, I can only bow to the crafty genius that is B to the C.

By the way, just to put this out there, but people always want to ask me about Bol and I and I usually never say anything about it because truly: Byron and I share a love that dare not speak its name. (Cue: War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?")

3) I told Wilson that because Asian Americans are not white, we're subject to similar forms of discrimination as other people of color. I also went onto state that, despite this, there are also significant differences between Asians and other people of color, so it's not like one can equate our experiences with those of, say, African Americans.

Similar at times? Sure. Equivalent? Not hardly. However, that part of the quote was not included in the story.

4) My parents are not from Sichuan. What I told Wilson was that my mother's family is from Xianxi, but grew up in Sichuan because of WWII while my father's family was from Fujian and as far as I know, they never ended up in Sichuan. My parents met in Taipei in any case.

5) I do live in a cluttered house, though technically, it is an apartment. However, no one has ever called the Sunset district in San Francisco, "bohemian." My neighborhood is about as far from "bohemian" as one can get, especially in S.F.

6) Everything else is pretty much accurate. I'll clip the part about me being a "doting father" so when my daughter grows up to resent me, I'll have some proof that I was a good dad at one point.

The lesson to be learned here - all the more ironic since I interview people all the time - is be careful what you say. Not only will journalists potentially get facts wrong, they'll also quote you out of context - and believe me, I do the same stuff at times. Also, you can't predict, let alone dictate, the direction that a story will take.

In the book, The Journalist and the Murderer, author Janet Malcolm writes something to effect of this: people say things to journalists they really shouldn't because the act of the interview is seductive. Offering people the opportunity to speak on their views is something that very few amongst us will pass by because our egos overrule our good sense.

The irony is that, I should absolutely know this as a writer...but when the tables get turned and I'm on the other end of the microphone... Well, you get the idea.

--O.W.

PLAYING CATCH-UP

this month, in a nutshell
To say this past month has been crazy would be gross understatement. Hurricanes, Supreme Court vacancies, the start of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, you name it. I was originally going to write last month about how Junichi and I were both reducing our Poplicks post load because of outside commitments but with Katrina, as was obvious, I felt compelled to write far more than I would have ever anticipated. Things have started to slow down a bit, more out of exhaustion than lack of things to say.

I figure now's as good a time as any to announce (albeit seven weeks late) that I've joined the ranks of the professional bloggers, much to my surprise. Since August, I've been writing a music news blog for MSN, part of their new "Filter" series of topical blogs (others include tv, film, sports, etc.). The opportunity fell in my lap - it really never occurred to me to seek out a paid gig as a blogger even though I already write, you know, fourteen blogs (not really, but keeping more than one blog makes you a dork beyond redemption so 4, 14, 423, it's all the same). It's been an interesting experience, not so much because it's paid blog work (though, that is a bit surreal at times), but because I haven't had a daily gig since 1998 or so.

The downside is that when you spend a few hours a day getting paid to blog, it's harder to muster the enthusiasm to write your own. Still, I'm going to try to stay on top of Poplicks (and Soul-Sides.com too) as best I can. With that...onto the news.

---

PISSED OFF: Two readers sent this in via the comments section: Two Asian American students at the Univ. of Michigan get urinated on by drunk white guys on a balcony:

"One of the students was immediately taken into custody. The other student who urinated on the couple, barricaded himself in the apartment, which the police could not enter without a warrant. However, the [Ann Arbor Police] knows the identity of the student, who could face jail time if prosecuted.

AAPD Lt. Michael Logghe classified the crime as ethnic intimidation, or verbal or physical attack against a person of another race or gender. Logghe said ethnic intimidation is a felony and carries a maximum penalty of four years in jail. The suspects could also be charged with assault, and one of the suspects could face a charge of indecent exposure, which would require him to register as a sex offender."

That and they face possible expulsion. I'm all for improved race relations but seriously, there needs to be some beatdowns handed out here.

KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FROM PORN: The Wash Post reports on how the FBI, under directions of the Bush administration, has tasked at least a dozen or so agents to an anti-obscenity squad:

""I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."

A few of the printable samples:

"Things I Don't Want On My Resume, Volume Four."

"I already gave at home."

"Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."

FBI agents with senses of humor? Looks like not everything is looking bad at the DOJ.

And last but not least...

LEFT BEHIND: Slate's William Saletan writes on how recent media coverage of the National Center for Health Statistics sex survey has played up the rise of oral sex amongst teenagers, but no other bothered to note how prevalent anal sex has become.

"Talking to your kids about oral sex is the easy part. If you're going to be frank about the most dangerous widespread activity revealed in the survey, you're looking at the wrong end of the digestive tract."

Saletan's point isn't just to admonish newspapers for being overly selective with what they sensationalize and don't. He's also arguing that the point here is that, from a public health standpoint, it's far more important to educate people about the health risks associated with anal sex than oral:

"...the probability of HIV acquisition by the receptive partner in unprotected oral sex with an HIV carrier is one per 10,000 acts. In vaginal sex, it's 10 per 10,000 acts. In anal sex, it's 50 per 10,000 acts. Do the math. Oral sex is 10 times safer than vaginal sex. Anal sex is five times more dangerous than vaginal sex and 50 times more dangerous than oral sex. Presumably, oral sex is far more frequent than anal sex. But are you confident it's 50 times more frequent?

Looking over the survey reveals some interesting numbers:

• Atleast 25% of 15 year old boys and girls have had sex. That number climbs to 62% and 70%, respectively, by the time they're 18. I'm pretty astounded by those statistics though I find it surprising that there are 8% more 18 year old women having sex than men.
  
  
• By the time they reach their 40s, most men have had 8 sexual partners, women, 4. When broken down into race, among men, 18% of Latinos, between 15-44, have had sex with 15 or more partners. For whites, it's 22%, for Blacks, it's 34%. (Which of course prompts the question: where the Asians at?) Among women, the same groups chart at 5, 10 and 9%, respectively, which would seem to indicate that Black men and white women play the field more, racially speaking (or at least, report that they do).

Who says statistics can't be fun?

--O.W.

LIFE ON RANDOM

oh no, another air supply song?
Like many, when I've listened to any large musical library on my iPod or just off my computer's library of songs, I always have wondered if the "random" function is really all that random. After all, how many of us have had that experience where, on "random," we still hear three songs from the same album within half an hour of each other. Wired's Dan Goodin wondered the same thing and sought out some scientific help to explain the phenomenon. The short story is this: the problem isn't the playlist: it's us. (Alternatively: it's not computers at fault, it's the human users).

Goodin spoke to mathematician Jeff Lait who specializes in randomization:

"Lait referred to a phenomenon statisticians call the birthday paradox. Roughly stated, it holds that if there are 23 randomly selected people in a room, there is a better than 50-50 chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday. The point: Mathematical randomness often contradicts our intuitive expectations of randomness."

What Lait explains is that our expectation isn't that things be wholly random since, randomly speaking, it's perfectly mathematically reasonable for multiple songs by the same artist to show up close to one another. As far as the science is concerned, that's random but our perception is that this is too many similar songs in a row. Instead, Lait suggests that what we really want is a playlist that's:

" ... stratified, or separated into categories that are weighted by a listener's preferences. A stratified playlist might select songs randomly but would be smart enough to throw out choices that, say, would repeat a band within 10 songs."

In other words, a stratified list would conform to our expectation and perception of randomness even if, technically speaking, we're actually giving programming instructions that would seem to be the opposite of what the point of randomness is. But hey, so long as you're happy with your playlist at the end of the day, it's all good.

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #24

Arrrrgh! I care about black people! They're off the hook!

This Week's Question:

In honor of today, National Talk Like A Pirate Day, what's your favorite pirate joke?

By the way, I started a new job and have effectively been taking a vacation from blogging. I'd like to thank O-Dub for holding it down. I plan to come up for air soon, especially to release the backlog of diatribes I've been storing up. Thanks for the emails from the two individuals who wondered whether I had vanished. By the way, please watch the season premiere of Emmy-winning Arrrrrrrested Development tonight at 8 pm so that the show can stay on the air indefinitely. Big ups to the NY Times. & happy b-day, Chewy.

