“Gatemouth” Brown dies after hurricane evacuation

press03.jpgClarence “Gatemouth” Brown died in his hometown Orange, Texas yesterday, where he had been evacuated after Katrina destroyed his home in Slidell, Louisiana. (Brown was suffering from lung cancer.)

Brown refused the “bluesman” moniker and preferred to be known as someone who played “American music” (the kind of music The Blasters sang about). The Gate played blues, jazz, Texas Swing, Cajun, country, Zydeco, whatever. And he could do it on just about any instrument. I saw him play numerous times and at one concert in Albany, NY he played guitar, bass, keyboards, and his beloved fiddle (I think he even did some drumming). Brown was a consistent winner of the “Living Blues” award for the category “Best Instrumentalist (Other)” for his fiddle playing.

He was an ageless performer whose career started in the 1940s with his signature “Okie Dokie Stomp.”

I will never forget when I took my then 5 or 6 year-old daughter to see Brown play at “The Egg” in Albany, NY. Rachel sat in the aisle down near the stage in what is very intimate venue. Gatemouth sang to her during the first set and while he was mingling with the crowd during the intermission gave Rachel an autographed picture…I’m sure she was the only 6 year-old white girl in the world with a photo of Gatemouth on her bedroom wall (beside her photo of Albany bluesman Ernie Williams)…

Check out is his Alligator Records album, Standing My Ground (super album with the great song “What Am I Living For?”).

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

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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.

Soldiers, cops muzzle reporters in wake of Katrina

LA Weekly: The shoot anchors don’t they?

Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. And the truth telling soon turned to backslapping. Lost amid all the self-congratulation by broadcasters once the crisis point had been passed was the fact that TV journalists went back to business-as-usual by the weekend. Their choke chains had been yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of any FCC regulatory fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed.

Now comes the real test of pathos vs. profit: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of truth and trust earned with the public to challenge FEMAís attempt to perpetrate a campaign of mass deception. Thatís the only way to describe what Reuters says is the agencyís attempt to block the news media from photographing the dead ó officials have readied 25,000 body bags ó as they are recovered from flooded New Orleans. Yet again, as it did with the coffins coming home from the Iraqi War and its violent aftermath, the Bush administration wants to hide from the public the lethal consequences of its flawed programs and policies.

Democracy Now!”: Is the government trying to stem the tide of images from New Orleans by threatening journalist?

Journalists covering New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina report that militarization in and around the city has hindered their work and threatened their physical safety. We hear from two journalists who were reporting in New Orleans recently.

Soldiers, cops muzzle reporters in wake of Katrina

From NBC’s Bryan Williams: An interesting dynamic is taking shape in this city, not altogether positive: after days of rampant lawlessness (making for what I think most would agree was an impossible job for the New Orleans Police Department during those first few crucial days of rising water, pitch-black nights and looting of stores) the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won’t be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media… obvious members of the media… armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It’s a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Martial law creates tense situation for reporter

New Orleans — I did not actually count the number of automatic weapons pointed at me, but there were at least five, and I was certain they were all locked and loaded, or whatever that military phrase is signifying that a gun is ready to blow a hole in somebody.

“Football season is over”

hunter-s-thompson.jpgApparent Hunter S. Thompson suicide note published by Rolling Stone

The brief message, scrawled in black marker and titled ”Football Season Is Over” (an apparent reference to the end of the NFL season he avidly followed as fan), reads as follows:

“No More Games. No More bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun –for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”

Gonzo journalist and political genius Dr. H. S. Thompson killed himself last February.

US censoring Katrina coverage

US censoring Katrina coverage

When U.S. officials asked the news media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free- speech watchdogs said yesterday.

The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration’s ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors charged in separate telephone interviews.

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.

“God outdoes terrorists yet again” (The Onion reports on Katrina)

“America’s Finest News Source” covers Katrina like no other media outlet: God outdoes terrorists yet again

Stories include:

    “Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq”
    “Government Relief Workers Mosey in to Help”
    “Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston”
    “White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters”
    “Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance”