Via Marc Pruyn at NMSU…a web site all you white folks might be interested in: Black People Love Us
Category Archives: Social Studies
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Ray Davies: New Orleans—The ideal place to get shot
The Times of London ran this column by Ray Davies. Davies, who was the lead singer for the The Kinks, describes his experience getting shot in NOLA, his indebtedness to the music of New Orleans and the American South, and asks “How can the USA be expected to look after the whole world when it cannot even look after its own?”
“So it doesn’t surprise me to see the world reacting with shock to the “Third World” conditions in New Orleans “in this, the richest and most powerful country in the world”. I could have told them that.
But I have been astonished by the reactions and apparent shame of some of the US television reporters who seemed overwhelmed to discover that there actually is poverty in America. They made me want to grab my television and shout “Hello, dear reporter, yes, America actually does have poor and underprivileged people as well.”
“Who murdered the Vets?: A first hand account of the Florida hurricane” (1935)
Baton Rouge’s racism gets a boost
As NOLA evacuees move into Baton Rouge, restauarants lock their doors to black people, the mayor labels all refugees “thugs,” and lawyers whine because their former 7 minute commute to work balloons to 28 minutes—Oh the horror!).
Jill Monhoney describes all this in a short article in the <a href=”http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050910/STORMBATON10/TPInternational/TopStories”Globe and Mail:
“While residents of Baton Rouge, 110 kilometres northwest of New Orleans, say they are happy to help, many acknowledge deep-seated fears the evacuees will cause a spike in crime.”
Means:
“While whites in Baton Rouge, 110 kilometres northwest of New Orleans, say they are happy to help, many acknowledge that they are racists and want all those black folk to go back to where they belong.”
9/11 anniversary
The Globe and Mail has an excellent piece reconsidering the American empire, post-9/11 (and post-Katrina) by Paul William Roberts. Roberts is a the author of The War Against Turth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq.
In “The Flagging Empire,”, Roberts starts wth the watery hell that is New Orleands (which he says shouldn’t be a surprise) and aruges that decades of oil-greed and misguided foreign policy have created a monster at oddds with much of the planet and unwilling to take care of its own. Over the course of the article Roberts analyzes the politics of the “Founding Fathers,” deconstructs Cold War thinkiing, rehabilitates (some of) the views of George Kennan, recounts the lead up to 9/11 and concludes
“Put these anomalies together: Americans knew of Arab hostility in 1955 Yet they persisted in supporting hated regimes And even got them to promote Islam While training large numbers of devout Muslims in terrorist skills Even after being humiliated by a massive Islamic resurgence in Iran And experts on Islam had pointed out that the religion was populist in appeal and socialistic in nature.
Either you have an extraordinary jamboree of stupidity here, or you have the deliberate creation of a national demon to replace the defeated Soviet Red Peril, a new cause of public anxiety that justifies continued expenditure on arms, explains far-flung wars, and ultimately provides an excuse for the current terror and finances the invisible war against China.”
Mercenaries move into New Orleans
Truthout.org reports that the most feared mercenaries in the world, from Blackwater security firm, are now patroling the streets of New Orleans, some sporting the badges of the Louisiana state police on their chests and their Blackwater IDs on their arms. This report is confirmed by press releases on the Blackwater web site.
Blackwater mecernaries have been murdering civilians in Iraq as part of the US-lead occupation force. Private security firms are running amok in Iraq. Bri. Gen Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Bagdad told the Washington Post “These guys [Blackwater mercenaries] run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they excalate force. They shoot people and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”
Mercenaries are playing a significant role in Iraq as part of the rise of private armies. For more on this phenomenon see Corporate Warriors by P W Singer.
Katrina rips Bush a new one
Writing for The Boston Phoenix Mark Jurkowitz says forget Iraq, the Supreme Court nominations, and Social Security, it took a hurricane to wake up the press, raise the issue of race and class, and redefine the political landscape.
Hurricane Katrina did not simply destroy physical infrastructure, social fabric, and countless lives on America’s Gulf Coast. It blew away the ground rules that had defined post-9/11 American politics and protected the most polarizing administration in recent history one that failed to articulate a coherent domestic agenda, tossed gasoline on the smoldering culture wars, and dragged the country into a divisive and very likely disastrous war in Iraq.
New Orleans: Genocide by depraved indifference
The Black Commentator is back with its usual straight-talking, hard-hitting analysis of white supremacy in the USA.
The new issue has three pieces on post-Katrina USA that cut through the BS:
Thulani Davis on the “Unbearable crime on the Mississippi:
When I woke up today, the only thought that came to mind was Reverend Jesse Jackson’s indignant cry, “This is the bottom of the slave ship we are looking at.”
I think Jesse actually put his finger on what happened to all of us this week. Those shots we’ve seen are, as he said, the bottom of the slave ships. I think that really goes to why all the rest of us watching are so traumatized. And I think it is necessary to repeat what he has said about how the people in this country have a high tolerance for viewing “black pain.” Yes, while we are asking the unheard question as to why a third of New Orleans’ population is poor and all black, everyone from the president on down is comfortable with these realities of our ongoing unemployment, overcrowding, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, neighborhood crime and despair.
…The people in charge have the capacity to tolerate scenes of suffering they know have been suffered by blacks for generations…
Tim Wise on “Blasphemy about New Orleans: A god with whom I’m not familiar”:
…And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
Why didn’t they evacuate like they were told?
Are you serious?
There were 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don’t have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up for.
And no, they didn’t just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied, and as you likely heard, since you’re the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.…
Scottie Lowe on America’s pretenses washed away”:
Everyone has been affected by the news of Hurricane Katrina and it’s victims who happen to be largely of color. The media has made no attempt to hide its racist practices by portraying the economically disenfranchised Black people that live there, whose lives have been devastated and destroyed, as thugs, criminals, and lawless rouges while the fairer “victims” of Katrina are portrayed as helpless and defenseless survivors trapped in dehumanizing conditions. Down in Louisiana, with its vicious racist policies that allowed 30 percent of New Orleans’ residents of color to live below an acceptable standard of living and educational opportunity, with its governor having her lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, calling her own devastated constituents hoodlums and lawbreakers, the receding waters have revealed a frightening reality in this so-called land of opportunity…
I guess people want to save their prayers and petitions for causes all America can rally around, not just the Black people. Where was the emergency midnight session for Congress to pass illegal legislation like they did with one white woman who was already dead while thousands of living people suffered without food and water? Will America wear brown ribbons as a show of support for the flood victims of Katrina? I think not. It is with this faith that we as a nation will be able to hew out of the cesspool of despair a drop of hope.
Barbara Bush: Good enough for the poor
While W and his cronies are running away from Katrina (or like Condi out there shoe shopping), Momma Bush was declaring that the conditions for hurricane refugees in Houston’s Astrodome are good enough for the poor.
In The Nation John Nichols reports
Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees — cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases — former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.
“Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them,” Mrs. Bush told American Public Media’s “Marketplace” program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.
On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.
“Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead”
Here are three recent columns from The New York Times that are worth the read.
Are we looking at the end of a the neo-con era? Lot’s of folks are asking the question. The only problem is that the Democrats in the US don’t have any idea on what an effective government might be and while it might seem oxymoronic it is quite true that Dems and Republicans are united on neo-liberalism (free-market) policies.
Frank Rich: Falluja Floods the Superdome
“As the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn’t change: it is immutable, and it is destiny…”
Maureen Dowd: United States of Shame
“Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it’s happening in America…”
Bob Herbert: A Failure of Leadership
“”Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead”
Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president’s failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.
The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see…”