--Junichi

THEY GOT THE INTERNET GOIN' NUTS

I know thuggy-poseur 14 year old white kids from New Jersey are an easy mark. (By the way, these two dudes are on myspace.com which seems to be swimming in poseur-dom and certainly not just limited to white boys). Images like these are already so unintentionally self-mocking that pointing out 1) that the kid on the left is rocking a b.b.gun and 2) that Tweety Bird clock in the background is dumb hot (you think this dude knows about Tweedy Bird Loc? He better ask somebody) would be redundant.

Still, let's pose this: who's likely to be most offended by the above images?

1) Black folk who see these as examples of modern minstrelsy.
2) White folk who see these as examples of how "innocent" white children are falling into the "dangerous" allure of Black culture.
3) Gun enthusiasts who would point out that the sideways gun pose is poor for accuracy.
4) True ballers who know that unless you're rocking Franklins in your money fan, you're perpetrating.
(Source: Soul Strut)

--O.W.

DO THE FEMA RAP

This is truly mind-boggling. FEMA, aka the most inept-looking agency in the federal government at current, has a sub-section on their website devoted to children, since, we presume, emergency preparation starts early. Buried within the section is this, the "FEMA for Kidz Rap," (notice the use of the signifying "z" instead of an "s").

This could be really funny if not for, you know, the misery of post-Katrina. Seriously, can anyone take these lyrics seriously at this point? Or ever?

Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.
Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.
People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.

(Source: del.icio.us)

--O.W.

GOOGLE'S BLOG SEARCH

In lighter news for a change, Google just rolled out the beta version of their blog search engine. As many will likely ask: doesn't Technorati already do that? The answer would be "yes" but that's not going to stop Google from making a power move into the same territory (you have to wonder if it crossed their minds to just buy Technorati). So far, it's producing some interesting results, even in beta stage.

Search for "Katrina" for example and Google spits back over 750,000 results compared to Technorati's 240,000. The former can be organized by relevance or date while the latter is strictly chronologically shuffled. However, I noticed that Google would give back results for sites that are not technically blogs, including pages on About.com and NPR's websites.

This said, for egocentric Leos such as myself, this just opens up a whole new way to see what folks are saying about you. Or people with your name. For example, I discovered there's an Oliver Wang who hosts a Mandarin-language radio show in Dublin. As in Ireland. And then there's this person who hates Kanye West and hated my NPR review of Late Registration:

"Please, please, please do NOT choose a bad example of a genre to raise up on a false pedistal and praise. My grandmother could out-rap this pathetic punk."

--O.W.

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

do not give us your tired, huddled masses
I know some of you are probably tired of hearing about Katrina and all the debacles that have followed it. You want to get back to the fun-loving old days of Poplicks where we posted about life-sized R. Kelly dolls and see-through skirts (both, oddly, related to Japanese folk but let's not go down that road right now). We'll get back to there. Maybe. Eventually.

But seriously, it's not our fault that every new story emerging from NOLA is unbelievably f---ed up. Case in point, CNN just reported on this today:

New Orleans residents fleeing the city as flood waters rose tried to cross into the neighboring town of Gretna, only to get turned away by police officers with shotguns. This was about 200 people, according to the CNN report, but police forcibly turned everyone back, including "people in wheelchairs, we had people in strollers, people on crutches," mostly, as it seems women, children and elderly.

Mostly Black.

"What we were told by the deputies is that they were not going to allow another New Orleans, and they weren't going to allow a Superdome to go into their side of the bridge, Gretna. So to us, that reeks absolute racism, since our group that was trying to cross over was women, children, predominantly African-American," said one witness.

Gretna's police chief, now joining a long list of what The Daily Show has delicately termed "The F**kers", claims that it wasn't race, but ill-preperation...

...and the need to protect other people's property. Talk about damning yourself with your own words:

"We had no preparations. You know, we're a small city on the west bank of the river. We had people being told to come over here, that we were going to have buses, we were going to have food, we were going to have water, and we were going to have shelter. And we had none. Our people had left. Our city was locked down and secured, for the sake of the citizens that left their valuables here to be protected by us."

I don't blame Chief Lawson for admitting that the town was woefully under-prepared to handle an influx of survivors trying to flee the city - if one thing is clear, everyone was under-prepared, right? However, his point that it would have been somehow irresponsible to help save hurricane survivors because they were trying to protect the "valuable property" of those who left is some pretty cold sh--. Once again, the private property of the few outweigh the needs of the many (who happen to be poor and Black).

Let's just read between the lines: he was worried that the people fleeing New Orleans might loot their pretty little town even though most of them seemed desperate just not to drown.

That's just upstanding of the Gretna police - let's give 'em a big hand for putting capitalism ahead of humanitarianism. At least they got the "Protect" part of the police motto right.

--O.W.

INJUSTICE BY THE NUMBERS

count 'em down
(Note: I asked a friend and colleague, Professor David Leonard at Washington St. Univ., if there was anything he wanted to say regarding Katrina and since he's been posting in the comments on several threads. This is what he sent. -- O.W.)

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

Injustice by the Numbers
compiled/written by Dr. David Leonard

125
MPH Winds
Not what destroyed New Orleans, that left the lives of so many in ruins
Facing an uncertain future already uncertain within Bush’s America

71.2
Million Dollars
Sliced from the Budget of the Army Corp of Engineers
Leaving the levees and water pumping system unable to save New Orleans

33.8
Billion Dollars
Allocated to the Department of Homeland Security
Protecting who from what, just not Hurricanes or poverty

67
Percent
Of New Orleans is African American
Surviving race riots, Jim Crow, deindustrialization and an unavailable American Dream

30
Percent
Of New Orleans lives below the poverty line
Astounding to some, but the end result of Hurricane free market

120,000
People
Without Cars, and thousands more without options
Media blaming them for their stubbornness, for choosing not to leave

5
Days
People desperate to survive, to hug and feel their loved ones again
Waiting for food, water, transportation and security

90
Percent
Of those stranded on 1-10, without food, water or the spoils of America were Black and poor
Demonstrating that American continues not to be America for much of America

100s
Of questions
To victims of American Racism, of poverty, of another hurricane
Wondering why they didn’t just leave, work harder, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps

1000s
Of Images
Those looters who take food, bread, shoes and televisions
Stealing from the hand that feeds them no water, food, or Future

2
Comments
From Bill O’Reilly, that unfair and unbalanced media hack
Calling them, the victims, those black victims, a urban menace that deserves to be shot

SHUT UP!

1000s
Of comments
On the Internet, in the street, and behind closed doors
Blaming the victims, those black victims, referring to them as animals and savages

SHUT UP!

1
Image
That of Mardi Gras, beads, flaming desserts, and parties
Denying the reality of New Orleans, of America, one of poverty, inequality and despair

SHUT UP!

George Bush, T.D Jakes, Michael Brown, Bill O’Reilly, that asshole at Nuevo, Barbara Bush, skinheads, haters and those who tell Kanye to sit down, who deny race, who laugh at the death, who make jokes, who don’t give, who live in their bubble . . . . Shut up and Listen and Learn

40
Percent
Illiterate

50
Percent
Of Children Living in Poverty

50
Percent
Drop Out Rate

$4,724
Spent Per Child

48th
In Teacher Salaries

60
Students Drop out each day

50,000 students
Absent each Day from School

No Child Left Behind??
No Child Left Behind
Left Behind in Angola State Prison

Number 1
Factor
Being Race in the geographic organization of communities
Leaving people of color in the worst, most vulnerable places

10,000
Dead
Mostly African American men, women and children
Dying not from a natural disaster, but from racism, from neglect from the violence of America

100,000s
Dead
Mostly men, women and Children of color
Dying not from natural causes, but from greed, from capitalism, from violence

Hurricane Katrina
A Natural Disaster
If only poverty, police brutality, structural adjustment, the prison industrial complex, environmental racism, neglect, ignorance, and white supremacy were natural

--O.W.

