Katrina lays flat American pride: Why the Republicans are OUT now, thank Gaia for small mercies!
The Weather gods have spoken. Lady Gaia herself has marshalled them and they have all gathered together in the form of a hurricane to scourge the USA for the iniquities it has committed towards Iraq and other countries. In a piece of poetic justice (ah, but 'twould have been even better had Katrina taken out Texas, or some South-MidWestern Bible Belt state), the southern half of the Atlantic seabord of North America has taken the brunt of this terrible natural disaster - thus scourging a large part of the very power base, namely the South, that brought today's Republicans into power.
Can I say that this is poetic justice? I think I can! But seriously folks, it has harmed and killed and brought into danger of survival many, MANY poor people, more so than better-off ones, though an entire three states at least, and in fact, as we are soon coming to see, the entire COUNTRY is seriously, economically, affected by the disaster. It has, INDEED, been "America's tsunami". Yes, indeed. And... as we can see every few years in somewhere like Bangladesh, and as has been all too plain in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the places in SE Asia worst affected by last year's terrible tsunami... it is the POOR who bear the brunt of the damage, it is always their little houses and dwellings that get swept away first, and it is always the low-income housing that stands at the end of the list of any rebuilding priorities. And the countries' governments are always reluctant, under the new laws of "neoliberalism", to give the aid that is necessary for basic disaster relief - food, medicine, interim shelter, help to replace dwellings and possessions of essential staff, eg. nurses, teachers and medics. They're like Scrooge when it comes to shelling out the "federal" aid. And so too is America! TO ITS OWN PEOPLE, NO LESS!!!
This is VERY revealing, I think - of the nature of capitalism, the modern, neoliberal, "global" variety especially. What it MEANS is, that misery is the same all over the globe, and governments' response is equally indifferent to it! It means, now, that NOBODY, no country, however rich - especially the USA - is immune to the kind of mass suffering endured in Third World countries; in Indonesia - or in Africa, for that matter. If there are for whatever environmental or climatic reasons, disruptions to the agribusiness/food production system in America, millions could quite easily starve there, just as in Ethiopia. AMERICA IS NOT IMMUNE. BY NO MEANS.
Beforehand, Americans and everybody else could just kid themselves by saying: "it won't happen here, REAL disasters only happen in poor countries where a lot of skinny people die like flies or mice", and silently pat themselves on the back. Home-grown flood disasters, to the American mind, were highly inconvenient things, but manageable; like those which hit those towns and country areas bordering the Mississippi in the earlier 1990s.
Well - no longer! Now you see what a REAL disaster in the USA is and would be like - this New Orleans flood is just a TASTE of it as well, believe me! - and the fact that the US government is SIMPLY NOT GEARED UP TO MANAGE IT, OR ITS AFTERMATH - nor does it have the money in readiness to - nor does it - certainly not when the show is run by the Bush crime family and their clique - even CARE very much about it! As President Chavez of Venezuela said, Bush goes on holiday EVERY time this happens!!
And IMAGINE, if you will, if there had been a REAL tsunami - which is quite possible, and even predicted, for America's eastern seabord in the next few decades, by the imminent collapse of the side of a large volcano in the Canary Islands, right into the Atlantic ocean. I'll look up a good web reference for that story in a comment below, possibly.
As the World Socialist Web Site says - I can't beat the way they put it! "The catastrophe that is unfolding in New Orleans and on the Gulf coast of Mississippi has been transformed into a national humiliation without parallel in the history of the United States.
The scenes of intense human suffering, hopelessness, squalor, and neglect amidst the wreckage of what was once New Orleans have exposed the rotten core of American capitalist society before the eyes of the entire world-and, most significantly, before those of its own stunned people.
The reactionary mythology of America as the “Greatest Country in the World” has suffered a shattering blow.