HOLY S---, THE PRES "TAKES RESPONSIBILITY"

"aw shucks, yeah, I messed up"
Bush: 'I take responsibility' for U.S. failures

Wow, for G. Bush, it used to be that being president means never having to say you're sorry or admit mistakes or whatever but looks like Katrina has created such a outpouring of outrage and disappointment that he's finally been forced so say, "ok, yeah, this was my bad" (at least on the federal level). I think Karl Rove has finally been looking at the poll numbers and realizing it was mea culpa time rather than scapegoating and stonewalling any more.

Just like when Clinton apologized, expect...

1) Bush's approval ratings to start to climb back up.
2) Pro-President (mostly on the Right) pundits applaud this show of humility and accountability even though some of them have ardently defended the President from having to take any responsibility in any of this.
3) Bush critics (on the Left) suddenly scrambling to keep the heat on. After insisting for weeks that "the feds messed up," it kind of takes the wind out of your sails to hear Bush say, "yeah, we failed. It was my bad."

I have to say...I'm not even sure what to do with this. The Bush admin has been so adamant about spinning every Iraq disaster as some kind of improvement that it's rather stunning to hear them admit failure for a change.

--O.W.

THE COLOR OF BLAME

57% of the blame, right here
This isn't surprising but according to a new CNN poll "reaction to Katrina split on racial lines."

I won't quote the whole article at length, but here are the key differences:

Belief: the federal gov't slow in rescuing people because they were Black.
Blacks: 60% agreed
Whites: 12.5%


Belief: they were slow because they were poor.
B: 63%
W: 21%


Who's to blame for the relief effort? (Black responses)
37% Bush (aka Feds)
20% Mayor Nagin (aka local)
11% The residents themselves
27% No one

(White responses)
29% Nagin
27% The residents
15% Bush
27% No one


Does George Bush, in fact, not care about Black people?
Blacks: 79% agree with Kanye.
Whites: 33% agree with Kanye.


Were all looters criminals?
Whites: 50% say yes.
Blacks: 16% say yes, 77% say they were just trying to survive.

---

Analysis: wow, white people don't think race is an issue - how amazing is that! All sarcasm aside, if there's one thing most white Americans can be counted on, it's to never believe racism is at play. You could probably get a majority of white folk to believe that cross burnings are about religious enthusiasm and Strom Thurmond was only looking out for state rights when he opposed integration.

Beyond that, it is worth noting that a majority of all polled thought the response was uniformly terrible and all thought Bush performed poorly in the beginning (though whites think he's done better since but not Blacks).

It's also notable that Nagin definitely shoulders the blame in everyone's minds, even if the balance between him and Bush changes depending on who's being asked.

And before you go: The Onion, killin' it as always.

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #23

Rev. Jackson with Thai refugees

This Week's Question:

In describing the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, is there anything wrong with using the term 'refugees'?


Background: The National Association of Black Journalists and the Black Congressional Caucus recommends everyone refrain from using the word 'refugee' to describe American citizens. Rev. Jesse Jackson has suggested, "It is racist to call American citizens refugees."For additional perspectives, click here and here.

--Junichi

ONE HAND PAYS OFF THE OTHER

he thinks halliburton is #1
FEMA might have been slow in directing federal resources to help out the cities and towns devastated by Hurricane Katrina but they've sure been quick in giving contracts to help clean up the mess to the folks at a Halliburton sub-company, along with Shaw and Bechtel. Did we mention that all of them have close ties to Bush and his boys?

Question: is there any major disaster that Bush has had a role in that doesn't involve Halliburton? Just asking.

---

By the way, if there's one site I've seen really, really, really holding it down, especially with media clips and acting as a clearinghouse for other sites, it's Crooks and Liars. This guy's energy seems limitless and he's managed to keep the heat turned on 24/7 through this crisis and done it without sounding like he's stark raving loony. And frankly, if Mark Williams thinks C&L is trying to get his dog killed, we figure he must be doing something right.

--O.W.

COLIN POWELL FINALLY SPEAKS HIS MIND (ABOUT TIME)

stepping out of the shadow
You just KNEW that Powell had grave reservations about Iraq, about a lot of foreign policy but out of loyalty, fear, whatever, he bit his tongue. Finally, he's come out and candidly shared his opinion on Iraq. Where were you two years ago though?

Powell regrets 'mess' of Iraq

"COLIN POWELL, the former US Secretary of State, harshly criticised the Bush Administration yesterday for its failures in Iraq, calling the country a mess and voicing concerns that it may slide into civil war."

"Asked in an interview broadcast on ABC whether he regretted his support for the war, he replied: “Who knew what the whole mess was going to be like?” He added: “What we didn’t do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country, with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces, or by recreating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now. “And it may not have turned out to be such a mess if we had done some things differently.”

"Turning to his pre-war address to the UN Security Council, when he forcefully made the case for invasion and offered proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, General Powell said that he felt terrible about the claims he made. Asked whether the speech would tarnish his reputation, he replied: “Of course it will. It’s a blot. I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”

"General Powell said that he had “never seen evidence to suggest” a connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the regime of Saddam Hussein, unlike Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, who has made such a claim."

Expect the Right to start demonizing Powell by morning. It will be viciously ugly since, as we all know, Massa doesn't like it when the household help goes all Nat Turner on them.

Too little too late? Or another crack in the facade, post-Katrina?
(Source: Soulstrut)

--O.W.

NPR BREAKS DOWN WHAT WENT WRONG BEFORE AND AFTER KATRINA

maybe they should have text-messaged instead?
Who's fault is it? Apparently, bad phones had a lot to do with (well, that and a really, really, really bad bureaucratic chain of events).

Listen here.

What it confirms is something that needs to be repeated over and over until people get it:

A) It wasn't the local response.
B) It wasn't the state response.
C) It wasn't the federal response.

The answer is D) ALL OF THE ABOVE.

That's what makes the finger pointing that everyone's engaged in such utter bullshit: every level of government bureaucracy fucked up royally on this. People need to stop defending Nagin or Blanco or Bush and trying to pin the Katrina Disaster on the other two. They all failed. Utterly.

And more than that, let's just take a deep breath and also remember that NOLA's destruction was decades in the making, a combination of remarkably bad public policy and what you might as well call "deliberate neglect." But, if you want to pin the blow-by-blow series of mini-disasters that added up to Katrina, you can lay much of that at the doorstep of every public official involved in preparing for the hurricane and the relief effort afterwards.

--O.W.

JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT

via wonkette

And this just in: "FEMA director Michael Brown being sent back to Washington; Homeland Security Director Chertoff to announce new leader for on-the-ground Katrina relief efforts."

Wow, the Bush admin actually held someone accountable for once? Is Hell experiencing a chill?

--O.W.

TAP DANCING AROUND THE TRUTH

hey hey, I'm just the messenger
Look, I know it's Scott McClellan's job to be Human Kevlar when it comes to standing between the Bush admin. and the media but it's times like these that you just want to get inside his head and really know what he's thinking. In any case, his evasiveness is getting to be patently f***ing ridiculous. To wit, I saw this on boingboing.net and it comes from Law Geek, who in turn, excerpted it from Salon. (You get that?):
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

Reporter: Scott, does the president retain confidence in his FEMA director and secretary of Homeland Security?
McClellan: And again, David, see, this is where some people want to look at the blame game issue, and finger-point. We're focused on solving problems, and we're doing everything we can --
Reporter: What about the question?
McClellan: We're doing everything we can in support --
Reporter: We know all that.
McClellan: -- of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.
Reporter: Does he retain complete confidence --
McClellan: We're going to continue. We appreciate the great effort that all of those at FEMA, including the head of FEMA, are doing to help the people in the region. And I'm just not going to engage in the blame game or finger-pointing that you're trying to get me to engage.
Reporter: OK, but that's not at all what I was asking.
McClellan: Sure it is. It's exactly what you're trying to play.
Reporter: You have your same point you want to make about the blame game, which you've said enough now. I'm asking you a direct question, which you're dodging.
McClellan: No --
Reporter: Does the president retain complete confidence in his director of FEMA and secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?
McClellan: I just answered the question.
Reporter: Is the answer "yes" on both?
McClellan: And what you're doing is trying to engage in a game of finger-pointing --
Reporter: There's a lot of criticism. I'm just wondering if he still has confidence.
McClellan: -- and blame-gaming. What we're trying to do is solve problems, David. And that's where we're going to keep our focus.
Reporter: So you're not -- you won't answer that question directly?
McClellan: I did. I just did.
Reporter: No, you didn't. Yes or no? Does he have complete confidence or doesn't he?
McClellan: No, if you want to continue to engage in finger-pointing and blame-gaming, that's fine --
Reporter: Scott, that's ridiculous. I'm not engaging in any of that.
McClellan: It's not ridiculous.
Reporter: Don't try to accuse me of that. I'm asking you a direct question and you should answer it. Does he retain complete confidence in his FEMA director and secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?
McClellan: Like I said, that's exactly what you're engaging in.
Reporter: I'm not engaging in anything. I'm asking you a question about what the president's views are --
McClellan: Absolutely -- absolutely --
Reporter: -- under pretty substantial criticism of members of his administration. OK? And you know that, and everybody watching knows that as well.
McClellan: No, everybody watching this knows, David, that you're trying to engage in a blame game.
Reporter: I'm trying to engage?
McClellan: Yes.
Reporter: I am trying to engage?
McClellan: That's correct.

Meanwhile, the "they blew up the levees" theory is getting more traction.

--O.W.

THE PICTURE'S FAKE BUT CLOSE TO REALITY OTHERWISE

(from boingboing.net)

On the other hand, this is real - drinking water in a beer can, courtesy of Anheuser-Busch.

In more serious news, the NY Times is reporting that police officials in New Orleans are starting to confiscate firearms from residents still in the city.

"No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said."

Now, we're not constitutional law scholars here (well, actually, I think Junichi might be) and we're all for stricter gun control but isn't this, um, illegal under the 2nd Amendment?

It also seems highly suspect that private armed guards won't have to relinquish anything.

"that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons."

In other words, if you're not rich enough to hire guards to protect your private property, you are not allowed to own a firearm to protect your own private property. Huh?

By the way, the images of the evictions are incredible.

By the way, the conspiracy theorists are claiming that the Army Corps of Engineers blew up the 17th St. levee as a way to divert flooding away from the French Quarter (and tonier neighborhoods) while sinking the poorer parts of town under water. Normally, we'd just brush this off - and the rumors are far, far, far from being substantiated - but it's worth noting that there's a precedent for this.

In 1927, panicked by rising waters on the Mississippi, rich New Orleans bankers and others convinced the state governor to blew up a levee downstream, destroying two parishes in the process, in an effort to save N.O. from being flooding:

"a major portion of the 600 thousand people made homeless was black tenant farmers which made up the labor force of the agriculture-based Delta. Those refugees were not allowed to leave and were forced to work and live on the levees that year to provide damage control."

All sounds eerily prescient, doesn't it?

Moreover, there's an online Wall St. Journal article which reveals that the affluent, whiter neighborhoods of New Orleans survived that some of the residents would be more than happy to see N.O. rebuilt with fewer black and poor folk:

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

There's sort of a dilemma here: no one wants to see NOLA rebuilt down to the last slum. This city has suffered so terribly these last weeks precisely because there's such a large population of underserved people in poverty. On the other hand, who wants to see NOLA get rebuilt strictly along gentrification lines, i.e. all Starbucks and Barnes and Noble? Clearly, the challenge will be to rebuild the city and lure back poorer survivors with actual jobs and affordable housing. Anything less and this tragedy becomes magnified many times over.

--O.W.

AS THE WATERS RECEDE

baton rogue
welcome wagon
Apparently, though it's been estimated that Katrina will cost up to 400,000 jobs and devastate the Gulf Coast economy for years to come, it hasn't been bad for everyone. For example, gun dealers in Baton Rogue are doing a brisk business. From the NY Times:

"Many relief workers and volunteers say the worries over crime reflect more wholesale stereotyping of people fleeing a catastrophe than anything based in fact, but safety is a major issue. At the height of the post-storm panic last week, people waited in line for three and a half hours at Jim's Firearms, a giant gun and sporting goods store. Many were people from New Orleans with their own safety issues. But many were local residents jumpy about the newcomers from New Orleans and stocking up on Glock and Smith & Wesson handguns.

Jim Siegmund, a salesman at Jim's recently returned from military service in Iraq, said he did not think there was anything to worry about. Still, holding a cellphone in his hand and comparing it to a 9-millimeter handgun he said: "When push comes to shove, this won't protect you, but a Glock 9 will."

Ah, the profits of paranoia.
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

Speaking of which, you knew this would happen but it's despairing to hear anyways: here come the scammers. Nothing like making a buck off of tragedy:

"The earliest online frauds began to appear within hours of Katrina's passing. "It was so fast it was amazing," said Audri Lanford, co-director of ScamBusters.org, an Internet clearinghouse for information on various forms of online fraud. "The most interesting thing is the scope," she said. "We do get a very good feel for the quantity of scams that are out there, and there's no question that this is huge compared to the tsunami."

By the end of last week, Ms. Landford's group had logged dozens of Katrina-related swindles and spam schemes. The frauds ranged from opportunistic marketing (one spam message offered updates on the post-hurricane situation, with a link that led to a site peddling Viagra) to messages said to be from victims, or families of victims.

"This letter is in request for any help that you can give," reads one crude message that was widely distributed online. "My brother and his family have lost everything they have and come to live with me while they looks for a new job."

Meanwhile, in Washington, the blame game is taking its predictable course, with Tom DeLay, always the good GOP attack dog, tries to shield the Feds and goes after local officials even though the evidence continues to mount that FEMA blew this on every level. Seriously, when the New York Post, not exactly known as being the bastion of the "liberal press" writes a headline like, "FEMA Fool Sat On His Hands," that is not a good look for Mike Brown.

Continuing on the political front, the Washington Post ran an interesting article on why Katrina isn't pulling people together the way 9/11 did. And what they conclude: it's Bush.

This goes back to what I was writing about yesterday - that Bush gets blamed for much of this, not only because he owns some culpability as the head of the federal gov't, but also because his leadership skills have so offended around half the public that the hate is automatic. However, this has created a circling of partisan wagons on both sides. I was astounded to hear this:

"A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken last Friday illustrates the point vividly. Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved. About two in three Republicans rated the federal government's response as good or excellent, while two in three Democrats rated it not so good or poor."

I've heard some very prominent conservatives blast the federal response to Katrina but apparently, for random Americans, they're sticking by the party line despite the overwhelming evidence contrary to the affair. I'm not even trying to dog the GOP here but how can 74% of Republicans actually says that Bush has handled Katrina well considering his 1) weak fly-over on Day 3, 2) his piss poor "comfort" speeches since and 3) his insistence on supporting Mike Brown despite FEMA's flat feet?

In any case, what we're left with is this:

"Bush is the most partisan president in modern American history," said William Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland and previously a top domestic adviser to former President Bill Clinton. "As a result, voters in both parties are focusing on him, rather than on the specifics of the policies."

To this degree, both sides bear responsibility because one could argue that the hatred of Bush is so great that it blinds people to finding reasonable bipartisan solutions. But c'mon - what rational, intelligent person can take Bush seriously?

Last but not least, CNN's poll on Katrina had some interesting findings, not the least of which is: "63 percent said they do not believe anyone at federal agencies responsible for handling emergencies should be fired as a result." Looks like accountability isn't what it used to be. Compare that with this: "a resounding 79 percent said they believe gas companies are taking advantage of the situation and charging unfair prices to consumers as a result of the hurricane."