Hurricane Katrina has laid bare the awful truths of contemporary America-a country torn by the most intense class divisions, ruled by a corrupt plutocracy that possesses no sense either of social reality or public responsibility, in which millions of its citizens are deemed expendable and cannot depend on any social safety net or public assistance if disaster, in whatever form, strikes.
Washington’s response to this human tragedy has been one of gross incompetence and criminal indifference. People have been left to literally die in the streets of a major American city without any assistance for four days. Images of suffering and degradation that resemble the conditions in the most impoverished Third World countries are broadcast daily with virtually no visible response from the government of a country that concentrates the greatest share of wealth in the world."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s02.shtml
Yeah. You bet! Telling me!
THAT IS THE REALITY, FOLKS - DEAL WITH IT, DEAL WITH YOUR POLITICAL MIRE!!
Other interesting snippets, which again serve to expose the US government/establishments TRUE priorities:
"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered nearly the entire active police force in the flood-ravaged city to abandon rescue operations Wednesday night and focus on efforts to halt looting. The decision came in response to mounting pressure from sensationalized media coverage which is increasingly placing emphasis on the property damage done by looters, suggesting that it has become nearly as significant a social problem as the virtual destruction of the city by Hurricane Katrina..... The Associated Press reported, “The number of officers called off the search-and-rescue mission amounts to virtually the entire police force in New Orleans.”
The order came only hours after Nagin warned that the death toll in New Orleans might rise to the “thousands” once the bodies of those trapped in their homes by the flood waters begin to be recovered. Thousands of people have been rescued from rooftops and attics over the past two days, but efforts to save other survivors will be drastically curtailed as a result of the new focus on saving property.....
[And, RACISM ALERT!!!!] The media focus on the looting escalated throughout Wednesday, with the cable television networks, in particular, broadcasting and rebroadcasting the same footage of looters, mainly young black people, emerging from flood-damaged stores, goods in hand.
There is a definite social significance to such coverage, which grossly distorts the reality of the worst natural disaster in American history. It demonstrates that under the profit system, private property counts for far more than human life.
The sensationalized press coverage has an obvious political purpose: to demonize the victims of Hurricane Katrina and whip up the basest sentiments, including racism. In this way, the media helps justify the policy already decided on by the American ruling class and the Bush administration-to carry out only the most perfunctory recovery efforts and leave the vast majority of working class victims of the catastrophe to fend for themselves." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/loot-s01.shtml
Telling me! I tell you what, though - if *I* were abandoned in a disaster-hit city for what will probably turn out to be weeks and months, I would a) take everything that would help to amuse me - eg, a GameBoy - or for my own tastes, even more vital, a CD Walkman, and batteries - lots of batteries!! and b) as a woman in particular, I would most CERTAINLY take things to barter - to get food or medicine, maybe, to get out of a tight situation with other people, or, maybe, to bribe myself on a bus away from the disaster area!
Come on people - has NO ONE got any common sense/survival sense! Don't you know it's everyone for themselves in a war situation? Or haven't you watched the horror movies where the heroes and heroines hole up in a big department store and take *EVERYTHING THEY NEED* to help fight off plagues of zombies??
What's different about this situation??
And this information is particularly charming, sounds like Ethiopia or similar: "Many of those waiting to be evacuated have no water and have not eaten for days. Crowds chanted as television cameras filmed the scene, “We want, we want help,” while others begged, “Don’t leave us here to die.” Many cursed local, state and federal officials for what has emerged as criminal neglect and incompetence from the White House on down.
Expressing the mounting frustration within the city, Terry Ebbert, the head of the city’s emergency operations, called the US government’s response to the disaster “a national disgrace.” He noted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “has been here three days, yet there is no command and control.” The delay, he warned, had created an “incredibly explosive situation.”
CNN reporter Chris Lawrence reported seeing “many, many bodies” both inside and outside the convention center, where the elderly and the sick have dropped dead in the intense heat. The network broadcast images of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair and another body wrapped in a blanket, both abandoned by the side of the building." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/norl-s02.shtml
Finally, another thing! But THIS, folks, is the MAIN reason why the Republicans ain't gonna get in next time... or for the next, shall I say, 2 or 3 or 4 presidential elections?? (It's a bit like the British Winter of Discontent writ about 1000 times larger!!! (1978-1979 - NOT a natural disaster, but a great inconvenience caused to the middle class and everybody else by nationwide cross-services strikes against an unpopular public pay policy of the Callaghan regime! Rubbish in the street, no burials, rats everywhere and things. Well, anyway, the British middle class didn't like it, and THEY as in other countries are the ones who vote... so no more Labour government for the next nearly twenty years! I WISH the same effect on Mr Bush!)
Yes, and I BELIEVE it will happen to him this time, and it WILL preclude one of his brothers like Jeb assuming power as well, thankfully! But IF it is possible, truly, for an American president to be recalled without impeachment (well, it works for state governors!) then George W. Bush should be recalled at the first opportunity. Most CERTAINLY!! At the 2-year-mark of his term. And if his pathetic reaction to this dreadful disaster can get him impeached, then by all means, IMPEACH the bastard!! 1000s of people dying on his watch and billions of dollars of property damage and an incompetent LACK of policy to deal with both are surely worse than a bit of extramarital sex. Mind, he already allowed what I've just mentioned on his watch once, in 9/11... so, Americans, don't let him or his party get away with it again!!
IT'S THE GAS PRICES THAT ARE REALLY GOING TO "GET" YOU ALL THOUGH, ISN'T IT? THAT WILL PROVIDE THE FINAL DISILLUSIONMENT, ENDING THE MIDDLE CLASSES' and "MIDDLE AMERICA'S" LOVE FOR THE BUSH REGIME!!
"Bush made clear that he would do nothing to halt brazen price-gouging by the energy industry, which has seized on the disaster to hike up gasoline prices all across the country, boosting already swollen corporate profits. Gas prices were raised literally overnight anywhere from 30 to 75 cents a gallon, and are now above $3 in most of the country. There is talk of gasoline soaring toward $5 a gallon in the coming weeks or months."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s01.shtml
Well more fool him, because it's his death-knell, and serve the bugger right.
Can I say that this is poetic justice? I think I can! But seriously folks, it has harmed and killed and brought into danger of survival many, MANY poor people, more so than better-off ones, though an entire three states at least, and in fact, as we are soon coming to see, the entire COUNTRY is seriously, economically, affected by the disaster. It has, INDEED, been "America's tsunami". Yes, indeed. And... as we can see every few years in somewhere like Bangladesh, and as has been all too plain in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the places in SE Asia worst affected by last year's terrible tsunami... it is the POOR who bear the brunt of the damage, it is always their little houses and dwellings that get swept away first, and it is always the low-income housing that stands at the end of the list of any rebuilding priorities. And the countries' governments are always reluctant, under the new laws of "neoliberalism", to give the aid that is necessary for basic disaster relief - food, medicine, interim shelter, help to replace dwellings and possessions of essential staff, eg. nurses, teachers and medics. They're like Scrooge when it comes to shelling out the "federal" aid. And so too is America! TO ITS OWN PEOPLE, NO LESS!!!
This is VERY revealing, I think - of the nature of capitalism, the modern, neoliberal, "global" variety especially. What it MEANS is, that misery is the same all over the globe, and governments' response is equally indifferent to it! It means, now, that NOBODY, no country, however rich - especially the USA - is immune to the kind of mass suffering endured in Third World countries; in Indonesia - or in Africa, for that matter. If there are for whatever environmental or climatic reasons, disruptions to the agribusiness/food production system in America, millions could quite easily starve there, just as in Ethiopia. AMERICA IS NOT IMMUNE. BY NO MEANS.