Seems simple: so long as FEMA isn't messing with their commute, they get a pass. Well guess what suckers? $3/gallon isn't about to fade away that fast. Thank god for our Prius, that's all I'm saying.

--O.W.

BLAME GAME

bush blames god

President Bush says he will launch an inquiry in what happened post-Katrina. Hmm...I think there's a very likely chance that, at the end of this inquiry, FEMA's Mike Brown might get a Medal of Freedom.

Hey Dubya, will this inquiry include anything about this Aug. 28 memo?

You have to give Christopher Hitchens credit: he really remains loyal to the neo-con party line. In Slate, he argues that Iraq had nothing to do with the hurricane response. To be quite honest, I'm willing to actually buy much of his argument in this respect: NOLA was a disaster in the making for decades. Everyone has said this.

Moreover, there was enough personnel, on the ground, in the U.S. (vs. overseas) that could probably have manned whatever emergency response was needed. The problem wasn't the quantity of manpower - it was putting it into action soon enough, which obviously failed to happen.

So why blame Bush? I thought tonight's Daily Show captured it best: it's not Bush's hands-on management that's the issue for most, at least, I don't think it should be. Bush is a symbol but as I've stressed throughout, what you saw was a massive failure of government bureaucracy at many levels, not just resting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

However, the problem with Bush is that he simply cannot project himself as a 1) competent or 2) compassionate leader. He never has. And given this, given 9/11, given trying to sell us on Iraq, it really, truly boggles many of us, at least 45% of the population, that he's managed to stay in office and that at least the other half of America actually seems to think this dude is worth backing.

So I'm not sure it's exactly accurate to blame Bush for the NOLA disaster. His underlings? Yeah, no doubt. I think it's more the point thought that we can blame Bush for being an incredibly crappy leader in a time of national crisis, someone who doesn't reassure you - actually offends instead - and yet, keeps on trucking with a "what? Me worry?" attitude. I don't think this is an impeachable offense but frankly, it ought to. Getting BJs in the broom closet of the White House isn't a great look either but at least Clinton exuded more charisma with his big honkin' nose than Dubya can muster in his entire body.

But really, it's not the charisma issue that's at hand here. It's also Bush's failure to protect American from...itself.

I'm sure has already been said elsewhere but is resting on my mind. Don't you think, somewhere out there, there's a cadre of terrorists sitting around, watching CNN, thinking, "wait, that's all we needed to do? Blow up a levee? Jesus, and here we were, trying to get our hands on a dirty bomb. All we needed was some bulldozers and maybe a little C4."

I saw over at Home of the Groove, a New Orleans-dedicated MP3 blog, an editorial by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann who makes the following comments along these lines:

"No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes.  Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska."

"But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe...this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water."

By the way, Slate's John Dickerson lays out a road map to Bush's post-Katrina rehabilitation. I, for one, will be highly surprised to see him take it.

I think all this uproar over Kanye is soon to be very moot. I mean, it's great that David Banner, T.I. and Jay-Z all are backing West but seriously, the people have voted and: Kanye is their man. Bill O'Reilly can whine all he wants but he's not stopping 'Ye like he did Luda.

By the way, this MTV News poll is illuminating in terms of public perceptions around Katrina responses.

--O.W.

OVER-DOING THE LOOTING

chief compass
Not to say we told you so, but New Orleans' chief of police has put the media on blast for overplaying the looting angle, which, in many ways, seemed like it was a bigger story than dying and starving people. All this damn fuss over sneakers and plasma TVs. Seriously, people have had totally warped senses of importance, getting their thongs into a snit over consumer goods rather than human suffering. (Thanks, Todd)

--O.W.

WE KNEW FOX NEWS WERE STUPID BUT...

...this new review of Kanye West's Late Registration seriously reads like 12 year old wrote it.

• "There are plenty of other collaborators on "Late Registration" since West, you know, like Sean "Diddy" Combs and other rap entrepreneurs, does not actually sing."
  
• Will all these people be listed as Grammy nominees when the time comes? If there are winners, will they all be included? That's something I'd like to see. "Late Registration" is fun to listen to, but in many ways it's a con job. It's a clip job, too."

I can't even go on without splitting my sides with laughter. I almost NEVER try to say this to another music reviewer but Roger Friedman needs to Shut The F--- Up. Seriously. It's like he's trying to do a hack job on Kanye to get back at him for his "Bush doesn't care about black people" comment but he's trying to do it in some underhanded way. Instead, Friedman just comes up sounding like a complete moron (which, from what I can read, he's constantly compared to).

Of course, in all truth, who's more out of step with contemporary Black affairs: Fox or BET?

--O.W.

"HERE LIES VERA"

From: "Ned Sublette"

i said i was going away, but i just saw something that i can't keep to myself. you may have seen the story about the woman named vera who lay dead at the corner of jackson and magazine. i've walked along this sidewalk many times. i practically memorized the up-and-down contour of its broken sidewalk.  



this was this morning's report:

Sunday morning, a woman's body remained lying at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street - a business area in the lower Garden District with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday.

As days passed, people covered her with blankets or plastic.



By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around her body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."

i didn't get what this was saying from the description, until i saw a picture of it. they improvised an *above-ground* tomb for her. the way it's done in new orleans.

--O.W.

FORESHADOWING DISASTER

One of the folks who left a comment in a previous post pointed me to this 2004 essay by Mike Davis (City of Quartz) which discusses how NOLA dodged a bullet when Hurricane Ivan came through. Not only does Davis foreshadow the exact circumstances that have happened in Katrina's wake but he also puts Mayor Nagin on blast for failing to adequately look after the city's poor and Black communities when Ivan threatened to overwhelm the city. Here's the key section:

Poor, Black, and Left Behind



by Mike Davis


The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.


New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.


Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.


In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.


Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population -- blamed for the city's high crime rates -- across the Mississippi river. Historic Black public-housing projects have been razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely evicted for offenses as trivial as their children's curfew violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist theme-park New Orleans -- one big Garden District -- with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits.


But New Orleans isn't the only the case-study in what Nixonians once called "the politics of benign neglect." In Los Angeles, county supervisors have just announced the closure of the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital near Watts. The hospital, located in the epicenter of LA's gang wars, is one of the nation's busiest centers for the treatment of gunshot wounds. The loss of its ER, according to paramedics, could "add as much as 30 minutes in transport time to other facilities."

The result, almost certainly, will be a spate of avoidable deaths. But then again the victims will be Black or Brown and poor."

I've been trying to make this point all week - that Nagin, while much deserving of props for speaking outside of spin, would have to bear some of the culpability of what's happened. The general attitude I've seen displayed has been to cut him a free pass simply because he's been candid while placing all the blame for Katrina on the federal gov't. In truth, according to my buddy who does policy analysis on natural disasters for his living, things like evacuations are the responsibility of city and state officials, not the feds. I'm, of course, not putting this all on Nagin but before we start asking this guy to run as Obama's VP in '08, I think we need to look at his record just a little bit more.


See Slate's column on "Pointing Fingers" which echoes similar points. Bottomline: putting this all on the feds is as myopic as putting this all on the city. What we've seen here is a MASSIVE failure on all levels of the governmental bureaucracy. Oh, and they really are pointing fingers at one another. Fun times.


By the way, this also raises an obvious thoguth: we try to manage other nations' business on a daily basis but when it comes to mustering the basics of a domestic crisis, America showed itself to be beyond incompetent (and if that's the case, then how bad must Iraq really be going, where media access is far more controlled and limited).

By the way, if folks have other resources on news stories outside of the mainstream media loop, please drop them in the comments box. Thanks.

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #22

Throw your diamonds in the sky if you feel the vibe

This Week's Question:

The hurricane just destroyed your home and eliminated your job. You have no insurance or savings. Is it morally defensible to break into an abandoned jewelry store and take just enough jewels to feed, clothe, and house your family for a year?

--Junichi

ENOUGH RHETORIC, MORE REALNESS

I have a friend in New York who I knew worked in public policy but I had forgotten what area. I caught him on IM the other morning and asked, "what kind of policy do you work on?"

"Emergency preparedness/natural disasters with a focus on coastal storms and evacuation scenarios."

Like whoa.

I immediately started to hammer him with questions about what went wrong in NOLA on every policy level he knew of and he gave me a very calm and very honest assessment of the problems. I promised not to quote him since he was explaining this to me as a friend and not as an analyst but I want to relay some of the key points he touched upon, most of which I've been able to confirm after the fact through other research.

First of all, he mentioned an early FEMA study which I found mentioned in this Dec. 2001 Houston Chronicle editorial:

"Earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country. The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City."

(As someone who lives in S.F, I'm hoping this is one of those 2 out of 3 scenarios). So even FEMA, back in 2001, knew that this could be a danger, ergo, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff really needs to S.T.F.U.

The problem is that post-9/11, FEMA got swept under the Dept. of Homeland Security and as most of us should realize now (if not before), HS is about combating terrorism. It is not about natural disaster preparedness. FEMA has subsequently seen its budget siphoned off, much of it being diverted into anti-terrorism initiatives. This is one of those things that are really infuriating about public policy - it's so kneejerk. Public officials felt like we got sucker-punched on 9/11 (which we did) so in true, reactionary fashion, they went out and went crazy with anti-terrorism legislation, budgets, a false war in Iraq (let's not forget this), etc. And did it not occur to folks that, all things considered, we were more likely to get socked by a natural disaster than another large-scale terrorist attack? Expect to see much hang-writing and fist-poudning in the wake of Katrina where everyone will be saying, "we need to overhaul FEMA" (and we probably do) but will anyone admit, "yeah, so we kind of fucked up to begin with. Our bad."? Not likely. As Slate pointed out, we didn't learn from Chicago either.

By the way, just to break into my own post, but I just caught this: the National Guard was/is preventing the Red Cross from entering New Orleans. WTF?

And apparently, N.O. police shot and killed 5 people on a bridge.

More to follow...

--O.W.

A THOUGHT ON NEW ORLEANS AND AMERICA

After a night of not-so-fitful rest, I came back to my original essay and wanted to clarify some things. (The original version is at the bottom of this).

First of all, my point in comparing NY to NO is not to "rank" our national traumas. It is to say though if 9/11 was supposed to be some "wake up call," then NO are air raid sirens. Only, this time, our worst enemies aren't outside our borders. They are within it.

And the thing is - I don't want to sound quaintly naive in speaking on any of this. Part of my years in graduate school, in Ethnic Studies, was specifically focused on studying race and racism - its root causes, its history, its legacies - so it's not just like I woke up yesterday and realized, "hey, American hates poor people! It hates Black people! Whowouldathunkit?" I always knew the potential was here for something like NOLA.

But I also came of age in a post-civil rights era of feel-good liberal humanism and multiculturalism, where the party line was, "Racism still exists but..." where the key word in that phrase wasn't "racism." It was the "but..." and the litany of excuses and fictions that followed. So even though I know my Martin and Malcolm by heart, even though I've seen the videos of Selma, I've seen the photos of Alabama, I saw riots pop off outside my dorm room one April night in 1992, and I've seen all the other incidents since, part of me probably still clung to the belief that these are either in the past, and therefore, not something we're going to slide back on or, if they are in the present, they're exceptions, not the rule.
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I keep invoking the name of Derrick Bell in my posts because what Bell writes are parables for how racism could play out in what seemed like a dystopian future. However, I always read them as "realistic fictions," in other words, they were still stories, cautionary tales of what a worst-case-scenario could look like. This past week makes Bell's warnings intensely prophetic in a way that, for me, has been a revelation. As Kris Ex just wrote on his blog, "...this may prove to be one of the most pivotal moments of our generation."

Certainly, Bush is shook, for perhaps one of the first times I can remember. And straight up: when mainstream media mouthpieces like Paula Zhan and the rest of CNN hand you your ass over lies and excuses, you know we've reached a new point. I even read that Michelle Malkin was praising this guy. Ok?

So what now? I don't have the faintest except that, 1) give now. (Or pick some other place besides the Red Cross, but give). 2) Mistrust any excuses given by any public official. Unless they're saying, "this was on us and we blew it," it's bullshit spin and needs to be called out for it. For example, Chertoff is vying with FEMA's Mike Brown to be the stupidest man in the room at the moment. 3) Obviously, we need to confront poverty and racism for the 21st century. I feel stupid saying the latter since it's so goddamn obvious. And has been.

Ok, amendment over. In the meantime, read Kris' blog entry about what danger this current political moment may mean in the wake of Rehnquist's death. Also, the NY Times writes their analysis of how race and class played out in NOLA.

Also, I'm late in noticing this but Slate.com's coverage has been thorough on many of these issues.

---

(The original essay)
It's late (again) and I admit - I'm in a moment here where I'm thinking aloud and not that organized and I might end up amending some of these thoughts later as more time passes and I gain some better understanding of self. That said, let me try this out...

Right now, I'm convinced that what's happened in New Orleans this week is bigger than 9/11 and by that, I mean that its impact, truths and repercussions are greater and more profound than what our society and nation had to confront almost four years ago. This is not to disrespect the memory of all those killed nor the scar it left on New York. However, the difference is that though New York was struck by human action and technically speaking, New Orleans was struck by natural action, the suffering endured in NOLA is most certainly by human inaction and neglect and incompetence.

In other words, we can't blame the suffering and death in NOLA on terrorists from Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda and Bin Laden's signature aren't on this. We can't invade another country hunting for scapegoats. For New Orleans, and all its victims/survivors - whatever you want to call them - this is on no one but us.

We fucked up. We failed. As every media talking head in the nation has figured out - America, in the 21st century, as the sole superpower left, as the presumed bastion of democracy, progress and social superiority - we watched one of our cities and somewhere around 100,000 of its people be destroyed, abandoned, starved, beaten, raped and left to rot - both literally and figuratively. That most of them happen to be poor and Black is not a coincidence. They are the ones who are always left for the waters and the rats. The difference now is that we can't hide behind our fictions about America's great social progress and equality. Sorry, but that grade school civics class bullshit doesn't fly anymore. Katrina washed all that away.

And unlike 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination or whatever national traumas we've endured before, there's no conspiracy theory at work, no black helicopters in the night. It's us. It's our public officials, it's our public indifference. And sure, it starts with Bush because the buck is supposed to stop with him - and no, he doesn't care about Black people, or poor people, or anyone who deviates from his fundamentalist agenda - but it's not just Bush. It's not just Mike Brown, though, as FEMA's head, he might possibly be the most deservedly despised public official out there right now. Oh, there is accountability to be made here. There are prices that need to be paid. But it's not just the top that rots. It goes all the way down the line to each of us as Americans.

I know that sounds overly dramatic but how do we escape accountability here? How do we say, "well, it wasn't my problem?" Is that what you'll want to hear when your home is destroyed and you're left in the dark, inside a stadium, scared and alone? This could have happened in my city, from an earthquake. Or yours, from a flood, or fire, or storm. New Orleans' displaced survivors are basically us but by the grace of God...and some really bad emergency planning.

********
One more thought before I try to sleep: today was a full day of college football. And I wasn't angry that the games were on, that people were watching. But I had to think, "who the fuck cares?"

After 9/11, we had days of national mourning - no football, no baseball, no nothing. With NOLA, a disaster which is of far greater dimensions and consequences (again, no disrespect to NYC), there's no pause in the action, we just move on. And I can appreciate that difference: 9/11 was a shock to our collective system, like getting shot in the stomach. But NOLA is so much more profound a disaster of human and civic proportions - it's not a bullet but rather a tumor that we've just acknowledged even though it's been festering for decades.

I'm not saying we need to stop everything for a few days to mourn. But the world feels different now, doesn't it? 9/11 was supposedly the end of our innocence but this week confirms a far more horrible truth: we were never innocent to begin with.