Beforehand, Americans and everybody else could just kid themselves by saying: "it won't happen here, REAL disasters only happen in poor countries where a lot of skinny people die like flies or mice", and silently pat themselves on the back. Home-grown flood disasters, to the American mind, were highly inconvenient things, but manageable; like those which hit those towns and country areas bordering the Mississippi in the earlier 1990s.
Well - no longer! Now you see what a REAL disaster in the USA is and would be like - this New Orleans flood is just a TASTE of it as well, believe me! - and the fact that the US government is SIMPLY NOT GEARED UP TO MANAGE IT, OR ITS AFTERMATH - nor does it have the money in readiness to - nor does it - certainly not when the show is run by the Bush crime family and their clique - even CARE very much about it! As President Chavez of Venezuela said, Bush goes on holiday EVERY time this happens!!
And IMAGINE, if you will, if there had been a REAL tsunami - which is quite possible, and even predicted, for America's eastern seabord in the next few decades, by the imminent collapse of the side of a large volcano in the Canary Islands, right into the Atlantic ocean. I'll look up a good web reference for that story in a comment below, possibly.
As the World Socialist Web Site says - I can't beat the way they put it! "The catastrophe that is unfolding in New Orleans and on the Gulf coast of Mississippi has been transformed into a national humiliation without parallel in the history of the United States.
The scenes of intense human suffering, hopelessness, squalor, and neglect amidst the wreckage of what was once New Orleans have exposed the rotten core of American capitalist society before the eyes of the entire world-and, most significantly, before those of its own stunned people.
The reactionary mythology of America as the “Greatest Country in the World” has suffered a shattering blow.
Hurricane Katrina has laid bare the awful truths of contemporary America-a country torn by the most intense class divisions, ruled by a corrupt plutocracy that possesses no sense either of social reality or public responsibility, in which millions of its citizens are deemed expendable and cannot depend on any social safety net or public assistance if disaster, in whatever form, strikes.
Washington’s response to this human tragedy has been one of gross incompetence and criminal indifference. People have been left to literally die in the streets of a major American city without any assistance for four days. Images of suffering and degradation that resemble the conditions in the most impoverished Third World countries are broadcast daily with virtually no visible response from the government of a country that concentrates the greatest share of wealth in the world."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s02.shtml
Yeah. You bet! Telling me!
THAT IS THE REALITY, FOLKS - DEAL WITH IT, DEAL WITH YOUR POLITICAL MIRE!!
Other interesting snippets, which again serve to expose the US government/establishments TRUE priorities:
"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered nearly the entire active police force in the flood-ravaged city to abandon rescue operations Wednesday night and focus on efforts to halt looting. The decision came in response to mounting pressure from sensationalized media coverage which is increasingly placing emphasis on the property damage done by looters, suggesting that it has become nearly as significant a social problem as the virtual destruction of the city by Hurricane Katrina..... The Associated Press reported, “The number of officers called off the search-and-rescue mission amounts to virtually the entire police force in New Orleans.”
The order came only hours after Nagin warned that the death toll in New Orleans might rise to the “thousands” once the bodies of those trapped in their homes by the flood waters begin to be recovered. Thousands of people have been rescued from rooftops and attics over the past two days, but efforts to save other survivors will be drastically curtailed as a result of the new focus on saving property.....
[And, RACISM ALERT!!!!] The media focus on the looting escalated throughout Wednesday, with the cable television networks, in particular, broadcasting and rebroadcasting the same footage of looters, mainly young black people, emerging from flood-damaged stores, goods in hand.
There is a definite social significance to such coverage, which grossly distorts the reality of the worst natural disaster in American history. It demonstrates that under the profit system, private property counts for far more than human life.
The sensationalized press coverage has an obvious political purpose: to demonize the victims of Hurricane Katrina and whip up the basest sentiments, including racism. In this way, the media helps justify the policy already decided on by the American ruling class and the Bush administration-to carry out only the most perfunctory recovery efforts and leave the vast majority of working class victims of the catastrophe to fend for themselves." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/loot-s01.shtml
Telling me! I tell you what, though - if *I* were abandoned in a disaster-hit city for what will probably turn out to be weeks and months, I would a) take everything that would help to amuse me - eg, a GameBoy - or for my own tastes, even more vital, a CD Walkman, and batteries - lots of batteries!! and b) as a woman in particular, I would most CERTAINLY take things to barter - to get food or medicine, maybe, to get out of a tight situation with other people, or, maybe, to bribe myself on a bus away from the disaster area!
Come on people - has NO ONE got any common sense/survival sense! Don't you know it's everyone for themselves in a war situation? Or haven't you watched the horror movies where the heroes and heroines hole up in a big department store and take *EVERYTHING THEY NEED* to help fight off plagues of zombies??
What's different about this situation??
And this information is particularly charming, sounds like Ethiopia or similar: "Many of those waiting to be evacuated have no water and have not eaten for days. Crowds chanted as television cameras filmed the scene, “We want, we want help,” while others begged, “Don’t leave us here to die.” Many cursed local, state and federal officials for what has emerged as criminal neglect and incompetence from the White House on down.
Expressing the mounting frustration within the city, Terry Ebbert, the head of the city’s emergency operations, called the US government’s response to the disaster “a national disgrace.” He noted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “has been here three days, yet there is no command and control.” The delay, he warned, had created an “incredibly explosive situation.”
CNN reporter Chris Lawrence reported seeing “many, many bodies” both inside and outside the convention center, where the elderly and the sick have dropped dead in the intense heat. The network broadcast images of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair and another body wrapped in a blanket, both abandoned by the side of the building." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/norl-s02.shtml
Finally, another thing! But THIS, folks, is the MAIN reason why the Republicans ain't gonna get in next time... or for the next, shall I say, 2 or 3 or 4 presidential elections?? (It's a bit like the British Winter of Discontent writ about 1000 times larger!!! (1978-1979 - NOT a natural disaster, but a great inconvenience caused to the middle class and everybody else by nationwide cross-services strikes against an unpopular public pay policy of the Callaghan regime! Rubbish in the street, no burials, rats everywhere and things. Well, anyway, the British middle class didn't like it, and THEY as in other countries are the ones who vote... so no more Labour government for the next nearly twenty years! I WISH the same effect on Mr Bush!)
Yes, and I BELIEVE it will happen to him this time, and it WILL preclude one of his brothers like Jeb assuming power as well, thankfully! But IF it is possible, truly, for an American president to be recalled without impeachment (well, it works for state governors!) then George W. Bush should be recalled at the first opportunity. Most CERTAINLY!! At the 2-year-mark of his term. And if his pathetic reaction to this dreadful disaster can get him impeached, then by all means, IMPEACH the bastard!! 1000s of people dying on his watch and billions of dollars of property damage and an incompetent LACK of policy to deal with both are surely worse than a bit of extramarital sex. Mind, he already allowed what I've just mentioned on his watch once, in 9/11... so, Americans, don't let him or his party get away with it again!!
IT'S THE GAS PRICES THAT ARE REALLY GOING TO "GET" YOU ALL THOUGH, ISN'T IT? THAT WILL PROVIDE THE FINAL DISILLUSIONMENT, ENDING THE MIDDLE CLASSES' and "MIDDLE AMERICA'S" LOVE FOR THE BUSH REGIME!!
"Bush made clear that he would do nothing to halt brazen price-gouging by the energy industry, which has seized on the disaster to hike up gasoline prices all across the country, boosting already swollen corporate profits. Gas prices were raised literally overnight anywhere from 30 to 75 cents a gallon, and are now above $3 in most of the country. There is talk of gasoline soaring toward $5 a gallon in the coming weeks or months."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s01.shtml
Well more fool him, because it's his death-knell, and serve the bugger right.