Ugh, it's way too late. Consider this a first draft towards some better promulgation. Sleep now.

--O.W.

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST DIES

retired, permanently
CNN reports on it here.

We're in for one hell of a ride the next few months. Bush's ratings are almost sure to bottom out over the Katrina debacles but true to form, expect him to concede nothing.

These are extraordinary times in America right now. And we hate to admit it but how big is this dude's ego going to be now?

please god, now send me some fiber

--O.W.

DISASTER ZONE

Keep in mind: some of the information in the following article is anecdotally based and hasn't necessarily been verified by other media or officials. That said, if true (and frankly, we're willing to believe it), the situation in New Orleans, even with the National Guard in the area, is still horrific. Now we might see a wave of accidental shootings (shades of London anyone?) now that everyone's been made paranoid by the idea that everyone on the street might be a strapped looter.

Update: Apparently, the looters are strapped - with police badges.


From Reuters:

Rapes, killings hit Katrina refugees in New Orleans
Sat Sep 3, 2005 4:23 PM ET


By Mark Egan


NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.

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Police and National Guard troops on Saturday closed down the two centers -- the Superdome arena and the city's convention center -- but them penned them in outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city.


Military helicopters and buses staged a massive evacuation to take away thousands of people who waited in orderly lines in stifling heat outside the flooded convention center.


The refugees, who were waiting to be taken to sports stadiums and other huge shelters across Texas and northern Louisiana, described how the convention center and the Superdome became lawless hellholes beset by rape and murder.


Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.


In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said.


Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said "I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged."


"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. "A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windshield and they shot him dead."


Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror.


"Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head," Batiste said.


The young man's body lay in the street by the Convention Center's entrance on Saturday morning, covered in a black blanket, a stream of congealed blood staining the street around him. Nearby his family sat in shock.


A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.


"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.


People here said there were now 22 bodies of adults and children stored inside the building, but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the makeshift morgue.


People trying to walk out are forced back at gunpoint - something troops said was for their own safety. "It's sad, but how far do you think they would get," one soldier said.


"They have us living here like animals," said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. "We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America."


One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here."


The Louisiana National Guard soldier said, "We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq."


Across town at the Superdome, where as many as 38,000 refugees camped out until Wednesday night when evacuation buses first came, the 4,000 still there were corralled outside, hoping to get on four waiting buses with seats for only 200.


The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them last night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high. The stench of human waste pervaded the interior of the now vacant stadium.


One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last Saturday, when people arrived to take shelter.


At the arena, too, there was much talk of bedlam after dark.


"We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."

--O.W.

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM KANYE WEST

>
for the people
Kanye...all the talk about your ego trippin', about your diva-like behavior, about whatever...

ALL IS FORGIVEN.

OK, sure, he was a little nervous, not exactly the most articulate speech he'll ever give...but clearly, he went off the teleprompter and really put it down. You have to wonder what Mike Myers and Chris Tucker were thinking...

And ha ha ha ha, you put him on the cover of Time because you thought he'd be the safe Black man to promote. What now, suckas?

--O.W.

AN INSIDER'S REPORT

Notes From Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.
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In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me, "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want to be here at night."

There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.

To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, it's important to look at New Orleans itself.


For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz

Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.

It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.

It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don‚t need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.

There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.

The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child‚s education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.

Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.

Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane down" to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.

While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.

No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.

Images of New Orleans‚ hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on ‚welfare queens‰ and ‚super-predators‰ obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.

City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.
The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.

In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be "rebuilt and revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.

Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.

Now that the money is flowing in, and the world‚s eyes are focused on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
-----------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine (www.leftturn.org). He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans.

(Thanks to Kenyon Farrow for passing this on).

--O.W.

REAL TALK

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is about as candid as I've ever heard a public official. This is from a radio interview he did on Thursday night.
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Some choice quotes:

On Looters: "And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun."

On the State and Federal Gov't Response: "Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."

Pardon my French, but that is fucking REAL TALK. Compare this to FEMA's head Michael Brown, who clearly has his and his entire agency's head up their collective asses.

On question for Nagin though: why weren't the poorest and most dispossessed of your population evacuated when you had a chance?

More real talk:

From Wonkette: "The President's schedule today includes one "briefing on Hurricane Damage," one "walking tour of Biloxi, Mississippi Hurricane Damaged Neighborhoods" and three "aerial tours" before he makes an appearance at the New Orleans International Airport.

Even the Harry Connick, Jr. made it to the Superdome, and he's a fucking pussy."

From the Washington Post: "While hundreds of thousands of people have been dislocated by Hurricane Katrina, the images that have filled the television screens have been mainly of black Americans -- grieving, suffering, in some cases looting and desperately trying to leave New Orleans. Along with the intimate tales of family drama and survival being played out Thursday, there was no escaping that race had become a subtext to the unfolding drama of the hurricane's aftermath.

"To me," said Bernadette Washington, "it just seems like black people are marked. We have so many troubles and problems."

And last but not least...this speaks for itself (and we don't even really like the Democrats):
GOP home page
Democrats home page

Gee, it's great that the #1 action item for the GOP is to get John Roberts confirmed. I won't say that the current disaster is the GOP's fault - there will almost surely be much bi-partisan blame to go around - but the way the GOP leadership has handled it so far is unfathomably bad. And I thought Louisiana was a red state.

--O.W.

IT'S ABOUT POVERTY AND RACE, STUPID

In my previous post, I was still trying to work out some clarity from a jumble of different thoughts and even though I touched on both class and race, I didn't crystalize on it until now.

What we're seeing in New Orleans isn't simply the failure of (pick your choice): the local city and county governments, state emergency officials, FEMA (they got herbed by Paula Zhan of all people), and every politician up to and most certainly including President Bush to handle this emergency. It's certainly that of course - not enough preparation, not enough response organization, etc. It's not even that the Bush administration diverted money from shoring up the levees in order to pay for Iraq.

The humanitarian crisis in New Orleans right now is all about poverty and race.


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Yet, despite all the righteous hand-wringing that's going on, it seems like few are talking about what should be so blatantly obvious, especially if you've been watching cable or network news.

Luckily, some people have been bringing up this exactly issue, including:

• Jack Shafer's "Lost in the Flood"
  
• Joan Walsh's "Flushing Out the Ugly Truth"
  
• Andrew Buncombe's "'The ones who could not leave were poor folks. Most are black'"
  
  ...and others.

Why can't someone just put this out there:

"Well Larry, it's apparent the vast majority of those suffering in New Orleans right now are both poor and black?"

"Wow, why do you think that is?"

"Probably because they're poor and black and no one cared enough to address their needs in the first place."

"That's very interesting. After these commercials and a plug for my Sunday, "Larry King Special" show, we'll talk more about that..."

No one, especially me, is denying the fact that if you look at the total population who've been dispossessed, it's cross-class, cross-color. New Orleans is basically destroyed and many different kinds of people lived there. What I'm addressing is the current conditions of those still left in New Orleans and not the majority of middle class or wealthy who fled town already.

I was talking about some of this with a friend tonight who basically floated out the fear that maybe people would stop caring about the humanitarian crisis given how the visible victims are both poor and black. In other words, he feared that latent racism will eventually lead to these people being forgotten though of course, the issue here is that they were forgotten to begin with.

Moreover, let's just call this for what it is:

1) Much of the frenzy over looters is a red herring to deflect attention away from more important issues (like saving dying people and alleviating the suffering of tens of thousands of others).

2) If the looters were whiter and less poor, the media and public's response would be considerably less hysterical.

3) If New Orleans wasn't such a poverty-stricken city to begin with, nor a city with an over 60% black population, it's possible that federal and state officials would have spent more resources in preventing this kind of disaster from happening to begin with. (Though, in all fairness, perhaps not building a major city in a bowl-like depression between two large sources of water might have been a good idea too).

And while we're at this, let's talk more about looting.

Is there looting? Yes, of course there is. But as I asked yesterday: so what? This isn't people looting stores after their hometeam won a championship game and decided to get all mobbed up over it. This isn't like the 1992 L.A. Rebellion/Riots where looting was part of the rebelling/rioting (depending on your perspective). We're talking about looting in the midst of the worst disaster (by American standards) people here can imagine and I don't think you can really overdramatize the level of desperation that has set in amongst people who have lost everything, made all the worse by the fact that they probably didn't have that much to begin with.

If you don't believe that America's not-so-hidden disdain for both the poor and black has nothing to do with this, just read the message boards out there where people have no qualms with expressing their true feelings. The attitudes quite plainly suggest that looters should be summarily executed for - *gasp* - stealing from stores that are already nearly destroyed. In fact, I saw one absolute moron argue that what we need to do is pull all the law enforcement officers off of rescue duty, posse 'em up, and send them out to take out the looters. Since, of course, stopping someone from ripping off Foot Locker is more important than saving lives. God forbid I should actually quote Bol but here it goes - Mr. Crawford quite succinctly captured the situation in his own, Bol-esque way: A white man's property rights > A jig's life

I'll put it another way: for those who want a "shoot looters" policy (and this includes some very prominent public folks), what they're practically advocating is that killing a looter (who just happens to be black) is more important than saving the life of children (who just happen to be black too). I don't doubt that if the looters were white, there'd still be much outrage but I am almost certain, more sympathy as well. If it were all white babies being shown 24/7 on cable news, everyone from FEMA on down would be working their asses off to do more.

Not to sound too cynical but none of this should be so surprising. I said this before, but I swear to god, Derrick Bell and many others called this same scenario years ago. All Katrina did was wash away the pretense and let the true ugliness surface.

This isn't a moral defense of looting. However, it is to say that all the whipped up hysteria about looting really deflects attention away from far more important issues. People in the Superdome have gone 2-3 days without water or food. What's more important? Them? Or the local Wal-Greens? And why is it that people want to keep fixating on the looting, even though no one can really confirm how bad it is (whereas, we can far better confirm the number of actual dying and suffering in shelters, hospitals, etc.)? Is it because people's latent fears of the poor and colored are all bubbling up to the surface? (Read: yes).

Now, before some knee-jerk out there starts to bang away at their keyboard, I'm certainly not condoning snipers shooting at hospital workers. I'm also horrified by the rumors coming out that roving groups of men are raping women in the streets and in the Superdome. But there's no reasonable way that you can equate looting with raping and sniping and considering that the police can't even protect people in the Superdome from being raped or dying, then I don't really think the issue is out there in the streets of New Orleans. You have a collapse of infrastructure and organization and everyone is suffering as a result. That's the real issue. Looting is a symptom, not the disease here.

It's late and I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but the short story is this: people need to stop talking about the looters and start talking about how they're going to save those who can still be saved.

--O.W.

SCHOOL BUS TO SAFETY

modern day noah
Jay Smooth passed this on: the first bus to reach the Astrodome from New Orleans wasn't from the Superdome. It was a school bus that 20 year old drove up from N.O., picking up refugees and stragglers along the way after police in N.O. gave him the keys and told him to drive:

HOUSTON -- A bus of refugees left homeless and helpless by Hurricane Katrina arrived at the Astrodome, but they were not the evacuees who originally took shelter at the Superdome, Local 2 reported Thursday.

State and county officials said the Astrodome would only accept refugees from the Louisiana Superdome, but the first bus that arrived at the Astrodome Thursday night was actually stolen. The driver of the school bus claimed to be from the Superdome, but after authorities questioned the 20-year-old driver, they learned the bus was actually stolen.

"The police told me I could have the bus. I told them I had a license," Jabar Gibson told Local 2.

Gibson said the Orleans Parish school bus was parked at the Superdome and that he picked up refugees stranded on the highway.

"We had walked on the interstate for two hours. (Officials) were passing us up. They weren't even worrying about us. They were just worrying about the people in the Superdome," evacuee Makivia Horton told Local 2.

Authorities let the refugees on the bus stay while other evacuees already in Houston have been turned away because they were not from the Superdome.

Local 2 reported that 20 of 475 buses scheduled to arrive at the Astrodome had arrived by 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

About 20,000 refugees from the Superdome are expected to arrive at Houston's Astrodome over the next couple of days.

An American Red Cross volunteer said they have ordered 45,000 cots and blankets to be delivered to the Astrodome.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said the Astrodome could temporarily house the refugees but said the facility could not act as a permanent home. The arena's schedule has been cleared through December.

I heard earlier though at the Astrodome is now turning away people since they've reached their max. At least those there have basics like water, toilets, showers, food, air conditioning and electricity, none of which was at the Superdome.

--O.W.

THE POOR SHALL INHERIT THE WRETCHED

Like many, I've been glued to checking the news coming out of New Orleans every hour. I fully admit - there's definitely a morbid fascination at play here, the macro version of watching a car accident unfold in front of you. I've been trying to work through myriad thoughts about what's happening and how this all might play out for larger questions around society, government and the human cost of all this.

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1) This certainly pales in comparison to last December's tsunami but that was distant enough to feel remote and "somewhere else." I'm well aware that it's pure American parochialism to make a big issue of this disaster when something like 1,000 people got trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq yesterday too. In fact, it seems like disasters of that magnitude happen every other month around the world. Just not here.

Bottomline, it is still absolutely astounding to see one of America's bigger cities - and one with such a cache of identity and history - literally destroyed in front of us. I was asking a historian friend of mine what could possibly compare to this in recent American history and he half-joked, "the burning of Atlanta" which took place during the Civil War. In truth, something like the 1906 Earthquake and Fire of San Francisco would be more recent but certainly, it's hard to remember what else even remotely compares in terms of the sheer vastness of what's been destroyed.

Moreover, you would just think that in 2005, a city the size of New Orleans would be better insulated from this kind of circumstance then by levees failing. I know it's not as simple as that. As the S.F. Chronicle pointed out yesterday, levees bust all the time so perhaps it's not that surprising but seriously, who would have thought a break like this could wipe out 80% of a city?

2) This disaster is also laying bare what the price of poverty is: you will be left behind. Something like 20% of New Orleans was unwilling but more likely, incapable of leaving the city before the hurricane hit. A lot of ignorant folk are asking profoundly stupid questions like, "well, why didn't they leave when they had a chance?" which presumes that you have 100% of a population owning transportation and a means to pay for gas. People who stayed didn't do so because they were stubborn or stupid. They did it because, I believe, they didn't feel like they had any other options but to try to ride it out. Perhaps the next time something like this happens, more people will try to get out but that's only because they have this abject lesson to learn from.

In any case, it's becoming increasingly clear that the government either didn't have the means or the will to look after their most needy citizens. And should we be surprised that the bulk of this neglected population also appears to be Black (at least in the media's eyes)? Nothing like a natural disaster to lay bare all the fictions liberals and conservatives alike hold about the realities of race and class in America. In fact, this practically reads as a Derrick Bell parable.

3) Looting. I don't want to crowd the echo box on this issue any more than it already has but I do think this New York Times piece puts things in a better perspective than the knee-jerks on both sides. One small thought to add: in many cases, people were looting stores that would have been completely destroyed by the flood anyways. That doesn't necessarily make it defensible but the moral outrage over property that would have been lost anyways seems like a lot of wasted hot air compared to larger issues.

4) The pictures coming out of the Superdome are incredible. Many who were housed there are now being moved to the Astrodome in Texas where one hopes conditions are better (like clean water, working bathrooms, et. al.) By the way, just to check the math: 500,000 people live in New Orleans. 20% got left behind. That's 100,000. 30,000 people ended up at the Superdome, several thousand have been rescued the last two days. That leaves at least 60,000 people unaccounted for. 60,000.

5) I've heard rumors that the vast, vast majority of homes and businesses could not or were not insured. How is New Orleans supposed to rebuild itself under those circumstances? What will happen to all those who lost their homes and don't have the financial means to rebuild?

--O.W.